“Hould your tongue, woman,” shouted Pete. “I'll see herself first, and
I'm dying to do it.”

Cæsar came back with the gorse; Nancy fed the fire and Grannie stirred
the oatmeal and water. And while the cakes were baking, Pete tramped the
kitchen and examined everything and recognised old friends with a roar.

“Bless me! the same place still. There's the clock on the shelf, with
the scratch on its face and the big finger broke at the joint, and the
lath--and the peck--and the whip--you've had it new corded, though----”

“'Sakes, how the boy remembers!” cried Grannie.

“And the white rumpy” (the cat had leapt on to the dresser out of
the reach of Pete's dog, and from that elevation was eyeing him
steadfastly), “and the slowrie--and the kettle--and the poker--my
gracious, the very poker----”

“Now, did you ever!” cried Grannie with amazement.

“And--yes--no--it is, though--I'll swear it before the
Dempster--that's,” said Pete, picking up a three-legged stool, “that's
the very stool she was sitting on herself in the fire-seat in front of
the turf closet. Let me sit there now for the sake of ould times gone
by.”

He put the stool in the fireplace and sat on it, shouting as he did so
between a laugh and a cry, “Aw, Grannie, bogh--Grannie, bogh! to think
there's been half the world between us since I was sitting here before!”

And Grannie herself, breaking down, said, “Wouldn't you like the tongs,
boy? Give the boy the tongs, woman, just to say he's at home.”

Pete plucked the tongs out of Nancy's hands, and began feeding the
fire with the gorse. “Aw, Grannie, have I ever been away?” he cried,
laughing, and his wet eyes gleaming.

“Nancy Joe, have you no nose at all?” cried Grannie. “The cake's burning
to a cinder.”

“Let it burn, mother,” shouted Pete. “It's the way she was doing herself
when she was young and forgetting. Shillings a-piece for all that's
wasted. Aw, the smell of it's sweet!”

So saying he piled the gorse on the fire, ramming it under the griddle
and choking it behind the crow. And while the oatcake crackled and
sparched and went black, he sniffed up the burning odour, and laughed
and cried in the midst of the smoke that went swirling up the chimney.

And meanwhile, Grannie herself, with the tears rolling down her cheeks,
was flapping her apron before her face and saying, “He'll make me die of
laughing, he will, though--yes, he will!” But behind the apron she was
blubbering to Nancy, “It's coming home, woman, that's it--it's just
coming home again, poor boy!”

By this time word of Pete's return had gone round Sulby? and the
bar-room was soon thronged with men and women, who looked through the
glass partition into the kitchen at the bronzed and bearded man who sat
smoking by the fire, with his dog curled up at his feet. “There'll be a
wedding soon,” said one. “The girl's in luck,” said another. “Success to
the fine girl she always was, and lucky they kept her from the poor
toot that was beating about on her port bow.”--“The young Ballawhaine,
eh?”--“Who else?”

Presently the dog went out to them, and, in default of its master,
became a centre of excited interest. It was an old creature, with a
settled look of age, and a gravity of expression that seemed to say he
had got over the follies of youth, and was now reserved and determined
to keep the peace. His back was curved in as if a cart-wheel had gone
over his spine, he had gigantic ears, a stump of a tail, a coat thin and
prickly like the bristles of a pig, but white and spotted with brown.

“Lord save us! a queer dog, though--what's his breed at all?” said one;
and then a resounding voice came from the kitchen doorway, saying--

“A sort of a Manxman crossed with a bat. Got no tail to speak of, but
there's plenty of ears at him. A handy sort of a dog, only a bit spoiled
in his childhood. Not fit for much company anyway, and no more notion of
dacent behaviour than my ould shoe. Down, Dempster, down.”

It was Pete. He was greeted with loud welcomes, and soon filled the room
all round with the steaming odour of spirits and water.

“You've the Manx tongue at you still, Mr. Quilliam,” said Jonaique; “and
you're calling the dog Dempster; what's that for at all?”

“For sake of the ould island, Mr. Jelly, and for the straight he's like
Dempster Mylrea when he's a bit crooked,” said Pete.

“The old man's dead, sir,” said John the Clerk.

“You don't say?” said Pete.

“Yes, though; the sun went down on him a Wednesday. The drink, sir, the
drink! I've been cutting a sod of his grave to-day.”

“And who's to be Dempster now?” asked Pete. “Who are they putting in for
it?”

“Well,” said John the Clerk, “they're talking and talking, and some's
saying this one and others that one; but the most is saying your ould
friend Philip Christian.”

“I knew it--I always said it,” shouted Pete; “best man in the island,
bar none. Oh, he'll not deceave me.”

The wind was roaring in the chimney, and the light was beginning to
fail. Pete became restless, and walked to and fro, peering out at
intervals by the window that looked on to the road. At this there was
some pushing and nudging and indulgent whispering.

“It's the girl! Aw, be aisy with the like! Five years apart, be aisy!”

“The meadow's white with the gulls sitting together like parrots; what's
that a sign of, father?” said Pete.

“Just a slant of rain maybe, and a puff of wind,” said Cæsar.

“But,” said Pete, looking up at the sky, “the long cat tail was going
off at a slant awhile ago, and now the thick skate yonder is hanging
mortal low.”

“Take your time, sir,” said Cæsar. “No need to send round the Cross
Vustha (fiery cross) yet. The girl will be home immadiently.”

“It'll be dark at her, though,” said Pete.

The company tried to draw him into conversation about the ways of life
in the countries he had visited, but he answered absently and jerkily,
and kept going to the door.

“Suppose there'll be Dempsters enough where you're coming from?” said
Jonaique.

“Sort of Dempsters, yes. Called one of them Ould Necessity, because it
knows no law. He rigged up the statute books atop of his stool for a
high sate, and when he wanted them he couldn't find them high or low.
Not the first judge that's sat on the law, though.... It's coming,
Cæsar, d'ye hear it? That's the rain on the street.”

“Aisy, man, aisy, man,” said Cæsar. “New dresses isn't rigged up in no
time. There'll be chapels now, eh? Chapels and conferences, and proper
religious instruction?”

“Divil a chapel, sir, only a rickety barn, belonging to some-ones
they're calling the Sky Pilots to. Wanted the ould miser that runs it to
build them a new tabernacle, but he wouldn't part till a lump of plaster
fell on his bald head at a love-feast, and then he planked down
a hundred pound, and they all shouted, 'Hit him again, Lord--you
might!'... D'ye hear that, then? That's the water coming down from the
gill. I can't stand no more of it, Grannie.”

Grannie was at the door, struggling to hold it against the wind, while
she looked out into the gathering darkness. “'Deed, but I'm getting
afraid of it myself,” she said, “and dear heart knows where Kirry can be
at this time of night.” “I'm off to find her,” said Pete, and, catching
up his hat and whistling to the dog, in a moment he was gone.

X.

The door was hard to close behind him, for it was now blowing a gale
from the north-east. Cæsar slipped through the dairy to see if the
outbuildings were safe, and came back with a satisfied look. The stable
and cow-house were barred, the barns were shut up, the mill-wheel was on
the brake, the kiln fire was burning gently, and all was snug and tight.
Grannie was wringing her hands as he returned, crying “Kate! Oh, Kate!”
 and he reproved her for want of trust in Providence.

People were now coming in rapidly with terrible stories of damage done
by the storm. It was reported that the Chicken Rock Lighthouse was blown
down, that the tide had risen to twenty-five feet in Ramsey and torn up
the streets, and that a Peel fisherman had been struck by his mainsail
into the sea and drowned.

More came into the house at every minute, and among them were all the
lonesome and helpless ones within a radius of a mile--Blind Jane, who
charmed blood, but could not charm the wind; Shemiah, the prophet, with
beard down to his waist and a staff up to his shoulder; and old Juan
Vessy, who “lived on the houses” in the way of a tramp. The people
who had been there already were afraid to go out, and Grannie, still
wringing her hands and crying “Kate, Kate,” called everybody into the
kitchen to gather about the fire. There they bemoaned their boys on the
sea, told stories of former storms, and quarrelled about the years of
wrecks and the sources of the winds that caused them.

The gale increased to fearful violence, and sometimes the wind sounded
like sheets flapping against the walls, sometimes like the deep boom of
the waves that roll on themselves in mid-ocean and never know a shore.
It began to groan in the chimney as if it were a wild beast struggling
to escape, and then the smoke came down in whorls and filled the
kitchen. They had to put out the fire to keep themselves from
suffocation, and to sit back from the fireplace to protect themselves
from cold. The door of the porch flew open, and they barricaded it with
long-handled brushes; the windows rattled in their frames, and they
blocked them up with the tops of the tables. In spite of all efforts
to shut out the wind, the house was like a basket, and it quaked like a
ship at sea. “I never heard the like on the water itself, and I'm used
of the sea, too,” said one. The others groaned and mumbled prayers.

Kelly the Thief, who had come in unopposed by Grannie, was on his knees
in one corner with his face to the wall, calling on the Lord to remember
that he had seen things in letters--stamps and such--but had never
touched them. John the Clerk was saying that he had to bury the
Deemster; Jonaique, the barber, that he had been sent for to “cut” the
Bishop; and Claudius Kewley, the farmer, that he had three fields of
barley still uncut and a stack of oats unthatched. “Oh, Lord,” cried
Claudius, “let me not die till I've got nothing to do!”

Cæsar stood like a strong man amidst their moans and groans, their
bowings of the head and clappings of the hands, and, when he heard the
farmer, his look was severe.

“Cloddy,” said he, “how do you dare to doubt the providence of God?”

“Aisy to talk, Mr. Cregeen,” the farmer whined, “but you've got your own
harvest saved,” and then Cæsar had no resource but to punish the man in
prayer. “The Lord had sent His storm to reprove some that were making
too sure of His mercies; but there was grace in the gale, only they
wouldn't be patient and trust to God's providence; there was milk in
the breast, only the wayward child wouldn't take time to find the teat.
Lord, lead them to true stillness----”

In the midst of Cæsar's prayer there was a sudden roar outside, and he
leapt abruptly to his feet with a look of vexation. “I believe in my
heart that's the mill-wheel broken loose,” said he, “and if it is, the
corn on the kiln will be going like a whirlingig.”

“Trust in God's providence, Cæsar,” cried the farmer.

“So I will,” said Cæsar, catching up his hat, “but I'll put out my kiln
fire first.”

When Pete stepped out of the porch, he felt himself smitten as by an
invisible wing, and he gasped like a fish with too much air. A quick
pain in the side at that moment reminded him of his bullet-wound,
but his heels had heart in them, and he set off to run. The night had
fallen, but a green rent was torn in the leaden sky, and through this
the full moon appeared.

When he got to Ramsey the tide was up to the old cross, slates were
flying like kites, and the harbour sounded like a battlefield with its
thunderous roar of rigging. He made for the dressmaker's, and heard that
Kate had not been there for six hours. At the draper's he learned that
at two o'clock in the afternoon she had been seen going up Ballure. The
sound rocket was fired as he pushed through the town. A schooner riding
to an anchor in the bay was flying her ensign for help. The sea was
terrific--a slaty grey, streaked with white foam like quartz veins; but
the men who had been idling on the quay when the water was calm were now
struggling, chafing, and fighting to go out on it, for the blood of the
old Vikings was in them.

Going by the water-trough, Pete called on Black Tom, who was civil
and conciliatory until he heard his errand, then growled with
disappointment, but nevertheless answered his question. Yes, he had
seen the young woman. She went up early in the “everin,” and left him
good-day. Giving this grateful news, Black Tom could not deny himself
a word of bitterness to poison the pleasure. “And when you are finding
her,” said he, “you'll be doing well to take her in tow, for I'm
thinking there's some that's for throwing her a rope.”

“Who d'ye mane?” said Pete.

“I lave it with you,” said Black Tom; and Pete pulled the door after
him.

On the breast of the hill there was the meeting of two roads, one of
them leading up to the “Hibernian,” the other going down to Port Mooar.
To resolve the difficulty of choice, Pete inquired at a cottage standing
some paces beyond, and as Kate had not been seen to pass up the higher
road, he determined to take the lower one. But he gathered no tidings
by the way, for Billy by the mill knew nothing, and the woman by the
sundial had gone to bed. At length he dipped into Port Mooar, and came
to a little cottage like a child's Noah's ark, with its tiny porch and
red light inside, looking out on the white breakers that were racing
along the beach. It was the cottage of the lobster-fisher. Pete inquired
if he had seen Kate. He answered no; he had seen nobody that day but Mr.
Christian. Which of the Christians? Mr. Philip Christian.

The news carried only one message to Pete's mind. It seemed to explain
something which had begun to perplex him--why Philip had not met him at
the quay, and why Kate had not heard of his coming. Clearly Philip was
at present at Ballure. He had not yet received the telegram addressed to
Douglas.

Pete turned back. Surely Kate had called somewhere. She would be at home
by this time. He tried to run, but the wind was now in his face. It was
veering northwards every minute, and rising to the force of a hurricane.
He tied his handkerchief over his head and under his chin to hold on his
hat. His hair whipped his ears like rods. Sometimes he was swept into
the hedge; often he was brought to his knees. Still he toiled along
through sheets of spray that glistened with the colours of a rainbow,
and ran over the ground like driven rain. His eyes smarted, and the
taste on his lips was salt.

The moon was now riding at the full through a wild flecked sky, and
Pete could clearly see, as he returned towards the bay, a crowd of human
figures on the cliffs above Port Lewaige. Quaking with undefined fears,
he pushed on until he had joined them. The schooner, abandoned by her
crew, had parted her cable, and was rolling like a blinded porpoise
towards the rocks. She fell on them with the groan of a living creature,
and, the instant her head was down, the white lions of the sea leapt
over her with a howl, the water swirled through her bulwarks and filled
her hatches, her rudder was unshipped, her sails were torn from their
gaskets, and the floating home wherein men had sailed, and sung,
and slept, and laughed, and jested, was a broken wreck in the heavy
wallowings of the waves.

Kate had not returned when Pete got back to Sulby, but the excitement of
her absence was eclipsed for the time by the turmoil of Cæsar's trouble.
Standing in the dark on the top of the midden, he was shouting to the
dairy door in a voice of thunder, which went off at the end of his
beard like the puling of a cat. The mill-wheel was going same as a
“whirlingig”--was there nobody to “hould the brake?” The stable roof was
stripped, and the mare was tearing herself to pieces in a roaring “pit
of hell”--was there never a shoulder for the door? The cow-house thatch
was flapping like a sail--was there nothing in the world but a woman
(Nancy Joe) to help a man to throw a ladder and a stone over it?

Only when Cæsar had been pacified was there silence to speak of Kate. “I
picked up news of her coming back by Claughbane,” said Pete, “and traced
her as near home as the 'Ginger.' She can't be far away. Where is she?”

Those who were cool enough fell to conjecture. Grannie had no resource
but groans. Nancy was moaning by her side. The rest were full of their
own troubles. Blind Jane was bewailing her affliction.

“You can all see,” she cried, “but I'm not knowing the harm that's
coming on me.”

“Hush, woman, hush,” said Pete; “we're all same as yourself half our
lives--we're all blind at night.”

In the midst of the tumult a knock came to the door, and Pete made a
plunge towards the porch.

“Wait,” cried Cæsar. “Nobody else comes here to-night except the girl
herself. Another wind like the last and we'll have the roof off the
house too.”

Then he called to the new-comer, with his face to the porch door, and
the answer came back to him in a wail like the wind itself.

“Who's there?”

It was Joney from the glen.

“We're like herrings in a barrel--we can't let you in.”

She wasn't wanting to come in. But her roof was going stripping, and
half her house was felled, and she couldn't get her son (the idiot boy)
to leave his bed. He would perish; he would die; he was all the family
she had left to her--wouldn't the master come and save him?

“Impossible!” shouted Cæsar. “We've our own missing this fearful night,
Joney, and the Lord will protect His children.”

Was it Kate? She had seen her in the glen----

“Let me get at that door,” said Pete.

“But the house will come down,” cried Cæsar.

“Let it come,” said Pete.

Pete shut the door of the bar-room, and then the wind was heard to swirl
through the porch.

“When did you see her, Joney, and where?” said the voice of Pete; and
the voice of Joney answered him--

“Goings by my own house at the start of the storm this everin.”

“I'll come with you--go on,” said Pete, and Grannie shouted across the
bar--

“Take Cæsar's topcoat over your monkey-jacket.”

“I've sail enough already for a wind like this, mother,” cried the
voice of Pete, and then the swirling sound in the porch went off with a
long-drawn whirr, and Cæsar came back alone to the kitchen.

Pete's wound ached again, but he pressed his hand on the place of it and
struggled up the glen, dragging Joney behind him. They came to her house
at last. One half of the thatch lay over the other half; the rafters
were bare like the ribs of the wreck; the oat-cake peck was rattling on
the lath; the meal-barrel in the corner was stripped of its lid, and
the meal was whirling into the air like a waterspout; the dresser was
stripped, the broken crockery lay on the uncovered floor, and the iron
slowrie hanging over the place of the fire was swinging and striking
against the wall, and ringing like a knell. And in the midst of this
scene of desolation the idiot boy was placidly sleeping on his naked
bed, and over it the moon was scudding through a tattered sky.

The night wore on, and the company in the kitchen listened long, and
sometimes heard sounds as of voices crying in the wind, but Pete did not
return. Then they fell to groaning again, to praying aloud without fear,
and to confessing their undiscovered sins without shame.

“I'm searched terrible--I can see through me,” cried Kelly, the postman.

Some were chiefly troubled lest death should fall on them while they
were in a public-house.

“I keep none,” cried Cæsar.

“But you wouldn't let us open the door,” whined the farmer.

If the door had been wide enough for a Bishop, not a soul would have
stirred. For the first time within anyone's recollection, Nancy Joe was
on her knees.

“O Lord,” she prayed, “Thou knowest well I don't often bother Thee.
But save Kate, Lord; oh, save and prasarve my little Kirry! It's twenty
years and better since I asked anything of Thee before and if Thou wilt
only take away this wind, I'll promise not to say another prayer for
twenty years more.”

“Say it in Manx, woman,” moaned Grannie. “I always say my prayers in
Manx as well, and the Lord can listen to the one He knows best.”

“There's prayer as well as praise in singing,” cried Cæsar; and they
began to sing, all down on their knees, their eyes tightly closed, and
their hands clasped before their faces. They sang of heaven and its
peaceful plains, its blue lakes and sunny skies, its golden cities and
emerald gates, its temples and its tabernacles, where “congregations
ne'er break up and Sabbaths never end.” It was some comfort to drown
with the wild discord of their own voices the fearful noises of the
tempest. When they finished the hymn, they began on it again, keeping
it up without a break, sweeping the dying note of the last word into
the rising pitch of the first one. In the midst of their singing,
they thought a fiercer gust than ever was beating on the door, and, to
smother the fear of it, they sang yet louder. The gust came a second
time, and Cæsar cried--

“Again, brothers,” and away they went with another wild whoop through
the hymn.

It came a third time, and Cæsar cried--

“Once more, beloved,” and they raced madly through the hymn again.

Then the door burst open as before a tremendous kick, and Pete, fierce
and wild-eyed, and green with the drift of the salt foam caked thick on
his face, stepped over the threshold with the unconscious body of Kate
in his arms and the idiot boy peering over his shoulder.

“Thank the Lord for an answer to prayer,” cried Cæsar. “Where did you
find her?”

“In the tholthan up the glen,” said Pete. “Up in the witch's tholthan.”

XI.

On the second morning afterwards the air was quiet and full of the odour
of seaweed; the sky was round as the inside of a shell, and pale pink
like the shadow of flame; the water was smooth and silent; the hills
had lost the memory of the storm, and land and sea lay like a sleeping
child.

In this broad and steady morning Kate came back to consciousness. She
had slid out of delirium into sleep as a boat slides out of the open
sea into harbour, and when she awoke there was a voice in her ears that
seemed to be calling to her from the quay. It was a familiar voice, and
yet it was unfamiliar; it was like the voice of a friend heard for the
first time after a voyage. It seemed to come from a long way off, and
yet to be knocking at the very door of her heart. She kept her eyes
closed for a moment and listened; then she opened them and looked again.

The light was clouded and yet dazzling, as if glazed muslin were
shaking before her eyes. Grannie was sitting by her bedside, knitting in
silence.

“Why are you sitting there, mother?” she asked.

Grannie dropped her needles and caught at her apron. “Dear heart alive,
the child's herself again!” she said.

“Has anything happened?” said Kate. “What time is it?”

“Monday morning, bogh, thank the Lord for all His mercies!” cried
Grannie.

The familiar voice came again. It came from the direction of the stairs.
“Who's that?” said Kate, whispering fearfully.

“Pete himself, Kirry. Aw well! Aw dear!”

“Pete!” cried Kate in terror.

“Aw, no, woman, but a living man come back again. No fear of him, bogh!
Not dead at all, but worth twenty dead men yet, and he brought you safe
out of the storm.”

“The storm?”

“Yes, the storm, woman. There warn such a storm on the island I don't
know the years. He found you in the tholthan up the glen. Lost your way
in the wind, it's like, and no wonder. But let me call father. Father!
father! Chut! the man's as deaf as little Tom Hommy. Father!” called
Grannie, bustling about at the stair-head in a half-demented way.

There was some commotion below, and the voice on the stairs was saying,
“_This_ way? No, _sir_. That way, if _you_ plaze.”

“D'ye hear him, Kirry?” cried Grannie, putting her head back into the
room. “That's the man himself. Sitting on the bottom step same as
an ould bulldog, and keeping watch that nobody bothers you. The
good-naturedst bulldog breathing, though, and he hasn't had a wink on
the night. Saved your life, darling. He did; yes, he did, praise God.”

At mention of the tholthan, Kate had remembered everything. She dropped
back on the pillow, and cried, in a voice of pain, “Why couldn't he
leave me to die?”

Grannie chuckled knowingly at that, and wiped her eyes with the corner
of her apron. “The bogh is herself, for sure. When they're wishing
themselves dead they're always mending father! But I'll go down
instead. Lie still, bogh, lie still!”

The voice of Grannie went muffled down the stairs with many “Aw dears,
aw dears!” and then crackled from below through the floor and the
unceiled joists, saying sharply but with a tremor, too, “Nancy Joe, why
aren't you taking a cup of something upstairs, woman?”

“Goodness me, Mistress Cregeen, is it true for all?” said Nancy.

“Why, of course it's true. Do you think a poor child is going fasting
for ever?”

“What's that?” shouted the familiar voice again. “Was it herself you
were spaking to in the dairy loft, Grannie?”

“Who else, man?” said Grannie, and then there was a general tumult.

“Aw, the joy! Aw, the delight! Gough bless me, Grannie, I was thinking
she was for spaking no more.”

“Out of the way,” cried Nancy, as if pushing past somebody to whip the
kettle on to the fire. “These men creatures have no more rising in their
hearts than bread without balm.”

“You're balm enough yourself, Nancy, for a quiet husband. But lend me a
hould of the bellows there--I'll blow up like blazes.”

Cæsar came into the house on the top of this commotion, grumbling as
he stepped over the porch, “The wind has taken half the stacks of my
haggard, mother.”

“No matter, sir,” shouted Pete. “The best of your Melliah is saved
upstairs.”

“Is she herself?” said Cæsar. “Praise His name!”

And over the furious puffing and panting and quacking of the bellows and
the cracking and roaring of the fire, the voice of Pete came in gusts
through the floor, crying, “I'll go mad with the joy! I will; yes, I
will, and nobody shall stop me neither.”

The house, which seemed to have been holding its breath since the storm,
now broke into a ripple of laughter. It began in the kitchen, it ran up
the stairs, it crept through the chinks in the floor, it went over the
roof. But Kate lay on her pillow and moaned, and turned her face to the
wall.

Presently Nancy Joe appeared in the bedroom, making herself tidy at the
doorway with a turn of the hand over her hair. “Mercy on me!” she cried,
clapping her hands at the first sight of Kate's face, “who was the
born blockhead that said the girl's wedding was as like to be in the
churchyard as in the church?”

“That's me,” said a deep voice from the middle of the stairs, and then
Nancy clashed the door back and poured Pete into Kate in a broadside.

“It was Pete that done it, though,” she said. “You can't expect much
sense of the like, but still and for all he saved your life, Kitty. Dr.
Mylechreest says so. 'If the girl had been lying out another hour,' says
he----And, my goodness, the fond of you that man is; it's wonderful!
Twisting and turning all day yesterday on the bottom step yonder same as
a live conger on the quay, but looking as soft about the eyes as if he'd
been a week out of the water. And now! my sakes, _now!_ D'ye hear him,
Kirry? He's fit to burst the bellows. No use, though--he's a shocking
fine young fellow--he's all that.... But just listen!”

There was a fissing sound from below, and a sense of burning. “What do
I always say? You can never trust a man to have sense enough to take it
off. That's the kettle on the boil.”

Nancy went flopping downstairs, where with furious words she rated Pete,
who laughed immoderately. Cæsar came next. He had taken off his boots
and was walking lightly in his stockings; but Kate felt his approach by
his asthmatic breathing. As he stepped in at the door he cried, in the
high pitch of the preacher, “Praise the Lord, O my soul, and all that is
within me praise His holy name!” Then he fell to the praise of Pete as
well.

“He brought you out of the jaws of death and the mouth of Satan. It
was a sign, Katherine, and we can't do better than follow the Spirit's
leading. He saved your life, woman, and that's giving him the right to
have and to hould it. Well, I've only one child in this life, but, if
it's the Lord's will, I'm willing. He was always my white-headed boy,
and he has made his independent fortune in a matter of five years'
time.”

The church bell began to toll, and Kate started up and listened.

“Only the Dempster's funeral, Kitty,” said Cæsar. “They were for burying
him to-morrow, but men that drink don't keep. They'll be putting him in
the family vault at Lezayre with his father, the staunch ould Rechabite.
Many a good cow has a bad calf, you see, and that's bad news for a man's
children; but many a good calf is from a bad cow, and that's good news
for the man himself. It's been the way with Peter anyway, for the
Lord has delivered him and prospered him, and I'm hearing on the best
authority he has five thousand golden sovereigns sent home to Mr.
Dumbell's bank at Douglas.”

Grannie came up with a basin of beef-tea, and Cæsar was hustled out of
the room.

“Come now, bogh; take a spoonful, and I'll lave you to yourself,” said
Grannie.

“Yes, leave me to myself,” said Kate, sipping wearily; and then Grannie
went off with the basin in her hand.

“Has she taken it?” said some one below.

“Look at that, if you plaze,” said Grannie in a jubilant tone; and Kate
knew that the empty basin was being shown around.

Kate lay back on the pillow, listened to the tolling of the bell, and
shuddered. She thought it a ghostly thing that the first voice she had
heard on coming as from another world had been the voice of Pete, and
the first name dinned into her ears had been Pete's name. The procession
of the Deemster's funeral passed the house, and she closed her eyes
and seemed to see it--the coffin on the open cart, the men on horseback
riding beside it, and then the horses tied up to posts and gates
about the churchyard, and the crowd of men of all conditions at the
grave-side. In her mind's eye, Kate was searching through that crowd for
somebody. Was _he_ there? Had he heard what had happened to her?

She fell into a doze, and was awakened by a horse's step on the road,
and the voices of two men talking as they came nearer.

“Man alive, the joy I'm taking to see you! The tallygraph? Coorse not.
Knew I'd find you at the funeral, though.” It was Pete.

“But I meant to come over after it.” It was Philip, and Kate's heart
stood still.

The voices were smothered for a moment (as the buzzing is when the bees
enter the hive), and then began with as sharper ring from the rooms
below.

“How's she now, Mrs. Cregeen?” said the voice of Philip.

“Better, sir--much better,” answered Grannie.

“No return of the unconsciousness?”

“Aw, no,” said Grannie.

“Was she”--Kate thought the voice faltered--“was she delirious?”

“Not rambling at all,” replied Grannie.

“Thank God,” said Philip, and Kate felt a long breath of relief go
through the air.

“I didn't hear of it until this morning,” said Philip. “The postman told
me at breakfast-time, and I called on Dr. Mylechreest coming out. If I
had known----I didn't sleep much last night, anyway; but if I had ever
imagined----”

“You're right good to the girl, sir,” said Grannie, and then Kate,
listening intently, caught a quavering sound of protestation.

“'Deed you are, though, and always have been,” said Grannie, “and I'm
saying it before Pete here, that ought to know and doesn't.”

“Don't I, though?” came in the other voice--the resounding voice--the
voice full of laughter and tears together. “But I do that, Grannie, same
as if I'd been here and seen it. Lave it to me to know Phil Christian.
I've summered and wintered the man, haven't I? He's timber that doesn't
start, mother, blow high, blow low.”

Kate heard another broken sound as of painful protest, and then with a
sickening sense she covered up her head that she might hear no more.

XII.

She was weak and over-wrought, and she fell asleep as she lay covered.
While she slept a babel of meaningless voices kept clashing in her ears,
and her own voice haunted her perpetually. When she awoke it was
broad morning again, and the house was full of the smell of boiling
stock-fish. By that she knew it was another day, and the hour of early
breakfast. She heard the click of cups and saucers on the kitchen table,
the step of her father coming in from the mill, and then the heartsome
voice of Pete talking of the changes in the island since he went
away. New houses, promenades, iron piers, breakwaters, lakes,
towers--wonderful I extraordinary! tre-menjous!

“But the boys--w here's the Manx boys at all?” said Pete. “Gone like a
flight of birds to Austrillya and Cleveland and the Cape, and I don't
know where. Not a Manx house now that hasn't one of the boys foreign.
And the houses themselves--where's the ould houses and the crofts?
Felled, all felled or boarded up. And the boats--where's the boats?
Lying rotting at the top of the harbour.”

Grannie's step came into the kitchen, and Pete's loud voice drooped to a
whisper. “How's herself this morning, mother?”

“Sleeping quiet and nice when I came downstairs,” said Grannie.

“Will I be seeing her myself to-day, think you?” asked Pete.

“I don't know in the world, but I'll ask,” answered Grannie.

“You're an angel, Grannie,” said Pete, “a reg'lar ould archangel.”

Kate shuddered with a new fear. It was clear that in the eyes of her
people the old relations with Pete were to stand. Everybody expected her
to marry Pete; everybody seemed anxious to push the marriage on.

Grannie came up with her breakfast, pulled aside the blind, and opened
the window.

“Nancy will tidy the room a taste,” she said coaxingly, “and then I
shouldn't wonder if you'll be sending for Pete.”

Kate raised a cry of alarm.

“Aw, no harm when a girl's poorly,” said Grannie, “and her promist man
for all.”

Kate tried to protest and explain, but courage failed her. She only
said, “Not yet, mother. I'm not fit to see him yet.”

“Say no more about it. Not to-day at all--to-morrow maybe,” said
Grannie, and Kate clutched at the word, and answered eagerly--

“Yes, tomorrow, mother; to-morrow maybe.”

Before noon Philip had come again. Kate heard his horse's step on the
road, trotting hard from the direction of Peel. He drew up at the porch,
but did not alight, and Grannie went out to him.

“I'll not come in to-day, Mrs. Cregeen,” he said. “Does she continue to
improve?”

“As nice as nice, sir,” said Grannie.

Kate crept out of bed, stole to the window, hid behind the curtains, and
listened intently.

“What a mercy all goes well,” he said; Kate could hear the heaving of
his breath. “Is Pete about?”

“No, but gone to Ramsey, sir,” said Grannie. “It's like you'll meet him
if you are going on to Ballure.”

“I must be getting back to business,” said Philip, and the horse swirled
across the road.

“Did you ride from Douglas on purpose, then?” said Grannie, and Philip
answered with an audible effort--

“I was anxious. What an escape she has had! I could scarcely sleep last
night for thinking of it.”

Kate put her hand to her throat to keep back the cry that was bubbling
up, and her mother's voice came thick and deep.

“The Lord's blessing. Master Philip----” she began, but the horse's feet
stamped out everything as it leapt to a gallop in going off.

Kate listened where she knelt until the last beat of the hoofs had died
away in the distance, and then she crept back to bed and covered up her
head in the clothes as before, but with a storm of other feelings. “He
loves me,” she told herself with a thrill of the heart. “He loves
me--he loves me still! And he will never, never, never see me married to
anybody else.”

She felt an immense relief now, and suddenly found strength to think of
facing Pete. It even occurred to her to send for him at once, as a first
step towards removing the impression that the old relations were to
remain. She would be quiet, she would be cold, she would show by her
manner that Pete was impossible, she would break the news gently.

Pete came like the light at Nancy's summons. Kate heard him on the
stairs whispering with Nancy and breathing heavily. Nancy was hectoring
it over him and pulling him about to make him presentable.

“Here,” whispered Nancy, “take the redyng comb and lash your hair out,
it's all through-others. And listen--you've got to be quiet. Promise
me you'll be quiet. She's wake and low and nervous, so no kissing. D'ye
hear me now, no kissing.”

“Aw, kissing makes no noise to spake of, woman,” whispered Pete; and
then he was in the room.

Kate saw him come, a towering dark figure between her and the door. He
did not speak at first, but slid down to the chair at the foot of the
bed, modestly, meekly, reverently, as if he had entered a sanctuary. His
hand rested on his knee, and she noticed that the wrist was hairy and
tattooed with the three legs of Man.

“Is it you, Pete?” she asked; and then he said in a low tone, almost in
a whisper, as if speaking to himself in a hush of awe--

“It's her own voice again! I've heard it in my drames these five years.”

He looked helplessly about him for a moment, fixed his watery eyes on
Nancy as if he wanted to burst into sobs but dare not for fear of the
noise, then turned on his chair and seemed on the point of taking to
flight. But just at that instant his dog, which had followed him into
the room, planted its forelegs on the counterpane and looked impudently
into Kate's face.

“Down, Dempster, down!” cried Pete; and after that, the ice being broken
by the sound of his voice, Pete was his own man once more.

“Is that your dog, Pete?” said Kate.

“Aw, no, Kate, but I'm his man,” said Pete. “He does what he likes with
me, anyway. Caught me out in Kimber-ley and fetched me home.”

“Is he old?”

“Old, d'ye say? He's one of the lost ten tribes of dogs, and behaves as
if he'd got to inherit the earth.”

She felt Pete's big black eyes shining on her.

“My gracious, Kitty, what a woman you're growing, though!” he said.

“Am I so much changed?” she asked.

“Changed, is it?” he cried. “Gough bless me heart! the nice little
thing you were when we used to play fishermen together down at Cornaa
Harbour--d'ye remember? The ould kipper-box rolling on a block for
a boat at sea--do you mind it? Yourself houlding a bit of a broken
broomstick in the rope handle for a mast, and me working the
potato-dibber on the ground, first port and then starboard, for rudder
and wind and oar and tide. 'Mortal dirty weather this, cap'n?' 'Aw, yes,
woman, big sea extraordinary'--d'ye mind it, Kirry!”

Kate tried to laugh a little and to say what a long time ago it was
since then. But Pete, being started, laughed uproariously, slapped his
knee, and rattled on.

“Up at the mill, too--d'ye remember that now? Yourself with the top of
a barrel for a flower basket, holding it 'kimbo at your lil hip and
shouting, 'Violets! Swate violets! Fresh violets!'” (He mocked her
silvery treble in his lusty baritone and roared with laughter.)

“And then me, woman, d'ye mind me?--me, with the pig-stye gate atop of
my head for a fish-board, yelling, 'Mackerel! Fine ladies, fresh ladies,
and bellies as big as bishops--Mack-er-el!' Aw, Kirry, Kirry! Aw, the
dear ould times gone by! Aw, the changes, the changes!... Did I _know_
you then? Are you asking me did I know you when I found you in the glen?
Did I know I was alive, Kitty? Did I know the wind was howling? Did I
know my head was going round like a compass, and my heart thumping a
hundred and twenty pound to the square inch? Did I kiss you and kiss you
while you were lying there useless, and lift you up and hitch your poor
limp arms around my neck, and carry you out of the dirty ould tholthan
that was going to be the death of you--the first job I was doing on
the island, too, coming back to it.... Lord save us, Kitty, what have I
done?”

Kate had dropped back on the pillow, and was sobbing as if her heart
would break, and seeing this, Nancy fell on Pete with loud reproaches,
took the man by the shoulders and his dog by the neck, and pushed both
out of the room.

“Out of it,” cried Nancy. “Didn't I tell you to be quiet? You great
blethering omathaun, you shall come no more.”

Abashed, ashamed, humiliated, and quiet enough now, Pete went slowly
down the stairs.

XIII.

Late that night Kate heard Cæsar and her mother talking together as they
were going to bed. Cæsar was saying--

“I got him on the track of a good house, and he went off to Ramsey this
morning to put a sight on it.”

“Dear heart alive, father!” Grannie answered, “Pete isn't home till a
week come Saturday.”

“The young man is warm on the wedding,” said Cæsar, “and he has money,
and store is no sore.”

“But the girl's not fit for it, 'deed she isn't,” said Grannie.

“If she's wake,” said Cæsar, “shell be no worse for saying 'I will,' and
when she's said it she'll have time enough to get better.”

Kate trembled with fear. The matter of her marriage with Pete was going
on without her. A sort of supernatural power seemed to be pushing it
along. Nobody asked if she wished it, nobody questioned that she did so.
It was taken for granted that the old relations would stand. As soon
as she could go about she would be expected to marry Pete. Pete himself
would expect it, because he believed he had her promise; her mother
would expect it, because she had always thought of it as a thing
understood; her father would expect it, because Pete's prosperity had
given him a new view of Pete's piety and pedigree; and Nancy Joe
would expect it, too, if only because she was still haunted by her old
bugbear, the dark shadow of Ross Christian. There was only one way to
break down these expectations, and that was to speak out. But how was a
girl to speak? What was she to say?

Kate pretended to be ill. Three days longer she lay, like a hunted wolf
in its hole, keeping her bed from sheer dread of the consequences of
leaving it. The fourth day was Sunday. It was morning, and the church
bells were ringing. Cæsar had shouted from his bedroom for some one to
tie his bow, then for some one to button his black gloves. He had gone
off at length with the footsteps of the people stepping round to chapel.
The first hymn had been started, and its doleful notes were trailing
through the mill walls. Kate was propped up in bed, and the window of
her room was open. Over the droning of the hymn she caught the sound of
a horse's hoofs on the road. They stopped at a little distance, and then
came on again, with the same two voices as before.

Pete was talking with great eagerness. “Plenty of house, aw plenty,
plenty,” he was saying. “Elm Cottage they're calling it--the slate
one with the ould fir-tree behind the Coort House and by the lane to
Claughbane. Dry as a bone and clane as a gull's wing. You could lie with
your back to the wall and ate off the floor. Taps inside and water as
white as gin. I've been buying the cabin of the 'Mona's Isle' for a
summer-house in the garden. Got a figurehead for the porch too, and
I'll have an anchor for the gate before I'm done. Aw, I'm bound to have
everything nice for her.”

There was a short silence, in which nothing was heard but the step of
the horse, and then Philip said in a faltering voice, “But isn't this
being rather in a hurry, Pete?”

“Short coorting's the best coorting, and ours has been long enough
anyway,” said Pete. They had drawn up at the porch, and Pete's laugh
came in at the window.

“But think how weak she is,” said Philip. “She hasn't even-left her bed
yet, has she?”

“Well, yes, of coorse, sartenly,” said Pete, in a steadier voice, “if
the girl isn't fit----”

“It's so sudden, you see,” said Philip. “Has she--has she--consented?”

“Not to say consented----” began Pete; and Philip took him up and said
quickly, eagerly, hotly--

“She can't--I'm sure she can't.”

There was silence again, broken only by the horse's impatient pawing,
and then Philip said more calmly, “Let Dr. Mylechreest see her first, at
all events.”

“I'm not a man for skinning the meadow to the sod, no----” said Pete, in
a doleful tone; but Kate heard no more.

She was trembling with a new thought. It was only a shadowy suggestion
as yet, and at first she tried to beat it back. But it came again, it
forced itself upon her, it mastered her, she could not resist it.

The way to break the fate that was pursuing her was to make _Philip_
speak out! The way to stop the marriage with Pete was to compel Philip
to marry her! He thought she would never consent to marry Pete--what if
he were given to understand that she had consented. That was the way to
gain the victory over Philip, the way to punish him!

He would not blame her--he would lay the blame at the door of chance, of
fate, of her people. He would think they were forcing this marriage upon
her--the mother out of love of Pete, the father out of love of Pete's
money, and Nancy out of fear of Ross Christian. He would know that she
could not struggle because she could not speak. He would believe she was
yielding against her will, in spite of her love, in the teeth of
their intention. He would think of her as a victim, as a martyr, as a
sacrifice.

It was a deceit--a small deceit; it looked so harmless, too--so
innocent, almost humorous, half ridiculous; and she was a woman, and she
could not put it away. Love, love, love! It would be her excuse and her
forgiveness. She had appealed to Philip himself and in vain. Now she
would pretend to go on with her old relations. It was so little to do,
and the effects were so certain. In jealousy and in terror Philip would
step out of himself and claim her.

She had craft--all hungry things have craft. She had inklings of
ambition, a certain love of luxury, and desire to be a lady. To
get Philip was to get everything. Love would be satisfied, ambition
fulfilled, the aims of refinement reached. Why not risk the great stake?

Nancy came to tidy the room, and Kate said, “Where's Pete all this time,
I wonder?”

“Sitting in the fire-seat this half-hour,” said Nancy. “I don't know in
the world what's come over the man. He's rocking and moaning there like
a cow licking a dead calf.”

“Would he like to come up, think you?”

“Don't ask the man twice if you want him to say no,” said Nancy.

Blushing and stammering, and trying to straighten his black curls, Pete
came at Nancy's call.

Kate had few qualms. The wound she had received from Philip had left her
conscienceless towards Pete. Yet she turned her head a little sideways
as she welcomed him.

“Are you better, then, Kirry?” said Pete timidly.

“I'm nearly as well as ever,” she answered.

“You are, though?” said Pete. “Then you'll be down soon, it's like, eh?”

“I hope so, Pete--quite soon.”

“And fit for anything, now--yes?”

“Oh, yes, fit for anything.”

Pete laughed from his heart like a boy. “I'll take a slieu round to
Ballure and tell Philip immadiently.”

“Philip?” said Kate, with a look of inquiry.

“He was saying this morning you wouldn't be equal to it, Kirry.”

“Equal to what, Pete?”

“Getting--going--having--that's to say--well, you know, putting a sight
on the parson himself one of these days, that's the fact.” And, to cover
his confusion, Pete laughed till the scraas of the roof began to snip.

There was a moment's pause, and then Kate said, with a cough and a
stammer and her head aside, “Is that so _very_ tiring, Pete?”

Pete leapt from his chair and laughed again like a man demented. “D'ye
say so, Kitty? The word then, darling--the word in my ear--as soft as
soft----”

He was leaning over the bed, but Kate drew away from him, and Nancy
pulled him back, saying, “Get off with you, you goosey gander! What for
should you bother a poor girl to know if sugar's sweet, and if she's
willing to change a sweetheart for a husband?”

It was done. One act--nay, half an act; a word--nay, no word at all, but
only silence. The daring venture was afoot.

Grannie came up with Kate's dinner that day, kissed her on both cheeks,
felt them hot, wagged her head wisely, and whispered, “I know--you
needn't tell _me!_”

XIV.

The last hymn was sung, Cæsar came home from chapel, changed back
from his best to his work-day clothes, and then there was talking and
laughing in the kitchen amid the jingling of plates and the vigorous
rattling of knives and forks.

“Phil must be my best man,” said Pete. “He'll be back to Douglas now,
but I'll get you to write me a line, Cæsar, and ask him.”

“Do you hold with long engagements, Pete?” said Grannie.

“A week,” said Pete, with the air of a judge; “not much less anyway--not
of a rule, you know.”

“You goose,” cried Nancy, “it must be three Sundays for the banns.”

“Then John the Clerk shall get them going this evening,” said Pete.
“Nancy had the pull of me there, Grannie. Not being in the habit of
getting married, I clane forgot about the banns.”

John the Clerk came in the afternoon, and there was some lusty
disputation.

“We must have bridesmaids and wedding-cakes, Pete--it's only proper,”
 said Nancy.

“Aw, yes, and tobacco and rum, and everything respectable,” said Pete.

“And the parson--mind it's the parson now,” said Grannie; “none of their
nasty high-bailiffs. I don't know in the world how a dacent woman can
rest in her bed----”

“Aw, the parson, of coorse--and the parson's wife, maybe,” said Pete.

“I think I can manage it for you for to-morrow fortnight,” said John
the Clerk impressively, and there was some clapping of hands, quickly
suppressed by Cæsar, with mutterings of--

“Popery! clane Popery, sir! Can't a person commit matrimony without a
parson bothering a man?”

Then Cæsar squared his elbows across the table and wrote the letter to
Philip. Pete never stood sponsor for anything so pious.

“Respected and Honoured Sir,--I write first to thee that it hath been
borne in on my mind (strong to believe the Lord hath spoken) to marry on
Katherine Cregeen, only beloved daughter of Cæsar Cregeen, a respectable
man and a local preacher, in whose house I tarry, being free to use all
his means of grace. Wedding to-morrow fortnight at Kirk Christ,
Lezayre, eleven o'clock forenoon, and the Lord make it profitable to
my soul.--With love and-reverence, thy servant, and I trust the Lord's,
Peter Quilliam.”

Having written this, Cæsar read it aloud with proper elevation of pitch.
Grannie wiped her eyes, and Pete said, “Indited beautiful, sir--only you
haven't asked him.”

“My pen's getting crosslegs,” said Cæsar, “but that'll do for an N.B.”

“N. B.--Will you come for my best man?”

Then there was more talk and more laughter. “You're a lucky fellow,
Pete,” said Pete himself. “My sailor, you are, though. She's as sweet
as clover with the bumbees humming over it, and as warm as a gorse bush
when the summer's gone.”

And then, affection being infectious beyond all maladies known to
mortals, Nancy Joe was heard to say, “I believe in my heart I must be
having a man myself before long, or I'll be losing the notion.”

“D'ye hear that, boys?” shouted Pete. “Don't all spake at once.”

“Too late--I've lost it,” said Nancy, and there was yet more laughter.

To put an end to this frivolity, Cæsar raised a hymn, and they sang it
together with cheerful voices. Then Cæsar prayed appropriately, John the
Clerk improvised responses, and Pete went out and sat on the bottom
step in the lobby and smoked up the stairs, so that Kate in the bedroom
should not feel too lonely.

XV.

Meanwhile Kate, overwhelmed with shame, humiliation, self-reproach,
horror of herself, and dread of everything, lay with cheeks ablaze and
her head buried in the bedclothes. She had no longer any need to pretend
to be sick; she was now sick in reality. Fate had threatened her. She
had challenged it. They were gambling together. The stake was her love,
her life, her doom.

By the next day she had worked herself into a nervous fever. Dr.
Mylechreest came to see her, unbidden of the family. He was one of those
tall, bashful men who, in their eagerness to be gone, seem always to
have urgent business somewhere else. After a single glance at her and
a few muttered syllables, he went off hurriedly, as if some one were
waiting for him round the corner. But on going downstairs he met Cæsar,
who asked him how he found her.

“Feverish, very; keep her in bed,” he answered. “As for this marriage,
it must be put off. She's exciting herself, and I won't answer for
the consequences. The thing has fallen too suddenly. To tell you the
truth--this way, Mr. Cregeen--I am afraid of a malady of the brain.”

“Tut, tut, doctor,” said Cæsar.

“Very well, if you know better. Good-day! But let the wedding wait.
_Traa dy liooar_--time enough, Mr. Cregeen. A right good Manx maxim for
once. Put it off--put it off!”

“It's not my putting off, doctor. What can you do with a man that's
wanting to be married? You can't bridle a horse with pincers.”

But when the doctor was gone, Cæsar said to Grannie, “Cut out the
bridesmaids and the wedding-cakes and the fiddles and the foolery, and
let the girl be married immadiently.”

“Dear heart alive, father, what's all the hurry?” said Grannie.

“And Lord bless my soul, what's all the fuss?” said Cæsar. “First
one objecting this, then another objecting that, as if everybody was
intarmined to stop the thing. It's going on, I'm telling you; d'ye hear
me? There's many a slip--but no matter. What's written with the pen
can't be cut out with the axe, so lave it alone, the lot of you.”

Kate was in an ecstasy of exultation. The doctor had been sent by
Philip. It was Philip who was trying to stop the marriage. He would
never be able to bear it; he would claim her soon. It might be to-day,
it might be to-morrow, it might be the next day. The odds were with her.
Fate was being worsted. Thus she clung to her blind faith that Philip
would intervene.

That was Monday, and on Tuesday morning Philip came again. He was very
quiet, but the heart has ears, and Kate heard him. Pete's letter had
reached him, and she could see his white face. After a few words of
commonplace conversation, he drew Pete out of the house. What had he got
to say? Was he thinking that Pete must be stopped at all hazards? Was
he about to make a clean breast of it? Was he going to tell all?
Impossible! He could not; he dared not; it was _her_ secret.

Pete came back to the house alone, looking serious and even sad. Kate
heard him exchange a few words with her father as they passed through
the lobby to the kitchen. Cæsar was saying--

“Stand on your own head, sir, that's my advice to you.”

In the intensity of her torment she could not rest. She sent for Pete.

“What about Philip?” she said. “Is he coming? What has he been telling
you?”

“Bad news, Kate--very bad,” said Pete.

There was a fearful silence for a moment. It was like the awful hush
at the instant when the tide turns, and you feel as if something has
happened to the world. Then Kate hardened her face and said, “What is
it?”

“He's ill, and wants to go away in a week. He can't come to the
wedding,'' said Pete.

“Is that all?” said Kate. Her heart leapt for joy. She could not help
it--she laughed. She saw through Philip's excuse. It was only his
subterfuge--he thought Pete would not marry without him.

“Aw, but you never seen the like, though, Kirry,” said Pete; “he was
that white and wake and narvous. Work and worry, that's the size of it.
There's nothing done in this world without paying the price of it, and
that's as true as gospel. 'The sea's calling me, Pete,' says he, and
then he laughed, but it was the same as if a ghost itself was grinning.”

In the selfishness of her enfeebled spirit, Kate still rejoiced. Philip
was suffering. It was another assurance that he would come to her
relief.

“When does he go?” she asked.

“On Tuesday,” answered Pete.

“Isn't there a way of getting a Bishop's license to marry in a week?”
 said Kate.

“But will you, though?” said Pete, with a shout of joy.

“Ask Philip first. No use changing if Philip can't come.”

“He shall--he must. I won't take No.”

“You may kiss me now,” said Kate, and Pete plucked her up into his arms
and kissed her.

She was heart-dead to him yet, from the wound that Philip had dealt her,
but at the touch of his lips a feeling of horror seemed to cramp all her
limbs. With a shudder she crept down in the bed and hid her face, hating
herself, loathing herself, wishing herself dead.

He stood a moment by her side, crying like a big boy in his great
happiness. “I don't know in the world what she sees in me to be so fond
of me, but that's the way with the women always, God bless them!”

She did not lift her face, and he stepped quietly to the door. Half-way
through he turned about and raised one arm over his head. “God's rest
and God's peace be with you, and may the man that gets you keep a clane
heart and a clane hand, and be fit for the good woman he's won for his
wife.”

At the next minute he went tearing down the stairs, and the kitchen rang
with his laughter.

XVI.

Fate scored one. Kate had been telling herself that Philip was tired of
her, that he did not love her any longer, that having taken all he could
take he desired to be done with her, that he was trying to forget her,
and that she was a drag upon him, when suddenly she remembered the
tholthan, and bethought herself for the first time of a possible
contingency. Why had she not thought of it before? Why had _he_ never
thought of it? _If_ it should come to pass! The prospect did not appal
her; it did not overwhelm her with confusion or oppress her with shame;
it did not threaten to fall like a thunderbolt; the thought of it came
down like an angel's whisper.

She was not afraid. It was only an idea, only a possibility, only a
dream of consequences, but at one bound it brought her so much nearer to
Philip. It gave her a right to him. How dare he make her suffer so? She
would not permit him to leave her. He was her husband, and he must
cling to her, come what would. Across the void that had divided them
a mysterious power drew them together. She was he, and he was she, and
they were one, for--who knows?--who could say?--perhaps Nature herself
had willed it.

Thus the first effect of the new thought upon Kate was frenzied
exultation. She had only one thing to do now. She had only to go
to Philip as Bathsheba went to David. True, she could not say what
Bathsheba said. She had no certainty, but her case was no less strong.
“Have you never thought of what may possibly occur?” This is what she
would say now to Philip. And Philip would say to her, “Dearest, I have
never thought of that. Where was my head that I never reflected?” Then,
in spite of his plans, in spite of his pledge to Pete, in spite of the
world, in spite of himself--yea, in spite of his own soul if it stood
between them--he would cling to her; she was sure of it--she could swear
to it--he could not resist.

“He will believe whatever I tell him,” she thought, and she would say,
“Come to me, Philip; I am frightened.” In the torture of her palpitating
heart she would have rejoiced at that moment if she could have been sure
that she was in the position of what the world calls a shameful woman.
With that for her claim she could see herself going to Philip and
telling him, her head on his breast, whispering sweetly the great
secret--the wondrous news. And then the joy, the rapture, the long kiss
of love! “Mine, mine, mine! he is mine at last!”

That could not be quite so; she was not so happy as Bathsheba; she was
not sure, but her right was the same for all that. Oh, it was joyful, it
was delicious!

The little cunning arts of her sex, the small deceits in which she had
disguised herself fell away from her now. She said to herself, “I will
stop the nonsense about the marriage with Pete.” It was mean, it was
foolish, it was miserable trifling, it was wicked, it was a waste
of life--above all, it was doing a great, great wrong to her love of
Philip! How could she ever have thought of it?

Next morning she was up and was dressing when Grannie came into the room
with a cup of tea. “I feel so much better,” she said “that I think I'll
go to Douglas by the coach today, mother.”

“Do, bogh,” said Grannie cheerfully, “and Pete shall go with you.”

“Oh, no; I must be quite alone, mother.”

“Aw, aw! A lil errand, maybe! Shopping is it? Presents, eh? Take your
tay, then.” And Grannie rolled the blind, saying, “A beautiful morning
you'll have for it, too. I can see the spire as plain as plain.” Then,
turning about, “Did you hear the bells this morning, Kitty?”

“Why, what bells, mammy?” said Kate, through a mouthful of bread and
butter.

“The bells for Christian Killip. Her old sweetheart took her to church
at last. He wouldn't get rest at your father till he did--and her baby
two years for Christmas. But what d'ye think, now? Robbie left her at
the church door, and he's off by the Ramsey packet for England. Aw,
dear, he did, though. 'You can make me marry her,' said he, 'but you
can't make me live with her,' he said, and he was away down the road
like the dust.”

“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 Cæsar 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!”

Cæsar 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: 'God 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
Cæsar.

“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
passions--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 Cæsar came and rallied her.

“Gough bless me, but nobody 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 cushions
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
assert 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 furnishing.

“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-glasses 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, God 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 Cæsar. “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 Cæsar 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 cock's stride shorter in September,” said Cæsar; “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--

“Hop over the sticks and lie crossed on the floor, And you're man and
wife for nevermore.”

There was some laughter at this, but Kate sat in the fire-seat and
sipped her tea in silence, and Pete said quietly, “Nothing to laugh at,
though. I remember a girl over Foxal way that was married to a man like
that, and then he went off to Kinsale, and got kept for the herring
riots--d'ye mind them? She was a strapping girl, though, and when the
man was gone the boys came bothering her, first one and then another,
and good ones among them too. And honour bright for all, they were for
taking her to the parzon about right But no! Did they think she was for
committing beggamy? She was married to one man, and wasn't that enough
for a dacent girl anyway. And so she wouldn't and she didn't, and last
of all her own boy came back, and they lived together man and wife, and
what for shouldn't they?”

This question from the man who was on the point of going to church was
received with shouts of laughter, through which the voice of Grannie
rose in affectionate remonstrance, saying, “Aw, Pete, it's ter'ble to
hear you, bogh.”

“What's there ter'ble about that, Grannie?” said Pete. “Isn't it the
Almighty and not the parzon that makes the marriage?”

“Aw, boy veen, boy veen,” cried Grannie, “you was used to be a good man,
but you have fell off very bad.”

Kate was in a fever of eagerness. She wanted to open her heart to Pete,
to beg him to spare her, to tell him that it was impossible that they
should ever marry. Pete would see that Philip was her husband by every
true law, human and divine. In this mood she lived through much of the
following day, Friday, tossing and turning in bed, for the exhaustion of
the day in Douglas had confined her to her room again.

In the evening she came downstairs, and was established in the fire-seat
as before. There were four or five old women in the kitchen spinning
yarn for a set of blankets which Grannie intended for a wedding present.
“When the day's work was nearly done, two or three old men, the old
husbands of the old women, came to carry their wheels home again. Then,
as the wheels whirred for the last of the twist, Pete set the old crones
to tell stories of old times.

“Tell us of the days when you were young, Anne,” said Pete to an ancient
dame of eighty. Her husband of eighty-four sat sucking his pipe by her
side.

“Well,” said old Anne, stretching her arms to the yarn, “I was as near
going foreign, same as yourself, sir, just as near, now, as makes no
matter. It was the very day I married this man, and his brother was
making a start for Austrillya. Jemmy was my ould sweetheart, only I had
given him up because he was always stealing my pocket-handkerchers. But
he came that morning and tapped at my window, and 'Will you come, Anne?'
says he, and I whipped on my perricut and stole out and down to the quay
with him. But my heart was losing me when I saw the white horses on the
water, and home I came and went to church with this one instead.”

While old Anne told her story her old husband opened his mouth wider and
wider, until the pipe-shank dropped out of his toothless gums on to his
waistcoat. Then he stretched his left arm and brought down his clenched
hand with a bang on to her shoulder.

“And have you been living with me better than sixty years,” said he,
“and never telling me that before?”

Pete tried to pacify his ancient jealousy, but it was not to be
appeased, and he shouldered the wheel and hobbled off, saying, “And I
sent out two pound five to put a stone on the man's grave!”

There was loud laughter when the old couple were gone, but Pete said,
nevertheless, “A sacret's a sacret, though, and the ould lady had no
right to tell it. It was the dead man's sacret too, and she's fouled the
ould man's memory. If a person's done wrong, the best thing he can do
next is to say darned little about it.”

Kate rose and went off to bed. Another door had been barred to her, and
she felt sick and faint.

XVIII.

The next day was Saturday. Kate remembered that Philip came to Ballure
on Saturdays. She felt sure that he would come to Sulby also. Let him
only set eyes on her, and he would divine the trouble that had taken the
colour out of her cheeks. Then he would speak to Pete and to her father;
he would deliver her; he would take everything upon himself. Thus all
day long, like a white-eyed gambler who has staked his last, she waited
and listened and watched. At breakfast she said to herself, “He will
come this morning.” At dinner, “He will come this evening.” At supper,
“He will come tonight.”

But Philip did not come, and she grew hysterical as well as restless.
She watched the clock; the minutes passed with feet of lead, but the
hours with wings of fire. She was now like a criminal looking for a
reprieve. Every time the clock warned to strike, she felt one hour
nearer her doom.

The strain was wearing her out. She reproached Philip for leaving her to
this cruel uncertainty, and she suffered the pangs of one who tries
at the same time to love and to hate. Then she reproached herself with
altering the date of the marriage, and excused Philip on the grounds of
her haste. She felt like a witch who was burning by her own spell. Hope
was failing her, and Will was breaking down as well. Nevertheless, she
determined that the wedding should be postponed.

That was on Saturday night. On Sunday morning she had gone one step
farther. The last pitiful shred of expectation that Philip would
intervene seemed then to be lost, and she had resolved that, come
what would, she should not marry at all. No need to appeal to Pete; no
necessity to betray the secret of Philip. All she had to do was to
say she would not go on with the wedding, and no power on earth should
compel her.

With this determination, and a feeling of immense relief, she went
downstairs. Cæsar was coming in from the preaching-room, and Pete from
the new house at Ramsey. They sat down to dinner. After dinner she would
speak out. Cæsar sharpened the carving-knife on the steel, and said,
“We've taken the girl Christian Killip back to communion to-day.”

“Poor thing,” said Grannie, “pity she was ever put out of it, though.”

“Maybe so,--maybe no,” said Cæsar. “Necessary anyway; one scabby sheep
infects the flock.”

“And has marriage daubed grace on the poor sheep's sore then, Cæsar?”
 said Pete.

“She's Mistress Robbie Teare and a dacent woman, sir,” said Cæsar,
digging into the beef, “and that's all the truck a Christian church has
got with it.”

Kate did not eat her dinner that day, and neither did she speak out as
she had intended. A supernatural power seemed to have come down at the
last moment and barred up the one remaining pathway of escape. She was
in the track of the storm. The tempest was ready to fall on her. Where
could she fly for shelter?

What her father had said of the girl had revealed her life to her in the
light of her relation to Philip. The thought of the possible contingency
which she had foreseen with so much joy, as so much power, had awakened
the consciousness of her moral position. She was a fallen woman! What
else was she? And if the contingency befell, what would become of her?
In the intensity of her father's pietistic views the very shadow of
shame would overwhelm his household, overthrow his sect, and uproot
his religious pretensions. Kate trembled at the possibility of such a
disaster coming through her. She saw herself being driven from house and
home. Where could she fly? And though she fled away, would she not still
be the cause of sorrow and disgrace to all whom she left behind--her
mother, her father, Pete, everybody?

If she could only tear out the past, at least she could stop this
marriage. Or if she had been a man she could stop it, for a man may sin
and still look to the future with a firm face. But she was a woman, and
a woman's acts may be her own, but their consequences are beyond her.
Oh, the misery of being a woman! She asked herself what she could do,
and there was no answer. She could not break the web of circumstances.
Her situation might be false, it might be dishonourable, but there was
no escape from it. There was no gleam of hope anywhere.

Late that night--Sunday night--they were sitting together in the
kitchen, Kate in the fire-seat as usual, Pete on the stool by the turf
closet, smoking up the chimney, Cæsar reading aloud, Grannie listening,
and Nancy cooking the supper, when the porch door burst open and
somebody entered. Kate rose to her feet with a startled cry of joy,
looked round eagerly, and then sat down again covered with confusion.

It was the girl Christian Killip, a pale, weak, frightened creature,
with the mouth and eyes of a hare.

“Is Mr. Quilliam here?” she asked.

“Here's the man himself, Christian,” said Grannie. “What do you want
with him?”

“Oh, God bless you, sir,” said the girl to Pete, “God bless you for ever
and ever.”

Then turning back to Grannie, she explained in woman's fashion, with
many words, that somebody unknown had sent her twenty pounds, for the
child, by post, the day before, and she had only now guessed who it must
be when John the Clerk had told her what Pete had said a week before.

Pete grunted and glimed, smoked up the chimney, and said, “That'll do,
ma'am, that'll do. Don't believe all you hear. John says more than his
Amens, anyway.”

“I'm axing your pardon, miss,” said the girl to Kate, “but I couldn't
help coming--I couldn't really--no, I couldn't,” and then she began to
cry.

“Where's that child?” said Pete, heaving up to his feet with a ferocious
look. “What! you mane to say you've left the lil thing alone, asleep? Go
back to it then immajent. Good night!”

“Good night, sir, and God bless you, and when you're married to-morrow,
God bless your wife as well!”

“That'll do--that'll do,” said Pete, backing her to the porch.

“You desarve a good woman, sir, and may the Lord be good to you both.”

“Tut! tut!” said Pete, and he tut-tutted her out of the house.

She smoothed her baby's hair more tenderly than ever that night, and
kissed it again and again.

Kate could scarcely breathe, she could barely see. Her pride and her
will had broken down utterly. This greathearted man loved her. He would
lay down his life if need be to save her. To morrow he would marry her.
Here, then, was her rock of refuge--this strong man by her side.

She could struggle against fate no longer. It's invisible hand was
pushing her on. It's blind power was dragging her. If Philip would not
come to claim her she must marry Pete.

And Pete? She meant no harm to Pete. She had not yet thought of things
from Pete's point of view. He was like the camel-bag in the desert to
the terrified wayfarer when the sand-cloud breaks oyer him. He flies to
it. It shelters him. But what of the camel itself, with its head in the
storm? Until the storm is over he does not think of that.

XIX.

Meantime Philip himself was in the throes of his own agony. At the news
of Kate's illness he was overwhelmed with remorse, and when he inquired
if she had been delirious, he was oppressed with a sense of meanness
never felt before. At his meeting with Pete he realised for the first
time to what depths his duplicity had degraded him. He had prided
himself on being a man of honour, and he was suddenly thrown out of the
paths in which he could walk honourably.

When the first shock of Kate's disaster was over, he remembered the
interview with the Governor. The Deemstership burnt in his mind with
a growing fever of desire, but he did not apply for it. He did not
even mention it to Auntie Nan. She heard of his prospects from Peter
Christian Balla-whaine, who first set foot in her house on this errand
of congratulation. The sweet old soul was wildly excited. All the hopes
of her life were about to be realised, the visions and the dreams were
coming true. Philip was going to regain what his father had lost. Had he
made his application yet? No? He would, though; it was his duty.

But Philip could not apply for the Deemstership. To sit down in cold
blood and write to the Home Secretary while Kate was lying sick in bed
would be too much like asking the devil's wages for sacrificing her.
Then came Pete with his talk of the wedding. That did not really alarm
him. It was only the last revolution of the old wheel that had been set
spinning before Pete went away. Kate would not consent. They had taken
her consent for granted. He felt easy, calm, and secure.

Next came his old master, the college friend of his father, now promoted
to the position of Clerk of the Polls. He was proud of his pupil, and
had learnt that Philip was first favourite with the Governor.

“I always knew it,” he said. “I did, ma'am, I did. The first time I set
eyes on him, thinks I, 'Here comes the makings of the best lawyer in the
island,' and by ------ he's not going to disappoint me either.”

The good fellow was a noisy, hearty, robustious creature, a bachelor,
and when talking of the late Deemster, he said women were usually the
chief obstacles in a man's career. Then he begged Auntie Nan's pardon,
but the old lady showed no anger. She agreed that it had been so in some
cases. Young men should be careful what stumbling-blocks they set up in
the way of their own progress.

Philip listened in silence, and was conscious, through all the unselfish
counselling, of a certain cynical bitterness. Still he did not make
application for the Deemstership. Then came Cæsar's letter announcing
the marriage, and even fixing a date for it. This threw him into a fit
of towering indignation. He was certain of undue pressure. They were
forcing the girl. It was his duty to stop the marriage. But how? There
was one clear course, but that course he could not take. He could not go
back on his settled determination that he must not, should not marry the
girl himself. Only one thing was left--to rely on Kate. She would never
consent. Not being able to marry _him_, she would marry no man. She
would do as he was doing--she would suffer and stand alone.

By this time Philip's love, which, in spite of himself, had grown cool
since the Melliah, and in his fierce battle with his worldly aims,
suddenly awakened to fresh violence at the approach of another man. But
his ambition fought with his love, and he began to ask himself if it
made, any difference after all in this matter of Kate whether he took
the Deemstership or left it. Kate was recovering; he had nothing to
reproach himself with, and it would be folly to sacrifice the ambition
of a lifetime to the love of a woman who could never be his, a woman he
could never marry. At that he wrote his letter to the Home Secretary.
It was a brilliant letter of its kind, simple, natural, strong, and
judicious. He had a calm assurance that nothing so good would leave the
island, yet he could not bring himself to post it. Some quiverings of
the old tenderness came back as he held it in his hand, some visions of
Kate, with her twitching lips, her passionate eyes, some whisperings of
their smothered love.

Then came Pete again with the decisive blow. Kate _had_ consented. There
was no longer any room for doubt. His former indignation seemed almost
comic, his confidence absurd. Kate was willing to marry Pete, and after
all, what right had he to blame her? What right had he to stop the
marriage? He had wronged the girl enough already. A good man came and
offered her his love. She was going to take it. How should he dare to
stop her from marrying another, being unable to marry her himself?

That night he posted his letter to the Home Secretary, and calmed the
gnawings of his love with dreams of ambition. He would regain the place
of his father; he would revive the traditions of his grandfather; the
Christians should resume their ancient standing in the Isle of Man; the
last of their race should be a strong man and a just one. No, he would
never marry; he would live alone, a quiet life, a peaceful one, slightly
tinged with melancholy, yet not altogether unhappy, not without cheer.

Under all other emotions, strengthening and supporting him, was a secret
bitterness towards Kate--a certain contempt of her fickleness, her
lightness, her shallow love, her readiness to be off with the old love
and on with the new. There was a sort of pride in his own higher type of
devotion, his sterner passion. Pete invited him to the wedding, but he
would not go, he would invent some excuse.

Then came the change of the day to suit his supposed convenience, and
also Kate's own invitation. Very well, be it so. Kate was defying him.
Her invitation was a challenge. He would take it; he would go to the
wedding. And if their eyes should meet, he knew whose eyes must fall.

XX.

Early next day the sleeping morning was awakened by the sound of a horn.
It began somewhere in the village, wandered down the glen, crossed the
bridge, plodded over the fields, and finally coiled round the house of
the bride in thickening groans of discord. This restless spirit in the
grey light was meant as herald of the approaching wedding. It came from
the husky lungs of Mr. Jonaique Jelly.

Before daylight “The Manx Fairy” was already astir. Somewhere in the
early reaches of the dawn the house had its last dusting down at the
hands of Nancy Joe. Then Grannie finished, on hearth and griddle, the
baking of her cakes. After that, some of the neighbours came and carried
off to their own fires the beef, mutton, chickens, and ducks intended
for the day's dinner. It was woman's work that was to the fore, and all
idle men were hustled out of the way.

Towards nine o'clock breakfast was swallowed standing. Then everybody
began to think of dressing. In this matter the men had to be finished
off before the women could begin. Already they were heard bellowing for
help from unseen regions upstairs. Grannie took Cæsar in hand. Pete was
in charge of Nancy Joe.

It was found at the last moment that Pete had forgotten to provide
himself with a white shirt. He had nothing to be married in except the
flannel one in which he came home from Africa. This would never do. It
wasn't proper, it wasn't respectable. There was no choice but to borrow
a shirt of Cæsar's. Cæsar's shirt was of ancient pattern, and Pete was
shy of taking it. “Take it, or you'll have none,” said Nancy, and she
pushed him back into his room. When he emerged from it he walked with
a stiff neck down the stairs in a collar that reached to his ears at
either side, and stood out at his cheeks like the wings of a white bat,
with two long sharp points on the level of his eyes, which he seemed to
be watching warily to avoid the stab of their ironed starch. At the
same moment Cæsar appeared in duck trousers, a flowered waistcoat, a
swallow-tail coat, and a tall hat of rough black beaver.

The kitchen was full of men and women by this time, and groups of young
fellows were gathered on the road outside, some with horses, saddled and
bridled for the bride's race home after the ceremony; others with guns
ready loaded for firing as the procession appeared; and others again
with lines of print handkerchiefs, which, as substitutes for flags, they
were hanging from tree to tree.

At every moment the crowd became greater outside, and the company inside
more dense. John the Clerk called on his way to church, and whispered
Pete that everything was ready, and they were going to sing a beautiful
psalm.

“It isn't many a man's wedding I would be taking the same trouble with,”
 said John. “When you are coming down the alley give a sight up, sir, and
you'll see me.”

“He's only a poor thing,” said Mr. Jelly in Pete's ear as John the Clerk
went off. “No more music in the man than my ould sow. Did you hear the
horn this morning, sir? Never got up so early for a wedding before. I'll
be giving you 'the Black and the Grey' going into the church.”

Grannie came down in a gigantic bonnet like a half-moon, with her white
cap visible beneath it; and Nancy Joe appeared behind her, be-ribboned
out of all recognition, and taller by many inches for the turret of
feathers and flowers on the head that was usually bare.

Then the church bells began to peal, and Cæsar made a prolonged A--hm!
and said in a large way, “Has the carriage arrived?”

“It's coming over by the bridge now,” said somebody at the door, and at
the next moment a covered wagonette drew up at the porch.

“All ready?” asked Cæsar.

“Stop, sir,” said Pete, and then, turning to Nancy Joe, “Is it glad a
man should be on his wedding-day, Nancy?”

“Why, of coorse, you goose. What else?” she answered.

“Well, no man can be glad in a shirt like this,” said Pete; “I'm going
back to take it off.”

Two minutes afterwards he reappeared in his flannel one, under his suit
of blue pilot, looking simple and natural, and a man every inch of him.

“Now call the bride,” said Cæsar.

XXI.

Kate had been kept awake during the dark hours with a sound in her ears
that was like the measured ringing of far-off bells. When the daylight
came she slept a troubled sleep, and when she awoke she had a sense of
stupefaction, as if she had taken a drug, and was not yet recovered from
the effects of it. Nancy came bouncing into her room and crying, “It's
your wedding-day, Kitty!” She answered by repeating mechanically, “It's
your wedding day, Kitty.”

There was an expression of serenity on her face; she even smiled a
little. A sort of vague gaiety came over her, such as comes to one who
has watched long in agony and suspense by the bed of a sick person and
the person is dead. Nancy drew the little window curtain aside, stooped
down, and looked out and said, “'Happy the bride the sun shines on'
they're saying, and look! the sun is shining.”

“Oh, but the sun is an old sly-boots,” she answered.

They came up to dress her. She kept stumbling against things, and then
laughing in a faint way. The dress was the new one, and when they had
put it on they stood back from her and shouted with delight. She took up
the little broken hand-glass to look at herself. Her great eyes sparkled
piteously.

The church bells began to ring her wedding-peal. She had to listen hard
to hear it. All sounds seemed to be very far away; everything looked a
long way off. She was living in a sort of dead white dawn of thought and
feeling.

At last they came to say the coach was ready and everything was waiting
for the bride. She repeated their message like a machine, made a slow
gesture, and followed them downstairs. When she got near to the bottom,
she looked around on the faces below as if expecting to see somebody.
Just then her father was saying, “Mr. Christian is to meet us at the
church.”

She smiled faintly and answered the people's greetings in an indistinct
tone. There was some indulgent whispering at sight of her pale face.
“Pale but genteel,” said some one, and then Nancy reached over and drew
the bride's veil down over her face.

At the next minute she was outside the house, standing at the back of
the wagonette. The coachman, with his white rosette, was holding the
door open on one side, and her father was elevating her hand on the
other.

“Am I to go, then?” she asked in a helpless voice.

“Well, what do _you_ think?” said Cæsar. “Shall the man slip off and get
married to himself, think you?”

There was laughter among the people standing round, and she laughed also
and stepped into the coach. Her mother followed her, crinkling in noisy
old silk, and Nancy Joe came next, smelling of lavender and hair-oil.
Then her father got in, and then Pete, with his great warm presence.

A salute of six guns was fired straight up by the coach-windows. The
horses pranced, Nancy screamed, and Grannie started, but Kate gave no
sign. People were closing round the coach-door and shouting altogether
as at a fair. “Good luck to you, boy. Good luck! Good luck!” Pete was
answering in a rolling voice that seemed to be lifting the low roof off,
and at the same time flinging money out in handfuls as the horses moved
away.

They were going slowly down the road. From somewhere in front came
the sound of a clarionet. It was playing “the Black and the Grey.”
 Immediately behind there was the tramp of people walking with an even
step, and on either side the rustle of an irregular crowd. The morning
was warm and beautiful. Here and there the last of the golden cushag
glistened on the hedges with the first of the autumn gorse. They passed
two or three houses that had been made roofless by the recent storm,
and once or twice they came on a fallen tree-trunk with its thin leaves
yellowing on the fading grass.

Kate was floating vaguely through these sights and sounds. It was all
like a dream to her--a waking dream in shadow-land. She knew where she
was and where she was going. Some glimmering of hope was left yet.
She was half expecting a miracle of some sort. Philip would be at the
church. Something supernatural would occur.

They drew up sharply, the glass of the windows rattled, and the talk
that had been going on in the carriage ceased. “Here we are,” cried
Cæsar; there were voices outside, and then the others inside stepped
down. She saw a hand held out to her and knew whose it was before her
eyes had risen to the face. Philip was there. He was helping her to
alight.

“Am I to get down too?” she asked in a helpless way.

Cæsar said something that made the people laugh again, and then she
smiled like faded sunshine and took the hand of Philip. She held it a
moment as if expecting him to say something, but he only raised his hat.
His face was white as marble. He will speak yet, she thought.

Over the gateway to the churchyard there was an arch of flowers and
evergreens, with an inscription in coloured letters: “God bless the
happy pair.” The sloping path going down as to a dell was strewn with
gilvers and slips of fuchsia.

At the bottom stood the old church mantled in ivy, like a rock of the
sea covered by green moss.

Leaning on her father's arm she walked in at the porch. The church was
full of people. As they passed under the gallery there was a twittering
as of birds. The Sunday-school girls were up there, looking down and
talking eagerly. Then the coughing and hemming ceased; there was a sort
of deep inspiration; the church seemed to hold its breath for a moment.
After that there were broken exclamations, and the coughing and hemming
began again. “How pale!”--“Not fit, poor thing.” Everybody was pitying
her starved features.

“Stand here,” said somebody in a soft voice.

“Must I?” she said quite loudly.

All at once she was aware that she was alone before the communion rail,
with the parson--old ruddy-faced Parson Quiggin--in his white surplice
facing her. Some one came and stood beside her. It was Pete. She did not
look at him, but she felt his warm presence again, and was relieved. It
was like shelter from the eyes around. After a moment she turned about
Philip was one step behind Pete. His head was bent.

Then the service began. The voice of the parson muttered words in a low
voice, but she did not listen. She found herself trying to spell out the
Manx text printed over the chancel arch: “Bannet T'eshyn Ta Cheet ayns
Ennyn y Chearn” (“Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord”).

Suddenly the words the parson was speaking leapt into meaning and made
her quiver.

“.... is commended of Saint Paul to be honourable among all men, and
therefore not by any to be enterprised, nor taken in hand unadvisedly,
lightly, or wantonly----”

She seemed to know that Philip's eyes were on her. They were on the back
of her head, and the veil over her face began to shake.

The voice of the parson was going on again--

“Therefore if any man can show just cause why they may not lawfully be
joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter for ever hold his
peace.”

She turned half around. Her eyes fell on Philip. His face was
colourless, almost fierce; his forehead was deathly white. She was sure
that something was about to happen.

Now was the moment for the miracle. It seemed to her as if the whole
congregation were beginning to divine what tie there was between him and
her. She did not care, for he would soon declare it. He was going to do
so now; he had raised his head, he was about to speak.

No, there was no miracle. Philip's eyes fell before her eyes, and his
head went down. He was only digging at the red baize with one of his
feet. She felt tired, so very tired, and oh! so cold. The parson had
gone on with his reading. When she caught up with him he was saying--

“--as ye shall, answer at the great day of judgment, when the secrets of
all hearts shall be disclosed, that if either of you know any impediment
why ye may not be lawfully joined together in matrimony, ye do now
confess it.”

The parson paused. He had always paused at that point. The pause had no
meaning for him, but for Kate how much! Impediment! There was indeed an
impediment. Confess? How could she ever confess? The warning terrified
her. It seemed to have been made for her alone. She had heard it before,
and thought nothing of it. Now it seemed to scorch her very soul. She
began to tremble violently.

There was an indistinct murmur which she did not catch. The parson
seemed to be speaking to Pete--

“--love her, comfort her, honour and keep her... so long as ye both
shall live.”

And then came Pete's voice, full and strong from his great chest, but
far off, and going by her ear like a voice in a shell--“I will.”

After that the parson's words seemed to be falling on her face.

“Wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband, to live together after
God's ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou obey him and
serve him, love, honour, and keep him in sickness and in health; and
forsaking all other, keep thee unto him, so long as ye both shall live?”

Kate was far away. She was spelling out the Manx text, “Bannet T'eshyn
Ta Cheet,” but the letters were dancing in and out of each other, and
yellow lights were darting from her eyes. Suddenly she was aware that
the parson's voice had stopped. There was blank silence, then an uneasy
rustle, and then somebody was saying something in a soft tone.

“Eh?” she said aloud.

The parson's voice came now in a whisper at her breast--“Say, 'I will.'”

“Ah I,” she murmured.

“I-will! That's all, my dear. Say it with me, 'I--will.'”

She framed her lips to speak, but the words were half uttered by the
parson. The next thing she knew was that a stray hand was holding her
hand. She felt more safe now that her poor cold fingers lay in that big
warm palm.

It was Pete, and he was speaking again. She did not so much hear him as
feel his voice tingling through her veins.

“I, Peter Quilliam, take thee, Katherine Cregeen----'”

But it was all a vague murmur, fraying off into nothing, ending like a
wave with a long upward plash of low sound.

The parson was speaking to her again, softly, gently, caressingly,
almost as if she were a frightened child. “Don't be afraid, my dear! try
to speak after me. Take your time.”

Then, aloud, “'I, Katherine Cregeen.'”

Her throat gurgled; she faltered, but she spoke at length in the
toneless voice of one who speaks in sleep.

“'I, Katherine Cregeen---'”

“'Take thee, Peter Quilliam----'”

The toneless voice broke---- “take thee, Peter Quilliam------'”

And then all came in a rush, with some of the words distinctly repeated,
and some of them droned and dropped--

“--'to my wedded husband, to have and to hold-----'”

“--'have and to hold-----'”

“--'from this day forward.... till death do us part-----'”

“--'death do us part------'”

“--'therefore I give thee my troth------'”

“--'troth------'”

The last word fell like a broken echo, and then there was a rustle in
the church, and much audible breathing. Some of the school-girls in the
gallery were reaching over the pews with parted lips and dancing eyes.

Pete had taken her left hand, and was putting the ring on her finger.
She was conscious of his warm breath and of the words--

“With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my
worldly goods I thee endow, Amen.”

Again she left her cold hand in Pete's warm hand. He was stroking it on
the outside with his other one.

It was all a dream. She seemed to rally from it as she moved down the
aisle. Ghostly faces were smiling at her out of the air on either side,
and the choir in the gallery behind the school-girls were singing the
psalm, with John the Clerk's husky voice drawling out the first word
of each new verse as his companions were singing the last word of the
preceding one--

  “Thy wife shall be as the fruitful vine upon the walls of thine house;
  Thy children like the olive branches round about thy table.
  As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be;
  World without end, A--men.”

They were all in the vestry now, standing together in a group. Her
mother was wiping her eyes, Pete was laughing, and Nancy Joe was
nudging him and saying in an audible whisper, “Kiss her, man--it's only
respectable.”

The parson was leaning over the table. He spoke to Pete, and then said,
“A substantial mark, too. The lady's turn next.”

The open book was before her, and the pen was put into her hand. When
she laid it down, the parson returned his spectacles to their sheath,
and a nervous voice, which thrilled and frightened her, said from
behind, “Let me be the first to wish you happiness, Mrs. Quilliam.”

It was Philip. She turned towards him, and their eyes met for a moment.
But she was only conscious of his prominent nose, his clear-cut chin,
his rapid smile like sunshine, disappearing as before a cloud. He said
something else--something about a new life and a new beginning--but she
could not gather its meaning, her mind would not take it in. At the next
moment they were all in the open air.

XXII.

Philip had been in torment--first the torment of an irresistible hatred
of Kate. He knew that this hatred was illogical, that it was monstrous;
but it supported his pride, it held him safe above self-contempt in
being present at the wedding. When the carriage drew up at the church
gate, and he helped Kate to alight, he thought she looked up at him as
one who says, “You see, things are not so bad after all!” And when she
turned her face to him at the beginning of the service, he thought
it wore a look of fierce triumph, of victory, of disdain. But as the
ceremony proceeded and he observed her absent-ness, her vacancy, her
pathetic imbecility, he began to be oppressed by an awful sense of her
consciousness of error. Was she taking this step out of pique? Was she
thinking to punish him, forgetting the price she would have to pay?
Would she awake to-morrow morning with her vexation and vanity gone,
face to face with a hideous future--the worst and most terrible that
is possible to any woman--that of being married to one man and loving
another?

Faugh! Would his own vanity haunt him even there? Shame, shame! He
forced himself to do the duty of a best man. In the vestry he approached
the bride and muttered the conventional wishes. His heart was devouring
itself like a rapid fire, and it was as much as he could do to look
into her piteous eyes and speak. Struggle as he might at that moment, he
could not put out of his heart a passionate tenderness. This frightened
him, and straightway he resolved to see no more of Kate. He must be fair
to her, he must be true to himself. But walking behind her up the path
strewn with flowers from the church door to the gate, the gnawings of
the worm of buried love came on him again, and he felt like a man who
was being dragged through the dirt.

XXIII.

Four saddle-horses, each with its rider seated and ready, had been
waiting at the churchyard gate, pawing up the gravel. The instant the
bride and bridegroom came out of the church the horses set off for
Cæsar's house at a furious gallop. Kate and Pete, Cæsar, Grannie, and
Nancy, with the addition of Philip and Parson Quiggin, returned in the
covered carriage.

At the turn of the road the way was blocked by a group of stalwart girls
out of the last of the year's cornfields. With the straw rope of the
stackyard stretched across, they demanded toll before the carriage would
be allowed to pass. Pete, who sat by the door, put his head out and
inquired solemnly if the highway women would take their charge in silver
or in kind--half-a-crown apiece or a kiss all round. They laughed, and
answered that they saw no objection to taking both. Whereupon Pete,
whispering behind his hand that the mistress was looking, tossed into
the air a paper bag, which rose like a cannon-ball, broke in the air
like a shell, and fell over their white sun-bonnets like a shower.

At the door of “The Manx Fairy” the four riders were waiting with
smoking horses. The first to arrive had been rewarded already with a
bottle of rum. He had one other ancient privilege. As the coach drove up
to the door, he stepped up to the bride with the wedding-cake and broke
it over her head. Then there was a scramble for the pieces among the
girls who gathered round her, that they might take them to bed and dream
of a day to come when they should themselves be as proud and happy.

The wedding-breakfast (a wedding-dinner) was laid in the loft of the
mill, the chapel of The Christians. Cæsar sat at the head of the table,
with Grannie on one side and Kate on the other. Pete sat next to Kate,
and Philip next to Grannie. The parson sat at the foot with Nancy Joe, a
lady of consequence, receiving much consideration, at his reverent right
hand. Jonaique Jelly sat midway down the table, with a fine scorn on
his features, for John the Clerk sat opposite with a fiddle gripped
between his knees.

The neighbours brought in the joints of beef and mutton, the chickens
and the ducks. Cæsar and the parson carved. Black Tom, who had been
invited by way of truce, served out the liquor from an eighteen-gallon
cask, and sucked it up himself like the sole of an old shoe. Then Cæsar
said grace, and the company fell to. Such noise, such sport, such chaff,
such laughter! Everything was a jest--every word had wit in it. “How are
you doing, John?”--“Haven't done as well for a month, sir; but what's
it saying, two hungry meals make the third a glutton.”--“How are _you_
doing, Tom?”--“No time to get a right mouthful for myself Cæsar; kept
so busy with the drink.”--“Aw, there'll be some with their top works
hampered soon.”--“Got plenty, Jonaique?”--“Plenty, sir, plenty. Enough
down here to victual a menagerie. It'll be Sunday every day of the week
with the man that's getting the lavings.”--“Take a taste of this
beef before it goes, Mr. Thomas Quilliam, or do you prefer the
mutton?”--“I'm not partic'lar, Mr. Cregeen. Ateing's nothing to me
but filling a sack that's empty.”

Grannie praised the wedding service--it was lovely--it was
beautiful--she didn't think the ould parzon could have made the like;
but Cæsar criticised both church and clergy--couldn't see what for the
cross on the pulpit and the petticoat on the parson. “Popery, sir, clane
Popery,” he whispered across Grannie to Philip.

Away went the shanks of mutton, the breasts of birds, and the slabs of
beef, and up came an apple-pudding as round as a well-fed salmon, and as
long as a twenty-pound cod. There was a shout of welcome. “None of your
dynamite pudding that,--as green as grass and as sour as vinegar.”

Kate was called on to make the first cut of the monster. A faint colour
had returned to her cheeks since she had come home. She was talking a
little, and even laughing sometimes, as if the weight on her heart
was lightening every moment. She rose at the call, took, with the hand
nearest to the dish, the knife that her father held out, and plunged
it into the pudding. As she did so, with all eyes upon her, the
wedding-ring on her finger flashed in the light and was seen by
everybody.

“Look at that, though,” cried Black Tom. “There's the wife for a
husband, if you plaze. Ashamed of showing it, is she? Not she, the
bogh.”

Then there was much giggling among the younger women, and cries of “Aw,
the poor girl! Going to church has been making her left-handed!”

“Time enough, my beauties,” cried Pete; “and mind you're not struck that
way yourselves one of these days.”

Away went the dishes, and the parson rose to return thanks.

“Never heard that grace but once before, Parson Quiggin,” said Pete,
“and then”--lighting his pipe--“then it was a burial sarvice.”

“A _burial_ sarvice!”

A dozen voices echoed the words together, and in a moment the table was
quiet.

“Yes, though,” said Pete. “It was up at Johannesburg. Two chums settled
there, and one married a girl. Nice lil thing, too; some of the Boer
girls, you know; but not much ballast at her at all. The husband went
up country for the Consolidated Co., and when he came back there was
trouble. Chum had been sweethearting the wife a bit!”

“Aw, dear!”--“Aw, well, well!”

“Do? The husband? He went after the chum with a repeater, and took him.
Bath-chair sort of a chap--no fight in him at all. 'Mercy!' he cries. 'I
can't,' says the husband. 'Forgive him this once,' says the wife. 'It's
only once a woman loses herself,' says the man. 'Mercy, mercy!' 'Say
your prayers.' 'Mercy, mercy, mercy!' 'Too late!' and the husband shot
him dead. The woman dropped in a faint, but the man said, 'He didn't say
his prayers, though--I must be doing it for him.' Then down he went on
his knees by the body, but the prayers were all forgot at him--all but
the bit of a grace, so he said that instead.”

Loud breathings on every side followed Pete's story, and Cæsar, leaning
over towards Philip, whose face had grown ashy, said, “Terrible, sir,
terrible! But still and for all, right enough, though, eh! What's it
saying, Better an enemy than a bad friend.”

Philip answered absently; his eyes were on the opposite side of the
table. There was a sudden rising of the people about Kate.

“Water, there,” shouted Pete. “It's a thundering blockhead I am for
sure--frightning the life out of people with stories fit for a funeral.”

“No, no,” said Kate; “I'm not faint Why should you think so?”

“Of coorse, not, bogh,” said Nancy, who was behind her in a twinkling.
“White is she? Well, what of it, man? It's only becoming on a girl's
wedding-day. Take a lil sup, though, woman--there, there!”

Kate drank the water, with the glass jingling against her teeth, and
then began to laugh. The parson's ruddy face rose at the end of the
table. “Friends,” he said, “after that tragic story, let us indulge in
a little vanity. Fill up your glasses to the brim, and drink with me to
the health of the happy couple. We all know both of them. We know the
bride for a good daughter and a sweet girl--one so naturally pure that
nobody can ever say an evil word or think an evil thought when she is
near. We know the bridegroom for a real Manxman, simple and rugged and
true, who says all he thinks and thinks all he says. God has been
very good to them. Such virginal and transparent souls have much to be
thankful for. It is not for them to struggle with that worst enemy of
man, the enemy that is within, the enemy of bad passions. So we can wish
them joy on their union with a full heart and a sure hope that, whatever
chance befall them on the ways of this world, they will be happy and
content.”

“Aw, the beautiful advice,” said Grannie, wiping her eyes.

“Popery, just Popery,” muttered Cæsar. “What about original sin?”

There was a chorus of applause. Kate was still laughing. Philip's head
was down.

“And now, friends,” continued the parson, “Captain Quilliam has been a
successful man abroad, but he has had to come home to do the best piece
of work he ever did.” (A voice--“Do it yourself, parzon.”) “It is true
I've never done it myself. Vanity of vanities, love is not for me. It's
been the Lord's will to put me here to do the marrying and leave my
people to do the loving. But there is a young man present who has all
the world before him and everything this life can promise except one
thing, and that's the best thing of all--a wife.” (Kate's laughter grew
boisterous.) “This morning he helped his friend to marry a pure and
beautiful maiden. Now let me remind him of the text which says, 'Go thou
and do likewise.'”

The toast was drunk standing, with shouts of “Cap'n Pete,” and,
amid much hammering on the table, stamping on the floor, and other
thunderings of applause, Cap'n Pete rolled up to reply. After a moment's
pause, in which he distributed sage winks and nods on every side, he
said: “I'm not much for public spaking myself. I made my best speech and
my shortest in church this morning--_I will_. The parzon has has been
telling my _dooiney molla_ to do as I have done today. He can't. Begging
pardon of the ladies, there's only one woman on the island fit for him,
and I've got her.” (Kate's laughter grew shrill.) “My wife----”

At this word, uttered with an air of life-long familiarity, twenty
clay pipes lost their heads by collision with the table, and Pete was
interrupted by roars of laughter.

“Gough bless me, can't a married man mention his wife in company? Well
then. Mistress Cap'n Peter Quilliam----”

This mouthful was the signal for another riotous interruption, and a
general call for more to drink.

“Won't that do for you neither? I'm not going back on it, though. 'Whom
God hath joined together let no man put asunder'--isn't that it, Parzon
Quiggin? What's it you're saying--no man but the Dempster? Well, the
Dempster's here that is to be--I'll clear him of _that_, anyway.”

Kate's laughter became explosive and uncontrollable. Pete nodded
sideways to fill up the gap in his eloquence, and then went on. “But if
my _dooiney molla_ can't marry my wife, there's one thing he can do for
her--he can make her house his home in Ramsey when he goes to Douglas
for good and comes down here to the coorts once a fortnight.”

Kate laughed more immoderately than ever; but Philip, with a look of
alarm, half rose from his seat, and said across the table, “There's my
aunt at Ballure, Pete.”

“She'll be following after you,” said Pete.

“There are hotels enough for travellers,” said Philip.

“Too many by half, and that's why I asked in public,” said Pete.

“I know the brotherly feeling----” began Philip.

“Is it a promise?” demanded Pete.

“If I can't escape your kindness----”

“No, you can't; so there's an end of it.”

“It will kill me yet----”

“May you never die till it polishes you off.”.

At Philip's submission to Pete's will, there was a general chorus of
cheers, through which Kate's shrill laughter rang like a scream. Pete
patted the back of her hand, and continued, “And now, young fellows
there, let an ould experienced married man give you a bit of advice--he
swore away all his worldly goods this morning, so he hasn't much else to
give. I've no belief in bachelors myself. They're like a tub without a
handle--nothing to lay hould of them by.” (Much nudging and whispering
about the bottom of the table.) “What's that down yonder? 'The vicar,'
you say? Aw, the vicar's a grand man, but he's only a parzon, you see.
Mr. Christian, is it? He's got too much work to do to be thinking about
women. We're living on the nineteenth century, boys, and it's middling
hard feeding for some of us. If the fishing's going to the dogs and the
farming going to the deuce, don't be tossing head over tip at the tail
of the tourist. If you've got the pumping engine inside of you, in plain
English, if you've got the indomable character of the rael Manxman, do
as I done--go foreign. Then watch your opportunity. What's Shake-spar
saying?” Pete paused. “What's that he's saying, now?” Pete scratched his
forehead. “Something about a flood, anyway.” Pete stretched his hand out
vigorously. “'Lay hould of it at the flood,' says he, 'that's the way to
make your fortune.'”

Then Pete melted to sentiment, glanced down at Kate's head, and
continued, “And when you come back to the ould island--and there isn't
no place like it--you can marry the girl of your heart, God bless her.
Work's black, but money's white, and love is as sweet on potatoes and
herrings three times a day, as on nothing for dinner, and the same every
night of the week for supper. While you're away, you'll be draming of
her. 'Is she faithful?' 'Is she thrue?' Coorse she is, and waiting to
take you the very minute you come home.” Kate was still laughing as if
she could not stop. “Look out for the right sort, boys. Plenty of the
like in yet. If the young men of these days are more smart and more
educated than their fathers, the young women are more handsome and more
virtuous than their mothers. So _ben-my-chree_, my hearties, and enough
in the locker to drive away the divil and the coroner.”

Through the volley of cheers which followed Pete's speech came the
voice of Black Tom, thick with drink, “Drive off the crow at the
wedding-breakfast.”

Everybody rose and looked. A great crow, black as night, had come in
at the open door of the mill, calmly, sedately, as if by habit, for the
corn that usually lay there.

“It manes divorce,” said Black Tom.

“Scare it away,” cried some one.

“It's the new wife must do it,” said another.

“Where's Kate?” cried Nancy.

But Kate only looked and went on laughing as before.

The crow turned tail and took flight of itself at finding so eager
an audience. Then Pete said, “Whose houlding with such ould wife's
wonders?”

And Cæsar answered, “Coorse not, or fairies either. I've slept out all
night on Cronk-ny-airy-Lhaa--before my days of grace, I mane--and I
never seen no fairies.”

“It would be a fool of a fairy, though, that would let _you_ see him,
Cæsar,” said Black Tom.

At nine o'clock Cæsar's gig was at the door of “The Manx Fairy” to take
the bride and bridegroom home. They had sung “Mylecharane,” and “Keerie
fu Snaighty,” and “Hunting the Wren,” and “The Win' that Shook the
Barley,” and then they had cleared away the tables and danced to the
fiddle of John the Clerk and the clarionet of Jonaique Jelly. Kate, with
wild eyes and flushed cheeks, had taken part in everything, but always
fiercely, violently, almost tempestuously, until people lost enjoyment
of her heartiness in fear of her hysteria, and Cæsar whispered Pete to
take her away, and brought round the gig to hasten them.

Kate went up for her cloak and hat, and in the interval between her
departure and reappearance, Grannie and Nancy Joe, both glorified
beings, Nancy with her unaccustomed cap askew, stood in the middle of a
group of women, who were deferring, and inquiring, and sympathising.

“I don't know in the world how she has kept up so long,” said Grannie.

“And dear heart knows how _I'm_ to keep up when she's gone,” said Nancy,
with her apron to her eyes.

Kate came down ready. Everybody followed her into the road, and all
stood round the gig with flashes from the gig-lamps on their faces,
while Pete swung her up into the seat, lifting her bodily in his great
arms.

“You wouldn't drown yourself to-night for an ould rusty nail, eh,
Capt'n?” cried somebody with a laugh.

“You go bail,” said Pete, and he leapt up to Kate's side, twiddled the
reins, cracked the whip, and they drove away.

XXIV.

Philip had stood at the door of the porch, struggling to command his
soul, and employing all his powers to look cheerful and even gay. But as
Kate had passed she had looked at him with an imploring look, and then
he had seemed to understand everything--that she had made a mistake and
that she knew it, that her laughter had been bitterer than tears, that
some compulsion had been put upon her, and that she was a wretched and
miserable woman. At the next moment she had gone by with an odour
of lace and perfume; and then a flood of tenderness, of pity, of mad
jealousy had come upon him, and it had been as much as he could do to
restrain himself. One instant he held himself in hand, and at the next
the wheels of the gig had begun to move, the horse had started, the
women had trooped into the house again, and there was nothing before him
but the broad back of Cæsar, who was looking into the darkness after the
vanishing gig-lamps, and breathing asthmatical breath.

“Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave
unto his wife,” said Cæsar. “You're time enough yet, sir; come in, come
in.”

But the man was odious to Philip at that moment, the house was odious,
the people and the talk inside were odious, and he slipped away
unobserved.

Too late! From the torment of his own thoughts he could not escape--his
lost love, his lost happiness, his memories of the past, his dreams of
the future. A voice--it was his own voice--seemed to be taunting him
constantly: “You were not worthy of her. You did not know her value. She
is gone; and what have you got instead!”

The Deemstership! That was of no consequence now. A name, an idle name!
Love was the only thing worth having, and it was lost. Without it all
the rest was nothing, and he had flung it away. He had been a monster,
he had been a fool. The thought of his folly was insupportable;
the recollection of his selfishness was stifling; the memory of his
calculating deliberations was dragging him again in the dust. Thus, with
a sense of crushing shame, he plunged down the dark road, trying not to
think of the gig that had gone swinging along in front of him.

He would leave the island. To-morrow he would sail for England. No
matter if he lost the chance of promotion. To-morrow, to-morrow! But
to-night? How could he live through the hours until morning, with the
black thoughts which the darkness generated? How could he sleep? How lie
awake? What drug would bring forgetfulness? Kate! Pete! To-night! Oh,
God! oh, God!

XXV.

Six strides of the horse into the darkness and Kate's hysteria was
gone. She had been lost to herself the whole day-through, and now she
possessed herself again. She grew quiet and silent, and even solemn. But
Pete rattled on with cheerful talk about the day's doings. At the doors
of the houses on the road as they passed, people were standing in the
half-light to wave them salutations, and Pete sent back his answers in
shouts and laughter. Turning the bridge they saw a little group at the
porch of the “Ginger.”

“There's company waiting for us yonder,” said Pete, giving the mare a
touch of the whip.

“Let us get on,” said Kate in a nervous whisper.

“Aw, let's be neighbourly, you know,” said Pete. “It wouldn't be dacent
to disappoint people at all. We'll hawl up for a minute just, and hoof
up the time at a gallop. Woa, lass, woa, mare, woa, bogh!”

As the gig drew up at the inn door, a voice out of the porch cried, “Joy
to you, Capt'n, and joy to your lady, and long life and prosperity to
you both, and may the Lord give you children and health and happiness to
rear them, and may you see your children's children, and may they call
you blessed.”

“Glasses round. Mrs. Kelly,” shouted Pete.

“Go on, please,” said Kate in a fretful whisper, and she tugged at
Pete's sleeve.

The stars came out; the moon gave a peep; the late hay of the Curragh
sent a sweet odour through the night. Kate shuddered and Pete covered
her shoulders with a rug. Then he began to sing snatches. He sang bits
of all the songs that had been sung that night, but kept coming back at
intervals to an old Manx ditty which begins--

     “Little red bird of the black turf ground,
          Where did you sleep last night?”

Thus he sang like a great boy as he went rolling down the dark road, and
Kate sat by his side and trembled.

They came to the town, rattled down the Parliament Street, passed the
Court-house under the trees, turned the sharp angle by the market-place,
and drew up at Elm Cottage in the corner.

“Home at last,” cried Pete, and he leapt to the ground.

A dog began to bark inside the house. “D'ye hear him?” said Pete.
“That's the master in charge.”

The porch door was opened, and a comfortable-looking woman in a widow's
cap came out with a lighted candle shaded by her hand.

“And this is your housekeeper, Mrs. Gorry,” said Pete.

Kate did not answer. Her eyes had been fixed in a rigid stare on the
hind-quarters of the horse, which were steaming in the light of the
lamps. Pete lifted her down as he had lifted her up. Then Mrs. Gorry
took her by the hand, and saying, “Mind the step, ma'am--this way,
ma'am,” led her through the gate and along the garden path, and up
to the porch. The porch opened on a square hall, furnished as a
sitting-room. A fire was burning, a lamp was lit, the table was laid for
supper, and the place was warm and cosy.

“_There!_ What d'ye say to _that_?” cried Pete, coming behind with the
whip in his hand.

Kate looked around; she did not speak; her eyes began to fill.