The Manxman Part 29

Philip went in and was received with goodwill and rough courtesy, but no man abated a jot of his freedom of action or liberty of speech, and the thumping and shouting were as loud as before. "Appeal to the Receiver-General."--"Chut! an ould woman with a face winking at you like a roast potato."--"Will we go to the Bishop, then?"--"A whitewashed Methodist with a soul the size of a dried pea."--"The Governor is the proper person," said Philip above the hubbub, "and he is to visit Peel Castle next Sat.u.r.day afternoon about the restorations. Let every Manx fisherman who thinks the trawl-boats are enemies of the fish be there that day. Then lay your complaint before the man whose duty it is to inquire into all such grievances; and if you want a spokesman, I'm ready to speak for you."--"Bravo!"--"That's the ticket!"

Then the meeting was at an end; the men went on with stories of the week's fis.h.i.+ng, stories of smugglers, stories of the Swaddlers (the Wesleyans), stories of the totalers (teetotallers), and Philip made for the door. When he got there, he began to reflect that, being in the house, he ought to leave good-night with Caesar and Grannie. Hardly decent not to do so. No use hurting people's feelings. Might as well be civil. Cost nothing anyway. Thus an overpowering compulsion in the disguise of courtesy drew him again into Kate's company; but to-morrow he would take a new turn.

"Proud to see you, Mr. Philip," said Caesar.

"The water's playing in the kettle; make Mr. Philip a cup of tay, Nancy," said Grannie. Caesar was sitting back to the part.i.tion, pretending to read out of a big Bible on his knees, but listening with both ears and open mouth to the profane stories being told in the bar-room. Kate was not in the kitchen, but an open book, face downwards, lay on the chair by the turf closet.

"What's this?" said Philip. "A French exercise-book! Whoever can it belong to here?"

"Aw, Kirry, of coorse," said Grannie, "and sticking that close to it of an everin that you haven't a chance to put a word on her."

"Vanity, sir, vanity, all vanity," said Caesar; and again he listened hard.

Philip's eyes began to blink. "Teaching herself French, is she? Has she been doing it long, Grannie?"

"Long enough, sir, three years or better, since poor Pete went away maybe; and at the books for ever, grammars and tex' books, and I don't know what."

Caesar, with his ear at the gla.s.s, made an impatient gesture for silence, but Grannie continued, "I don't know what for people should be larning themselves foreign languages at all. For my part, there isn't one of them bates the Manx itself for plainness. And aren't we reading, when the Lord wanted to bring confusion on Noah and his disobedient sons and grandsons at going up the Tower of Babel, he made them spake different tongues?"

"Good thing too," snapped Caesar, "if every poor man was bound to carry his wife up with him."

Philip's eyes were streaming, and, un.o.bserved, he put the lesson-book to his lips. He had guessed its secret. The girl was making herself worthy of him. G.o.d bless, her!

Kate came downstairs in the dark dress and white collar of Sunday night.

She saw Philip putting down the book, lowered her head and blushed, took up the volume, and smuggled it out of sight. Then Caesar's curiosity conquered his propriety and he ventured into the bar-room, Grannie came and went between the counter and the fishermen, Nancy clicked about from dairy to door, and Kate and Philip were left alone.

"You were wrong the other night," she said. "I have been thinking it over, and you were quite, quite wrong."

"So?"

"If a man marries a woman beneath him, he stoops to her, and to stoop to her is to pity her, and to pity her is to be ashamed of her, and to be ashamed of her would kill her. So you are wrong."

"Yes?" said Philip.

"Yes," said Kate, "but do you know what it ought to be? The _woman_ ought to marry beneath herself, and the man _above_ himself; then as much as the woman descends, the man rises, and so-----don't you see?"

She faltered and stopped, and Philip said, "Aren't you talking nonsense,' Kate?"

"Indeed, sir!"

Kate pretended to be angry at the rebuff, and pouted her lips, but her eyes were beaming.

"There is neither above nor below where there is real liking," said Philip. "If you like any one, and she is necessary to your life, that is the sign of your natural equality. It is G.o.d's sign, and all the rest is only man's book-keeping."

"You mean," said Kate, trying to keep a grave mouth, "you mean that if a woman belongs to some one she can like, and some one belongs to her, that is being equal, and everything else is nothing? Eh?"

"Why not?" said Philip.

It was music to her, but she wagged her head solemnly and said, "I'm sure you're wrong, Philip. I am, though. Yes, indeed I am. But it's no use arguing. Not against you. Only----"

The glorious choir of love-birds in her bosom were singing so loud that she could say no more, and the irresistible one had his way. After a while, she stuffed something into the fire.

"What's that?" said Philip.

"Oh, nothing," she answered brightly.

It was the French exercise-book.

XVI.

Philip went home rebelling against his father's fate. It was accidental; it was inevitable only in the Isle of Man. But perdition to the place where a man could not marry the woman he loved if she chanced to be born in the manger instead of the stable loft. Perdition to the land where a man could not live unless he was a skunk or a cur. Thank G.o.d the world was wide.

That night he said to Auntie Nan, "Auntie, why didn't father go away when he found the tide setting so strongly against him?"

"He always meant to, but he never could," said Auntie Nan. "A woman isn't like a man, ready to pitch her tent here to-day and there to-morrow. We're more like cats, dear, and cling to the places we're used to, if they're only ruins of tumbling stones. Your mother wasn't happy in the Isle of Man, but she wouldn't leave it. Your father wouldn't go without her, and then there was the child. He was here for weal or woe, for life or death. When he married his wife he made the chain that bound him to the island as to a rock."

"It wouldn't be like that with Kate," thought Philip. But did Auntie know anything? Had somebody told her? Was she warning him? On Sunday night, on the way home from church, she talked of his father again.

"He came to see at last that it wasn't altogether his own affair either," she said. "It was the night he died. Your mother had been unwell and father had sent for me. It was a dark night, and late, very late, and they brought me down the hill from Lewaige Cottage with a lantern. Father was sinking, but he _would_ get out of bed. We were alone together then, he and I, except for you, and you were asleep in your cot by the window. He made straight for it, and struggled down on his knees at its side by help of the curtains. 'Listen,' he said, trying to whisper, though he could not, for his poor throat was making noises.

You were catching your breath, as if sobbing in your sleep. 'Poor little boy, he's dreaming,' said I; 'let me turn him on his side.' 'It's not that,' said father; 'he went to sleep in trouble.'"

"I remember it, Auntie," said Philip. "Perhaps he had been trying to tell me something."

"'My boy, my son, forgive me, I have sinned against you,' he said, and he tried to reach over the cot rail and put his lips to your forehead, but his poor head shook like palsy and bobbed down into your little face. I remember you rubbed your nose with your little fist, but you did not waken. Then I helped him back to bed, and the table with the medicine gla.s.ses jingled by the trembling of his other hand. 'It's dark, all, all dark, Nannie,' he said, 'sure some angel will bring me light,'

and I was so simple I thought he meant the lamp, for it was dying down, and I lit a candle."

Philip went about his work that week as if the spirit of his father were hovering over him, warning him when awake in words of love and pleading, crying to him in his sleep in tones of anger and command, "Stand back; you are at the edge of the precipice."

Nevertheless his soul rose in rebellion against this league as of the past and the dead. It was founded in vanity, in the desire for glory and success. Only let a man renounce the world and all that the world can give, and he can be true to himself, to his heart's impulse, to his honour, and to his love. He would deliberate no longer. He despised himself for deliberating. If was the world against Kate, let the world go to perdition.

XVII.

On Sat.u.r.day afternoon he was at Peel. It was a beautiful day; the sun was s.h.i.+ning, and the bay was blue and flat and quiet. The tide was down, the harbour was empty of water, but full of smacks with hanging sails and hammocks of nets and lines of mollags (bladders) up to the mast heads. A flight of seagulls were fis.h.i.+ng in the mud, and swirling through the brown wings of the boats and crying. A flag floated over the ruins of the castle, the church-bells were ringing, and the harbour-masters were abroad in best blue and gold b.u.t.tons.

On the tilting-ground of the castle the fishermen had gathered, sixteen hundred strong. There were trawlers among them, Manx, Irish, and English, prowling through the crowd, and scooping up the odds and ends of gossip as their boats on the bottom sc.r.a.ped up the little fish.

Occasionally they were observed by the herring-fishers, and then there were high words and free fights. "Taking a creep round from Port le Murrey are you, Dan?"--"Thought I'd put a sight on Peel to-day."--"Bad for your complexion, though; might turn it red, I'm thinking."--"Strek me with blood will you? I'd just like you to strek me, begough. I'd put a Union Jack on your face as big as a griddle."

The Governor came, an elderly man, with a formidable air, an aquiline nose, and cheeks pitted with small-pox. Philip introduced the fishermen and told their grievance. Trawling destroyed immature fish, and so contributed to the failure of the fisheries. They asked for power to stop it in the bays of the island, and within three miles of the coast.

"Then draft me a bill with that object, Mr. Christian," said the Governor, and the meeting ended with cheers for His Excellency, shouts for Philip, and mutterings of contempt from the trawlers. "Didn't think there was a man on the island could spake like it."--"But hasn't your fancy-man been rubbing his back agen the college?"--"I'd take lil tacks home if I was yourself, Dan."--"Drink much more and it'll be two feet deep inside of you."

Philip was hurrying away under the crumbling portcullis, when a deputation of the fishermen approached him. "What are we owing you, Mr.