The Manxman Part 80

"Tremenjous grand the ould man's house is--you wouldn't believe. A reg'lar Dempster's palace. The grandeur on it is a show and a pattern.

Plenty to ate, plenty to drink, and a boy at the door with white b.u.t.tons dotting on his brown coat, bless you like--like a turnip-field in winter. Then the man himself; goodness me, the happy that man is--Happy Joe they're calling him. Wouldn't trust but he'll be taking Kate to a theaytre. Well, and why not, if a person's down a bit? A merry touch and go--where's the harm at all? Fact is, Grannie, that's why we couldn't tell you Kate was going. Caesar would have been objecting. He's fit enough for it--ha, ha, ha!"

Grannie looked up at Pete as he laughed, and the broad rose withered on his face.

"H'm! h'm!" he said, clearing his throat; "I'm bad dreadful wanting a smook." And past the dinner-table, now smoking and ready, he slithered out of the house.

Caesar was Pete's next visitor. He said nothing of Kate, and neither did Pete mention Uncle Joe. The interview was a brief and grim one. It was a lie that Ross Christian had been sent by his father to ask for a loan, but it was true that Peter Christian was in urgent need of money. He wanted six thousand pounds as mortgage on Ballawhaine. Had Pete got so much to lend? No need for personal intercourse; Caesar would act as intermediary.

Pete took only a moment for consideration. Yes, he had got the money, and he would lend it. Caesar looked at Pete; Pete looked at Caesar. "He's talking all this rubbish," thought Caesar, "but he knows where the girl has gone to. He knows who's taken her; he manes to kick the rascal out of his own house neck and crop; and right enough, too, and the Lord's own vengeance."

But Pete's thoughts were another matter. "The ould man won't live to redeem it, and the young one will never try--it'll do for Philip some day."

II.

For three days Pete bore himself according to his wont, thinking to silence the evil tongues of the little world about him, and keep sweet and alive the dear name which they were waiting to befoul and destroy.

By Tuesday morning the strain had become unbearable. On pretences of business, of pleasure, of G.o.d knows what folly and nonsense, he began to scour the island. He visited every parish on the north, pa.s.sed through every village, climbed every glen, found his way into every out-of-the-way hut, and sc.r.a.ped acquaintance with every old woman living alone. Sometimes he was up in the vague fore-dawn, creeping through the quiet streets like a thief, going silently, stealthily, warily, until he came to the roads, or the fields, or the open Curragh, and could give swing to his step, and breath to his lungs, and voice to the cries that hurst from him.

Two long weeks he spent in this wild quest, and meanwhile he was as happy as a boy to all outward seeming--whistling, laughing, chaffing, bawling, talking nonsense, any nonsense, and kicking up his heels like a kid. But wheresoever he went, and howsoever early he started on his errands, he never failed to be back at home at seven o'clock in the evening--washed, combed, in his slippers and s.h.i.+rt-sleeves, smoking a long clay over the garden gate as the postman went by with the letters.

"She'll write," he told himself. "When she's mending a bit she'll aise our mind and write. 'Dear ould Pete, excuse me for not writing afore'--that'll he the way of it. Aw, trust her, trust her."

But day followed day, and no letter came from Kate. Ten evenings running he smoked over the gate, leisurely, largely, almost languidly, hut always watching for the peak of the postman's cap as it turned the corner by the Court-house, and following the toes of his foot as they stepped off the curb, to see if they pointed in his direction--and then turning aside with a deep breath and a smothered moan that ended in a rattle of the throat and a pretence at spitting.

The postman saw him as he went by, and his little eyes twinkled treacherously.

"Nothing for you yet, Capt'n," he said at length.

"Chut!" said Pete, with a mighty puff of smoke; "my business isn't done by correspondence, Mr. Kelly."

"Aw, no; but when a man's wife's away----" began the postman.

"Oh, I see," said Pete, with a look of intelligence, and then, with a lofty wave of the hand, "She's like her husband, Mr. Kelly--not bothering much with letters at all."

"You'll be longing for a line, though, Capt'n--that's only natural."

"No news is good news--I can lave it with her."

"Of coorse, that's truth enough, yes! But still and for all, a taste of a letter--it's doing no harm, Capt'n--aisy writ, too, and sweet to get sometimes, you know--shows a woman isn't forgetting a man when she's away."

"Mr. Kelly! Mr. Kelly!" said Pete, with his hand before his face, palm outwards.

"Not necessary? Well, I lave it with you. Good-night, Capt'n."

"Good-night to you, sir," said Pete.

He had laughed and tut-tutted, and lifted his eyebrows and his hands in mock protest and a pretence of indifference, but the postman's talk had cut him to the quick. "People are suspecting," he thought. "They're saying things."

This made him swear, but a thought came behind that made him sweat instead. "Philip will be hearing them. They'll be telling him she doesn't write to me; that I don't know where she is; that she has left me, and that she's a bad woman."

To make Kate stand well with Philip was an aim that had no rival but one in Pete's reckoning--to make Philip stand well with Kate. Out of the shadow-land of his memory of the awful night of his bereavement, a recollection, which had been lying dead until then, came back now in its grave-clothes to torture him. It was what Caesar had said of Philip's fight with Ross Christian. Philip himself had never mentioned it--that was like him. But when evil tongues told of Ross and hinted at mischief, Philip would know something already; he would be prepared, perhaps he would listen and believe.

Two days longer Pete sat in the agony of this new terror and the dogged impatience of his old hope. "She'll write. She'll not lave me much longer." But she did not write, and on the second night, before returning to the house from the gate, he had made his plan. He must silence scandal at all hazards. However his own heart might bleed with doubts and fears and misgivings, Philip must never cease to think that Kate was good and sweet and true.

"Off to bed, Nancy," he cried, heaving into the hall like a man in drink. "I've work to do to-night, and want the house to myself."

"Goodness me, is it yourself that's talking of bed, then?" said Nancy.

"Seven in the everin', too, and the child not an hour out of my hands?

And dear knows what work it is if you can't be doing it with good people about you."

"Come, get off, woman; you're looking tired mortal. The lil one's ragging you ter'ble. But what's it saying, Nancy--bed is half bread.

Truth enough, too, and the other half is beauty. Get off, now. You're spoiling your complexion dreadful--I'll never be getting that husband for you."

Thus coaxing her, cajoling her, watching her, dodging her, nagging her, driving her, he got her off to bed at last. Being alone, he looked around, listened, shut the doors of the parlour and the kitchen, put the bolt on the door of the stairs, the chain on the door of the porch, took off his boots, and went about on tiptoe. Then he blew out the lamp, filled and trimmed and relit it, going down on the hearthrug to catch the light of the fire. After that he settled the table, drew up the armchair, took from a corner cupboard pens and ink, a blotting pad, a packet of notepaper and envelopes, a stick of sealing wax, a box of matches, a postage stamp, the dictionary, and the exercise-book in which Kate had taught him to write.

As the clock was striking nine, Pete was squaring himself at the table, pen in hand, and his tongue in his left cheek. Half an hour later he was startled, by an interruption.

"Who's there?" he shouted in a ferocious voice, leaping up with a look of terror, like a man caught in a crime. It was only Nancy, who had come creeping down the stairs under pretence of having forgotten the baby's bottle. He made a sort of apologetic growl, handed the flat bottle through an opening like a crack, and ordered her back to bed.

"Goodness sakes!" said Nancy, going upstairs. "Is it coining money the man is? Or is it whisky itself that's doing on him?"

Two hours afterwards Pete fancied he saw a face at the window, and he caught up a stick, unchained the door, and rushed into the garden. It was no one; the town lay asleep; the night was all but airless; only the faintest breeze moved the leaves of the trees; there was no noise anywhere, except the measured beat of the sea in its everlasting coming and going on the sh.o.r.e.

Stepping back into the house, where the fire chirped and the kettle sang and all else was quiet, he resumed his task, and somewhere in the dark hours before the dawn he finished it. The fingers of his right hand were then inky up to the first joint, his collar was open, his neck was bare, his eyes were ablaze, the cords on his face were big and blue, great beads of cold sweat were standing on his forehead, and the carpet around his chair was littered as white as if a snowstorm had fallen on it.

He went down on his knees and gathered up these remnants and burnt them, with the air of a man destroying the evidences of his guilt. Then he put back the ink and the dictionary, the blotting pad and sealing wax, and replaced them with a loaf of bread, a table knife, a bottle of brandy, and a drinking gla.s.s. After that he made up the fire with a shovel of slack, that it might burn until morning; removed the lamp from the table to the window recess that it might cast its light into the darkness outside; and unchained the outer door that a wanderer of the night, if any such there were, might enter without knocking.

He did all this in the absent manner of a man who did it nightly. Then unbolting the staircase door, and listening a moment for the breathing of the sleepers overhead, he crept into the dark parlour overlooking the road, and lay down on the sofa to sleep.

It was done! Pete's great scheme was afoot! The mighty secret which he had enshrouded with such awful mystery lay in an envelope in the inside breast-pocket of his monkey-jacket, signed, sealed, stamped, and addressed.

_Pete had written a letter to himself_.

III.

Next day the crier was crying: "Great meeting--Manx fishermen--on Zigzag at Peel when boats come in to-morrow morning--protest agen harbour taxes."

"The thing itself," thought Pete, with his hand pressed hard on the outside of his breast-pocket. At five o'clock in the afternoon he went down to the harbour, where his Nickey lay by the quay, shouted to the master, "Take an odd man tonight, Mr. Kemish?" then dropped to the deck and helped to fetch the boat into the bay.

They had to haul her out by poles alone the quay wall, for the tide was low, and there was no breakwater. It was still early in the herring season, but the fis.h.i.+ng was in full swing. Five hundred boats from all parts were making for the fis.h.i.+ng round. It lay off the south-west tail of the island. Before Pete's boat reached it the fleet were sitting together, like a flight of sea-fowl, and the sun was almost gone.

The sun went down that night over the hills of Mourne very angry and red in its setting; the sky to the north-west was dark and sullen; the round line of the sea was bleared and broken, but there was little wind, and the water was quiet.

"Bring to and shoot," cried Pete, and they dropped sail to the landward of the fleet, off the shoulder of the Calf Island, with its two lights making one. The boat was brought head to the wind, with the flowing tide veering against her; the nets were shot over the starboard quarter, and they dropped astern; the bow was swung round to the line of the floating mollags, and boat and nets began to drift together.