The Manxman

Philip gave his hand and his oath, and then tried to turn away, for he knew that his face was reddening.

"Wait! There's another while your hand's in, Phil. Swear that nothing and n.o.body shall ever come between us two."

"You know nothing ever will."

"But swear to it, Phil. There's bad tongues going, and it'll make me more aisier. Whatever they do, whatever they say, friends and brothers to the last?"

Philip felt a buzzing in his head, and he was so dizzy that he could hardly stand, but he took the second oath also. Then the bell rang again, and there was a great hubbub. Gangways were drawn up, ropes were let go, the captain called to the sh.o.r.e from the bridge, and the bl.u.s.tering harbour-master called to the bridge from the sh.o.r.e.

"Go and stand on the end of the pier, Phil--just aback of the lighthouse--and I'll put myself at the stern. I want a friend's face to be the last thing I see when I'm going away from the old home."?

Philip could bear no more. The hate in his heart was mastered. It was under his feet. His flushed face was wet.

The throbbing of the funnels ceased, and all that could be heard was the running of the tide in the harbour and the wash of the waves on the sh.o.r.e. Across the sea the sun came up boldly, "like a guest expected,"

and down its dancing water-path the steamer moved away. Over the land old Bar-rule rose up like a sea king with h.o.a.r-frost on his forehead, and the smoke began to lift from the chimneys of the town at his feet.

"Good-bye, little island, good-bye! I'll not forget you. I'm getting kicked out of you, but you've been a good ould mother to me, and, G.o.d help me, I'll come back to you yet. So long, little Mona, s'long? I'm laving you, but I'm a Manxman still."

Pete had meant to take off his stocking cap as they pa.s.sed the lighthouse, and to dash the tears from his eyes like a man. But all that Philip could see from the end of the pier was a figure huddled up at the stern on a coil of rope.

PART II. BOY AND GIRL.

I.

Auntie Nan had grown uneasy because Philip was not yet started in life.

During the spell of his partners.h.i.+p with Pete she had protested and he had coaxed, she had scolded and he had laughed. But when Pete was gone she remembered her old device, and began to play on Philip through the memory of his father.

One day the air was full of the sea freshness of a beautiful Manx November. Philip sniffed it from the porch after breakfast and then gathered up his tackle for cod.

"The boat again, Philip?" said Auntie Nan. "Then promise me to be back for tea."

Philip gave his promise and kept it. When he returned after his day's fis.h.i.+ng the old lady was waiting for him in the little blue room which she called her own. The sweet place was more than usually dainty and comfortable that day. A bright fire was burning, and everything seemed to be arranged so carefully and nattily. The table was laid with cups and saucers, the kettle was singing on the jockey-bar, and Auntie Nan herself, in a cap of black lace and a dress of russet silk with flounces, was fluttering about with an odour of lavender and the light gaiety of a bird.

"Why, what's the meaning of this?" said Philip.

And the sweet old thing answered, half nervously, half jokingly, "You don't know? What a child it is, to be sure! So you don't remember what day it is?"

"What day? The fifth of Nov--oh, my birthday! I had clean forgotten it, Auntie."

"Yes, and you are one-and-twenty for tea-time. That's why I asked you to be home."

She poured out the tea, settled herself with her feet on the fender, allowed the cat to establish itself on her skirt, and then,

"How the years roll on, Philip! It's twenty years since I gave you my first birthday present I wasn't here when you were born, dear.

Grandfather had forbidden me. Poor grandfather! But how I longed to come and wash, and dress, and nurse my boy's boy, and call myself an auntie aloud! Oh, dear me, the day I first saw you! Shall I ever forget it?

Grandfather and I were at Cowley, the draper's, when a beautiful young person stepped in with a baby. A little too gay, poor thing, and that was how I knew her."

"My mother?"

"Yes, dear, and grandfather was standing with his back to the street.

I grow hot to this day when I remember, but she didn't seem afraid. She nodded and smiled and lifted the muslin veil from the baby's face, and said 'Who's he like, Miss Christian?' It was wonderful. You were asleep, and it was the same for all the world as if your father had slept back to be a baby. I was trembling fit to drop and couldn't answer, and then your mother saw grandfather, and before I could stop her she had touched him on the shoulder. He stood with his bad ear towards us, and his sight was failing, too, but seeing the form of a lady beside him, he swept round, and bowed low, and smiled and raised his hat, as his way was with all women. Then your mother held the baby up and said quite gaily, 'Is it one of the Ballures he is, Dempster, or one of the Ballawhaines?'

Dear heart when I think of it! Grandfather straightened himself up, turned about, and was out on the street in an instant."

"Poor father!" said Philip.

Auntie Nan's eyes brightened.

"I was going to tell you of your first birthday, dearest. Grandfather had gone then--poor grandfather!--and I had knitted you a little soft cap of white wool, with a ta.s.sel and a pink bow. Your mother's father was living still--Capt'n Billy, as they called him--and when I put the cap on your little head, he cried out, 'A sailor every inch of him!' And sure enough, though I had never thought it, a sailor's cap it was.

And Capt'n Billy put you on his knee, and looked at you sideways, and slapped his thigh, and blew a cloud of smoke from his long pipe and cried again, 'This boy is for a sailor, I'm telling you.' You fell asleep in the old man's arms, and I carried you to your cot upstairs.

Your father followed me into the bedroom, and your mother was there already dusting the big sh.e.l.ls on the mantelpiece. Poor Tom! I see him yet. He dropped his long white hand over the cot-rail, pushed back the little cap and the yellow curls from your forehead, and said proudly, 'Ah, no, this head wasn't built for a sailor!' He meant no harm, but--Oh, dear, Oh, dear!--your mother heard him, and thought he was belittling her and hers. 'These qualities!' she cried, and slashed the duster and flounced out of the room, and one of the sh.e.l.ls fell with a clank into the fender. Your father turned his face to the window.

I could have cried for shame that he should be ashamed before me. But looking out on the sea,--the bay was very loud that day, I remember--he said in his deep voice, that was like a mellow bell, and trembled ratherly, 'It's not for nothing, Nannie, that the child has the forehead of Napoleon. Only let G.o.d spare him and he'll be something some day, when his father, with his broken heart and his broken brain, is dead and gone, and the daisies cover him.'"

Auntie Nan carried her point. That night Philip laid up his boat for the winter, and next morning he set his face towards Ballawhaine with the object of enlisting Uncle Peter's help in starting upon the profession of the law. Auntie Nan went with him. She had urged him to the step by the twofold plea that the Ballawhaine was his only male relative of mature years, and that he had lately sent his own son Ross to study for the bar in England.

Both were nervous and uncertain on the way down; Auntie Nan talked incessantly from under her poke-bonnet, thinking to keep up Philip's courage. But when they came to the big gate and looked up at the turrets through the trees, her memory went back with deep tenderness to the days when the house had been her home, and she began to cry in silence.

Philip himself was not unmoved. This had been the birthplace and birthright of his father.

The English footman, in buff and scarlet, ushered them into the drawing-room with the formality proper to strangers.

To their surprise they found Ross there. He was sitting at the piano strumming a music-hall ditty. As the door opened be shuffled to his feet, shook hands distantly with Auntie Nan, and nodded his head to Philip.

The young man was by this time a sapling well fed from the old tree.

Taller than his father by many inches, broader, heavier, and larger in all ways, with the slow eyes of a seal and something of a seal's face as well. But with his father's sprawling legs and his father's levity and irony of manner and of voice--a Manxman disguised out of all recognition of race, and apeing the fas.h.i.+onable follies of the hour in London.

Auntie Nan settled her umbrella, smoothed her gloves and her white front hair, and inquired meekly if he was well.

"Not very fit," he drawled; "shouldn't be here if I were. But father worried my life out until I came back to recruit."

"Perhaps," said Auntie Nan, looking simple and sympathetic, "perhaps you've been longing for home. It must be a great trial to a young man to live in London for the first time. That's where a young woman has the advantage--she needn't leave home, at all events. Then your lodgings, perhaps they are not in the best part either."

"I used to have chambers in an Inn of Court----"

Auntie Nan looked concerned. "I don't think I should like Philip to live long at an inn," she said.

"But now I'm in rooms in the Hay market."

Auntie Nan looked relieved.

"That must be better," she said. "Noisy in the mornings, perhaps, but your evenings will be quiet for study, I should think."

"Precisely," said Boss, with a sn.i.g.g.e.r, touching the piano again, and Philip, sitting near the door, felt the palm of his hand itch for the whole breadth of his cousin's cheek.