The Manxman

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 pa.s.sed, 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, la.s.s, 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."

"Gla.s.ses 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 s.n.a.t.c.hes. 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, pa.s.sed 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.

"Isn't it fit for a Dempster's lady?" said Pete, sweeping the whip-handle round the room like a showman.

Kate could bear no more. She sank into a chair and burst into a fit of tears. Pete's glowing face dropped in an instant.

"Dear heart alive, darling, what is it?" he said. "My poor girl, what's troubling you at all? Tell me, now--tell me, bogh, tell me."

"It's nothing, Pete, nothing. Don't ask me," said Kate. But still she sobbed as if her heart would break.

Pete stood a moment by her side, smoothing her arm with his hand. Then he said, with a crack and a quaver in

It's hard, darling; I know it's hard."

"Oh, leave me! leave me!" cried Kate, still weeping.

Pete brushed his sleeve across his eyes, and said, "Take her upstairs, Mrs. Gorry, while I'm putting up the mare at the 'Saddle.'"

Then he whistled to the dog, which had been watching him from the hearthrug, and went out of the house. The handle of the whip dragged after him along the floor.

Mrs. Gorry, full of trouble, took Kate to her room. Would she not eat her supper? Then salts were good for headache-should she bring a bottle from her box? After many fruitless inquiries and nervous protestations, the good soul bade Kate good-night and left her.

Being alone, Kate broke into yet wilder paroxysms of weeping. The storm-cloud which had been gathering had burst at last. It seemed as if the whole weight of the day had been deferred until then. The piled-up hopes of weeks had waited for that hour, to be cast down in the sight of her own eyes. It was all over. The fight with Fate was done, and the frantic merriment with which she had kept down her sense of the place where the blind struggle had left her made the sick recoil more bitter.

She thought of Philip, and her trouble began to moderate. Somewhere out of the uncrushed part of her womanhood there came one flicker of womanly pride to comfort her. She saw Philip at last from the point of revenge.

He loved her; he would never cease to love her. Do what he might to banish the thought of her, she would be with him always; the more surely with him, the more reproachfully and unattainably, because she would be the wife of another man. If he could put her away from him in the daytime, and in the presence of those worldly aims for which he had sacrificed her, when night came he would be able to put her away no more. He would never sleep but he would see her. In every dream he would stretch out his arms to her, but she would not be there, and he would awake with sobs and in torment. There was a real joy in this thought, although it tore her heart so terribly.

She got strength from the cruel comforting, and Mrs. Gorry in the room below, listening intently, heard her crying cease. With her face still shut in both her hands, she was telling herself that she had nothing to reproach herself with; that she could not have acted differently; that she had not really made this marriage; that she had only submitted to it, being swept along by the pitiless tide, which was her father, and Pete, and everybody. She was telling herself, too, that, after all, she had done well. Here she lay in close harbour from the fierce storm which had threatened her. She was safe, she was at peace.

The room lay still. The night was very quiet within those walls. Kate drew down her hands and looked about her. The fire was burning gently, and warming her foot on the sheepskin rug that lay in front of it. A lamp burned low on a table behind her chair. At one side there was a wardrobe of the shape of an old press, but with a tall mirror in the door; on the other side there was the bed, with the pink curtains hanging like a tent. The place had a strange look of familiarity. It seemed as if she had known it all her life. She rose to look around, and then the inner sense leapt to the outer vision, and she saw how it was.

The room was a reproduction of her own bedroom at home, only newer and more luxurious. It was almost as if some ghost of herself had been there while she slept--as if her own hand had done everything in a dream of her girlhood wherein common things had become grand.

Kate's eyes began to fill afresh, and she turned to take off her cloak.

As she did so, she saw something on the dressing-table with a label attached to it. She took it up. It was a little mirror, a handgla.s.s like her own old one, only framed in ivory, and the writing on the label ran--

Insted of The one that is bruk with fond Luv to Kirry.

peat.

Her heart was now beating furiously. A flood of feeling had rushed over her. She dropped the gla.s.s as if it stung her fingers. With both hands she covered her face. Everything in the room seemed to be accusing her.

Hitherto she had thought only of Philip. Now for the first time she thought of Pete.

She had wronged him--deeply, awfully, beyond atonement or hope of forgiveness. He loved her; he had married her; he had brought her to his home, to this harbour of safety, and she had deceived and betrayed him--she had suffered herself to be married to him while still loving another man.

A sudden faintness seized her. She grew dizzy and almost fell. A more terrible memory had come behind. The thought was like ravens flapping their black wings on her brain. She felt her temples beating against her hands. They seemed to be sucking the life out of her heart.

Just then the voice of Pete came beating up the echoes between the house and the chapel beyond the garden--

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

She heard him open the garden gate, clash it back, come up the path with an eager step, shut the door of the house and chain it on the inside.

Then she heard his deep voice speaking below.

"Better now, Mrs. Gorry?"

"Aw, better, sir, yes, and quiet enough this ten minutes."

"Give her time, the bogh! Be aisy with the like, be aisy."

Presently she heard him send off Mrs. Gorry for the night, saying he should want no supper, and should be going to bed soon. Then the house became quiet, and the smell of tobacco smoke came floating up the stairs.

Kate's hot breath on her hands grew damp against her face. She felt herself swooning, and she caught hold of the mantelpiece.

"It cannot be," she thought. "He must not come. I will go down to him and say, 'Pete, forgive me, I am really the wife of another.'"