The Manxman

They were near to "The Manx Fairy" by this time.

"And talking of praise," said Caesar, "I hear them there at their practices. Asking pardon now--it's proud I'd be, sir--perhaps you'd not be thinking mane to come in and hear the way we do 'Crown Him!'"

"So the saints use the fiddle," said the parson, as the gig drew up at the porch of the inn.

Half a minute afterwards the door of the parlour flew open with a bang, and Caesar stood and glared on the threshold with the parson's ruddy face behind him. There was a moment's silence. The uplifted toe of Katherine trailed back to the ground, the fiddle of Pete slithered to his farther side, and the smacking lips of Niplightly transfixed themselves agape.

Then the voice of the parson was heard to say, "Vanity, vanity, all is vanity!" and suddenly Caesar, still on the threshold, went down on his knees to pray.

Caesar's prayer was only a short one. His mortified pride called for quicker solace. Rising to his feet with as much dignity as he could command under the twinkling eyes of the parson, he stuttered, "The capers! Making a dacent house into a theaytre! Respectable person, too--one of the first that's going! So," facing the spectators, "just help yourselves home the pack of you! As for these ones," turning on Kate, Pete, and the constable, "there'll be no more of your practices.

I'll do without the music of three saints like you. In future I'll have three sinners to raise my singing. These polices, too!" he said with a withering smile. (Niplightly was worming his way out at the back of Parson Quiggin.)

"Who began it?" shouted Caesar, looking at Katherine.

From the moment that Caesar dropped on his knees at the door, Pete had been well-nigh choked by an impulse to laugh aloud. But now he bit his lip and said, "I did!"

"Behould ye now, as imperent as a goat!" said Caesar, working his eyebrows vigorously. "You've mistaken your profession, boy. It's a play-actorer they ought to be making of you. You're wasting your time with a plain, respectable man like me. You must lave me. Away to the loft for your chiss, boy! And just give sheet, my lad, and don't lay to till you've fetched up at another lodgings."

Pete, with his eye on the parson's face, could control himself no longer, and he laughed so loud that the room rang.

"Right's the word, ould Nebucannezzar," he cried, and heaved up to his feet. "So long, Kitty, woman! S'long! We'll finish it another night though, and then the ould man himself will be houlding the candle."

Outside in the road somebody touched him on the shoulder. It was the young man in the Alpine hat.

"My gough! What? Phil!" cried Pete, and he laid hold of him with both hands at once.

"I've just finished at King William's and bought a boat," said Philip, "and I came up to ask you to join me--congers and cods, you know--good fun anyway. Are you willing?"

"Willing!" cried Pete. "Am I jumping for joy?"

And away they went down the road, swinging their legs together with a lively step.

"That's a nice girl, though--Kitty, Kate, what do you call her?" said Phil.

"Were you in then? So you saw her dancing?" said Pete eagerly. "Aw, yes, nice," he said warmly, "nice uncommon," he added absently, and then with a touch of sadness, "shocking nice!"

Presently they heard the pattering of light feet in the darkness behind them, and a voice like a broken cry calling "Pete!"

It was Kate. She came up panting and catching her breath in hiccoughs, took Pete's face in both her hands, drew it down to her own face, kissed it on the mouth, and was gone again without a word.

VI.

Philip had not been a success at school; he had narrowly escaped being a failure. During his earlier years he had shown industry without gifts; during his later years he had shown gifts without industry. His childish saying became his by-word, and half in sport, half in earnest, with a smile on his lips, and a shuddering sense of fascination, he would say when the wind freshened, "The sea's calling me, I must be off." The blood of the old sea-dog, his mother's father, was strong in him.

Idleness led to disaster, and disaster to some disgrace. He was indifferent to both while at

"You'll be sixteen for spring," said Auntie Nan, "and what would your poor father say if he were alive? He thought worlds of his boy, and always said what a man he would be some day."

That was the shaft that found Philip. The one pa.s.sion that burned in his heart like a fire was reverence for the name and the will of his dead father. The big hopes of the broken man had sometimes come as a torture to the boy when the blood of the old salt was rioting within him. But now they came as a spur.

Philip went back to school and worked like a slave. There were only three terms left, and it was too late for high honours, but the boy did wonders. He came out well, and the masters were astonished. "After all,"

they said, "there's no denying it, the boy Christian must have the gift of genius. There's nothing he might not do."

If Phil had much of the blood of Captain Billy, Pete had much of the blood of Black Tom. After leaving the mill at Sulby, Pete made his home in the cabin of the smack. What he was to eat, and how he was to be clothed, and where he was to be lodged when the cold nights came, never troubled his mind for an instant. He had fine times with his partner.

The terms of their partners.h.i.+p were simple. Phil took the fun and made Pete take the fish. They were a pair of happy-go-lucky lads, and they looked to the future with cheerful faces.

There was one shadow over their content, and that was the ghost of a gleam of suns.h.i.+ne. It made daylight between them, though, day by day as they ran together like two that run a race. The prize was Katherine Cregeen. Pete talked of her till Phil's heart awoke and trembled; but Phil hardly knew it was so, and Pete never once suspected it. Neither confessed to the other, and the s.h.i.+fts of both to hide the secret of each were boyish and beautiful.

There is a river famous for trout that rises in Sulby glen and flows into Ramsey harbour. One of the little attempts of the two lads to deceive each other was to make believe that it was their duty to fish this river with the rod, and so wander away singly up the banks of the stream until they came to "The Manx Fairy," and then drop in casually to quench the thirst of so much angling. Towards the dusk of evening Philip, in a tall silk hat over a jacket and knickerbockers, would come upon Pete by the Sulby bridge, washed, combed, and in a collar. Then there would be looks of great surprise on both sides. "What, Phil! Is it yourself, though? Just thought I'd see if the trouts were biting to-night. Dear me, this is Sulby too! And bless my soul, 'The Fairy'

again I Well, a drop of drink will do no harm. Shall we put a sight on them inside, eh?" After that prelude they would go into the house together.

This little comedy was acted every night for weeks. It was acted on Hollantide Eve six months after Pete had been turned out by Caesar.

Grannie was sitting by the gla.s.s part.i.tion, knitting at intervals, serving at the counter occasionally and scoring up on a black board that was a ma.s.s of chalk hieroglyphics. Caesar himself in ponderous spectacles and with a big book in his hands was sitting in the kitchen behind with his back to the gla.s.s, so as to make the lamp of the business serve also for his studies. On a bench in the bar sat Black Tom, smoking, spitting, sc.r.a.ping his feet on the sanded floor, and looking like a gigantic spider with enormous bald head. At his side was a thin man with a face pitted by smallpox, and a forehead covered with strange protuberances.

This was Jonaique Jelly, barber, clock-mender, and Manx patriot. The postman was there, too, Kelly the Thief, a tiny creature with twinkling ferret eyes, and a face that had a settled look of age, as of one born old, being wrinkled in squares like the pointing of a cobble wall.

At sight of Pete, Grannie made way, and he pushed through to the kitchen, where he seated himself in a seat in the fireplace just in front of the peat closet, and under the fish hanging to smoke. At sight of Phil she dropped her needles, smoothed her front hair, rose in spite of protest, and wiped down a chair by the ingle. Caesar eyed Pete in silence from between the top rim of his spectacles and the bottom edge of the big book; but as Philip entered he lowered the book and welcomed him. Nancy Joe was coming and going in her clogs like a rip-rap let loose between the dairy and a pot of potatoes in their jackets which swung from the slowrie, the hook over the fire. A moment later Kate came flitting through the half-lit kitchen, her black eyes dancing and her mouth rippling in smiles. She courtesied to Philip, grimaced at Pete, and disappeared.

Then from the other side of the gla.s.s part.i.tion came the husky voice of the postman, saying, "Well, I must be taking the road, gentlemen.

There's Manx ones starting for Kim-berley by the early sailing to-morrow morning."

And then came the voice of the barber in a hoa.r.s.e falsetto: "Kimberley!

That's the place for good men I'm always saying. There's Billy the Red back home with a fortune. And ould Corlett--look at ould Corlett, the Ballabeg! Five years away at the diggings, and left a house worth twenty pounds per year per annum, not to spake of other hereditaments."

After that the rasping voice of Black Tom, in a tone of irony and contempt: "Of coorse, aw, yes, of coorse, there's goold on the cus.h.a.gs there, they're telling me. But I thought you were a man that's all for the island, Mr. Jelly."

"Lave me alone for that," said the voice of the barber. "Manx-land for the Manx-man--that's the text I'm houlding to. But what's it saying, 'Custom must be indulged with custom, or custom will die?' And with these English scouring over it like puffins on the Calf, it isn't much that's left of the ould island but the name. The best of the Manx boys are going away foreign, same as these ones."

"Well, I've letters for them to the packet-office anyway," said the postman.

"Who are they, Mr. Kelly?" called Philip, through the doorway.

"Some of the Quarks ones from Glen Rushen, sir, and the Gills boys from Castletown over. Good-night all, goodnight!"

The door closed behind the postman, and Black Tom growled, "Slips of lads--I know them."

"Smart though, smart uncommon," said the barber; "that's the only sort they're wanting out yonder."

There was a contemptuous snort. "So? You'd better go to Kimberley yourself, then."

"Turn the clock back a piece and I'll start before you've time to curl your hair," said the barber.

Black Tom was lifting his pot. "That's the one thing," said he, "the Almighty Himself" (gulp, gulp) "can't do."

"Which?" t.i.ttered the barber.

"Both," said Black Tom, scratching his big head, as bald as a bladder.

Caesar flashed about with his face to the gla.s.s part.i.tion. "You're like the rest of the infidels, sir," said he, "only spaking to contrad.i.c.k yourself--calling G.o.d the Almighty, and telling in the same breath of something He can't do."