The Manxman

Pete took her back to her mother's in the gig, driving very slowly, and lifting her up and down as tenderly as if she had been a child. She breathed freely when she left Elm Cottage, but when she was settled in her own bedroom at "The Manx Fairy" she realised that she had only stepped from misery to misery. So many memories lived like ghosts there--memories of innocent slumbers, and of gleeful awakenings amid the twittering of birds and the rattling of gravel. The old familiar place, the little room with the poor little window looking out on the orchard, the poor little bed with its pink curtains like a tent, the sweet old blankets, the wash-basin, the press, the blind with the same old pattern, the sheepskin rug underfoot, the whitewashed scraas overhead--everything the same, but, O G.o.d! how different!

"Let me look at myself in the gla.s.s, Nancy," she said, and Nancy gave her the handgla.s.s which had been cracked the morning after the Melliah.

She pushed it away peevishly. "What's the use of a thing like that?" she said.

Pete haunted the house day and night. There was no bed for him there, and he was supposed to go home to sleep. But he wandered away in the darkness over the Curragh to the sh.o.r.e, and in the grey of morning he was at the door again, bringing the cold breath of the dawn into the house with the long whisper round the door ajar. "How's she going on now?"

The women bundled him out bodily, and then he hung about the roads like a dog disowned. If he heard a sigh from the dairy loft, he sat down against the gable and groaned. Grannie tried to comfort him. "Don't be taking on so, boy. It'll be all joy soon," said she, "and you'll be having the child to shew for it."

But Pete was bitter and rebellious. "Who's wanting the child anyway?"

said he. "It's only herself I'm wanting; and she's laving me; O Lord, she's laving me. G.o.d forgive me!" he muttered. "O good G.o.d, forgive me!" he groaned: "It isn't fair, though. Lord knows it isn't fair," he mumbled hoa.r.s.ely.

At last Nancy Joe came out and took him in hand in earnest.

"Look here, Pete," she said. "If you're wanting to kill the woman, and middling quick too, you'll go on the way you're going. But if you don't, you'll be taking to the road, and you won't be coming back till you're wanted."

This settled Pete's restlessness. The fis.h.i.+ng had begun early that season, and he went off for a night to the herrings.

Kate waited long, and the women watched her with trembling. "It's a week or two early," said one. "The weather's warm," said another. "The boghee millis.h.!.+ She's a bit soon," said Grannie.

There was less of fear in Kate's own feelings.

"Do women often die?" she asked.

"The proportion is small," said the doctor.

Half an hour afterwards she spoke again.

"Does the child sometimes die?"

"Well, I've known it to happen, but only when the mother has had a shock--lost her husband, for example."

She lay tossing on the bed, wis.h.i.+ng for her own death, hoping for the death of the unborn child, dreading its coming lest she should hate and loathe it. At last came the child's first cry--that cry out of silence that had never broken on the air before, but was henceforth to be one of the world's voices for laughter and for weeping, for joy and for sorrow, to her who had borne it into life. Then she called to them to show her the baby, and when they did so, bringing it up with soft cooings and foolish words, she searched the little wrinkled face with a frightened look, then put up her arms to shut out the sight, and cried "Take it away," and turned to the wall. Her vague fear was a certainty now; the child was the child of her sin--she was a bad woman.

Yet there is no shame, no fear, no horror, but the pleading of a new-born babe can drown its clamour. The

"Are you sure it is well?" she asked. "Quite, quite well? Doesn't its little face look as if its mammy had been crying--no?"

"'Deed no," said Grannie, "but as bonny a baby as ever was born."

The women were scurrying up and down, giggling on the landings, laughing on the stairs, and saying _hush_ at their own noises as they crept into the room. In a fretful whimper the child was still crying, and Grannie was telling it, with many wags of the head and in a mighty stern voice, that they were going to have none of its complaining now that it _had_ come at last; and Kate Herself, with hands clasped together, was saying in a soft murmur like a prayer, "G.o.d is very good, and the doctor is good too. G.o.d is good to give us doctors."

"Lie quiet, and I'll come back in an hour or two," said Dr. Mylechreest from half-way through the door.

"Dear heart alive, what will the father say?" cried Grannie, and then the whole place broke into that smile of surprise which comes to every house after the twin angels of Life and Death have brooded long over its roof-tree, and are gone at length before the face of a little child.

VIII.

When Pete came up to the quay in the raw suns.h.i.+ne of early morning, John the Clerk, mounted on a barrel, was selling by auction the night's take of the boats.

"I've news for you, Mr. Quilliam," he cried, as Pete's boat, with half sail set, dropped down the harbour. Pete brought to, leapt ash.o.r.e, and went up to where John, at the end of the jetty, surrounded by a crowd of buyers in little spring-carts, was taking bids for the fish.

"One moment, Capt'n," he cried, across his outstretched arm, at the end whereof was a herring with gills still opening and closing. "Ten maise of this sort for the last lot, well fed, alive and kicking--how much for them? Five s.h.i.+llings? Thank you--and three, Five and three. It's in it yet, boys--only five and three--and six, thank _you_. It'll do no harm at five and six--six s.h.i.+llings? All done at six--_and six?_ All done at six and six?" "Seven s.h.i.+llings," shouted somebody with a voice like a foghorn. "They're Annie the Cadger's," said John, dropping to the ground. "And now, Capt'n Quilliam, we'll go and wet the youngster's head."

Pete went up to Sulby like an avalanche, shouting his greetings to everybody on the way. But when he got near to the "Fairy," he wiped his steaming forehead and held his panting breath, and pretended not to have heard the news.

"How's the poor girl now?" he said in a meek voice, trying to look powerfully miserable, and playing his part splendidly for thirty seconds.

Then the women made eyes at each other and looked wondrous knowing, and nodded sideways at Pete, and clucked and chuckled, saying, "Look at him,--_he_ doesn't know anything, does he?" "Coorse not, woman--these men creatures are no use for nothing."

"Out of a man's way," cried Pete, with a roar, and he made a rush for the stairs.

Nancy blocked him at the foot of them with both hands on his shoulders.

"You'll be quiet, then," she whispered. "You were always a rasonable man, Pete, and she's wonderful wake--promise you'll be quiet."

"TO be like a mouse," said Pete, and he whipped off his long sea-boots and crept on tiptoe into the room.

There she lay with the morning light on her, and a face as white as the quilt that she was plucking with her long fingers.

"Thank G.o.d for a living mother and a living child," said Pete, in a broken gurgle, and then he drew down the bedclothes a very little, and there, too, was the child on the pillow of her other arm.

Then do what he would to be quiet, he could not help but make a shout.

"He's there! Yes, he is! He is, though! Joy! Joy!"

The women were down on him like a flock of geese. "Out of this, sir, if you can't behave better!'

"Excuse me, ladies," said Pete humbly, "I'm not in the habit of babies.

A bit excited, you see, Mistress Nancy, ma'am. Couldn't help putting a bull of a roar out, not being used of the like." Then, turning back to the bed, "Aw, Kitty, the beauty it is, though! And the big! As big as my fist already. And the fat! It's as fat as a bluebottle. And the straight! Well, not so _very_ straight, neither, but the complexion at him now! Give him to me, Kitty I give him to me, the young rascal. Let me have a hould of him, anyway."

"_Him_, indeed! Listen to the man," said Nancy.

"It's a girl, Pete," said Grannie, lifting the child out of the bed.

"A girl, is it?" said Pete doubtfully. "Well," he said, with a wag of the head, "thank G.o.d for a girl." Then, with another and more resolute wag, "Yes, thank G.o.d for a living mother and a living child, if it is a girl," and he stretched out his arms to take the baby.

"Aisy, now, Pete--aisy," said Grannie, holding it out to him.

"Is it aisy broke they are, Grannie?" said Pete. A good spirit looked out of his great boyish face. "Come to your ould daddie, you lil sandpiper. Gough bless me, Kitty, the weight of him, though! This child's a quarter of a hundred if he's an ounce. He is, I'll go bail he is. Look at him! Guy heng, Grannie, did ye ever see the like, now! It's absolute perfection. Kitty, I couldn't have had a better one if I'd chiced it. Where's that Tom Hommy now? The bleating little billygoat, he was bragging outrageous about his new baby--saying he wouldn't part with it for two of the best cows in his cow-house. This'll floor him, I'm thinking. What's that you're saying, Mistress Nancy, ma'am? No good for nothing, am I? You were right, Grannie. 'It'll be all joy soon,' you were saying, and haven't we the child to show for it? I put on my stocking inside out on Monday, ma'am. 'I'm in luck,' says I, and so I was. Look at that, now! He's shaking his lil fist at his father. He is, though. This child knows me. Aw, you're clever, Nancy, but--no nonsense at all, Mistress Nancy, ma'am. Nothing will persuade me but this child knows me."

"Do you hear the man?" said Nancy. "_He_ and _he_, and _he_ and _he!_ It's a girl, I'm telling you; a girl--a girl--a girl."

"Well, well, a girl, then--a girl we'll make it," said Pete, with determined resignation.

"He's deceaved," said Grannie. "It was a boy he was wanting, poor fellow!"