Send her five pounds, Willie, and tell her to take that talk to the butchers."
""Honored Captain, we are going to erect a new school in connection with Ballajora chapel, and if you will honor us by laying the foundation stone...." Never laid a stone in my life "cept one, and that was my mawther"s sink-stone. Twenty pounds, Willie. "Sir, we are to hold a bazaar, and if you will consent to open it...." Bazaar! I know: a sort of ould clothes shop in a chapel where you"re never tooken up for cheating, because you always says your paternoster-ings afore you begin.
Ten pounds, Willie. h.e.l.loa, here"s Parson Quiggin. Wish the ould devil would write more simpler; I was never no good at the big spells myself.
"Dear David...." That"s good--he walloped me out of the school once for mimicking his walk--same as a coakatoo esactly. "Dear David, owing to the lamentable death of brother Mylechreest it has been resolved to ask you to become a member of our committee...." Com-mittee! I know the sort--kind of religious firm where there"s three partners, only two of them"s sleeping ones. Dirty ould hypocrite! Fifteen pounds, Willie."
This was the scene that Lovibond interrupted by his entrance. "Still bent on spending your money, Captain?" he said. "Don"t you see that the people who write you these begging letters are impostors?"
"Coorse I do," said Davy. "What"s it saying in the Ould Book? "Where the carca.s.s is, there will the eagles be gathered together." Only, as Parson Howard used to say, bless the ould angel, "Summat"s gone screw with the translation theer, friends, should have been vultures."
"Half of them will only drink your money, Captain," said Lovibond.
"And what for shouldn"t they? That"s what I"m doing," said Davy.
"It"s poor work, Captain, poor work. You didn"t always think: money was a thing to pitch into a ditch."
"Always? My goodness, no!" said Davy. "Time was once when I thought money was just all and Tommy in this world. My gough, yes, when I was a slip of a lad, didn"t I?" said he, sobering very suddenly. "The father was lost in a gale at the herrings, and the mawther had to fend for the lot of us. They all went off except myself--the sisters and brothers.
Poor things, they wasn"t willing to stay with us, and no wonder. But there"s mostly an ould person about every Manx house that sees the young ones out, and the mawther"s father was at us still. Lame though of his legs with the rheumatics, and wake in his intellecs for all. Couldn"t do nothing but lie in by the fire with his bit of a blanket hanging over his head, same as snow atop of a hawthorn bush. Just stirring the peats, and boiling the kettle, and lifting the gorse when there was any fire.
The mawther weeded for Jarvis Kewley--sixpence a day dry days, and fourpence all weathers. Middling hard do"s, mate. And when she"d give the ould man his basin of broth he"d be saying, squeaky-like, "Give it to the boy, woman; he"s a growing lad?" "Chut! take it, man," the mawther would say, and then he"d be whimpering, "I"m keeping you long, Liza, I"m keeping you long." And there was herself making a noise with her spoon in the bottom of a basin, and there was me grinding my teeth, and swearing to myself like mad, "As sure as the living G.o.d I"ll be ruch some day." And now--"
Davy snapped his fingers, laughed boisterously, rolled to his feet, and said shortly, "Where"ve you been to?"
"To church--the church with a spire at the end of the parade," said Lovibond.
"St. Thomas"s--I know it," said Davy.
St. Thomas"s was half way up to Castle Mona.
The men strolled out at the window, which opened on to the warm, soft turf of the Head, and lay down there with their faces to the sun-lit bay.
"Who preached?" said Davy, clasping hands at the back of his head.
"A young woman," said Lovibond.
Davy lifted his head out of its socket, "My goodness!" he said.
"Well, at all events," explained Lovi-bond, "it was a girl who preached to _me_. The moment I went into the church I saw her, and I saw nothing else until I came out again."
Davy laughed, "Ay, that"s the way a girl slips in," said he. "Who was she?"
"Nay; I don"t know," said Lovibond; "but she sat over against me on the opposite side of the aisle, and her face was the only prayer-book I could keep my eyes from wandering from."
"And what was her tex", mate?"
"Beauty, grace, truth, the tenderness of a true heart, the sweetness of a soul that is fresh and pure."
Davy looked up with vast solemnity. "Take care," said he. "There"s odds of women, sir. They"re like sheep"s broth is women. If there"s a heart and head in them they"re good, and if there isn"t you might as well be supping hot water. Faces isn"t the chronometer to steer your boat to the good ones. Now I"ve seen some you could swear to----."
"I"ll swear to this one," said Lovibond with an appearance of tremendous earnestness.
Davy looked at him, gravely. "D"ye say so?" said he.
"Such eyes, Capt"n--big and full, and blue, and then pale, pale blue, in the whites of them too, like--like----."
"I know," said Davy; "like a blackbird"s eggs with the young birds just breaking out of them."
"Just," said Lovibond, "And then her hair, Capt"n--brown, that brown with a golden bloom, as if it must have been yellow when she was a child."
"I know the sort, sir," said Davy, proudly; "like the ling on the mountains in May, with the gorse creeping under it."
"Exactly. And then her voice, Cap tain, her voice--."
"So you were speaking to her?" said Davy.
"No, but didn"t she sing?" said Lovi-bond. "Such tones, soft and tremulous, rising and falling, the same as--as--."
"Same as the lark"s, mate," said Davy, eagerly; "same as the lark"s--first a burst and a mount and then a trimble and a tumble, as if she"d got a drink of water out of the clouds of heaven, and was singing and swallowing together--I know the sort; go on."
Lovibond had kept pace with Davy"s warmth, but now he paused and said quietly, "I"m afraid she"s in trouble."
"Poor thing!" said Davy. "How"s that, mate?"
"People can never disguise their feelings in singing a hymn," said Lovibond.
"You say true, mate," said Davy; "nor in giving one out neither. Now, there was old Kinvig. He had a sow once that wasn"t too reg"lar in her pigging. Sometimes she gave many, and sometimes she gave few, and sometimes she gave none. She was a hit-and-a-missy sort of a sow, you might say. But you always know"d how the ould sow done, by the way Kinvig gave out the hymn. If it was six he was as loud as a clarnet, and if it was one his voice was like the tram-bones. But go on about the girl."
"That"s all," said Lovibond. "When the service was over I walked down the aisle behind her, and touched her dress with my hand, and somehow--"
"I know," cried Davy. "Gave you a kind of "lectricity shock, didn"t it?
Lord alive, mate, girls is quare things."
"Then she walked off the other way," said Lovibond.
"So you don"t know where she comes from?" said Davy.
"I couldn"t bring myself to follow her, Capt"n."
"And right too, mate. It"s sneaking. Following a girl in the streets is sneaking, and the man that done it ought to be wallopped till all"s blue. But you"ll see her again, I"ll go bail, and maybe hear who she is.
Rael true women is skess these days, sir; but I"m thinking you"ve got your flotes down for a good one. Give her line, mate--give her line--and if I wasn"t such a downhearted chap myself I"d be helping you to land her."
Lovibond observed that Capt"n Davy was more than usually restless after this conversation, and in the course of the afternoon, while he lay in a hazy dose on the sofa, he overheard this pa.s.sage between the captain and his boy:--
"Willie Quarrie, didn"t you say there was an English lady staying with Mistress Quiggin at Castle Mona?"
"Miss Crows; yes," said Willie. "So Peggy Quine is telling me--a little person with a spygla.s.s, and that fond of the mistress you wouldn"t think."
"Then just slip across in the morning, and spake to herself, and say can I see her somewheres, or will she come here, and never say nothing to n.o.body."
Davy"s uneasiness continued far into the evening. He walked alone to and fro on the turf of the Head in front of the house, until the sun set behind the hills to the west, where a golden rim from its falling light died off on the farthest line of the sea to the east, and the town between lay in a haze of deepening purple. Lovibond knew where his thoughts were, and what new turn they had taken; but he pretended to see nothing, and he gave no sign.