"Lave me, sir, lave me."
Philip turned away, breathing audibly. A moment longer Pete stood where he was, gripping his hat with both hands in front of him. Then he went down on his knees. "Oh, forgive me my hard thoughts of thee," he said.
"Jesus, forgive me my hard thoughts of my poor Kirry."
Philip heard no more. The organ was very loud and triumphant.
"Deep in unfathomable mines Of never-failing skill, He treasures up His bright designs And works His sovereign will."
A red shaft of sunlight tipped down on Pete"s uncovered head from the top of the wall. The blessed tears had come to him. He was sobbing aloud; he was alone with his love at last.
He was alone with her indeed. At that moment Kate was looking down from the window of her room. She saw him kneeling and praying by another"s grave.
Philip never knew how he got out of the churchyard. He crawled out--creeping along by the wall, and slinking through the gate--heart-sick and all but heart-dead. When he came to himself, he was standing in Athol Street, and a company of jolly fellows in a jaunting-car, driving out of the golden sunset, were rattling past him with shouts and peals of laughter.
XXIII.
Kate was standing in her room with the door open, beating her hands together in the first helpless stupor of fear, when she saw a man coming up the stairs. His legs seemed to be giving way as he ascended; he was bent and feeble, and had all the look of great age. As he approached he lifted his face, which was old and withered. Then she saw who it was. It was Philip.
She made an involuntary cry, and he smiled upon her--a hard, frozen, terrible smile. "He is lost," she thought. Her scared expression penetrated to his soul. He knew that she had seen everything. At first he tried to speak, but he could utter nothing. Then a mad desire seized him to lay hold of her--by the arms, by the shoulders, by the throat.
Conquering this impulse, he stood motionless, pa.s.sing his hands through his hair. She dropped her eyes and hung her head. Their abas.e.m.e.nt in each other"s eyes was complete. He was ashamed before her, she was ashamed before him. One moment they faced each other thus, in silence, in pitiless and awful silence, and then slowly, very slowly, stupefied and crushed, he turned away and crept out of the house.
"It is the end--the end." What was the use of going farther? He had fallen too low. His degradation was abject. It was hopeless, irreparable, irremediable. "End it all--end it all." The words clamoured in his inmost soul.
Halting down the quay, he made for the ferry steps, where boats were waiting for hire. He had lately hired one of an evening, and pulled round the Head for the sake of the breath and the silence of the sea.
"Going far out this evening, your Honor?" the boatman asked.
"Farther than ever," he answered.
Pull, pull! Away from the terrible past. Away from the horrible present.
The steamer had arrived, and had discharged her pa.s.sengers. She was still pulsing at the end of the red pier like a horse that pants after running a race.
A band was playing a waltz somewhere on the promenade. Pleasure boats were darting about the bay. Sea-birds were sitting on the water where the sewers of the gay little town empty into the sea.
Pull, pull! He was flying from remorse, from despair, from the deep duplicity of a double life, from the lie that had slain the heart of a living man. How low he had fallen! Could he fall lower without falling into crime?
Pull, pull! He would be a criminal next. When a man had been degraded in his own eyes, and in the eyes of her he loved, crime stood beckoning him. He might try, but he could not resist; he must yield, he must fall.
It was the only degradation remaining. Better end everything before dropping into that last abyss.
Pull, pull! He was the judge of his island, and he had outraged justice.
Holding a false t.i.tle, living on a false honour, he was safe of no man"s respect, secure of no woman"s goodwill. Exposure hung over him. He would be disgraced, the law would be disgraced, the island would be disgraced.
Pull, pull, pull, before it is too late; out, far out, farther than tide returns, or sea tells stories to the sh.o.r.e.
He had rowed like a slave escaping from his chains, in terror of being overtaken and dragged back. The voices of the harbour were now hushed, the music of the band was deadened, the horses running along the promenade seemed to creep like ants, and the traffic of the streets was no louder than a dull subterranean rumble. He had shot out of the margin of smooth blue water in which the island lay as on a mirror, and out of the shadow of the hill upon the bay. The sea about him now was running green and glistening, and the red sun-? light was coming down on it like smoke. Only the steeples and towers and gla.s.s domes of the town reached up into luminous air. He could see the squat tower of St. George"s silhouetted against the dying glory of the sky. Seven years he had been its neighbour, and it had witnessed such happy and such cruel hours. All the joy of work, the sweetness of success, the dreams of greatness, the rosy flushes of love, and then--the tortures of conscience, the visions, the horror, the secret shame, the self-abandonment, and, last of all, the twofold existence as of husband with wife, hidden, incomplete, unfulfilled, yet full of tender ties which had seemed like galling bonds so many a time, but were now so sweet when the hour had come to break them.
How distant it all appeared to be! And was he flying from the island like this? The island that had honoured him, that had rewarded him beyond his deserts, and earlier than his dreams, that had suffered no jealousy to impede him, no rivalry to fret him, no disparity of age and service to hold him back--the little island that had seemed to open its arms to him, and to cry, "Philip Christian, son of your father, grandson of your grandfather, first of Manxmen, come up!"
Oh, for what might have been! Useless regrets! Pull, pull, and forget.
But the home of his childhood! Ballure--Auntie Nan--his father"s death brightened by one hope--the last, but ah! how vain!--Port Mooar--Pete, "The sea"s calling me." Pull, pull! The sea was calling him indeed.
Calling him to the deep womb that is death, not birth.
He was far out. The sun had gone, the island was like a bird of ashy grey stretched across the horizon; the great wing of night was coming down from the sky, and up out the mysterious depths of the sea came the profound hum, the mighty voice that is the organ of the world.
He took in the oars, and his tiny sh.e.l.l began to drift At that moment his eye caught something at the bottom of the boat. It was a flower, a broken stem, a torn rose, and a few scattered rose leaves. Only a relic of the last occupants, but it brought back the perfume of love, a sense of tenderness, of bright eyes, of a caress, a kiss. His mind went back to Sulby, to the Melliah, to the glen, to the days so full of tremulous love, when they hovered on the edge of the precipice. They had been hurled over it since then. It was some relief that between love and honour he would not have to struggle any longer.
And Kate? When all was over and word went round, "The Deemster is gone,"
what would happen to Kate? She would still be at his house in Athol Street. That would be the beginning of evil! She would wait for him, and when hope of his return was lost, she would weep for him. That would be the key of discovery! The truth would become known. Though he might be at the bottom of the sea, yet the cloud that hung over his life would break. It was inevitable. And she would be there to bear the storm alone--alone with the island which had been deceived, alone with Pete, who had been lied to and betrayed. Was that just? Was that brave?
And then--what then? What would become of her? Openly shamed, charged, as she must be, with the whole weight of the crime from whose burden he had fled, accused of his downfall, a Delilah, a Jezebel, what fate should befall her? Where would she go? Down to what depths? He saw her sinking lower than ever man sinks; he heard her appeals, her supplications.
"Oh, what have I done," he cried, "that I can neither live nor die?"
Then in that delirium of anguish in which the order of nature is reversed, and external objects no longer produce sensation, but sensation produces, as it were, external objects, he thought he saw something at the bottom of the boat where the broken rose had been. It was the figure of a man, stretched out, still and lifeless. His eyes went up to the face. The face was his own. It was ashy grey, and it stared up at the grey sky. The brain image was himself, and he was dead. He watched it, and it faded away. There was nothing left but the scattered rose-leaves and the torn flower on the broken stem.
The terrible shadow was gone; he felt that it was gone for ever. It was dead, and it would haunt him no longer. It had lived on an empire of evil-doing, and his evil-doing was at an end. He would "see his soul" no more. The tears gushed to his eyes and blinded him. They were the first he could remember since he was a boy. Alone between the two mirrors of sea and sky, the chain that he had dragged so long fell: away from him.
He was a free man again.
"Go back! your place is by her side. Don"t sneak out of life, and leave another to pay. Suffering is a grand thing. It is the struggle of the soul to cast off its sin. Accept it, go through with it, come out of it purged. Go back to the island. Your life is not ended yet."
XXIV.
"We were just going sending a lil yawl after you, Dempster, when we were seeing you a bit overside the head yonder coming back. "He"s drifting home on the flowing tide," says I, and so you were. Must have been a middling stiff pull for all. We were thinking you were lost one while there."
"I _was_ almost lost, but I"m here again, thank G.o.d," said Philip.
He spoke cheerily, and went away with a light step. It was now full night; the town was lit up, and the musicians of the pavement were tw.a.n.ging their banjos and harps. Philip felt a sort of physical regeneration, a renewal of youth, a new birth of heart and hope. He was like a man coming out of some hideous Gehenna of delirious illness; he though he had never been so light, so buoyant, so happy in his life before. The future was vague. He did not yet know what he would do. It would be something radical, something that would go down to the heart of his condition. Oh, he would be strong, he would be resolute, he would pay the uttermost farthing, he would not wait to count the cost. And she--she would be with him. He could do nothing without her. The partner of his fault would share his redemption also. G.o.d bless her!
He let himself into the house and shut the door firmly behind him.
The lights were still burning in the hall, so it was not very late. He mounted the stairs with a loud step and swung into his room. The lamp was on the table, and within the circle cast by its blue shade a letter was lying. He took it up with dismay. It was in Kate"s handwriting:--
"Forgive me! I am going away. It is all my fault. I have broken the heart of one man, and I am destroying the soul of another. If I stay here any longer you will be ruined and lost. I am only a millstone about your neck. I see it, I feel it. And yet I have loved you so, and wished to be so proud of you. Your heart is brave enough, though I have sunk it down so low. You will live to be strong and good and true, though that can never be while I am with you. I have been far below you from the first. All along I have only been thinking how much I loved you, but you have had so many other things to consider. My life seems to have been one long battle for love. I think it has been a cruel battle too.
Anyway, I am beaten, and oh! so tired.
"Do not follow me. I pray of you do not try to find me. It is my last request. Think of me as on a long journey. I may be--the Great G.o.d of heaven knows.
"I am taking the little cracked medallion from the bottom of the oak box. It is the only picture I can find, and it will remind me of some one else as well--my little Katherine, my motherless baby.
"I have nothing to leave with you but this (_it was a lock of her hair_). At first I thought of the wedding-ring that you gave me when I came here, but it would not come off, and besides, I could not part with it.
"Good-bye! I ought to have done this long ago. But you will not hate me now? We could never be happy together again. Good-bye!"