"Can it be, sir, that you"ve not yet heard----"
"Heard what? Your tongue"s like a turnip-watch in a fob pocket--out with it, man."
"Your wife, Captain----"
"What? My wife disa---- What? So this is the jeel! My wife mysteriously disappear---- Oh, my gough!"
Pete burst into a peal of laughter. He shouted, roared, held his sides, doubled, rocked up and down, and at length flung himself into a chair, threw back his head, heaved out his legs, and shook till the house itself seemed to quake.
"Well, that"s good! that"s rich! that bates all!" he cried.
The child awoke on Nancy"s knee and sent its thin pipe through Pete"s terrific ba.s.s. Caesar opened his mouth and gaped, and the young man, now white and afraid, sc.r.a.ped and backed himself to the door, saying--
"Then perhaps it"s not true, after all, Capt"n?"
"Of coorse it"s not true," said Pete.
"Maybe you know where she"s gone."
"Of course I know where"s she"s gone. I sent her there myself!"
"You did, though?" said Caesar.
"Yes, did I--to England by the night sailing."
""Deed, man!" said Caesar.
"The doctor ordered it. You heard him yourself, grandfather."
"Well, that"s true, too," said Caesar.
The young man closed his long note-book and backed into a throng of women who had come up to the porch. "Of course, if you say so, Capt"n Quilliam----"
"I do say so," shouted Pete; and the reporter disappeared.
The voices of two women came from the gulf of white faces wherein the reporter had been swallowed up. "I"m right glad it"s lies they"ve been telling of her, Capt"n," said the first.
"Of coorse you are, Mistress Kinnish," shouted Pete.
"I could never have believed the like of the same woman, and I always knew the child was brought up by hand," said the other.
"Coorse you couldn"t, Mistress Kewley," Pete replied.
But he swung up and kicked the door to in their faces. The strangers being shut out, Caesar said cautiously--
"Do you mane that, Peter?"
"Molly"s smoking at the gate like a brewer"s vat, father," said Pete.
"The half hasn"t been told you, Peter. Listen to me. It"s only proper you should hear it. When you were away at Kim-berley this Ross Christian was bothering the girl terrible."
"She"ll be getting cold so long out of the stable," said Pete.
"I rebuked him myself, sir, and he smote me on the brow. Look! Here"s the mark of his hand over my temple, and I"ll be carrying it to my grave."
"Ross Christian! Ross Christian!" muttered Pete impatiently.
"By the Lord"s restraining grace, sir, I refrained myself--but if Mr.
Philip hadn"t been there that night--I"m not hould-ing with violence, no, resist not evil--but Mr. Philip fought the loose liver with his fist for me; he chastised him, sir; he--"
"D------the man!" cried Pete, leaping to his feet. "What"s he to me or my wife either?"
Caesar went home huffed, angry, and unsatisfied. And then, all being gone and the long strain over, Pete s.n.a.t.c.hed the puling child out of Nancy"s arms, and kissed it and wept over it.
"Give her to me, the bogh," he cried, hoa.r.s.e as a raven, and then sat on the stool before the fire, and rocked the little one and himself together. "If I hadn"t something innocent to lay hould of I should be going mad, that I should. Oh, Katherine bogh! Katherine bogh! My little bogh! My I"ll bogh millish!"
In the deep hours of the night, after Nancy had grumbled and sobbed herself to sleep by the side of the child, Pete got up from the sofa in the parlour and stole out of the house again.
"She may come up with the morning tide," he told himself. "If she does, what matter about a lie, G.o.d forgive me? G.o.d help me, what matter about anything?"
If she did not, he would stick to his story, so that when she came back, wherever she had been, she would come home as an honest woman.
"And _will be_, too," he thought. "Yes, will be, too, spite of all their dirty tongues--as sure as the Lord"s in heaven."
The dog trotted on in front of him as he turned up towards Ballure.
XIX.
Philip had not eaten much that night at dinner. He had pecked at the wing of a fowl, been restless, absent, preoccupied, and like a man struggling for composure. At intervals he had listened as for a step or a voice, then recovered himself and laughed a little.
Auntie Nan had explained his uneasiness on grounds of natural excitement after the doings of the great day. She had loaded his plate with good things, and chirruped away under the light of the lamp.
"So sweet of you, Philip, not to forget Pete amid all your success. He"s really such a good soul. It would break his heart if you neglected him.
Simple as a child, certainly, and of course quite uneducated, but----"
"Pete is fit to be the friend of any one, Auntie."
"The friend, yes, but you"ll allow not exactly the companion----"
"If he is simple, it is the simplicity of a nature too large for little things."
"The dear fellow! He"s not a bit jealous of you, Philip."
"Such feelings are far below him, Auntie."
"He"s your first cousin after all, Philip. There"s no denying that. As he says, the blood of the Christians is in him."