Nancy came from the kitchen at the moment, and hearing what he was saying, she lifted both hands and uttered a piercing shriek. He took her by the shoulders and turned her back, shut the door behind her, and said, holding his right hand hard at his side, "Women are brave, sir, but when the storm breaks on a man----" He broke off and muttered again, "Dead! Kirry is dead!"
The child, awakened by Nancy"s cry, was now whimpering fretfully. Pete went to the cradle and rocked it with one foot, crooning in a quavering treble, "Hush-a-bye! hush-a-bye!"
Philip"s breathing was oppressed. He felt like a man at the edge of a precipice, with an impulse to throw himself over. "G.o.d forgive me," he said. "I could kill myself. I"ve broken your heart;----"
"No fear of me, sir," said Pete. "I"m an ould hulk that"s seen weather.
I"ll not go to pieces from inside at all. Give me time, mate, give me time." And then he went on muttering as before, "Dead! Kirry dead!
Hush-a-bye! My Kirry dead!"
The little one slept, and Pete drew back in his chair, nodded into the fire, and said in a weak, childish voice, "I"ve known her all my life, d"ye know? She"s been my lil sweetheart since she was a slip of a girl, and slapped the schoolmaster for bating me wrongously. Swate lil thing in them days, mate, with her brown feet and tossing hair. And now she"s a woman and she"s dead! The Lord have mercy upon me!"
He got up and began to walk heavily across the floor, dipping and plunging as if going upstairs. "The bright and happy she was when I started for Kimberley, too; with her pretty face by the aising stones in the morning, all laughter and mischief. Five years I was seeing it in my drames like that, and now it"s gone. Kirry is gone! My Kirry! G.o.d help me! O G.o.d, have mercy upon me!"
He stopped in his unsteady walk, and sat and stared into the fire. His eyes were red; blotches of heart"s blood seemed to be rising to them; but there was not the sign of a tear. Philip did not attempt to console him. He felt as if the first syllable would choke in his throat.
"I see how it"s been, sir," said Pete. "While I was away her heart was changing her, and when I came back she thought she must keep her word.
My poor lamb! She was only a child anyway. But I was a man--I ought to have seen how it was. I"m like a drowning man, too--things are coming back on me. I"m seeing them plain enough now. But it"s too late! My poor Kirry! And I thought I was making her so happy!" Then, with a helpless look, "You wouldn"t believe it, sir, but I was never once thinking nothing else. No, I wasn"t; it"s a fact. I was same as a sailor working all the voyage home, making a cage, and painting it goold, for the love-bird he"s catcht in the sunny lands somewhere; but when he"s putting it in, it"s only wanting away, poor thing."
With a sense of grovelling meanness, Philip sat and listened. Then, with eyes wandering across the floor, he said, "You have nothing to reproach yourself with. You did everything a man could do--everything. And she was innocent also. It was the fault of another. He came between you. Perhaps he thought he couldn"t help it--perhaps he persuaded himself--G.o.d knows what lie he told himself--but she"s innocent, Pete; believe me, she"s----"
Pete brought his fist down heavily on the table, and the rings that lay on it jumped and tingled. "What"s that to me?" he cried hoa.r.s.ely. "What do I care if she"s innocent or guilty? She"s dead, isn"t she? and that"s enough. Curse the man! I don"t want to hear of him. She"s mine now. What for should he come here between me and my own?"
The torn heart and racked brain could bear no more. Pete dropped his head on the table. Presently his anger ebbed. Without lifting his head, he stretched his hand across the rings to feel for Philip"s hand.
Philip"s hand trembled in his grasp. He took that for sympathy, and became the more ashamed.
"Give me time, mate," he said. "I"ll be my own man soon. My head"s moithered dreadful--I"m not knowing if I heard you right. In Douglas, you say? By herself, too? Not by herself, surely? Not quite alone neither? She found you out, didn"t she? _You"d_ be there, Phil? You"d be with her yourself? She"d be wanting for nothing?"
Philip answered huskily, his eyes still wandering. "If it will be any comfort to you... yes, I _was_ with her--she wanted for nothing."
"My poor girl!" said Pete. "Did she send--had she any--maybe she said a word or two--at the last, eh?"
Philip clutched at the question. There was something at last that he could say without falsehood. "She sent a prayer for your forgiveness,"
he said. "She told me to tell you to think of her as little as might be; not to grieve for her too much, and to try to forget her, so that her sin also might be forgotten."
"And the lil one--anything about the lil one?" asked Pete.
"That was the bitterest grief of all," said Philip. "It was so hard that you must think her an unnatural mother. "My Katherine! My little Katherine! My sweet angel!" It was her cry the whole day long."
"I see, I see," said Pete, nodding at the fire; "she left the lil one for my sake, wanting it with her all the while. Poor thing! You"d comfort her, Philip? You"d let her go aisy?"
""The child is well and happy," I told her. "He"s thinking nothing of yourself but what is good and kind," I said."
"G.o.d"s peace rest on her! My darling! My wife!" said Pete solemnly. Then suddenly in another tone, "Do you know where she"s buried?"
Philip hesitated. He had not foreseen this question. Where had been his head that he had never thought of it? But there was no going back now.
He was compelled to go on. He must tell lie on lie. "Yes," he faltered.
"Could you take me to the grave?"
Philip gasped; the sweat broke out on his forehead.
"Don"t be freckened, sir," said Pete; "I"m my own man again. Could you take me to my wife"s grave?"
"Yes," said Philip. He was in the rapids. He was on the edge of precipitation. He was compelled to go over. He made a blindfold plunge.
Lie on lie; lie on lie!
"Then we"ll start by the coach to-morrow," said Pete.
Philip rose with rigid limbs. He had meant to tell one lie only, and already he had told many. Truly "a lie is a cripple;" it cannot stand alone. "Good night, Pete; I"ll go home. I"m not well to-night."
"We"ll stop the coach at your aunt"s gate in the morning," said Pete.
They stepped to the door together, and stood for a moment in the dank and lifeless darkness.
"The world"s getting wonderful lonely, man, and you"re all that"s left to me now, Phil--you and the child. I"m not for wailing, though. When I got my gun-shot wound out yonder, I was away over the big veldt, hundreds of miles from anywhere, behind the last bush and the last blade of gra.s.s, with the stones and the ashes and the dust--about as far, you"d say, as the world was finished, and never looking to see herself and the ould island and the ould faces no more. I"m not so lonesome as that at all. Good-night, ould fellow, and G.o.d bless you!"
The gate opened and closed, Philip went stumbling up the road. He was hating Pete. To hate this open-hearted man who had dragged him into an entanglement of lies was the only resource of his stifled conscience.
Pete went back to the house, muttering, "Kirry is dead! Kirry is dead!"
He put the catch on the door, said, "Close the shutters, Nancy," and then returned to his chair by the cradle.
XX.
Later the same night Pete carried the news to Sulby. Grannie was in the bar-room, and he broke it to her gently, tenderly, lovingly.
Loud voices came from the kitchen. Caesar was there in angry contention with Black Tom. An open Bible was between them on their knees. Tom tugged it towards him, bobbed his blunt forefinger down on the page, and cried, "There"s the text--that"ll pin you--_publicans and sinners_."
Caesar leaned back"in his seat, and said with withering scorn, "It"s a bad business--I"ll give you lave to say that. It"s men like you that"s making it bad. But whether is it better for a bad business to be in bad hands or in good ones? There"s a big local praicher in London, they"re telling me, that"s hot for joining the public-house to the church, and turning the parsons into the publicans. That"s what they all were on the Isle of Man in ould days gone by, and pity they"re not so still.
Oh, I"ve been giving it my sarious thoughts, sir. I"ve been making it a subject for prayer. "Will I give up my public or hould fast to it to keep it out of worse hands?" And I"m strong to believe the Lord hath spoken. "It"s a little vineyard--a little work in a little vineyard.
Stick to it, Caesar," and so I will."
Pete stepped into the kitchen and flung his news at Caesar with a sort of wild melancholy, as who would say, "There, is that enough for you? Are you satisfied now?"
"_Mair yee shoh_--it"s the hand of G.o.d," said Caesar.
"A middling bad hand then," said Pete; "I"ve seen better, anyway."
A high spiritual pride took hold of Caesar--Black Tom was watching him, and working his big eyebrows vigorously. With mouth firmly shut and head thrown back, Caesar said in a sepulchral voice, "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord!"
Pete made a crack of savage laughter.
"Aren"t you feeling it, sir?" said Caesar.
"Not a feel near me," said Pete. "I never did the Lord no harm that I know of, but He"s taken my young wife and left my poor innocent lil one motherless."
"Unsearchable the wisdom and justice of G.o.d," said Caesar.