"Philip, Philip, you must not go--you cannot go--you shall not go!"
He could see her bosom heaving under her loose red bodice. She took hold of his arm and dragged at it.
"Won"t you spare me? Will you shame me to death? Must I tell you? If you won"t speak, I will. You cannot leave me, Philip, because--because--what do I care?--because I love you!"
"Don"t say that, Kate!"
"I love you, Philip--I love you--I love you!"
"Would to G.o.d I had never been born!"
"But I will show you how sweet it is to be alive. Take me, take me--I am yours!"
Her upturned face seemed to flash. He staggered like one seized with giddiness. It was a thing of terror to behold her. Still he struggled.
"Though apart, we shall remember each other, Kate."
"I don"t want to remember. I want to have you with me."
"Our hearts will always be together."
"Come to me then, Philip, come to me!"
"The purest part of our hearts--our souls----"
"But I want _you!_ Will you drive a girl to shame herself again? I want _you_, Philip! I want your eyes that I may see them every day; and your hair, that I may feel it with my hands; and your lips--can I help it?--yes, and your lips, that I may kiss and kiss them!"
"Kate! Kate! Turn your eyes away. Don"t look at me like that!" She was fighting for her life. It was to be now or never.
"If you won"t come to me, I"ll go to you!" she cried; and then she sprang upon him, and all grew confused, the berries of the nightshade whipped his forehead, and the moon and the stars went out.
"My love! My darling! My girl!"
"You won"t go now?" she sobbed.
"G.o.d forgive me, I cannot."
"Kiss me. I feel your heart beating. You are mine--mine--mine! Say you won"t go now!"
"G.o.d forgive us both!"
"Kiss me again, Philip! Don"t despise me that I love you better than myself!"
She was weeping, she was laughing, her heart was throbbing up to her throat. At the next moment she had broken from his embrace and was gone.
"Kate! Kate!"
Her voice came from the tholthan.
"Philip!"
When a good woman falls from honour, is it merely that she is a victim of momentary intoxication, of stress of pa.s.sion, of the fever of instinct? No. It is mainly that she is a slave of the sweetest, tenderest, most spiritual and pathetic of all human fallacies--the fallacy that by giving herself to the man she loves she attaches him to herself for ever. This is the real betrayer of nearly all good women that are betrayed. It lies at the root of tens of thousands of the cases that make up the merciless story of man"s sin and woman"s weakness.
Alas! it is only the woman who clings the closer. The impulse of the man is to draw apart. He must conquer it or she is lost. Such is the old cruel difference and inequality of man and woman as nature made them--the old trick, the old tragedy.
XXIV.
Old Mannanin, the magician, according to his wont, had surrounded his island with mist that day, and, in the helpless void of things unrevealed, a steamship bound for Liverpool came with engines slacked some points north of her course, blowing her fog-horn over the breathless sea with that unearthly yell which must surely be the sound whereby the devil summons his legions out of chaos.
Presently something dropping through the dense air settled for a moment on the damp rope of the companion ladder, and one of the pa.s.sengers recognised it.
"My gough! It"s a bird, a sparrow," he cried.
At the same moment there was a rustle of wind, the mist lifted, and a great round shoulder rose through the white gauze, as if it had been the ghost of a mountain.
"That"s the Isle of Man," the pa.s.senger shouted, and there was a cry of incredulity. "It"s the Calf, I"m telling you, boys. Lave it to me to know." And instantly the engines were reversed.
The pa.s.senger, a stalwart fellow, with a look as of pallor under a tawny tan, walked the deck in a fever of excitement, sometimes shouting in a cracked voice, sometimes laughing huskily, and at last breaking down in a hoa.r.s.e gurgle like a sob.
"Can"t you put me ash.o.r.e, capt"n?"
"Sorry I can"t, sir, we"ve lost time already."
There was a dog with him, a little, misshappen, ugly creature, and he lifted it up in his arms and hugged it, and called it by bl.u.s.terous swear names, with noises of inarticulate affection. Then he went down to his berth in the second cabin and opened a little box of letters, and took them out one by one, and leaned up to the port to read them. He had read them before, and he knew them by heart, but he traced the lines with his broad forefinger, and spelled the words one by one. And as he did so he laughed aloud, and then cried to himself, and then laughed once more. "She is well and happy, and looking lovely, and, if she does not write, don"t think she is forgetting you."
"G.o.d bless her. And G.o.d bless him, too. G.o.d bless them both!"
He went up on deck again, for he could not rest in one place long. There was a breeze now, and he filled his lungs and blew and blew. The island was dying down over the sea in a pale light of silver grey. An engineman and a stoker were leaning over the bulwark to cool themselves.
"Happy enough now, sir, eh?"
"Happy as a sand-boy, mate, only mortal hungry. Tiffin you say? Aw, the heart has its hunger same as anything else, and mine has been on short commons these five years and better. See that island there, lying like a salmon gull atop of the water? Looks as if she might dip under it, doesn"t she? That"s my home, my native land, as the man says, and only three weeks ago I wasn"t looking to see the thundering ould thing again; but G.o.d is good, you see, and I am middling fit for all. I"m a Manxman myself, mate, and I"ve got a lil Manx woman that"s waiting for me yonder. It"s only an ould shirt I"m bringing her to patch, as the saying is, but she"ll be that joyful you never seen. It"s bad to take a woman by surprise, though--these nervous creatures--"sterics, you see--I"ll send her a tally graph from the Stage. My sakes! the joy she"ll be taking of that boy, too! He"ll be getting sixpence for himself and a drink of b.u.t.ter-milk. It"s always the way of these poor lil things--can"t stand no good news at all--people coming home and the like--not much worth, these women--crying reglar--can"t help it. Well, you see, they"re tender-hearteder than us, and when anybody"s been five years... Be gough, we"re making way, though! The island"s going under, for sure. Or is it my eyes that isn"t so clear since my bit of a bullet-wound! Aw, G.o.d is good, tremen-jous!"
The breaking voice stopped suddenly, and the engine-men turned about, but the pa.s.senger was stumbling down the cabin stairs.
"If ever a man came back from the dead it"s that one," said both men together.
PART III. MAN AND WOMAN
I.