Part 4 (1/2)

Bridget was dying of pleurisy, brought on by a long day's work at hoeing turnips in a soaking rain. Dr. Mylechreest had poulticed her lungs with mustard and linseed, but all to no purpose. ”It's feeling the same as the sun on your back at harvest,” she murmured, yet the poultices brought no heat to her frozen chest.

Caesar Cregeen was at her side; John the Clerk, too, called John the Widow; Kelly, the rural postman, who went by the name of Kelly the Thief; as well as Black Tom, her father. Caesar was discoursing of sinners and their latter end. John was remembering how at his election to the clerks.h.i.+p he had rashly promised to bury the poor for nothing; Kelly was thinking he would be the first to carry the news to Christian Balla-whaine; and Black Tom was varying the exercise of pounding rock-sugar for his bees with that of breaking his playful wit on the dying woman.

”No use; I'm laving you; I'm going on my long journey,” said Bridget, while Granny used a shovel as a fan to relieve her gusty breathing.

”Got anything in your pocket for the road, woman?” said the thatcher.

”It's not houses of bricks and mortal I'm for calling at now,” she answered.

”Dear heart! Put up a bit of a prayer,” whispered Grannie to her husband; and Caesar took a pinch of snuff out of his waistcoat pocket, and fell to ”wrastling with the Lord.”

Bridget seemed to be comforted. ”I see the jasper gates,” she panted, fixing her hazy eyes on the scraas under the thatch, from which broken spiders' webs hung down like rats' tails.

Then she called for Pete. She had something to give him. It was the stocking foot with the eighty greasy Manx banknotes which his father, Peter Christian, had paid her fifteen years before. Pete lit the candle and steadied it while Grannie cut the stocking from the wall side of the bed-ticking.

Black Tom dropped the sugar-pounder and exposed his broken teeth in his surprise at so much wealth; John the Widow blinked; and Kelly the Thief poked his head forward until the peak of his postman's cap fell on to the bridge of his nose.

A sea-fog lay over the land that morning, and when it lifted Bridget's soul went up as well.

”Poor thing! Poor thing!” said Grannie. ”The ways were cold for her--cold, cold!”

”A dacent la.s.s,” said John the Clerk; ”and oughtn't to be buried with the common trash, seeing she's left money.”

”A hard-working woman, too, and on her feet for ever; but 'lowanced in her intellecks, for all,” said Kelly.

And Caesar cried, ”A brand plucked from the burning! Lord, give me more of the like at the judgment.”

When all was over, and tears both hot and cold were wiped away--Pete shed none of them--the neighbours who had stood with the lad in the churchyard on Maughold Head returned to the cottage by the water-trough to decide what was to be done with his eighty good bank-notes. ”It's a fortune,” said one. ”Let him put it with Mr. Dumbell,” said another.

”Get the boy a trade first--he's a big lump now, sixteen for spring,”

said a third. ”A draper, eh?” said a fourth. ”May I presume? My nephew, Bobbie Clucas, of Ramsey, now?” ”A dacent man, very,” said John the Widow; ”but if I'm not ambitious, there's my son-in-law, John Cowley.

The lad's cut to a dot for a grocer, and what more nicer than having your own shop and your own name over the door, if you plaze--' Peter Quilliam, tay and sugar merchant!'--they're telling me John will be riding in his carriage and pair soon.”

”Chut! your grannie and your carriage and pairs,” shouted a rasping voice at last. It was Black Tom. ”Who says the fortune is belonging to the lad at all? It's mine, and if there's law in the land I'll have it.”

Meanwhile, Pete, with the dull thud in his ears of earth falling on a coffin, had made his way down to Ballawhaine. He had never been there before, and he felt confused, but he did not tremble. Half-way up the carriage-drive he pa.s.sed a sandy-haired youth of his own age, a slim dandy who hummed a tune and looked at him carelessly over his shoulder.

Pete knew him--he was Boss, the boys called him Dross, son and heir of Christian Ballawhaine.

At the big house Pete asked for the master. The English footman, in scarlet knee-breeches, left him to wait in the stone hall. The place was very quiet and rather cold, but all as clean as a gull's wing. There was a dark table in the middle and a high-backed chair against the wall. Two oil pictures faced each other from opposite sides. One was of an old man without a beard, but with a high forehead, framed around with short grey hair. The other was of a woman with a tired look and a baby on her lap.

Under this there was a little black picture that seemed to Pete to be the likeness of a fancy tombstone. And the print on it, so far as Pete could spell it out, was that of a tombstone too, ”In loving memory of Verbena, beloved wife of Peter Chr--”

The Ballawhaine came crunching the sand on the hall-floor. He looked old, and had now a pent-house of bristly eyebrows of a different colour from his hair. Pete had often seen him on the road riding by.

”Well, my lad, what can I do for _you?_” he said. He spoke in a jerky voice, as if he thought to overawe the boy.

Pete fumbled his stocking cap. ”Mothers dead,” he answered vacantly.

The Ballawhaine knew that already. Kelly the Thief had run hot-foot to inform him. He thought Pete had come to claim maintenance now that his mother was gone.