Part 52 (1/2)

”I don't think I'll go to Douglas to-day, mother,” said Kate in a broken voice. ”I'm not so very well, after all.”

”Aw, the bogh!” said Grannie. ”Making too sure of herself, was she? It's the way with them all when they're mending.”

With cheerful protestations Grannie helped her back to bed, and then went off with an anxious face to tell Caesar that she was more ill than ever.

She was ill indeed; but her worst illness was of the heart. ”If I go to him and tell him,” she thought, ”he will marry me--yes. No fear that he will leave me at the church door or elsewhere. He will stay with me. We will be man and wife to the last. The world will know nothing. But _I_ will know. As long as I live I will remember that he only sacrificed himself to repair a fault That shall never be--never, never!”

Caesar came up in great alarm. He seemed to be living in hourly dread that some obstacle would arise at the last moment to stop the marriage.

”Chut, woman!” he said play-. fully. ”Have a good heart, Kitty. The sun's not going down on you yet at all.”

That night there were loud voices from the bar-room. The talk was of the marriage which had taken place in the morning, and of its strange and painful sequel. John the Clerk was saying, ”But you'd be hearing of the by-child, it's like?”

”Never a word,” said somebody.

”Not heard of it, though? Fetching the child to the wedding to have the bad name taken off it--no? They were standing the lil bogh---it's only three--two is it, Grannie, only two?--well, they were standing the lil thing under its mother's perricut while the sarvice was saying.”

”You don't say!”

”Aw, truth enough, sir! It's the ould Manx way of legitimating. The parsons are knowing nothing of it, but I've seen it times.”

”John's right,” said Mr. Jelly; ”and I can tell you more--it was just _that_ the man went to church for.”

”Wouldn't trust,” said John the Clerk. ”The woman wasn't getting much of a husband out of it anyway.”

”No,” said Pete--he had not spoken before--”but the child was getting the name of its father, though.”

”That's not mountains of thick porridge, sir,” said somebody. ”Bobbie's gone. What's the good of a father if he's doing nothing to bring you up?”

”Ask your son if you've got any of the sort,” said Pete; ”some of you have. Ask me. I know middling well what it is to go through the world without a father's name to my back. If your lad is like myself, he's knowing it early and he's knowing it late. He's knowing it when he's saying his bits of prayers atop of the bed in the gable loft: 'G.o.d bless mother--and grandmother,' maybe--there's never no 'father' in his little texes. And he's knowing it when he's growing up to a lump of a lad and going for a trade, and the beast of life is getting the grip of him. Ten to one he comes to be a waistrel then, and, if it's a girl instead, a hundred to nothing she turns out a--well, worse. Only a notion, is it? Just a parzon's lie, eh? Having your father's name is nothing--no?

That's what the man says. But ask the _child_, and shut your mouth for a fool.”

There was a hush and a hum after that, and Kate, who had reached from the bed to open the door, clutched it with a feverish grasp.

”But Christian Killip is nothing but a trollop, anyway, sir,” said Caesar.

”Every cat is black in the night, father--the girl's in trouble,” said Pete. ”No, no! If I'd done wrong by a woman, and she was having a child by me, I'd marry her if she'd take me, though I'd come to hate her like sin itself.”

Grannie in the kitchen was wiping her eyes at these brave words, but Kate in the bedroom was tossing in a delirium of wrath. ”Never, never, never!” she thought.

Oh, yes, Philip would marry her if she imposed herself upon him, if she hinted at a possible contingency. He, too, was a brave man; he also had a lofty soul--he would not shrink. But no, not for the wealth of worlds.

Philip loved her, and his love alone should bring him to her side. No other compulsion should be put upon him, neither the thought of her possible future position, nor of the consequences to another. It was the only justice, the only safety, the only happiness now or in the time to come.

”He shall marry me for _my_ sake,” she thought, ”for my own sake--my own sake only.”

Thus in the wild disorder of her soul--the tempest of conflicting pa.s.sions--her pride barred up the one great way.

XVII.