Part 99 (1/2)
The driver alighted. A crowd gathered around. There were parcels to take up, parcels to set down, and the horses to water. When the coach was ready to start again, the farmer with his dogs had gone, but there was a pa.s.senger for an inside place. It was a girl, a bright young thing, with a comely face and laughing black eyes. She was dressed smartly, after her country fas.h.i.+on, in a hat covered with scarlet poppies, and with a vast brooch at the neck of her bodice. In one hand she carried a huge bunch of sweet-smelling gilvers. A group of girl companions came to see her off, and there was much giggling and chatter and general excitement.
”Are you forgetting the pouch and pipe, Emma?”
”Let me see; am I? No; it's here in my frock.”
”Well, you'll be coming together by the coach at nine, it's like?”
”It's like we will, Liza, if the steamer isn't late.”
”Now then, ladies, off the step! Any room for a lil calf' in the straw with you, missy? Freckened? Tut! Only a lil calf, as clane as clane--and breath as swate as your own, miss. There you are--it'll be lying quiet enough till we get to Douglas. All ready? Ready we are then. Collar work now, gentlemen. Aise the horse, sir. Thank you! Thank you! Not you, your Honour--sit where you are, Dempster.”
XXII.
Pete got down to walk up the hill, but Philip, though he made some show of alighting also, was glad of the excuse to remain in his seat. It relieved him of Pete's company for a while, at all events. He had time to ask himself again why he was there, where he was going to, and what he was going to do. But his brain was a cloudy waste. Only one picture emerged from the maze. It was that of the burial of the nameless waif in the grave at the foot of the wall. If he was conscious of any purpose, it was a vague idea of going to that grave. But it lay ahead of him only as an ultimate goal. He was waiting and watching for an opportunity of escape. If it came, G.o.d be praised! If it did not come, G.o.d help and forgive him!
Meanwhile Pete walked behind, and caught fragments of a conversation between the girl and Crow.
”So you're going to meet himself coming home, miss, eh?”
”My faith, how d'ye know that? But it's yourself for knowing things, Mr.
Crow. Has he been sailing foreign? Yes, sir; and nine months away for a week come Monday. But spoken at Holyhead in Tuesday's paper, and paid off in Liverpool yesterday. That's his 'nitials, if you want to know--J.
W. I worked them on the pouch myself. I've spun him a web for a jacket, too. Sweethearting with the miner fellows while Jemmy's been away? Have I, d'ye say? How people _will_ be talking!”
”Aw, no offence at all. But sorry you're not keeping another string to your bow, missy. These sailor lads aren't partic'lar, anyway. Bless your heart, no; but getting as tired of one swateheart as a pig of brewer's grain. Constant? Chut! When the like of that sort is away foreign, he lays up of the first girl he comes foul of.”
The girl laughed, and shook her head bravely, but the tears were beginning to trickle from her eyes, and the hand that held the flowers was trembling.
”Don't listen to the man, my dear,” said Pete. ”There's too much comic in these ould bachelor bucks. Your boy is dying to get home to you. Go bail on that, Emma. The packet isn't making half way enough for him, and he's bad dreadful wanting to s.h.i.+p aloft and let out the topsail.”
At the crest of the hill Pete climbed back to Philip's side, and said, ”The heart's a quare thing, sir. Got its winds and tides same as anything else. The wind blows contrary ways in one day, and it's the same with the heart itself. Changeable? Well, maybe! We shouldn't be too hard on it for all.... If I'd only known now.... She wasn't much better than a child when I left for Kimberley... and then what was I? I was only common stuff anyway... not much fit for the likes of herself, when you think of it, sir.... If I'd only guessed when I came back.... I could have done it, sir--I was loving the woman like life, but if I'd only known, now.... Well, and what's love if it's thinking of nothing but itself? If I'd thought she was loving another man by the time I came home, I could have given her up to him--yes, I could; I'm persuaded I could---so help me G.o.d, I could.”
Philip was wasting on that journey like a piece of wax. Pete saw his face melting away till it looked more like a skeleton than the face of a man really alive.
”You mustn't be taking it so bad at all, Phil,” said Pete. ”She'll be middling right where she's gone to, sir. She'll be right enough yonder,”
he said, rolling his head sideways to where the sun was going round to its setting. And then softly, as if half afraid she might not be, he muttered into his beard, ”G.o.d be good to my poor broken-hearted girl, and forgive her sins for Christ's sake.”
An elderly gentleman got on the coach at Onchan.
”h.e.l.loa, Deemster!” he cried. ”You look as sober as an old crow. Sober!
Old Crow! Ha, ha!”
He was a facetious person of high descent in the island.
”Crow never goes home without getting off the box once or twice to pick up the moonlight on the road--do you, Crow?”
”That'll do, parson, that'll do!” roared Crow. And then his reverence leaned across the driver and directed the shaft of his wit at Philip.