Part 100 (1/2)

”Lave me, sir, lave me.”

Philip turned away, breathing audibly. A moment longer Pete stood where he was, gripping his hat with both hands in front of him. Then he went down on his knees. ”Oh, forgive me my hard thoughts of thee,” he said.

”Jesus, forgive me my hard thoughts of my poor Kirry.”

Philip heard no more. The organ was very loud and triumphant.

”Deep in unfathomable mines Of never-failing skill, He treasures up His bright designs And works His sovereign will.”

A red shaft of sunlight tipped down on Pete's uncovered head from the top of the wall. The blessed tears had come to him. He was sobbing aloud; he was alone with his love at last.

He was alone with her indeed. At that moment Kate was looking down from the window of her room. She saw him kneeling and praying by another's grave.

Philip never knew how he got out of the churchyard. He crawled out--creeping along by the wall, and slinking through the gate--heart-sick and all but heart-dead. When he came to himself, he was standing in Athol Street, and a company of jolly fellows in a jaunting-car, driving out of the golden sunset, were rattling past him with shouts and peals of laughter.

XXIII.

Kate was standing in her room with the door open, beating her hands together in the first helpless stupor of fear, when she saw a man coming up the stairs. His legs seemed to be giving way as he ascended; he was bent and feeble, and had all the look of great age. As he approached he lifted his face, which was old and withered. Then she saw who it was. It was Philip.

She made an involuntary cry, and he smiled upon her--a hard, frozen, terrible smile. ”He is lost,” she thought. Her scared expression penetrated to his soul. He knew that she had seen everything. At first he tried to speak, but he could utter nothing. Then a mad desire seized him to lay hold of her--by the arms, by the shoulders, by the throat.

Conquering this impulse, he stood motionless, pa.s.sing his hands through his hair. She dropped her eyes and hung her head. Their abas.e.m.e.nt in each other's eyes was complete. He was ashamed before her, she was ashamed before him. One moment they faced each other thus, in silence, in pitiless and awful silence, and then slowly, very slowly, stupefied and crushed, he turned away and crept out of the house.

”It is the end--the end.” What was the use of going farther? He had fallen too low. His degradation was abject. It was hopeless, irreparable, irremediable. ”End it all--end it all.” The words clamoured in his inmost soul.

Halting down the quay, he made for the ferry steps, where boats were waiting for hire. He had lately hired one of an evening, and pulled round the Head for the sake of the breath and the silence of the sea.

”Going far out this evening, your Honor?” the boatman asked.

”Farther than ever,” he answered.

Pull, pull! Away from the terrible past. Away from the horrible present.

The steamer had arrived, and had discharged her pa.s.sengers. She was still pulsing at the end of the red pier like a horse that pants after running a race.

A band was playing a waltz somewhere on the promenade. Pleasure boats were darting about the bay. Sea-birds were sitting on the water where the sewers of the gay little town empty into the sea.

Pull, pull! He was flying from remorse, from despair, from the deep duplicity of a double life, from the lie that had slain the heart of a living man. How low he had fallen! Could he fall lower without falling into crime?

Pull, pull! He would be a criminal next. When a man had been degraded in his own eyes, and in the eyes of her he loved, crime stood beckoning him. He might try, but he could not resist; he must yield, he must fall.

It was the only degradation remaining. Better end everything before dropping into that last abyss.

Pull, pull! He was the judge of his island, and he had outraged justice.

Holding a false t.i.tle, living on a false honour, he was safe of no man's respect, secure of no woman's goodwill. Exposure hung over him. He would be disgraced, the law would be disgraced, the island would be disgraced.

Pull, pull, pull, before it is too late; out, far out, farther than tide returns, or sea tells stories to the sh.o.r.e.

He had rowed like a slave escaping from his chains, in terror of being overtaken and dragged back. The voices of the harbour were now hushed, the music of the band was deadened, the horses running along the promenade seemed to creep like ants, and the traffic of the streets was no louder than a dull subterranean rumble. He had shot out of the margin of smooth blue water in which the island lay as on a mirror, and out of the shadow of the hill upon the bay. The sea about him now was running green and glistening, and the red sun-? light was coming down on it like smoke. Only the steeples and towers and gla.s.s domes of the town reached up into luminous air. He could see the squat tower of St. George's silhouetted against the dying glory of the sky. Seven years he had been its neighbour, and it had witnessed such happy and such cruel hours. All the joy of work, the sweetness of success, the dreams of greatness, the rosy flushes of love, and then--the tortures of conscience, the visions, the horror, the secret shame, the self-abandonment, and, last of all, the twofold existence as of husband with wife, hidden, incomplete, unfulfilled, yet full of tender ties which had seemed like galling bonds so many a time, but were now so sweet when the hour had come to break them.

How distant it all appeared to be! And was he flying from the island like this? The island that had honoured him, that had rewarded him beyond his deserts, and earlier than his dreams, that had suffered no jealousy to impede him, no rivalry to fret him, no disparity of age and service to hold him back--the little island that had seemed to open its arms to him, and to cry, ”Philip Christian, son of your father, grandson of your grandfather, first of Manxmen, come up!”