Chapter 3

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_ CHAPTER III

Six days passed as with feet of lead, and Capt'n Davy and Mrs. Quiggin were still in Douglas. They could not tear themselves away. Morning and night the good souls were seized by a morbid curiosity about their servants' sweethearts. "Seen Peggy lately?" Capt'n Davy would say. "I suppose you've not come across Willie Quarrie lately?" Mrs. Quiggin would ask. Thus did they squeeze to the driest pulp every opportunity of hearing anything of each other.

Jenny Crow, with Mrs. Quiggin at Castle Mona, had not yet set eyes on Captain Davy, and Lovibond, with Captain Davy at Fort Ann, had never once seen Mrs. Quiggin. Jenny had said nothing of Lovibond to Nelly, and Lovibond had said nothing of Jenny to Davy.

Matters stood so when one evening Peggy Quine was dressing up her mistress's hair for dinner, and answering the usual question.

"Seen Willie Quarrie, ma'am? Aw 'deed, yes, ma'am; and it's shocking the stories he's telling me. The Capt'n's making the money fly. Bowls and beer, and cards and betting--it's ter'ble, ma'm, ter'ble. Somebody should hould him. He's distracted like. Giving to everybody as free as free. Parsons and preachers and the like--they're all at him, same as flies at a sheep with the rot."

"And what do people say, Peggy?"

"They say fools and their money is quickly parted ma'am."

"How dare you call anybody a fool, Peggy?"

"Aw it's not me, ma'am. It's them that's seeing him wasting his money like water through a pitchfork. And the dirts that's catching most is shouting loudest. 'Deed, ma'am, but his conduct is shocking."

"And what do people say is the cause of it, Peggy?"

"Lumps in his porridge, ma'am."

"What?"

"Yes, though, that's what Willie Quarrie is telling me. When a woman isn't just running even with her husband they call her lumps in his porridge. Aw, Willie's a feeling lad."

There was a pause after this disclosure, and then Mrs. Quiggin said in another voice, "Peggy, there's a strange gentleman staying with the Captain at Forte Ann, is there not?"

"Yes, ma'am; Mr. Loviboy."

"What is he like, Peggy?"

"Pepper and salt trowis, ma'am, and a morsel of hair on the tip of his chin."

"Tall, Peggy?"

"No, a long wisp'ry man."

"I suppose he helps the Captain to spend his money?"

"Never a ha'po'th, ma'am, 'deed no; but ter'ble onaisy at it, and rigging him constant But no use at all, at all. The Capt'n's intarmined to ruin hisself. Somebody should just take him and wallop him, ding dong, afore he's wasted all he's got, and hasn't a penny left at him."

"How dare you, Peggy?"

Peggy was dismissed in anger, and Mrs. Quiggin sat down to write a letter to Lovibond. She begged him to pardon the liberty of one who was no stranger, though they had never met, in asking him to come to her without delay. This done, and marked _private_, she called Peggy back and bade her to take the letter to Willie Quarrie, and tell him to give it to the gentleman before the Captain came down to breakfast in the morning.

The day was Sunday, the weather was brilliant, the window was open, and the salt breath of the sea was floating into the room. With the rustle of silk like a breeze in a pine tree Jenny Crow came back from a walk, swinging a parasol by a ring about her wrist.

"Such an adventure!" she said, sinking into a chair. "A man, of course! I saw him first on the Head at the skirts of the crowd that was listening to the Bishop's preaching. Such a manly fellow! Broad-shouldered, big-chested, standing square on his legs like a rock. Dark, of course, and such eyes, Nelly! Brown--no black-brown. I like black-brown eyes in a man, don't you?"

Captain Davy's eyes were of the darkest brown. Mrs. Quiggin gave no sign.

"Then his dress--so simple. None of your cuffs and ruffs, and great high collars like a cart going for coke. Just a blue serge suit, and a monkey jacket. I like a man in a monkey jacket."

Captain Davy wore a monkey jacket; Mrs. Quiggin colored slightly.

"A sailor, thinks I. There's something so free and open about a sailor, isn't there?"

"Do you think so, Jenny?" said Mrs. Quiggin in a faint voice.

"I'm sure of it, Nelly. The sailor is just like the sea. He's noisy--so is the sea. Liable to storms--so is the sea. Blusters and boils, and rocks and reels--so does the sea. But he's sunny too, and open and free, and healthy and bracing, and the sea is all that as well."

Mrs. Quiggin was thinking of Captain Davy, and tingling with pleasure and shame, but she only said, falteringly, "Didn't you talk of some adventure?"

"Oh, of course, certainly," said Jenny. "After he had listened a moment he went on, and I lost sight of him. Presently I went on, too, and walked across the Head until I came within sight of Port Soderick. Then I sat down by a great bowlder. So quiet up there, Nelly; not a sound except the squeal of the sea birds, the boo-oo of the big waves outside, and the plash-ash of the little ones on the beach below. All at once I heard a sigh. At that I looked to the other side of the bowlder, and there was my friend of the monkey jacket. I was going to rise, but he rose instead, and begged me not to trouble. Then I was vexed with myself, and said I hoped he wouldn't disturb himself on my account."

"You never said that, Jenny Crow?"

"Why not, my dear? You wouldn't have had me less courteous than he was. So he stood and talked. You never heard such a voice, Nelly. Deep as a bell, and his Manx tongue was like music. Talk of the Irish brogue! There's no brogue in the world like the Manx, is there now, not if the right man is speaking it."

"So he was a Manxman," said Mrs. Quiggin, with a far-away look through the open window.

"Didn't I say so before? But he has quite saddened me. I'm sure there's trouble hanging over him. 'I've been sailing foreign, ma'am,' said he, 'and I don't know nothing--'."

"Oh, then he wasn't a gentleman?" said Mrs. Quiggin.

Jenny fired up sharply. "Depends on what you call a gentleman, my dear. Now, any man is a gentleman to me who can afford to dispense with the first two syllables of the name."

Mrs. Quiggin looked down at her feet.

"I only meant," she said meekly, "that your friend hasn't as much education--."

"Then, perhaps, he has more brains," said Jenny. "That's the way they're sometimes divided, you know, and education isn't everything."

"Do _you_ think that, Jenny?" said Mrs. Quiggin, with another long look through the window.

"Of course I do," said Jenny.

"And what did he say?"

"' I've been sailing foreign, ma'am,' he said. 'And I don't know nothing that cut's a man's heart from its moorings like coming home same as a homing pigeon, and then wishing yourself back again same as a lost one.'"

"Poor fellow!" said Mrs. Quiggin. "He must have found things changed since he went away."

"He must," said Jenny.

"Perhaps he has lost some one who was dear to him," said Mrs. Quiggin.

"Perhaps," said Jenny, with a sigh.

"His mother may be, or his sister--" began Mrs. Quiggin.

"Yes, or his wife." continued Jenny, with a moan.

Mrs. Quiggin drew up suddenly. "What's his name?" she asked sharply.

"Nay, how could I ask him that?" said Jenny.

"Where does he live?" said Mrs. Quiggin.

"Or that either?" said Jenny.

Mrs. Quiggin's eyes wandered slowly back to the window. "We've all got our troubles, Jenny," she said quietly.

"All," said Jenny. "I wonder if I shall ever see him again."

"Tell me if you do, Jenny?" said Mrs. Quiggin.

"I will, Nelly," said Jenny.

"Poor fellow, poor fellow," said Mrs. Quiggin.

As Jenny rose to remove her bonnet she shot a sly glance out of the corners of her eyes, and saw that Mrs. Quiggin was furtively wiping her own.

Meanwhile Lovibond at Fort Ann was telling a similar story to Captain Davy. He had left the house for a walk before Davy had come down to breakfast, and on returning at noon he found him immersed in the usual occupation of his mornings. This was that of reading and replying to his correspondence. Davy read with difficulty, and replied to all letters by check. His method of business was peculiar and original. He was stretched on the sofa with a pipe in his mouth, and the morning's letters pigeonholed between his legs. Willie Quarrie sat at a table with a check-book before him. While Davy read the letters one by one he instructed Willie as to the nature of the answer, and Willie, with his head aslant, his mouth awry, and his tongue in his cheek, turned it into figures on the check-book.

As Lovibond came in Davy was knocking off the last batch for the day. "'Respected sir,' he was reading, 'I know you've a tender heart'... Send her five pounds, Willie, and tell her to take that talk to the butchers."

"'Honored Captain, we are going to erect a new school in connection with Ballajora chapel, and if you will honor us by laying the foundation stone....' Never laid a stone in my life 'cept one, and that was my mawther's sink-stone. Twenty pounds, Willie. 'Sir, we are to hold a bazaar, and if you will consent to open it....' Bazaar! I know: a sort of ould clothes shop in a chapel where you're never tooken up for cheating, because you always says your paternoster-ings afore you begin. Ten pounds, Willie. Helloa, here's Parson Quiggin. Wish the ould devil would write more simpler; I was never no good at the big spells myself. 'Dear David....' That's good--he walloped me out of the school once for mimicking his walk--same as a coakatoo esactly. 'Dear David, owing to the lamentable death of brother Mylechreest it has been resolved to ask you to become a member of our committee....' Com-mittee! I know the sort--kind of religious firm where there's three partners, only two of them's sleeping ones. Dirty ould hypocrite! Fifteen pounds, Willie."

This was the scene that Lovibond interrupted by his entrance. "Still bent on spending your money, Captain?" he said. "Don't you see that the people who write you these begging letters are impostors?"

"Coorse I do," said Davy. "What's it saying in the Ould Book? 'Where the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together.' Only, as Parson Howard used to say, bless the ould angel, 'Summat's gone screw with the translation theer, friends, should have been vultures."

"Half of them will only drink your money, Captain," said Lovibond.

"And what for shouldn't they? That's what I'm doing," said Davy.

"It's poor work, Captain, poor work. You didn't always think: money was a thing to pitch into a ditch."

"Always? My goodness, no!" said Davy. "Time was once when I thought money was just all and Tommy in this world. My gough, yes, when I was a slip of a lad, didn't I?" said he, sobering very suddenly. "The father was lost in a gale at the herrings, and the mawther had to fend for the lot of us. They all went off except myself--the sisters and brothers. Poor things, they wasn't willing to stay with us, and no wonder. But there's mostly an ould person about every Manx house that sees the young ones out, and the mawther's father was at us still. Lame though of his legs with the rheumatics, and wake in his intellecs for all. Couldn't do nothing but lie in by the fire with his bit of a blanket hanging over his head, same as snow atop of a hawthorn bush. Just stirring the peats, and boiling the kettle, and lifting the gorse when there was any fire. The mawther weeded for Jarvis Kewley--sixpence a day dry days, and fourpence all weathers. Middling hard do's, mate. And when she'd give the ould man his basin of broth he'd be saying, squeaky-like, 'Give it to the boy, woman; he's a growing lad?' 'Chut! take it, man,' the mawther would say, and then he'd be whimpering, 'I'm keeping you long, Liza, I'm keeping you long.' And there was herself making a noise with her spoon in the bottom of a basin, and there was me grinding my teeth, and swearing to myself like mad, 'As sure as the living God I'll be ruch some day.' And now--"

Davy snapped his fingers, laughed boisterously, rolled to his feet, and said shortly, "Where've you been to?"

"To church--the church with a spire at the end of the parade," said Lovibond.

"St. Thomas's--I know it," said Davy.

St. Thomas's was half way up to Castle Mona.

The men strolled out at the window, which opened on to the warm, soft turf of the Head, and lay down there with their faces to the sun-lit bay.

"Who preached?" said Davy, clasping hands at the back of his head.

"A young woman," said Lovibond.

Davy lifted his head out of its socket, "My goodness!" he said.

"Well, at all events," explained Lovi-bond, "it was a girl who preached to _me_. The moment I went into the church I saw her, and I saw nothing else until I came out again."

Davy laughed, "Ay, that's the way a girl slips in," said he. "Who was she?"

"Nay; I don't know," said Lovibond; "but she sat over against me on the opposite side of the aisle, and her face was the only prayer-book I could keep my eyes from wandering from."

"And what was her tex', mate?"

"Beauty, grace, truth, the tenderness of a true heart, the sweetness of a soul that is fresh and pure."

Davy looked up with vast solemnity. "Take care," said he. "There's odds of women, sir. They're like sheep's broth is women. If there's a heart and head in them they're good, and if there isn't you might as well be supping hot water. Faces isn't the chronometer to steer your boat to the good ones. Now I've seen some you could swear to----."

"I'll swear to this one," said Lovibond with an appearance of tremendous earnestness.

Davy looked at him, gravely. "D'ye say so?" said he.

"Such eyes, Capt'n--big and full, and blue, and then pale, pale blue, in the whites of them too, like--like----."

"I know," said Davy; "like a blackbird's eggs with the young birds just breaking out of them."

"Just," said Lovibond, "And then her hair, Capt'n--brown, that brown with a golden bloom, as if it must have been yellow when she was a child."

"I know the sort, sir," said Davy, proudly; "like the ling on the mountains in May, with the gorse creeping under it."

"Exactly. And then her voice, Cap tain, her voice--."

"So you were speaking to her?" said Davy.

"No, but didn't she sing?" said Lovi-bond. "Such tones, soft and tremulous, rising and falling, the same as--as--."

"Same as the lark's, mate," said Davy, eagerly; "same as the lark's--first a burst and a mount and then a trimble and a tumble, as if she'd got a drink of water out of the clouds of heaven, and was singing and swallowing together--I know the sort; go on."

Lovibond had kept pace with Davy's warmth, but now he paused and said quietly, "I'm afraid she's in trouble."

"Poor thing!" said Davy. "How's that, mate?"

"People can never disguise their feelings in singing a hymn," said Lovibond.

"You say true, mate," said Davy; "nor in giving one out neither. Now, there was old Kinvig. He had a sow once that wasn't too reg'lar in her pigging. Sometimes she gave many, and sometimes she gave few, and sometimes she gave none. She was a hit-and-a-missy sort of a sow, you might say. But you always know'd how the ould sow done, by the way Kinvig gave out the hymn. If it was six he was as loud as a clarnet, and if it was one his voice was like the tram-bones. But go on about the girl."

"That's all," said Lovibond. "When the service was over I walked down the aisle behind her, and touched her dress with my hand, and somehow--"

"I know," cried Davy. "Gave you a kind of 'lectricity shock, didn't it? Lord alive, mate, girls is quare things."

"Then she walked off the other way," said Lovibond.

"So you don't know where she comes from?" said Davy.

"I couldn't bring myself to follow her, Capt'n."

"And right too, mate. It's sneaking. Following a girl in the streets is sneaking, and the man that done it ought to be wallopped till all's blue. But you'll see her again, I'll go bail, and maybe hear who she is. Rael true women is skess these days, sir; but I'm thinking you've got your flotes down for a good one. Give her line, mate--give her line--and if I wasn't such a downhearted chap myself I'd be helping you to land her."

Lovibond observed that Capt'n Davy was more than usually restless after this conversation, and in the course of the afternoon, while he lay in a hazy dose on the sofa, he overheard this passage between the captain and his boy:--

"Willie Quarrie, didn't you say there was an English lady staying with Mistress Quiggin at Castle Mona?"

"Miss Crows; yes," said Willie. "So Peggy Quine is telling me--a little person with a spyglass, and that fond of the mistress you wouldn't think."

"Then just slip across in the morning, and spake to herself, and say can I see her somewheres, or will she come here, and never say nothing to nobody."

Davy's uneasiness continued far into the evening. He walked alone to and fro on the turf of the Head in front of the house, until the sun set behind the hills to the west, where a golden rim from its falling light died off on the farthest line of the sea to the east, and the town between lay in a haze of deepening purple. Lovibond knew where his thoughts were, and what new turn they had taken; but he pretended to see nothing, and he gave no sign.

Sunday as it was, Capt'n Davy's cronies came as usual at nightfall. They were a sorry gang, but Davy welcomed them with noisy cheer. The lights were brought in, and the company sat down to its accustomed amusements. These were drinking and smoking, with gambling in disguise at intervals. Davy lost tremendously, and laughed with a sort of wild joy at every failure. He was cheated on all hands, and he knew it. Now and again he called the cheaters by hard name, but he always paid them their money. They forgave the one for the sake of the other, and went on without shame. Lovibond's gorge rose at the spectacle. He was an old gambler himself, and could have stripped every rascal of them all as naked as a lettuce after a locust. His indignation got the better of him at last, and he went out on to the Head.

The calm sea lay like a dark pavement dotted with the reflection of the stars overhead. Lights in a wide half-circle showed the line of the bay. Below was the black rock of the island of the Tower of Refuge, and the narrow strip of the old Red pier; beyond was the dark outline of the Head, and from the seaward breast of it shot the light of the lighthouse, like the glow of a kiln. It was as quiet and beautiful out there as it had been noisy and hideous within.

Lovibond had been walking to and fro for more than an hour listening to the slumberous voices of the night, and hearing at intervals the louder bellowing from the room where Captain Davy and his cronies were sitting, when Davy himself came out.

"I can't stand no more of it, and I've sent them home," he said. "It's like saying your prayers to a hornpipe, thinking of her and carrying on with them wastrels."

He was sober in one sense only.

"Tell me more about the little girl in church. Aw, matey, matey! Something under my waistcoat went creep, creep, creep, same as a sarpent, when you first spake of her; but its easier to stand till that jaw inside anyway. Go on, sir. Love at first sight, was it? Aw, well, the eyes isn't the only place that love is coming in at, or blind men would all be bachelors. Now mine came in at the ear."

"Did you fall in love with her singing, Capt'n?" said Lovibond.

"Yes, did I," said Davy, "and her spaking, too, and her whispering as well, but it wasn't music that brought love in at my ear--my left ear it was, Matey."

"Whatever was it then, Capt'n," said Lovibond.

"Milk," said Davy.

"Milk?" cried Lovibond, drawing up in their walk.

"Just milk," said Davy again. "Come along and I tell you. It was this way. Ould Kinvig kep' two cows, and we were calling the one Whitie and the other Brownie. Nelly and me was milking the pair of them, and she was like a young goat, that full of tricks, and I was same as a big calf, that shy. One evening--it was just between the lights--that's when girls is like kittens, terr'ble full of capers and mischievousness--Nelly rigged up her kopie--that's her milking-stool--agen mine, so that we sat back to back, her milking Brownie and me milking Whitie. 'What she agate of now?' thinks I, but she was looking as innocent as the bas'es themselves, with their ould solem faces when they were twisting round. Then we started, and there wasn't no noise in the cow-house, but just the cows chewing constant, and, maybe, the rope running on their necks at whiles and the rattle of the milk in the pails. And I got to draeming same as I was used of, with the smell of the hay stealing down from the loft and the breath of the cows coming puff when they were blowing, and the tits in my hands agoing, when the rattle-rattle aback of me stopped sudden, and I felt a squish in my ear like the syringe at the doctor's. 'What's that?' thinks I. 'Is it deaf I'm going?' But it's deaf I'd been and blind, too, and stupid for all down to that blessed minute, for there was Nessy laughing like fits, and working like mad, and drops of Brownie's milk going trickling out of my ear on to my shoulder. 'It's not deafness,' thinks I; 'it's love'; and my breath was coming and going and making noises like the smithy bellows. So I twisted my wrist and blazed back at her, and we both fired away, ding-dong, till the cows was as dry as Kinvig when he was teetotal, and the cow-house was like a snowstorm with a gale of wind through it, and you couldn't see a face at the one of us for swansdown. That's how Nelly and me 'came engage."

He was laughing noisily by this time, and crying alternately, with a merry shout and a husky croak, "Aw, dear, aw, dear; the days that was, sir--the days that was!"

Lovibond let him rattle on, and he talked of Nelly for an hour. He had stories without end of her, some of them as simple as a baby's prattle, some as deep as the heart of man, and splitting open the very crust of the fires of buried passion.

It was late when they turned in for the night. The lights on the line of the land were all put out, and save for the reflection of the stars only the lamps of ships at anchor lit up the waters of the bay.

"Good night, capt'n," said Lovi-bond. "I suppose you'll go to bed now?"

"Maybe so, maybe no," said Davy. "You see, I'm like Kinvig these days, and go to bed to do my thinking. The ould man's cart-wheel came off in the road once, and we couldn't rig it on again no how. 'Hould hard, boys,' says Kinvig; and he went away home and up to the loft, and whipped off his clothes, and into the blankets and stayed there till he'd got the lay of that cartwheel. Aw, yes, though--thinking, thinking, thinking constant--that's me when I'm in bed. But it isn't the lying awake I'm minding. Och, no; it's the wakening up again. That's like nothing in the world but a rusty nail going driving into your skull afore a blacksmith's seven-pound sledge. Good night, mate; good night." _

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