Part 4. Man And Wife - Chapter 11

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_ PART IV. MAN AND WIFE
CHAPTER XI

Philip turned pale. "What is it?" he asked.

She tried to speak, but at first she could not.

"Are you unhappy, Kate?" he faltered.

"Can't you see?" she answered.

He sat down by the fire, and leaned his face on his hands. "Yes, we have both suffered," he said, in a low tone.

"Why did you let me marry him?"

Philip raised his head. "How could I have hindered you?"

"How? Do you ask me how?" She spoke with some bitterness, but he answered quietly.

"I tried, Kate, but I could do nothing. You seemed determined. Do what I would to prevent, to delay, to stop your marriage altogether, the more you hastened and hurried it. Then I thought to myself, Well, perhaps it is best. She is trying to forget and forgive, and begin again. What right have I to stand in her way? Haven't I wronged her enough already? A good man offers her his love, and she is taking it. Let her do so, if she can, God help her! I may suffer, but I am nothing to her now. Let me go my way."

She put her arms on the table, and hid her face in them. "Oh, I cannot bear it," she said.

He rose to his feet slowly. "If it is my presence here that hurts you, Kate, I will go away. It has been but a painful pleasure to come, and I have been forced to take it. You will acquit me of coming of my own choice, Kate. But I will not torment you. I will go away, and never come again."

She lifted her face, and said in a passionate whisper, "Take me with you."

He shook his head. "That's impossible, Kate. You are married now. Your husband loves you dearly. He is a better man than I am, a thousand, thousand times."

"Do you think I don't know what he is?" she cried, throwing herself back. "That's why I can't live with him. It's killing me. I tell you I can't bear it," she cried, rising to her feet. "Love me! Haven't I tried to make myself love _him_. Haven't I tried to be a good wife! I can't--I can't. He never speaks but he torments me. Nothing can happen but it cuts me through and through. I can't live in this house. The walls are crushing me, the ceiling is falling on me, the air is stifling me. I tell you I shall die if you do not take me out of it. Take me, Philip, take me, take me!"

She caught him by the arm imploringly, but he only dropped his head down between both hands, saying in a deep thick voice, "Hush, Kate, hush! I cannot and I will not. You are mad to think of it."

Then she sank down into the chair again, breathless and inert, and sobbing deep, low sobs. The sound of dancing came from the hall, with cries of "Hooch!" and the voice of Pete shouting--

"Hit the floor with heel and toe
'Till heaven help the boords below."

"Yes, I am mad, or soon will be," she said in a hard way. "I thought of that this morning when I crossed the river coming home from church. It would soon be over _there_, I thought. No more trouble, no more dreams, no more waking in the night to hear the breathing of the one beside me, and the voice out of the darkness crying----"

"Kate, what are you saying?" interrupted Philip.

"Oh, you needn't think I'm a bad woman because I ask you take me away from my husband. If I were that, I could brazen it out perhaps, and live on here, and pretend to forget; many a woman does, they say. And I'm not afraid that he will ever find me out either. I have only to close my lips, and he will never know. But _I_ shall know, Philip Christian," she said, with a defiant look into his eyes as he raised them.

Her reproaches hurt him less than her piteous entreaties, and in a moment she was sobbing again. "Oh, what can God do but let me die! I thought He would when the child came; but He did not, and then--am I a wicked woman, after all?--I prayed that He would take my innocent baby, anyway."

But she dashed the tears away in anger at her weakness, and said, "I'm not a bad woman, Philip Christian; and that's why I won't live here any longer. There is something you have never guessed, and I have never told you; but I must tell you now, for I can keep my secret no longer."

He raised his head with a noise in his ears that was like the flapping of wings in the dark.

"Your secret, Kate?"

"How happy I was," she said. "Perhaps I was to blame--I loved you so, and was so fearful of losing you. Perhaps you thought of all that had passed between us as something that would go back and back as time went on and on. But it has been coming the other way ever since. Yes, and as long as I live and as long as the child lives----"

Her voice quivered like the string of a bow and stopped. He rose to his feet.

"The child, Kate? Did you say the child?"

She did not answer at once, and then she muttered, with her head down, "Didn't I tell you there was something you had never guessed?"

"And is it that?" he said in a fearful whisper.

"Yes."

"You are sure? You are not deceiving yourself? This is not hysteria?"

"No."

"You mean that the child----"

"Yes."

His questions had come in gasps, like short breakers out of a rising sea; her answers had fallen like the minute-gun above it. Then, in the silence, Pete's voice came through the wall. He was singing a rough old ditty--

"It was to Covent Gardens I chanced for to go,
To see some of the prettiest flowers which in the gardens grow."

Nancy came in with a scuttle of coals. "The lil one's asleep," she said, going down on her knees at the fire. She had left the door ajar, and Pete's song was rolling into the room--

"The first was lovely Nancy, so delicate and fair,
The other was a vargin, and she did laurels wear."

"Grannie bathed her, and she's like a lil angel in the cot there," said Nancy. "And, 'Dear heart alive, Grannie,' says I,' the straight she's like her father when she's sleeping.'"

Nancy brushed the hearth and went off. As she closed the door, Pete's voice ebbed out.

Philip's lips trembled, his eyes wandered over the floor, he grew very pale, he tried to speak and could not. All his self-pride was overthrown in a moment The honour in which he had tried to stand erect as in a suit of armour was stripped away. Unwittingly he had been laying up an account with Nature. He had forgotten that a sin has consequences. Nature did not forget. She had kept her own reckoning. He had struggled to believe that after all he was a moral man, a free man; but Nature was a sterner moralist; she had chained him to the past, she had held him to himself.

He was still by the fire with his head down. "Did you know this before you were married to Pete?" he asked, without looking up.

"Hadn't I wronged him enough without that?" she answered.

"But did you think of it as something that might perhaps occur?"

"And if I did, what then?"

"If you had told me, Kate, nothing and nobody should have come between us--no," he said in a decisive voice, "not Pete nor all the world."

"And wasn't it your own duty to remember? Was it for me to come to you and say, 'Philip, something may happen, I am frightened.'"

Was this the compulsion that had driven her into marriage with the wrong man? Was it all hysteria? Could she be sure? In any case she could not think this awful thought and continue to live with her husband.

"You are right," he said, with his head still down. "You cannot live here any longer. This life of deception must end."

"Then you will take me away, Philip?"

"I must, God forgive me, I must. I thought it would be sin. But _that_ was long ago. It will be punishment. If I had known before--and I have been coming here time and again--looking on his happiness--but if I had once dreamt--and then only an hour ago--the oath at its baptism--O God!"

Her tears were flowing again, but a sort of serenity had fallen on her now.

"Forgive me," she whispered. "I tried to keep it to myself------"

"You could not keep it; you ought never to have kept it so long; the finger of God Himself ought to have burnt it out of you."

He spoke harshly, and she felt pain; but there was a secret joy as well.

"I am ruining you, Philip," she said, leaning over him.

"We are both drifting to ruin, Katherine," he answered hoarsely. He was an abandoned hulk, with anchorage gone and no hand at the helm--broken, blind, rolling to destruction.

"I can offer you nothing, Kate, nothing but a hidden life, a life in the dark. If you come to me you will leave a husband who worships you for one to whom your life can never be joined. You will exchange a life of respect by the side of a good man for a life of humiliation, a life of shame. How can it be otherwise now? It is too late, too late!"

"Don't think of that, Philip. If you love me there can be no humiliation and no shame for me in anything. I love you, dear, I cannot help but love you. Only love me a little, Philip, just a little, dearest, and I will never care--no, I will never, never care whatever happens."

Her passionate devotion swept down all his scruples. His throat thickened, his eyes grew dim. She put one arm tenderly on his shoulder.

"I will follow you wherever you must go," she said. "You are my real husband, Philip, and always have been. We will love one another, and that will make up for everything. There is nothing I will not do to make you forget. If you must go away--far away--no matter where--I will go with you--and the child as well--and if we must be poor, I'll work with you."

But he did not seem to hear her as he crouched with buried face by the fire. And, in the silence, Pete's muffled voice came again through the wall, singing his rugged ditty--

"I'm not engaged to any young man, I solemnly do swear,
For I mane to be a vargin and still the laurels wear."

Unconsciously their hands touched and their fingers intertwined.

"It will break his heart," he muttered.

She only grasped his hand the closer, and crouched beside him. They were like two guilty souls at the altar steps, listening to the cheerful bell that swings in the tower for the happy world outside.

The door opened with a bang, and Pete rolled in, heaving with laughter.

"Did you think it was an earth wake, Philip?" he shouted, "or a blackbird a bit tipsy, eh? Bless me, man, it's good of you, though, sitting up in the chimney there same as a good ould jackdaw, keeping the poor wife company when her selfish ould husband is flirting his tail like a stonechat. The company's going now, Kitty. Will they say good-night to you? No? Have it as you like, bogh. You're looking tired, anyway. Dempster, the boys are asking when the ceremony is coming off, and will you come home to Ramsey that night? But, sakes alive, man, your eye is splashed with blood as bad as the egg of a robin."

In his suffering and degradation, Philip felt as if he wished the earth to open and swallow him.

"Bloodshot, is it?" he said. "It's nothing. The ceremony? I'm to take the oath to-morrow at three o'clock at the Special Council in Douglas. Yes, I'll come back to Ballure for the night?"

"Driving, eh?"

"Yes."

"Six o'clock, maybe?"

"Perhaps seven to eight."

"That's all right. Mortal inquisitive the boys are, though. It's in the breed of these Manx ones, you know. Laxey way, now?"

"I'll drive by St. John's," said Philip.

With a look of wondrous wisdom, and a knowing wink at Kate across Philip's back, Pete went out. Then there was much talking in low tones in the hall, and on the paths outside the house.

Philip understood what it meant. He glanced back at the door, leaned over to Kate, and said in a whisper, without looking into her eyes--

"The carriage shall come at half-past seven. It will stand for a moment in the Parsonage Lane, and then drive back to Douglas by way of Laxey."

His face was broken and ugly with shame and humiliation. As she saw this she thought of her confession, and it seemed odious to her now; but there was an immense relief in the feeling that the crisis was over.

Pete was shouting at the porch, "Good-night, all! Goodnight!"

"Good-night!" came back in many voices.

Grannie came in muffled up to the throat. "However am I to get back to Sulby, and your father gone these two hours?" she said.

"Not him," said Pete, coming behind with one eye screwed up and a finger to his nose. "The ould man's been on the back-stairs all night, listening and watching wonderful. His bark's tremenjous, but his bite isn't worth mentioning."

And then a plaintive voice came from the hall, saying, "Are you _never_ coming home, mother? I'm worn out waiting for you."

A little patch of youth had blossomed in Grannie since the baby came.

"Good-night, Pete," she cried from the gate, "and many happy returns of the christening-day."

"One was enough for yourself, mother," said Caesar, and then his voice went rumbling down the street.

Philip had come out into the hall. "You're time enough yet," said Pete. "A glass first? No? I've sent over to the 'Mitre' for your mare. There she is; that's her foot on the path. I must be seeing you off, anyway. Where's that lantern, at all?"

They stepped out. Pete held the light while Philip mounted, and then he guided him, under the deep shadow of the old tree, to the road.

"Fine night for a ride, Phil. Listen! That's the churning of the nightjar going up to Ballure glen. Well, good-night! Good-night, and God bless you, old fellow!"

Kate inside heard the deadened sound of Philip's "Goodnight," the crunch of the mare's hoofs on the gravel and the clink of the bit in her teeth. Then the porch door closed with a hollow vibration like that of a vault, the chain rattled across it, and Pete was back in the room.

"_What_ a night we've had of it! And now to bed." _

Read next: Part 4. Man And Wife: Chapter 12

Read previous: Part 4. Man And Wife: Chapter 10

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