"First one's praying, and then another's praying," said Nancy.

"Lord-a-ma.s.sy, thinks I, it'll be my turn next, and what'll I say?"

"Where's Mr. Christian?"

"Gone into the parlour. I whispered him you wanted him alone."

"You never said that, Nancy," said Kate, at Nancy's reflection in the gla.s.s.

"Well, it popped out," said Nancy.

Kate went down, with a look of softened sorrow, and Philip, without lifting his eyes, began bemoaning Pete. They would never know his like--so simple, so true, so brave; never, never.

He was fighting against his shame at first seeing the girl after that kiss, which seemed to him now like treason at the mouth of a grave.

But, with the magic of a woman's art, Kate consoled him. He had one great comfort--he had been a loyal friend; such fidelity, such constancy, such affection, forgetting the difference of place, of education--everything.

Philip looked up at last, and there was the lovely face with its beaming eyes. He turned to go, and she said, softly, "How we shall miss you!"

"Why so?" said Philip.

"We can't expect to see you so often now--now that you've not the same reason for coming."

"I'll be here on Sunday," said Philip.

"Then you don't intend to desert us yet--not just yet, Philip?"

"Never!" said Philip.

"Well, good-night! Not that way--not by the porch. Good-night!"

As Philip went down the road in the darkness, he heard the words of the hymn that was being sung inside:

"Thy glory why didst Thou enshrine In such a clod of earth as mine, And wrap Thee in my clay."

XII.

At that moment day was breaking over the plains of the Transvaal. The bare Veldt was opening out as the darkness receded, depth on depth, like the surface of an unbroken sea. Not a bush, not a path, only a few log-houses at long distances and wooden beacons like gibbets to define the Boer farms. No sound in the transparent air, no cloud in the unveiling sky; just the night creeping off in silence as if in fear of awakening the sleeping morning.

Across the soulless immensity a covered waggon toiled along with four horses rattling their link chains, and a lad sideways on the shaft dangling his legs, twiddling the rope reins and whistling. Inside the waggon, under a little window with its bit of muslin curtain, a man lay in the agony of a bullet-wound in his side, and an old Boer and a woman stood beside him. He was lying hard on the place of his pain and rambling in delirium.

"See, boys? Don't you see them?"

"See what, my lad?" said the Boer simply, and he looked through the waggon window.

"There's the head-gear of the mines. Look! the iron roofs are glittering. And yonder's the mine tailings. We'll be back in a jiffy. A taste of the whip, boys, and away!"

Untouched by visions, the old Boer could see nothing.

"What does he see, wife, think you?"

"What can he see, stupid, with his face in the pillow like that?"

With the rushing of blood in his ears the sick man called out again:

"Listen! Don't you hear it? That's the noise of the batteries. Whip up, and away! Away!" and he tore at the fringe of the blanket covering him with his unconscious fingers.

"Poor boy! he's eager to get to the coast But will he live to cover another morgen, think you?"

"G.o.d knows, Jan--G.o.d only knows."

And the Veldt was very wide, and the sea and its ships were far away, and over the weary stretch of gra.s.s, and rock, and sand, there was nothing on the horizon between desolate land and dominating sky but a waste looking like a chaos of purple and green, where no bird ever sang and no man ever lived, and G.o.d Himself was not.

XIII.

"She loves me! She loves me! She loves me!" The words sang in Philip's ears like a sweet tune half the way back to Ballure. Then he began to pluck at the brambles by the wayside, to wound his hand by s.n.a.t.c.hing at the gorse, and to despise himself for being glad when he should have been in grief. Still, he was sure of it; there was no making any less of it. She loved him, he was free to love her, there need be no hypocrisy and no self-denial; so he wiped the blood from his fingers, and crept into the blue room of Auntie Nan.

The old lady, in a dainty cap with flying streamers, was sitting by the fireside spinning. She had heard the news of Pete as Philip pa.s.sed through to Sulby, and was now wondering if it was not her duty to acquaint Uncle Peter. The sweet and natty old gentlewoman, brought up in the odour of gentility, was thinking on the lines of poor Bridget, Black Tom when dying under the bare scraas, that a man's son was his son in spite of law or devil.

She decided against telling the Ballawhaine by remembering an incident in the life of his father. It was about Philip's father, too; so Philip stretched his legs from the sofa towards the hearth, and listened to the old Auntie's voice over the whirr of her wheel, with another voice--a younger voice, an unheard voice--breaking: in at the back of his ears when the wheel stopped, and a sweet undersong inside of him always, saying, "Be sensible; there is no disloyalty; Pete is dead. Poor Pete!

Poor old Pete!"

"Though he had cast your father off, Philip, for threatening to make your mother his wife, he never believed there was a parson on the island would dare to marry them against his wish."

"No, really?"

"No; and when Uncle Peter came in at dinner-time a week after and said, 'It's all over,' he said, 'No, sir, no,' and threw down his spoon in the plate, and the hot broth splashed on my hand, I remember. But Peter said, 'It's past praying for, sir,' and then grandfather cried, 'No, I tell you no.' 'But I tell you yes, sir,' said Peter. 'Maughold Church yesterday morning before service.' Then grandfather lost himself, and called Peter 'Liar,' and cried that your father couldn't do it. 'And, besides, he's my own son after all, and would not,' said grandfather.

But I could see that he believed what Uncle Peter had told him, and, when Peter began to cry, he said, 'Forgive me, my boy; I'm your father for all, and I've a right to your forgiveness.' All the same, he wouldn't be satisfied until he had seen the register, and I had to go with him to the church."

"Poor old grandfather!"

"The vicar in those days was a little dotty man named Kissack, and it was the joy of his life to be always crushing and stifling somebody, because somebody was always depriving him of his rights or something."

"I remember him--the c.o.c.katoo. His favourite text was, 'Jesus said, then follow Me,' only the people declared he always wanted to go first."

"Shocking, Philip. It was evening when we drove up to Maughold, and the little parson was by the Cross, ordering somebody with a cane. 'I am told you married my son yesterday; is it true?' said grandfather. 'Quite true,' said the vicar. 'By banns or special license?' grandfather asked.

'License, of course,' the vicar answered."

"Curt enough, any way."

"'Show me the register,' said grandfather, and his face twitched and his voice was thick. 'Can't you believe me?' said the vicar. 'The register,'

said grandfather. Then the vicar turned the key in the church door and strutted up the aisle, humming something. I tried to keep grandfather back even then. 'What's the use?' I said, for I knew he was only fighting against belief. But, hat in hand, he followed to the Communion rail, and there the vicar laid the open book before him. Oh, Philip, shall I ever forget it? How it all comes back--the little dim church, the smell of damp and of velvet under the holland covers of the pulpit, and the empty place echoing. And grandfather fixed his gla.s.ses and leaned over the register, but he could see nothing--only blurr, blurr, blurr.

"'_You_ look at it, child,' he said, over his shoulder. But I daren't face it; so he rubbed his gla.s.ses and leaned over the book again. Oh dear! he was like one who looks down the list of the slain for the name he prays he may not find. But the name was there, too surely: 'Thomas Wilson Christian... to Mona Crellin... signed Wm. Crellin and something Kissack.'"