XI.

On the second morning afterwards the air was quiet and full of the odour of seaweed; the sky was round as the inside of a sh.e.l.l, and pale pink like the shadow of flame; the water was smooth and silent; the hills had lost the memory of the storm, and land and sea lay like a sleeping child.

In this broad and steady morning Kate came back to consciousness. She had slid out of delirium into sleep as a boat slides out of the open sea into harbour, and when she awoke there was a voice in her ears that seemed to be calling to her from the quay. It was a familiar voice, and yet it was unfamiliar; it was like the voice of a friend heard for the first time after a voyage. It seemed to come from a long way off, and yet to be knocking at the very door of her heart. She kept her eyes closed for a moment and listened; then she opened them and looked again.

The light was clouded and yet dazzling, as if glazed muslin were shaking before her eyes. Grannie was sitting by her bedside, knitting in silence.

"Why are you sitting there, mother?" she asked.

Grannie dropped her needles and caught at her ap.r.o.n. "Dear heart alive, the child's herself again!" she said.

"Has anything happened?" said Kate. "What time is it?"

"Monday morning, bogh, thank the Lord for all His mercies!" cried Grannie.

The familiar voice came again. It came from the direction of the stairs.

"Who's that?" said Kate, whispering fearfully.

"Pete himself, Kirry. Aw well! Aw dear!"

"Pete!" cried Kate in terror.

"Aw, no, woman, but a living man come back again. No fear of him, bogh!

Not dead at all, but worth twenty dead men yet, and he brought you safe out of the storm."

"The storm?"

"Yes, the storm, woman. There warn such a storm on the island I don't know the years. He found you in the tholthan up the glen. Lost your way in the wind, it's like, and no wonder. But let me call father. Father!

father! Chut! the man's as deaf as little Tom Hommy. Father!" called Grannie, bustling about at the stair-head in a half-demented way.

There was some commotion below, and the voice on the stairs was saying, "_This_ way? No, _sir_. That way, if _you_ plaze."

"D'ye hear him, Kirry?" cried Grannie, putting her head back into the room. "That's the man himself. Sitting on the bottom step same as an ould bulldog, and keeping watch that n.o.body bothers you. The good-naturedst bulldog breathing, though, and he hasn't had a wink on the night. Saved your life, darling. He did; yes, he did, praise G.o.d."

At mention of the tholthan, Kate had remembered everything. She dropped back on the pillow, and cried, in a voice of pain, "Why couldn't he leave me to die?"

Grannie chuckled knowingly at that, and wiped her eyes with the corner of her ap.r.o.n. "The bogh is herself, for sure. When they're wishing themselves dead they're always mending father! But I'll go down instead. Lie still, bogh, lie still!"

The voice of Grannie went m.u.f.fled down the stairs with many "Aw dears, aw dears!" and then crackled from below through the floor and the unceiled joists, saying sharply but with a tremor, too, "Nancy Joe, why aren't you taking a cup of something upstairs, woman?"

"Goodness me, Mistress Cregeen, is it true for all?" said Nancy.

"Why, of course it's true. Do you think a poor child is going fasting for ever?"

"What's that?" shouted the familiar voice again. "Was it herself you were spaking to in the dairy loft, Grannie?"

"Who else, man?" said Grannie, and then there was a general tumult.

"Aw, the joy! Aw, the delight! Gough bless me, Grannie, I was thinking she was for spaking no more."

"Out of the way," cried Nancy, as if pushing past somebody to whip the kettle on to the fire. "These men creatures have no more rising in their hearts than bread without balm."

"You're balm enough yourself, Nancy, for a quiet husband. But lend me a hould of the bellows there--I'll blow up like blazes."

Caesar came into the house on the top of this commotion, grumbling as he stepped over the porch, "The wind has taken half the stacks of my haggard, mother."

"No matter, sir," shouted Pete. "The best of your Melliah is saved upstairs."

"Is she herself?" said Caesar. "Praise His name!"

And over the furious puffing and panting and quacking of the bellows and the cracking and roaring of the fire, the voice of Pete came in gusts through the floor, crying, "I'll go mad with the joy! I will; yes, I will, and n.o.body shall stop me neither."

The house, which seemed to have been holding its breath since the storm, now broke into a ripple of laughter. It began in the kitchen, it ran up the stairs, it crept through the c.h.i.n.ks in the floor, it went over the roof. But Kate lay on her pillow and moaned, and turned her face to the wall.

Presently Nancy Joe appeared in the bedroom, making herself tidy at the doorway with a turn of the hand over her hair. "Mercy on me!" she cried, clapping her hands at the first sight of Kate's face, "who was the born blockhead that said the girl's wedding was as like to be in the churchyard as in the church?"

"That's me," said a deep voice from the middle of the stairs, and then Nancy clashed the door back and poured Pete into Kate in a broadside.

"It was Pete that done it, though," she said. "You can't expect much sense of the like, but still and for all he saved your life, Kitty. Dr.

Mylechreest says so. 'If the girl had been lying out another hour,' says he----And, my goodness, the fond of you that man is; it's wonderful!

Twisting and turning all day yesterday on the bottom step yonder same as a live conger on the quay, but looking as soft about the eyes as if he'd been a week out of the water. And now! my sakes, _now!_ D'ye hear him, Kirry? He's fit to burst the bellows. No use, though--he's a shocking fine young fellow--he's all that.... But just listen!"

There was a fissing sound from below, and a sense of burning. "What do I always say? You can never trust a man to have sense enough to take it off. That's the kettle on the boil."

Nancy went flopping downstairs, where with furious words she rated Pete, who laughed immoderately. Caesar came next. He had taken off his boots and was walking lightly in his stockings; but Kate felt his approach by his asthmatic breathing. As he stepped in at the door he cried, in the high pitch of the preacher, "Praise the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me praise His holy name!" Then he fell to the praise of Pete as well.

"He brought you out of the jaws of death and the mouth of Satan. It was a sign, Katherine, and we can't do better than follow the Spirit's leading. He saved your life, woman, and that's giving him the right to have and to hould it. Well, I've only one child in this life, but, if it's the Lord's will, I'm willing. He was always my white-headed boy, and he has made his independent fortune in a matter of five years'

time."

The church bell began to toll, and Kate started up and listened.

"Only the Dempster's funeral, Kitty," said Caesar. "They were for burying him to-morrow, but men that drink don't keep. They'll be putting him in the family vault at Lezayre with his father, the staunch ould Rechabite.

Many a good cow has a bad calf, you see, and that's bad news for a man's children; but many a good calf is from a bad cow, and that's good news for the man himself. It's been the way with Peter anyway, for the Lord has delivered him and prospered him, and I'm hearing on the best authority he has five thousand golden sovereigns sent home to Mr.

Dumbell's bank at Douglas."

Grannie came up with a basin of beef-tea, and Caesar was hustled out of the room.

"Come now, bogh; take a spoonful, and I'll lave you to yourself," said Grannie.

"Yes, leave me to myself," said Kate, sipping wearily; and then Grannie went off with the basin in her hand.

"Has she taken it?" said some one below.

"Look at that, if you plaze," said Grannie in a jubilant tone; and Kate knew that the empty basin was being shown around.

Kate lay back on the pillow, listened to the tolling of the bell, and shuddered. She thought it a ghostly thing that the first voice she had heard on coming as from another world had been the voice of Pete, and the first name dinned into her ears had been Pete's name. The procession of the Deemster's funeral pa.s.sed the house, and she closed her eyes and seemed to see it--the coffin on the open cart, the men on horseback riding beside it, and then the horses tied up to posts and gates about the churchyard, and the crowd of men of all conditions at the grave-side. In her mind's eye, Kate was searching through that crowd for somebody. Was _he_ there? Had he heard what had happened to her?