PART V. MAN AND MAN.

I.

It was Sat.u.r.day, and the market-place was covered with the carts and stalls of the country people. After some feint of eating breakfast, Pete lit his pipe, called for a basket, and announced his intention of doing the marketing.

"Coming for the mistress, are you, Capt'n?"

"I'm a sort of a gra.s.s-widow, ma'am. What's your eggs to-day, Mistress Cowley?"

"Sixteen this morning, sir, and right ones too. They were telling me you've been losing her."

"Give me a shilling's worth, then. Any news over your side, Mag?"

"Two--four--eight--sixteen--it's every appearance we'll be getting a early harvest, Capt'n."

"Is it yourself, Liza? And how's your b.u.t.ter to-day?"

"Bad to bate to-day, sir, and only thirteen pence ha'penny. Is the lil one longing for the mistress, Capt'n?"

"I'll take a couple of pounds, then. What for longing at all when it's going bringing up by hand it is? Put it in a cabbage leaf, Liza."

Thus, with his basket on his arm and his pipe in his mouth, Pete pa.s.sed from stall to stall, chatting, laughing, bargaining, buying, shouting his salutations over the general hum and hubbub, as he ploughed his way through the crowd, but listening intently watching eagerly, casting out grapples to catch the anchor he had lost, and feeling all the time that if any eye showed sign of knowledge, if any one began with "Capt'n, I can tell you where she is," he must leap on the man like a tiger, and strangle the revelation in his throat.

Next day, Sunday, his friends from Sulby came to quiz and to question.

He was lounging in his shirt-sleeves on a deck-chair in his ship's cabin, smoking a long pipe, and pretending to be at ease and at peace with all the world.

"Fine morning, Capt'n," said John the Clerk.

"It _is_ doing a fine morning, John," said Pete.

"Fine on the sea, too," said Jonaique.

"Wonderful fine on the sea, Mr. Jelly."

"A nice fair wind, though, if anybody was going by the packet to Liverpool. Was it as good, think you, for the mistress on Friday night, Mr. Quilliam?"

"I'll gallantee," said Pete.

"Plucky, though--I wouldn't have thought it of the same woman--I wouldn't raelly," said Jonaique.

"Alone, too, and landing on the other side so early in the morning,"

said John the Clerk.

"Smart, uncommon! It isn't every woman would have done it," said Kelly the Postman.

"Aw, we've mighty boys of women deese days--we have dough," snuffled the constable, and then they all laughed together.

Pete watched their wheedling, fawning, and whisking of the tail, and then he said, "Chut! What's there so wonderful about a woman going by herself to Liverpool when she's got somebody waiting at the stage to meet her?"

The laughing faces lengthened suddenly. "And had she, then," said John the Clerk.

Pete puffed furiously, rolled in his seat, laughed like a man with a mouth full of water, and said, "Why, sartenly--my uncle, of coorse."

Jonaique wrinkled his forehead. "Uncle," he said, with a click in his throat.

"Yes, my Uncle Joe," said Pete.

Jonaique looked helplessly across at John the Clerk. John the Clerk puckered up his mouth as if about to whistle, and then said, in a faltering way, "Well, I can't really say I've ever heard tell of your Uncle Joe before, Capt'n."

"No?" said Pete, with a look of astonishment. "Not my Uncle Joseph? The one that left the island forty years ago and started in the coach and cab line? Well, that's curious. Where's he living? Bless me, where's this it is, now? Chut! it's clane forgot at me. But I saw him myself coming home from Kimberley, and since then he's been writing constant.

'Send her across,' says he; 'she'll be her own woman again like winking.' And you never heard tell of him? Not Uncle Joey with the bald head? Well, well! A smart ould man, though. Man alive, the lively he is, too, and the laughable, and the good company. To look at that man's face you'd say the sun was shining reg'lar. Aw, it's fine times she'll be having with Uncle Joe. No woman could be ill with yonder ould man about.

He'd break your face with laughing if it was bursting itself with a squinsey. And you never heard tell of my Uncle Joe, of Scotland Road, down Clarence Dock way? To think of that now!"

They went off with looks of perplexity, and Pete turned into the house.

"They're trying to catch me; they're wanting to shame my poor lil Kirry.

I must keep her name sweet," he thought.

The church bells had begun to ring, and he was telling himself that, heavy though his heart might be, he must behave as usual.

"She'll be going walking to church herself this morning, Nancy," he said, putting on his coat, "so I'll just slip across to chapel."

He was swinging up the path on his return home to dinner, when he heard voices inside the house.

"It's shocking to see the man bittending this and bittending that." It was Nancy; she was laying the table; there was a rattle of knives and forks. "Bittending to ate, but only pecking like a robin; bittending to sleep, but never a wink on the night; bittending to laugh and to joke and wink, and a face at him like a ghose's, and his hair all through-others. Walking about from river to quay, and going on with all that rubbish--it's shocking, ma'am, it's shocking!"

"Hush-a-bye, hush-a-bye!" It was the voice of Grannie, low and quavery; she was rocking the cradle.

"You can't spake to him neither but he's scolding you scandalous. 'I'm not used of being cursed at,' I'm saying, 'and is it myself that has to be tould to respect my own Kitty?' But cry shame on her I must when I look at the lil bogh there, and it so helpless and so beautiful.

'Stericks, you say? Yes, indeed, ma'am, and if I stay here much longer, it's losing myself I will be, too, with his bittending and bittending."

"Lave him to it, Nancy. His poor head's that moidered and mixed it's like a black pudding--there's no saying what's inside of it. But he's good, though; aw, right good he is for all, and the world's cold and cruel. Lave him alone, woman; lave him alone, poor boy."

The child awoke and cried, and, under cover of this commotion and the crowing and cooing of the two women, Pete stepped back to the gate, clashed it hard, swung noisily up the gravel, and rolled into the house with a shout and a laugh.

"Well, well! Grannie, my gough! Who'd have thought of seeing Grannie, now? And how's the ould angel to-day? So you've got the lil one there?

Aw, you rogue, you. You're on Grannie's lap, are you? How's Caesar? And how's Mrs. Gorry doing? Look at that now--did you ever? Opening one eye first to make sure if the world's all right. The child's wise.

Coo--oo--oo! Smart with the dinner, Nancy--wonderful hungry the chapel's making a man. Coo--oo! What's she like, now, Grannie?"

"When I set her to my knee like this I can see my own lil Kirry again,''

said Grannie, looking down ruefully, rocking the child with one knee and doubling over it to kiss it.

"So she's like the mammy, is she?" said Pete, blowing at the baby and tickling its chin with his broad forefinger. "Mammy's gone to the ould uncle's--hasn't she, my lammie?"

At that Grannie fell to rocking herself as well as the child, and to singing a hymn in a quavery voice. Then with a rattle and a rush, throwing off his coat and tramping the floor in his shirt-sleeves, while Nancy dished up the dinner, Pete began to enlarge on Kate's happiness in the place where she had gone.