Outside Ballure House there was a
crowd which covered the garden, the fence, the high-road,
and the top of the stone wall opposite. The band
had ceased to play, and the people were shouting, clapping
hands, and cheering. At the door which
was open Philip stood bareheaded, and a
shaft of the light in the house behind him lit up a
hundred of the eager faces gathered in the darkness.
He raised his hand for silence, but it was long before
he was allowed to speak. Salutations rugged,
rough almost rude but hearty
to the point of homeliness, and affectionate to the
length of familiarity, flew at his head from every
side. “Good luck to you, boy!” “Bravo
for Ramsey!” “The Christians
for your life!” “A chip of the
ould block Dempster Christian the Sixth!” “Hush,
man, he’s spaking!” “Go
it, Phil!” “Give it fits, boy!” “Hush!
hush!”
“Fellow-townsmen,” said
Philip his voice swung like a quivering
bell over a sea, “you can never know
how much your welcome has moved me. I cannot
say whether in my heart of hearts I am more proud of
it or more ashamed. To be ashamed of it altogether
would dishonour you, and to be too proud of
it would dishonour me, I am not worthy of your
faith and good-fellowship. Ah!” he
raised his hand to check a murmur of dissent (the
crowd was now hushed from end to end) “let
me utter the thought of all. In honouring me
you are thinking of others also (’No,’
’Yes’); you are thinking of my people above
all, of one who was laid under the willows yonder,
a wrecked, a broken, a disappointed man my
father, God rest him! I will not conceal it from
you his memory has been my guide, his failures
have been my lightship, his hopes my beacon, his love
my star. For good or for evil, my anchor has
been in the depths of his grave. God forbid that
I should have lived too long under the grasp of a
dead hand. It was my aim to regain what he had
lost, and this day has witnessed its partial reclamation.
God grant I may not have paid too dear for such success.”
There were cries of “No, sir, no.”
He smiled faintly and shook his head.
“Fellow-countrymen, you believe I am worthy
of the name I bear. There is one among you, an
old comrade, a tried and trusted friend, whose faith
would be a spur if it were not a reproach ”
His voice was breaking, but still
it pealed over the sea of heads. “Well,
I will try to do my duty from this hour
onwards you shall see me try. Fellow-Manxmen,
you will help me for the honour of the place I fill,
for the sake of our little island, and yes,
and for my own sake also, I know you will to
be a good man and an upright judge. But” he
faltered, his voice could barely support itself “but
if it should ever appear that your confidence has
been misplaced if in the time to come I
should seem to be unworthy of this honour, untrue to
the oath I took to-day to do God’s justice between
man and man, a wrongdoer, not a righter of the wronged,
a whited sepulchre where you looked for a tower of
refuge remember, I pray of you, my countrymen,
remember, much as you may be suffering then, there
will be one who will be suffering more that
one will be myself.”
The general impression that night
was that the Deemster’s speech had not been
a proper one. Breaking up with some damp efforts
at the earlier enthusiasm, the people complained that
they were like men who had come for a jig and were
sent home in a wet blanket. There should have
been a joke or two, a hearty word of congratulation,
a little natural glorification of Ramsey, and a quiet
slap at Douglas and Peel and Castletown, a few fireworks,
a rip-rap or two, and some general illumination.
“But sakes alive! the solemn the young Dempster
was! And the melancholy! And the mystarious!”
“Chut!” said Pete.
“There’s such a dale of comic in you, boys.
Wonder in the world to me you’re not kidnapped
for pantaloonses. Go home for all and wipe your
eyes, and remember the words he’s been spaking.
I’m not going to forget them myself, anyway.”
Handing over the big drum to little
Jonaique, Pete turned to go into the house. Auntie
Nan was in the hall, hopping like a canary about Philip,
in a brown silk dress that rustled like withered ferns,
hugging him, drawing him down to the level of her
face, and kissing him on the forehead. The tears
were raining over the autumn sunshine of her wrinkled
cheeks, and her voice was cracking between a laugh
and a cry.
“My boy! My dear boy!
My boy’s boy! My own boy’s own boy!”
Philip freed himself at length, and
went upstairs without turning his head, and then Auntie
Nan saw Pete standing in the doorway.
“Is it you, Pete?” she
said with an effort. “Won’t you come
in for a moment? No?”
“A minute only, then just
to wish you joy, Miss Christian, ma’am,”
said Pete.
“And you, too, Peter. Ah!”
she said, with a bird-like turn of the head, “you
must be a proud man to-night, Pete.”
“Proud isn’t the word
for it, ma’am I’m clane beside
myself.”
“He took a fancy to you when
you were only a little barefooted boy, Pete.”
“So he did, ma’am.”
“And now that he’s Deemster itself he
owns you still.”
“Aw, lave him alone for that, ma’am.”
“Did you hear what he said about
you in his speech. It isn’t everybody in
his place would have done that before all, Pete.”
“’Deed no, ma’am.”
“He’s true to his friends, whatever they
are.”
“True as steel.”
The maid was carrying the dishes into
the dining-room, and Auntie Nan said in a strained
way, “You won’t stay to dinner, Pete, will
you? Perhaps you want to get home to the mistress.
Well, home is best for all of us, isn’t it?
Martha, I’ll tell the Deemster myself that dinner
is on the table. Well, good-night, Peter.
I’m always so glad to see you.”
She was whisking about to go upstairs,
but Pete had taken one step into the dining-room,
and was gazing round with looks of awe.
“Lord alive, Miss Christian,
ma’am, what feelings now-barefooted boy, you
say? You’re right there, and cold and hungry
too, sleeping in the gable-house with the cow, and
not getting much but the milk I was staling from her,
and a leathering at the ould man for that. Philip
fetched me in here one evenin’ that
was the start, ma’am. See that pepper-and-salt
egg on the string there? It’s a Tommy Noddy’s.
Philip got it nesting up Gob-ny-Garvain. Nearly
cost him his life, though. You see, ma’am,
Tommy Noddy has only one, and she fights like mad for
it. We were up forty fathom and better, atop
of a cave, and had two straight rocks below us in
the sea, same as an elephant’s hoofs, you know,
walking out on the blue floor. And Phil was having
his lil hand on the ledge where the egg was keeping,
when swoop came the big white wings atop of his bare
head. If I hadn’t had a stick that day,
ma’am, it would have been heaven help the pair
of us. The next minute Tommy Noddy was going
splash down the cliffs, all feathers and blood together,
or Philip wouldn’t have lived to be Dempster....
Aw, frightened you, have I, ma’am, for all it’s
so long ago? The heart’s a quare thing,
now, isn’t it? Got no yesterday nor to-morrow
neither. Well, good-night, ma’am.”
Pete was making for the door, when he looked down and
said, “What’s this, at all? Down,
Dempster, down!”
The dog had came trotting into the
hall as Pete was going out. He was perking up
his big ears and wagging his stump of a tail in front
of him.
“My dog, ma’am? Yes,
ma’am, and like its master in some ways.
Not much of itself at all, but it has the blood in
it, though, and maybe it’ll come out better
in the next generation. Looking for me, are you,
Dempster? Let’s be taking the road, then.”
“Perhaps you’re wanted at home, Pete?”
“Wouldn’t trust.
Good night, ma’am.” Auntie Nan hopped
upstairs in her rustling dress, relieved and glad
in the sweet selfishness of her love to get rid of
Pete and have Philip to herself.