“No? Still, I’ve heard your voice. It keeps swingin’ in my ears; and I can’t remember.... I can’t remember!... But we’ll have a spin about it again, Padre.” He turned to the impatient men. “All right, bully-boys, I’m comin’.”
At the door he turned and looked again at Roscoe with a sharp, half-amused scrutiny, then the two parted. Kilby kept his word. He was liberal to Viking; and Phil’s memory was drunk, not in silence, many times that day. So that when, in the afternoon, he made up his mind to keep his engagement with Mrs. Falchion, and left the valley for the hills, he was not entirely sober. But he was apparently good-natured. As he idled along he talked to himself, and finally broke out into singing:
“‘Then swing the long boat down the drink,
For the lads as pipe to go;
But I sink when the ‘Lovely Jane’ does sink,
To the mermaids down below.’
“‘The long boat bides on its strings,’ says we,
‘An’ we bides where the long boat bides;
An’ we’ll bluff this equatorial sea,
Or swallow its hurricane tides.’
“But the ‘Lovely Jane’ she didn’t go down,
An’ she anchored at the Spicy Isles;
An’ she sailed again to Wellington Town—
A matter of a thousand miles.”
It will be remembered that this was part of the song sung by Galt Roscoe on the Whi-Whi River, the day we rescued Mrs. Falchion and Justine Caron. Kilby sang the whole song over to himself until he reached a point overlooking the valley. Then he stood silent for a time, his glance upon the town. The walk had sobered him a little. “Phil, old pal,” he said at last, “you ain’t got the taste of raw whiskey with you now. When a man loses a pal he loses a grip on the world equal to all that pal’s grip was worth.... I’m drunk, and Phil’s down there among the worms—among the worms!... Ah!” he added in disgust, and, dashing his hand across his eyes, struck off into the woods again, making his way to the summer hotel, where he had promised to meet Mrs. Falchion. He inquired for her, creating some astonishment by his uncouth appearance and unsteady manner.
He learned from Justine that Mrs. Falchion had gone to see Roscoe, and that he would probably meet her if he went that way. This he did. He was just about to issue into a partly open space by a ravine near the house, when he heard voices, and his own name mentioned. He stilled and listened.
“Yes, Galt Roscoe,” said a voice, “Sam Kilby is the man that loved Alo—loved her not as you did. He would have given her a home, have made her happy, perhaps. You, when Kilby was away, married her—in native fashion—which is no marriage—and KILLED her.”
“No, no, I did not kill her—that is not so. As God is my Judge, that is not so.”
“You did not kill her with the knife?... Well, I will be honest now, and say that I believe that, whatever I may have hinted or said before. But you killed her just the same when you left her.”
“Mercy Falchion,” he said desperately, “I will not try to palliate my sin. But still I must set myself right with you in so far as I can. The very night Alo killed herself I had made up my mind to leave the navy. I was going to send in my papers, and come back to Apia, and marry her as Englishmen are married. While I remained in the navy I could not, as you know, marry her. It would be impossible to an English officer. I intended to come back and be regularly married to her.”
“You say that now,” was the cold reply.