“Ah! tell us of that. Who was the lady?”
“The lady——” there was a pause; the white-haired dame coughed, smiled, closed her little ferret eyes, dropped her voice, and said with mock gravity, “The lady was the blacksmith's daughter, dearest.” And then there was a merry trill of laughter.
Philip felt sick, bowed to his hosts, and left. As he was going off, his uncle intercepted him, holding out both hands.
“How's this, Philip? You never come to Ballawhaine now. I see! Oh, I see! Too busy with the women to remember an old man. They're all talking of you. Putting the comather on them, eh? I know, I know; don't tell me.”
III.
Philip's way home lay through the town, but he made a circuit of the country, across Onchan, so heartsick was he, so utterly choked with bitter feelings. He felt as if all the angels and devils together must be making a mock at him. The thing he had worked for through five heavy years, the end he had aimed at, the goal he had fought for, was his already—his for the stretching out of his hand. Yet now that it was his, he could not have it. Oh, the mockery of his fate! Oh, the irony of his life! It was shrieking, it was frantic!
Then his bolder spirit seemed to say, “What is all this childish fuming about? Fortune comes to you with both hands full. Be bold, and you may have both the wish of your soul and the desire of your heart—both the Deemster-ship and Kate.”
It was impossible to believe that. If he married Kate, the Governor would not recommend him as Deemster. Had he not admitted that he stood in some fear of the public opinion of the island? And was it not conceivable that, besides the unselfish interest which the Governor had shown in him, there was even a personal one that would operate more powerfully than fear of the old-fashioned Manx conventions to prevent any recommendation of the husband of the wrong woman? At one moment a vague memory rose before Philip, as he crossed the fields, of the lunch at Government House, of the Governor's wife and daughter, of their courtesy and boundless graciousness. At the next moment he had drawn up sharply, with pangs of self-contempt, hating himself, loathing himself, swearing at himself for a mean-souled ingrate, as he kicked up the grass and the turf beneath it But the idea had taken root. He could not help it; the Governor's interest went for nothing in his reckoning.
“What a fool you are, Philip,” something seemed to whisper out of the darkest corner of his conscience; “take the Deemstership first, and marry Kate afterwards.” But it was impossible to think of that either. Say it could be done by any arts of cunning or duplicity, what then? Then there were the high walls of custom and prejudice to surmount. Philip remembered the garden-party, and saw that they could never be surmounted. The Deemster who slapped the conventions in the face would suffer for it. He would be taboo to half the life of the island—in public an official, in private a recluse. An icy picture rose before his mind's eye of the woman who would be his wife in her relations with the ladies he had just left. She might be their superior in education, certainly in all true manners, and in natural grace and beauty, in sweetness and charm, their mistress beyond a dream of comparison. But they would never forget that she was the daughter of a country innkeeper, and every little cobble in the rickety pyramid, even from the daughter of the innkeeper in the town, would look down on her as from a throne.