“I'll sleep here,” thought Pete. “I've not searched Douglas yet.”
The driver found him a bed at his mother's house. It was a lodging-house in Church Street, overlooking the churchyard. Finding himself so near to Athol Street, Pete thought he would look at the outside of Philip's chambers. He lit on the house easily, though the street was dark. It was one of a line of houses having brass plates, each with its name, and always the word Advocate. Philip's house bore one plate only, a small one, with the name hardly legible in the uneertain light. It ran—The Deemster Christian.
Having spelt out this inscription, Pete crept away. That was the last house in the island at which he wished to call. He was almost afraid of being seen in the same town. Philip might think he was in Douglas to look for Kate.
Pete rambled through the narrow thoroughfares of Post-Office Place, Heywood Lane, and Fancy Street, until he came to the sea front. It was now full tide of busy night, and the holiday town seemed to be given over to enjoyment. The steps of the terraces were thronged; itinerant photographers pitched their cameras on the curb-stones; every open window had its dark heads with the light behind; pianos were clashing in the houses, harps were twanging in the street, tinkling tram-cars, like toast-racks, were sweeping the curve of the bay; there was a steady flow of people on the pavement, and from water's edge to cliff top, three parts round like a horse's shoe, the town flashed and fizzed and sparkled and blazed under its thousand lights with the splendour of a forest fire.
Pete called to mind the blinking and groping of the dear old half-lit town to the north; he remembered the dark village at the foot of the lonely hills, with its trout-stream burrowing under the low bridge, and he thought, “She may have tired of it all, poor thing!”
He looked at every woman's face as she went by him, hungering for one glimpse of a face he feared to see. He did not see it, and he wandered like a lost soul through the little gay town until he drifted with the wave that flowed around the bay into the place that was known as the Castle.
It was a dancing palace in a garden, built in the manner of a conservatory, with the ground level for those who came to dance, and the galleries for such as came to see. Seated by the front rail of the gallery, Pete peered down into the faces below. Three thousand young men and young women were dancing, the men in flannels and coloured scarves, the women in light muslins and straw hats. Sometimes the white lights in the glass roof were coloured with red and blue and yellow. The low buzz of the dancers' feet, the clang and clash of the brass instruments, the boom of the big drum, the quake of the glass house itself, and the low rumble of the hollow floor beneath—it was like a battle-field set to music.
“She may have tired, poor thing; God knows she may,” thought Pete.
His eyes were growing hazy and his head dizzy, when he became conscious of a waft of perfume behind him, and a soft voice saying at his ear, “Were you looking for anybody, then?”
He turned with a start, and looked at the speaker. It was a young girl with a pretty face, thick with powder. He could not be angry with the little thing; she was so young, and she was smiling.