XIV.
The sky became overcast, rain began to fall, and there was a rush for the carts. In half an hour Tynwald Hill was empty, and the people were splashing off on every side like the big drops of rain that were pelting down.
Pete hired a brake that was going back to the north, and gathered up his friends from Ramsey. When these were seated, there was a rush of helpless and abandoned ones who were going in the same direction—young mothers with children, old men and old women. Pete hauled them up till the seats and the floor were choked, and the brake could hold no more. He got small thanks. “Such crushing and scrooging! I declare my black merino frock, that I've only had on once, will be teetotal spoilt.”—“If they don't start soon I'll be taking the neuralgy dreadful.”
They got started at length, and, at the tail of a line of stiff carts, they went rattling over the mountain-road. The harebells nodded their washed faces from the hedge, and the talk was brisk and cheerful.
“Our Thorn's sowl a hafer, and got a good price.”—“What for didn't you buy the mare of Corlett Beldroma, Juan?”—“Did I want to be killed as dead as a herring?”—“Kicks, does she? Bate her, man; bate her. A horse is like a woman. If you aren't bating her now and then——”
They stopped at every half-way houses—it was always halfway to somewhere. The men got exceedingly drunk and began to sing. At that the women grew very angry.
“Sakes alive! you're no better than a lot of Cottonies.”—“Deed, but they're worse than any Cottonies, ma'am. Some excuse for the like of them. In their cotton-mills all the year, and nothing at home but a piece of grass the size of your hand in the backyard, and going hopping on it like a lark in a cage.”
The rain came down in torrents, the mountain-path grew steep and desolate, the few houses passed were empty and boarded up, gorse bushes hissed to the rising breeze, geese scuttled and screamed across the untilled land, a solitary black crow flew across the leaden sky, and on the sea outside a tall pillar of smoke went stalking on and on, where the pleasure-steamer carried her freight of tourists round the island. Then songs gave way to sighs, some of the men began to pick quarrels, and some to break into fits of drunken sobbing.
Pete kept them all up. He chaffed and laughed and told funny stories. Choking, stifling, wounded to the heart as he was, still he was carrying on, struggling to convince everybody and himself as well, that nothing was amiss, that he was a jolly fellow, and had not a second thought.