“Hould hard, sir! Give me time,” said Pete. “I'd a gunshot wound at Kimberley, and since then I've a stitch in my side at whiles and sometimes a bit of a catch in my breathing.”
He staggered to the porch door and threw it open, then came back panting—“Dead! dead! Kate is dead!”
Nancy came from the kitchen at the moment, and hearing what he was saying, she lifted both hands and uttered a piercing shriek. He took her by the shoulders and turned her back, shut the door behind her, and said, holding his right hand hard at his side, “Women are brave, sir, but when the storm breaks on a man——” He broke off and muttered again, “Dead! Kirry is dead!”
The child, awakened by Nancy's cry, was now whimpering fretfully. Pete went to the cradle and rocked it with one foot, crooning in a quavering treble, “Hush-a-bye! hush-a-bye!”
Philip's breathing was oppressed. He felt like a man at the edge of a precipice, with an impulse to throw himself over. “God forgive me,” he said. “I could kill myself. I've broken your heart;——”
“No fear of me, sir,” said Pete. “I'm an ould hulk that's seen weather. I'll not go to pieces from inside at all. Give me time, mate, give me time.” And then he went on muttering as before, “Dead! Kirry dead! Hush-a-bye! My Kirry dead!”
The little one slept, and Pete drew back in his chair, nodded into the fire, and said in a weak, childish voice, “I've known her all my life, d'ye know? She's been my lil sweetheart since she was a slip of a girl, and slapped the schoolmaster for bating me wrongously. Swate lil thing in them days, mate, with her brown feet and tossing hair. And now she's a woman and she's dead! The Lord have mercy upon me!”
He got up and began to walk heavily across the floor, dipping and plunging as if going upstairs. “The bright and happy she was when I started for Kimberley, too; with her pretty face by the aising stones in the morning, all laughter and mischief. Five years I was seeing it in my drames like that, and now it's gone. Kirry is gone! My Kirry! God help me! O God, have mercy upon me!”
He stopped in his unsteady walk, and sat and stared into the fire. His eyes were red; blotches of heart's blood seemed to be rising to them; but there was not the sign of a tear. Philip did not attempt to console him. He felt as if the first syllable would choke in his throat.
“I see how it's been, sir,” said Pete. “While I was away her heart was changing her, and when I came back she thought she must keep her word. My poor lamb! She was only a child anyway. But I was a man—I ought to have seen how it was. I'm like a drowning man, too—things are coming back on me. I'm seeing them plain enough now. But it's too late! My poor Kirry! And I thought I was making her so happy!” Then, with a helpless look, “You wouldn't believe it, sir, but I was never once thinking nothing else. No, I wasn't; it's a fact. I was same as a sailor working all the voyage home, making a cage, and painting it goold, for the love-bird he's catcht in the sunny lands somewhere; but when he's putting it in, it's only wanting away, poor thing.”