“Just a little longer, my love, just a little longer. I am coming to you, I am coming. Older, perhaps, perhaps sadder, and a boy no more, but hopeful still, and ready to face whatever fate befall, with her I love beside me.”
Next day Jem-y-Lord took this letter to Castle Rushen and brought back an answer. It was one line only—“My darling! At last! At last! Oh, Philip! Philip! But what about our child?”
XVIII.
The proclamation of Philip's appointment as Governor of the Isle of Man had been read in the churches, and nailed up on the doors of the Court-houses, and the Clerk of the Rolls was pushing on the arrangements for the installation.
“Let it be on the Tuesday of Easter week,” he wrote, “and of course at Castle Rushen. The retiring Governor is ready to return for that day to deliver up his seals of office and to receive your commission.”
“P. S.—Private. And if you think that soft-voiced girl has been long enough 'At Her Majesty's pleasure,' I will release her. Not that she is taking any harm at all, but we had better get these little accounts squared off before your great day comes. Meantime you may wish to provide for her future. Be liberal, Christian; you can afford to treat her liberally. But what am I saying? Don't I know that you will be ridiculously over-generous?”
Philip answered this letter promptly. “The Tuesday of Easter week will do as well as any other day. As to the lady, let her stay where she is until the morning of the ceremony, when I will myself settle everything.”
Philip's correspondence was now plentiful, and he had enough work to cope with it The four towns of the island vied with each other in efforts to show him honour. Douglas, as the scene of his career, wished to entertain him at a banquet; Ramsey, as his birthplace, wanted to follow him in procession. He declined all invitations.
“I am in mourning,” he wrote. “And besides, I am not well.”