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Title: The Master of Man: The Story of a Sin

Author: Sir Hall Caine

Release date: April 18, 2020 [eBook #61865]
                Most recently updated: April 13, 2021

Language: English

Credits: Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MASTER OF MAN: THE STORY OF A SIN ***




  _The Novels of Hall Caine_

  THE SHADOW OF A CRIME
  A SON OF HAGAR
  THE DEEMSTER
  THE BONDMAN
  THE SCAPEGOAT
  THE MANXMAN
  THE CHRISTIAN
  THE ETERNAL CITY
  THE WHITE PROPHET
  THE PRODIGAL SON
  THE WOMAN THOU GAVEST ME
  THE MASTER OF MAN




  The Master of Man

  The Story of a Sin



  By

  Hall Caine



  "_Be sure your sin will find you out_"



  Philadelphia & London
  J. B. Lippincott Company
  1921




  The Master of Man
  _is published also in_
  ENGLAND
  CANADA
  AUSTRALIA
  FRANCE
  DENMARK
  HOLLAND
  SWEDEN
  FINLAND



  COPYRIGHT, 1920, 1921, BY SIR HALL CAINE, K.B.E.



  _Electrotyped and Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company
  The Washington Square Press, Philadelphia, U.S.A._




  CONTENTS


  FIRST BOOK

  THE SIN

  1. The Breed of the Ballamoar
  2. The Boyhood of Victor Stowell
  3. Father and Sons
  4. Enter Fenella Stanley
  5. The Student-at-Law
  6. The World of Woman
  7. The Day of Temptation
  8. The Call of Bessie Collister
  9. The Master of Man
  10. The Call of the Ballamoars


  SECOND BOOK

  THE RECKONING

  11. The Return of Fenella
  12. The Death of the Deemster
  13. The Saving of Kate Kinrade
  14. The Everlasting Song of the Sea
  15. The Woman's Secret
  16. At the Speaker's
  17. The Burning Boat
  18. The Great Winter


  THIRD BOOK

  THE CONSEQUENCE

  19. The Eve of Mary
  20. Victor Stowell's Vow
  21. Mother's Law or Judge's Law?
  22. The Soul of Hagar
  23. Stowell in London
  24. Alick Gell
  25. The Deemster's Oath


  FOURTH BOOK

  THE RETRIBUTION

  26. The Wind and the Whirlwind
  27. The Judge and the Man
  28. The Trial
  29. The Two Women--The Two Men
  30. The Verdict


  FIFTH BOOK

  THE REPARATION

  31. "Victor!  Victor!  My Victor!"
  32. The Voice of the Sea
  33. The Heart of a Woman
  34. The Man and the Law
  35. "And God Made Man of the Dust of the Ground"
  36. Out of the Depths
  37. The Escape
  38. The Grave of a Sin


  SIXTH BOOK

  THE REDEMPTION

  39. The Birth of a Lie
  40. The Call of a Woman's Soul
  41. In the Valley of the Shadow
  42. "He Drove Out the Man"
  43. The Dawn of Morning
  44. "God Gave Him Dominion"


  SEVENTH BOOK

  THE RESURRECTION

  45. The Way of the Cross
  46. Victory Through Defeat
  47. The Resurrection


  CONCLUSION




_AUTHOR'S NOTE_

_I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to conversations, many years
ago, with the late Karl Emil Franzos for important incidents in
Chapter Forty-Four, which, founded on fact, were in part incorporated
by the Russo-Jewish writer in his noble book, "The Chief Justice."_

_Also I wish to say that Tolstoy told me, through his daughter, that
similar incidents occurring in Russia (although he altered them
materially) had suggested the theme of his great novel,
"Resurrection."_

_For as much knowledge as I may have been able to acquire of Manx law
and legal procedure, I am indebted to Mr. Ramsey B. Moore, the
Attorney-General in the Isle of Man, the scene of my story._

_H. C._

  _Greeba Castle,
    Isle of Man._




The Master of Man


_FIRST BOOK_


THE SIN


CHAPTER ONE

THE BREED OF THE BALLAMOAR

We were in full school after breakfast, when the Principal came from
his private room with his high, quick, birdlike step and almost leapt
up to his desk to speak to us.  He was a rather small, slight man, of
middle age, with pale face and nervous gestures, liable to alternate
bouts of a somewhat ineffectual playfulness and gusts of ungovernable
temper.  It was easy to see that he was in his angry mood that
morning.  He looked round the school for a moment over the silver
rims of his spectacles, and then said,

"Boys, before you go to your classes for the day I have something to
tell you.  One of you has brought disgrace upon King William's, and I
must know which of you it is."

Then followed the "degrading story."  The facts of it had just been
brought to his notice by the Inspector of Police for Castletown.  He
had no intention of entering into details.  They were too shameful.
Briefly, one of our boys, a senior boy apparently, had lately made a
practice of escaping from his house after hours, and had so far
forfeited his self-respect as to go walking in the dark roads with a
young girl--a servant girl, he was ashamed to say, from the home of
the High Bailiff.  He had been seen repeatedly, and although not
identified, he had been recognised by his cap as belonging to the
College.  Last night two young townsmen had set out to waylay him.
There had been a fight, in which our boy had apparently used a
weapon, probably a stick.  The result was that one of the young
townsmen was now in hospital, still insensible, the other was
seriously injured about the face.  Probably a pair of young
blackguards who had intervened from base motives of their own and
therefore deserved no pity.  But none the less the conduct of the
King William's boy had been disgraceful.  It must be punished, no
matter who he was, or how high he might stand in the school.

"I tell you plainly, boys, I don't know who he is.  Neither do the
police--the townsmen never having heard his name and the girl
refusing to speak."

But he had a suspicion--a very strong suspicion, based upon an
unmistakable fact.  He might have called the boy he suspected to his
room and dealt with him privately.  But a matter like this, known to
the public authorities and affecting the honour and welfare of the
college, was not to be hushed up.  In fact the police had made it a
condition of their foregoing proceedings in the Courts that an open
inquiry should be made here.  He had undertaken to make it, and he
must make it now.

"Therefore, I give the boy who has been guilty of this degrading
conduct the opportunity of voluntary confession--of revealing himself
to the whole school, and asking pardon of his Principal, his masters
and his fellow-pupils for the disgrace he has brought on them.  Who
is it?"

None of us stirred, spoke or made sign.  The Principal was rapidly
losing his temper.

"Boys," he said, "there is something I have not told you.  According
to the police the disgraceful incident occurred between nine and
nine-thirty last night, and it is known to the house-master of one of
your houses that one boy, and one only, who had been out without
permission, came in after that hour.  I now give that boy another
chance.  Who is he?"

Still no one spoke or stirred.  The Principal bit his lip, and again
looked down the line of our desks over the upper rims of his
spectacles.

"Does nobody speak?  Must I call a name?  Is it possible that any
King William's boy can ask for the double shame of being guilty and
being found out?"

Even yet there was no sign from the boys, and no sound except their
audible breathing through the nose.

"Very well.  So be it.  I've given that boy his chance.  Now he must
take the consequences."

With that the Principal stepped down from his desk, turned his
blazing eyes towards the desks of the fifth form and said,

"Stowell, step forward."

We gasped.  Stowell was the head boy of the school and an immense and
universal favourite.  Through the mists of years some of us can see
him still, as he heaved up from his seat that morning and walked
slowly across the open floor in front to where the Principal was
standing.  A big, well-grown boy, narrowly bordering on eighteen,
dark-haired, with broad forehead, large dark eyes, fine features,
and, even in those boyish days, a singular air of distinction.  There
was no surprise in his face, and not a particle of shame, but there
was a look of defiance which raised to boiling point the Principal's
simmering anger.

"Stowell," he said, "you will not deny that you were out after hours
last night?"

"No, Sir."

"Then it was you who were guilty of this disgraceful conduct?"

Stowell seemed to be about to speak, and then with a proud look to
check himself, and to close his mouth as with a snap.

"It was you, wasn't it?"

Stowell straightened himself up and answered, "So you say, Sir."

"_I_ say?  Speak for yourself.  You've a tongue in your head, haven't
you?"

"Perhaps I have, Sir."

"Then it _was_ you?"

Stowell made no answer.

"Why don't you answer me?  Answer, Sir!  It _was_ you," said the
Principal.

And then Stowell, with a little toss of the head and a slight curl of
the lip, replied,

"If _you_ say it was, what is the use of _my_ saying anything, Sir?"

The last remnant of the Principal's patience left him.  His eyes
flamed and his nostrils quivered.  A cane, seldom used, was lying
along the ledge of his desk.  He turned to it, snatched it up, and
brought it down in two or three rapid sweeps on Stowell's back, and
(as afterwards appeared) his bare neck also.

It was all over in a flash.  We gasped again.  There was a moment of
breathless silence.  All eyes were on Stowell.  He was face to face
with the Principal, standing, in his larger proportions, a good two
inches above him, ghastly white and trembling with passion.  For a
moment we thought anything might happen.  Then Stowell appeared to
recover his self-control.  He made another little toss of the head,
another curl of the lip and a shrug of the shoulders.

"Now go back to your study, Sir," said the Principal, between gusts
of breath, "and stay there until you are told to leave it."

Stowell was in no hurry, but he turned after a moment and walked out,
with a strong step, almost a haughty one.

"Boys, go to your classes," said the Principal, in a hoarse voice,
and then he went out, too, but more hurriedly.

Something had gone wrong, wretchedly wrong, we scarcely knew
what--that was our confused impression as we trooped off to the
class-rooms, a dejected lot of lads, half furious, half afraid.



II

At seven o'clock that night Stowell was still confined to his study,
a little, bare room, containing an iron bedstead, a deal washstand, a
table, one chair, a trunk, some books on a hanging bookshelf, and a
small rug before an iron fender.  It was November and the day had
been cold.  Jamieson (the Principal's valet) had smuggled up some
coal and lit a little fire for him.  Mrs. Gale (the Principal's
housekeeper), bringing his curtailed luncheon, had seen the long red
wheal which the cane had left across the back of his neck, and
insisted on cooling it with some lotion and bandaging it with linen.
He was sitting alone in the half-darkness of his little room,
crouching over the fire, gloomy, morose, fierce and with a burning
sense of outraged justice.  The door opened and another boy came into
the room.  It was Alick Gell, his special chum, a lad of his own age,
but fair-haired, blue-eyed, and with rather feminine features.  In a
thick voice that was like a sob half-choked in his throat, he said,

"Vic, I can't stand this any longer."

"Oh, it's you, is it?  I thought you'd come."

"Of course you didn't do that disgraceful thing, as they call it, but
you've got to know who did.  It was I."

Stowell did not answer.  He had neither turned nor looked up, and
Gell, standing behind him, tugged at his shoulders and said again,

"Don't you hear me?  It was I."

"I know."

"You know?  How do you know?  When did you know?  Did you know this
morning?"

"I knew last night."

Going into town he had seen Gell on the opposite side of the road.
Yes, it was true enough he was out after hours.  The Principal
himself had sent him!  Early in the day he had told him that after
"prep" he was to go to the station for something.

"Good Lord!  Then he must have forgotten all about it!"

"He had no business to forget."

"Why didn't you tell him?"

"Not I--not likely!"

"But being out after hours wasn't anything.  It wasn't knocking those
blackguards about.  Why didn't you deny that anyway?"

"Oh, shut up, Alick."

Again Gell tugged at his shoulders and said,

"But why didn't you?"

"If you must know, I'll tell you--because they would have had you for
it next."

Mrs. Gale had found the big window of the lavatory open at a
quarter-past nine, and when she sent Jamieson down he saw Gell
closing it.

"Do you mean that.... that to save me, you allowed yourself to...."

"Shut up, I tell you!"

There was silence for a moment and then Gell began to cry openly, and
to pour out a torrent of self-reproaches.  He was a coward; a
wretched, miserable, contemptible coward--that's what he was and he
had always known it.  He would never forgive himself--never!  But
perhaps he had not been thinking of saving his own skin only.

"That was little Bessie Collister."

"I know."

If he had stood up to the confounded thing and confessed, and given
her away, after she had been plucky and refused to speak, and his
father had heard of it.... _her_ father also.... her stepfather....

"Dan Baldromma, you know what he is, Vic?"

"Oh, yes, there would have been the devil to pay all round."

"Wouldn't there?"

"The College, too!  Dan would have had something to say to old
Peacock (nickname for the Principal) on that subject also."

Yes, that was what Gell had thought, and it was the reason (one of
the reasons) why he had stood silent when the Principal challenged
them.  Nobody knew anything except the girl.  The Police didn't know;
the Principal didn't know.  If he kept quiet the inquiry would end in
nothing and there would be no harm done to anybody--except the town
ruffians, and they deserved all they got.  How was he to guess that
somebody else was out after hours, and that to save him from being
exposed, perhaps expelled, his own chum, like the brick he was and
always had been....

"Hold your tongue, you fool!"

Gell made for the door.  "Look here," he said, "I'm going to tell the
Principal that if you were out last night it was on an errand for
him--that can't hurt anybody."

"No, you're not."

"Yes, I am--certainly I am."

"If you do, I'll never speak to you again--on my soul, never."

"But he's certain to remember it sooner or later."

"Let him."

"And when he does, what's he to think of himself?"

"That's his affair, isn't it?  Leave him alone."

Gell's voice rose to a cry.  "No, I will not leave him alone.  And
since you won't let me say that about you, I'll tell him about
myself.  Yes, I will, and nobody shall prevent me!  I don't care what
happens about father, or anybody else, now.  I can't stand this any
longer.  I can't and I won't."

"Alick!  Alick Gell!  Old fellow...."

But the door had been slammed to and Gell was gone.



III

The Principal was in his Library, a well-carpeted room, warmed by a
large fire and lighted by a red-shaded lamp.  His half-yearly
examination had just finished and his desk was piled high with
examination papers, but he could not settle himself to his work on
them.  He was harking back to the event of the morning, and was not
too pleased with himself.  He had lost his temper again; he had
inflicted a degrading punishment on a senior boy, and to protect the
good name of the school he had allowed himself to be intimidated by
the police into a foolish and ineffectual public inquiry.

"Wretched!  Wretched!  Wretched!" he thought, rising for the
twentieth time from his chair before the fire and pacing the room in
a disorder.

He thought of Stowell with a riot of mingled anger and affection.  He
had always liked that boy---a fine lad, with good heart and brain in
spite of obvious limitations.  He had shown the boy some indulgence,
too, and this was how he had repaid him!  Defying him in the face of
the whole school!  Provoking him with his prevarication, the proud
curl of his lip and his damnable iteration: "If _you_ say so,
Sir...."  It had been maddening.  Any master in the world might have
lost his temper.

Of course the boy was guilty!  But then he was no sneak or coward.
Good gracious, no, that was the last thing anybody would say about
him.  Quite the contrary!  Only too apt to take the blame of bad
things on himself when he might make others equally responsible.
That was one reason the under-masters liked him and the boys
worshipped him.  Then why, in the name of goodness, hadn't he spoken
out, made some defence, given some explanation?  After all the first
offence was nothing worse than being out after hours for a little
foolish sweethearting.  The Principal saw Stowell making a clean
breast of everything, and himself administering a severe admonition
and then fighting it all out with the police for school and scholar.
But that was impossible now--quite impossible!

"Wretched!  Wretched!  Wretched!"

He thought of the boy's father--the senior judge or Deemster of the
island, and easily the first man in it.  One of the trustees of the
college also, to whom serious matters were always mentioned.  This
had become a serious matter.  Even if nothing worse happened to that
young blackguard in the hospital the police might insist on
expulsion.  If so, what would be the absolute evidence against the
boy?  Only that he had been out of school when the disgraceful
incident had happened!  The Deemster, who was cool and clear-headed,
might say the boy could have been out on some other errand.  Or
perhaps that some other boy might have been out at the same time.

But that couldn't be!  Good heavens, no!  Stowell wasn't a fool.  If
he had been innocent, why on earth should he have taken his degrading
punishment lying down?  No, no, he had been guilty enough.  He had
admitted that he was out after hours, and, having nothing else to say
even about that (why or by whose permission), he had tried to carry
the whole thing off with a sort of silent braggadocio.

"Wretched!  Wretched!  Wretched!"

The Principal had at length settled himself at his desk, and was
taking up some of the examination papers, when he uncovered a small
white packet.  Obviously a chemist's packet, sealed with red wax and
tied with blue string.  Not having seen it before he picked it up,
and looked at it.  It was addressed to himself, and was marked "By
Passenger Train--to be called for."

The Principal felt his thin hair rising from his scalp.  Something he
had forgotten had come back upon him with the force and suddenness of
a blow.  Off and on for a week he had suffered from nervous
headaches.  Somebody had recommended an American patent medicine and
he had written to Douglas for it.  The Douglas chemist had replied
that it was coming by the afternoon steamer, and he would send it on
to Castletown by the last train.  The letter had arrived when he was
in class, and Jamieson the valet, being out of reach, he had asked
Stowell, who was at hand, to go to the Station for the parcel after
preparation and leave it on his Library table.  And then the headache
had passed off, and in the pressure of the examination he had
forgotten the whole matter!

The Principal got up again.  His limbs felt rigid, and he had the
sickening sensation of his body shrinking into insignificance.  At
that moment there came a knocking at his door.  He could not answer
at first and the knocking was repeated.

"Come in then," he said, and Gell entered, his face flooded with
tears.

He knew the boy as one who was nearly always in trouble, and his
first impulse was to drive him out.

"Why do you come here?  Go to your house-master, or to your head,
or...."

"It's about Stowell himself, Sir.  He's innocent," said Gell.

"Innocent?"

"Yes, Sir--it was I," said Gell.  And then came a flood of words,
blurted out like water from an inverted bottle.  It was true that he
was with the girl last night, but it was a lie that he had made a
practice of walking out with her.  She came from the north of the
island, a farm near his home, and he hadn't known she was living in
Castletown until he met her in the town yesterday afternoon.  They
were on the Darby Haven Road, just beyond the college cricket ground,
about nine o'clock, when the blackguards dropped out on them from the
Hango Hill ruins and started to rag him.  It was true he smashed them
and he would do it again, and worse next time, but it was another lie
that he had done it with a stick.  _They_ had the stick, and it was
just when he was knocking out one of them that the other aimed a blow
at him which fell on his chum instead and tumbled him over
insensible.  The girl had gone off screaming before that, and seeing
the police coming up he had leapt into the cricket ground and got
back into school by the lavatory window.

"But why, boy .... why .... why didn't you say all this in school
this morning?"

"I was afraid, Sir," said Gell, and then came the explanation he had
given to Stowell.  He had been afraid his father would get to know,
and the girl's father, too--that was to say her step-father.  Her
step-father was a tenant of his own father's; they were always at
cross purposes, and he had thought if the girl got into any trouble
at the High Bailiff's and it came out that he had been the cause of
it, her step-father....

"Who is he?  What's his name?"

"Dan Collister--but they call him Baldromma after the farm, Sir."

"That wind-bag and agitator who is always in the newspapers?"

"Yes, Sir."

"But, good heavens, boy, don't you see what you've done for
me?--allowed me to punish an innocent person?"

"Yes, I know," said Gell, and then, through another gust of sobs,
came further explanations.  It had all been over before he had had
time to think.  The Principal had said that nobody knew, and he had
thought he had only to hold his tongue and nothing would be found
out.  But if he had known that Stowell knew, and that he had been out
himself....

"And did he know?"

"Yes, Sir.  He saw me with Bessie Collister as he was going to the
station and he thought he couldn't get out of this himself without
letting me in for it."

"Do you mean to tell me that he took that punishment to .... to save
you from being discovered?"

Gell hesitated for a moment, then choked down his sobs, and said with
a defiant cry:

"Yes, he did--to save me, and the school, and .... and you, too, Sir."

The Principal staggered back a step, and then said: "Leave me, boy,
leave me."

He did not go to bed that night, or to school next day, or the day
after, or the day after that.  On the fourth day he wrote a long
letter to the Deemster, telling him with absolute truthfulness what
had happened, and concluding:

"That is all, your Honour, but to me it is everything.  I have not
only punished an innocent boy, but one who, in taking his punishment,
was doing an act of divine unselfishness.  I am humiliated in my own
eyes.  I feel like a little man in the presence of your son.  I can
never look into his face again.

"My first impulse was to resign my post, but on second thoughts I
have determined to leave the issue to your decision.  If I am to
remain as head of your school you must take your boy away.  If he is
to stay I must go.  Which is it to be?"




CHAPTER TWO

THE BOYHOOD OF VICTOR STOWELL

Deemster Stowell was the only surviving member of an old Manx family.
They had lived for years beyond memory at Ballamoar (the Great Place)
an estate of nearly a thousand acres on the seaward angle of the
Curragh lands which lie along the north-west of the island.  The
fishermen say the great gulf-stream which sweeps across the Atlantic
strikes the Manx coast at that elbow.  Hence the tropical plants
which grow in the open at Ballamoar, and also the clouds of
snow-white mist which too often hang over it, hiding the house, and
the lands around, and making the tower of Jurby Church on the edge of
the cliff look like a lighthouse far out at sea.

The mansion house, in the Deemster's day, was a ramshackle old place
which bore signs of having been altered and added to by many
generations of his family.  It stood back to the sea and facing a
broad and undulating lawn, which was bordered by lofty elms that were
inhabited by undisturbed colonies of rooks.  From a terrace behind,
opening out of the dining-room, there was a far view on clear days of
the Mull of Galloway to the north, and of the Morne Mountains to the
west.  People used to say--

"The Stowells have caught a smatch of the Irish and the Scotch in
their Manx blood."

The Deemster was sixty years of age at that time.  A large, spare man
with an almost Jovian white head, clean-shaven face, powerful yet
melancholy eyes, bold yet sensitive features and long yet delicate
hands--a strong, silent, dignified, rather solemn personality.

He was a man of the highest integrity.  Occupying an office too often
associated, in his time, with various forms of corruption, the breath
of scandal never touched him.  He was a legislator, as well as a
Judge, being _ex officio_ a member of the little Manx Parliament, but
in his double capacity (so liable to abuse) nobody with a doubtful
scheme would have dared to approach him.

"What does the old Deemster say?"--the answer to that question often
settled a dispute, for nobody thought of appealing against his
judgment.

"Justice is the strongest and most sacred thing on earth"--that was
his motto, and he lived up to it.

His private life had been saddened by a great sorrow.  He married,
rather late in life, a young Englishwoman, out of Cumberland--a
gentle creature with a kind of moonlight beauty.  She died four or
five years afterwards and the Manx people knew little about her.  To
the last they called her the "Stranger."

The Deemster bore his loss in characteristic silence.  Nobody
intruded on his sorrow, or even entered his house, but on the day of
the funeral half "the north" lined the long grass-grown road from the
back gates of Ballamoar to the little wind-swept churchyard over
against the sea.  He thanked none of them and saluted none, but his
head was low as his coach passed through.

Next day he took his Court as usual, and from that day onward nobody
saw any difference in him.  But long afterwards, Janet Curphey, the
lady housekeeper at Ballamoar, was heard to say in the village
post-office, which was also the grocer's shop, that every morning
after breakfast the Deemster had put a vase of fresh-cut flowers on
the writing-desk in his library under his young wife's portrait,
until it was now a white-haired man who was making his daily offering
to the picture of a young woman.

"Aw, yes, Mrs. Clucas, yes!  And what did it matter to the woman to
be a stranger when she was loved like that?"

The "Stranger" had left a child, and this had been at once the
tragedy and the triumph of her existence.  Although an ancient family
of exceptional longevity the Stowells had carried on their race by a
very thin line.  One child, rarely two, never three, and only one son
at any time--that had been all that had stood from generation to
generation between the family name and extinction.  After three years
of childlessness the Deemster's wife had realised the peril, and, for
her husband's sake, begun to pray for a son.  With all her soul she
prayed for him.  The fervour of her prayers made her a devoutly
religious woman.  When her hope looked like a certainty her joy was
that of an angel rejoicing in the goodness and greatness and glory of
God.  But by that time the sword had almost worn out its scabbard.
She had fought a great fight and under the fire of her spirit her
body had begun to fail.

The Deemster had sent for famous physicians and some of them had
shaken their heads.

"She may get through it; but we must take care, your Honour, we must
take care."

Beneath his calm exterior the Deemster had been torn by the red
strife of conflicting hopes, but his wife had only had one desire.
When her dread hour came she met it with a shining face.  Her son was
born and he was to live, but she was dying.  At the last moment she
asked for her husband, and drew his head down to her.

"Call him Victor," she said--she had conquered.



II

It was then that the lady housekeeper took service at Ballamoar.
Janet Curphey was the last relic of a decayed Manx family that had
fallen on evil times, and having lost all she had come for life.  She
quickly developed an almost slave-like devotion to the Deemster
(during her first twenty years she would never allow anybody else to
wait on him at table) as well as a motherly love for his motherless
little one.  The child called her his mother, nobody corrected him,
and for years he knew nothing to the contrary.

He grew to be a braw and bright little man, and was idolized by
everybody.  Having no relations of his own, except "mother," and the
Deemster, he annexed everybody else's.  Bobbie, the young son of the
Ballamoar farmer (there was a farm between the mansion-house and the
sea) called his father "Dad," so Robbie Creer was "Dad" to Victor
too.  The old widow in the village who kept the post-office-grocer's
shop was "Auntie Kitty" to her orphan niece, Alice, so she was
"Auntie Kitty" to Victor also.

"Everybody loves that child," said Janet.  It was true.  As far back
as that, under God knows what guidance, he was laying his anchor deep
for the days of storm and tempest.

During his earlier years he saw little of his father, but every
evening after his bath he was taken into the Library to bid
Good-night to him, and then the Deemster would lift him up to the
picture to bid Good-night to his mother also.

"You must love and worship her all your life, darling.  I'll tell you
why, some day."

He was a born gipsy, often being lost in the broad plantations about
the house, and then turning up with astonishing stories of the
distances he had travelled.

"I didn't went no farther nor Ramsey to-day, mother"--seven miles as
the crow flies.

He was born a poet too, and after the Deemster had made a "Limerick"
on his Christian name, he learnt to rhyme to the same measure, making
quatrains almost as rapidly as he could speak, though often with
strange words of his own compounding.  Thus he celebrated his pet
lamb, his kid, his rabbits, the rooks on the lawn, and particularly a
naughty young pony his father had given him, who "lived in the fiel'"
and whom he "wanted to go to Peel," but whenever he went out to fetch
her she "always kicked up her heel."  Janet thought this marvellous,
miraculous.  It was a gift!  The little prophet Samuel might have
been more saintly but he couldn't have been more wonderful.

Janet was not the only one to be impressed.  It is known now that day
by day the Deemster copied the boy's rhymes, with much similar
matter, into a leather-bound book which he had labelled strangely
enough, "Isabel's Diary."  He kept this secret volume under lock and
key, and it was never seen by anyone else until years afterwards,
when, in a tragic hour, the childish jingles in the Judge's sober
handwriting, under the eyes that looked at them, burnt like flame and
cut like a knife.

It was remarked by Janet that the Deemster's affection for the child
grew greater, while the expression of it became less as the years
went on.  "Is the boy up yet?" would be the first word he would say
when she took his early tea to him in the morning; and if a long day
in the Courts kept him from home until after the child had been put
to bed, he would never sit down until he had gone upstairs to look at
the little one in his cot.

In common with other imaginative children brought up alone the boy
invented a playmate, but contrary to custom his invisible comrade was
of the opposite sex, not that of the little dreamer.  He called her
"Sadie," nobody knew why, or how he had come by the name, for it was
quite unknown in the island.  "Sadie" lived with her mother, "Mrs.
Corlett," in the lodge of Ballamoar, which had been empty and shut up
since "the Stranger" died, when the coachman, who had occupied it,
was no longer needed.  On returning from some of his runaway jaunts
the boy accounted for his absence by saying he had been down to the
gate to see "Sadie."  He filled the empty house with an entire scheme
of domestic economy, and could tell you all that happened there.

"Sadie was peeling the potatoes this morning and Mrs. Corlett was
washing up, mamma."

His pony's name was Molly and by six years of age he had learnt to
ride her with such ease and confidence that to see them cantering up
the drive was to think that boy and pony must be a single creature.
Molly developed a foal, called Derry, which always wanted to be
trotting after its mother.  That suited the boy perfectly.  Derry had
to carry "Sadie"--a rare device which enabled his invisible comrade
to be nearly always with him.

But at length came a dire event which destroyed "Sadie."  The master
of Ballamoar was rising seven when a distant relative of the Derby
family (formerly the Lords of Man) was appointed Lieutenant-Governor
of the island.  This was Sir John Stanley, an ex-Indian officer--a
man in middle life, not brilliant, but the incarnation of
commonsense, essentially a product of his time, firm of will,
conservative in opinions, impatient of all forms of romantic
sentiment, but kindly, genial and capable of constant friendship.

The Deemster and the new Governor, though their qualities had points
of difference, became good friends instantly.  They met first at the
swearing-in at Castle Rushen where, as senior Judge of the island,
the Deemster administered the oath.  But their friendship was sealed
by an experience in common--the Governor having also lost a beloved
wife, who had died in childbirth, leaving him with an only child.
This was a girl called Fenella, a year and a half younger than
Victor, a beautiful little fairy, but a little woman, too, with a
will of her own also.

The children came together at Ballamoar, the Governor having brought
his little daughter, with her French governess, on his first call.
There was the usual ceremonious meeting of the little people, the
usual eyeing of each other from afar, the usual shy aloofness.  Then
came swift comradeship, gurgling laughter, a frantic romping round
the rooms, and out on to the lawn, and then--a wild quarrel, with
shrill voices in fierce dispute.  The two fathers rose from their
seats in the Library and looked out of the windows.  The girl was
running towards the house with screams of terror, and the boy was
stoning her off the premises.

"You mustn't think as this is your house, 'cause it isn't."

Janet made peace between them, and the children kissed at parting,
but going home in the carriage Fenella confided to the French
governess her fixed resolve to "marry to a girl," not a boy, when her
time came to take a husband.

The effect on Victor was of another kind but no less serious.  It was
remarked that the visit of little Fenella Stanley had in some
mysterious way banished his invisible playmate.  Sadie was
dead--stone dead and buried.  No more was ever heard of her, and Mrs.
Corlett's cottage returned to its former condition as a closed-up
gate-lodge.  When Derry trotted by Molly's side there was apparently
somebody else astride of her now.  But--strange whispering of
sex--whoever she was the boy never helped her to mount, and when she
dismounted he always looked another way.



III

Four years passed, and boy and girl met again.  This time it was at
Government House and the boot was on the other leg.  Fenella, a tall
girl for her age, well-grown, spirited, a little spoiled, was playing
tennis with the three young Gell girls--daughters of a Manx family of
some pretensions.  When Victor, in his straw hat and Eton jacket,
appeared in the tennis court (having driven over with his father and
been sent out to the girls by the Governor) the French governess told
Fenella to let him join in the game.  She did so, taking a racquet
from one of the Gell girls and giving it to the boy.  But though
Victor, who was now at the Ramsey Grammar School, could play cricket
and football with any boy of his age on the island, he knew nothing
about tennis, and again and again, in spite of repeated protests,
sent the balls flying out of the court.

The Gells tittered and sniffed, and at length Fenella, calling him a
booby, snatched the racquet out of his hand and gave it back to the
girl.  At this humiliation his eyes flashed and his cheeks coloured,
and after a moment he marched moodily back to the open window of the
drawing-room.  There the Governor and the Deemster were sitting, and
the Governor said,

"Helloa!  What's amiss?  Why aren't you playing with the girls?"

"Because I'm not," said the boy.

"Victor!" said the Deemster, but the boy's eyes had began to fill, so
the matter ended.

There was a show of peace when the girls came in to tea, but on
returning to Ballamoar the boy communicated to Janet in "open Court"
his settled conviction that "girls were no good anyway."

Boy and girl did not meet again for yet another four years and then
the boot had changed its leg once more.  By that time Victor had made
his boy-friendship.  It was with Alick Gell, brother of the three
Gell girls and only son of Archibald Gell, a big man in Manxland,
Speaker of the House of Keys, the representative branch of the little
Manx Parliament.  Archibald Gell's lands, which were considerable,
made boundary with the Deemster's, and his mansion house was the next
on the Ramsey Road, but his principal activities were those of a
speculative builder.  In this capacity he had put up vast numbers of
boarding-houses all over the island to meet the needs of the visiting
industry, borrowing from English Insurance Companies enormous sums on
mortgage, which could only be repaid by the thrift and forethought of
a second generation.

Alick knew what was expected of him, but down to date he had shown no
promise of capacity to fulfil his destiny.  He had less of his
father's fiery energy than of the comfortable contentment of his
mother, who came of a line of Manx parsons, always shockingly
ill-paid, generally thriftless and sometimes threadbare.  Yet he was
a lovable boy, not too bright of brain but with a heart of gold and a
genuine gift of friendship.

At the Ramsey Grammar School he had attached himself to Victor,
fetching and carrying for him, and looking up to him with worshipful
devotion.  Now they were together at King William's College, the
public school of the island, fine lads both, but neither of them
doing much good there.

It was the morning of the annual prize day at the end of the summer
term.  The Governor had come to present the prizes, and he was
surrounded by all the officials of Man, except the Deemster, who
rarely attended such functions.  The boys were on platforms on either
side of the hall, and the parents were in the body of it, with the
wives and sisters of the big people in the front row, and Fenella,
the Governor's daughter, now a tall girl in white, with her French
governess, in the midst of them.

At this ceremony Gell played no part, and even Stowell did not shine.
One boy after another went down to a tumult of hand-clapping and
climbed back with books piled up to his chin.  When Stowell's turn
came, the Principal, who had been calling out the names of the
prize-winners, and making little speeches in their praise, tried to
improve the occasion with a moral homily.

"Now here," he said, making one of his bird-like steps forward, "is a
boy of extraordinary talents--quite extraordinary.  Yet he has only
one prize to receive.  Why?  Want of application!  If boys of such
great natural gifts .... yes, I might almost say genius, would only
apply themselves, there is nothing whatever, at school or in after
life...."

P'shew!  During this astonishing speech Stowell was already on the
platform, only a pace back from the Principal, in full view of
everybody, with face aflame and a burning sense of injustice.  And,
although, when the interlude was over, and he stepped forward to
receive his Horace (he had won the prize for Classics) the Governor
rose and shook hands with him and said he was sure the son of his old
friend, the Deemster, would justify himself yet, and make his father
proud of him, he was perfectly certain that Fenella Stanley's eyes
were on him and she was thinking him a "booby."

But his revenge came later.  In the afternoon he captained in the
cricket match, with fifteen of the junior house against the school
eleven.  Things went badly for the big fellows from the moment he
took his place at the wicket, so they put on their best and fastest
bowlers.  But he scored all round the wicket for nearly an hour,
driving the ball three times over the roof of the school chapel and
twice into the ruins beyond the Darby-Haven road, and carrying his
bat for more than sixty runs.  Then, as he came in, the little
fellows who had been frantic, and Gell, who had been turning
cart-wheels in delirious excitement, and the big fellows, who had
been beaten, stood up together and cheered him lustily.

But at that moment he wasn't thinking about any of them.  He
knew--although, of course, he did not look--that in the middle of the
people in the pavilion, who were all on their feet and waving their
handkerchiefs, there was Fenella Stanley, with glistening eyes and
cheeks aglow.  Perhaps she thought he would salute her now, or even
stop and speak.  But no, not likely!  He doffed his cap to the
Governor as he ran past, but took no more notice of the Governor's
winsome daughter than if she had been a crow.



IV

After that--nothing!  Neither of the boys distinguished himself at
college.  This was a matter of no surprise to the masters in Gell's
case, but in Stowell's it was a perpetual problem.  Their favourite
solution was that the David-and-Jonathan friendship between two boys
of widely differing capacity was at the root of the trouble--Gell
being slow and Stowell unwilling to shame him.

As year followed year without tangible results the rumour came home
to Ballamoar that the son of the Deemster was not fulfilling
expectations.  "_Traa de liooar_" (time enough) said Robbie Creer of
the farm; but Dan Baldromma, of the mill-farm in the glen, who prided
himself on being no respecter of persons, and made speeches in the
market-place denouncing the "aristocraks" of the island, and
predicting the downfall of the old order, was heard to say he wasn't
sorry.

"If these young cubs of the Spaker and the Dempster," said Dan,
"hadn't been born with the silver spoon in their mouths we should be
hearing another story.  When the young birds get their wings push
them out of the nest, I say.  It's what I done with my own
daughter--my wife's, I mane.  Immajetly she was fifteen I packed her
off to sarvice at the High Bailiff's at Castletown, and now she may
shift for herself for me."

The effect on the two fathers was hardly less conflicting.  The
Speaker stormed at his son, called him a "poop" (Anglo-Manx for
numskull), wondered why he had troubled to bring a lad into the world
who would only scatter his substance, and talked about making a new
will to protect his daughters and to save the real estate which the
law gave his son by heirship.

The Deemster was silent.  Term by term he read, without comment, the
Principal's unfavourable reports, with the "ifs" and "buts" and
"althoughs," which were intended to soften the hard facts with
indications of what might have been.  And he said not a word of
remonstrance or reproach when the boy came home without prizes,
though he wrote in his leather-bound book that he felt sometimes as
if he could have given its weight in gold for the least of them.

At seventeen and a half Stowell became head of the school, not so
much by scholastic attainment as by seniority, by proficiency in
games and by influence over the boys.  But even in this capacity he
had serious shortcomings.  Gell had by this time developed a
supernatural gift of getting into scrapes, and Stowell, as head boy,
partly responsible for his conduct, often allowed himself to become
his scapegoat.

Then the rumour came home that Victor was not only a waster but a
wastrel.  Janet wouldn't believe a word of it, 'deed she wouldn't,
and "Auntie Kitty" said the boy was the son of the Deemster, and she
had never yet seen a good cow with a bad calf.  But Dan Baldromma was
of another opinion.

"The Dempster may be a grand man," said Dan, "but sarve him right, I
say.  Spare the rod, spoil the child!  Show me the man on this island
will say I ever done that with my own child--my wife's, I mane."

Finally came a report of the incident on the Darby-Haven road.  John
Cæsar, a "lump" of a lad, son of Qualtrough, the butcher (a
respectable man and a member of the Keys), had been brutally
assaulted while doing his best to protect a young nurse-girl from the
unworthy attentions of a college boy.  The culprit was Victor
Stowell, and the father of the victim had demanded his prosecution
with the utmost rigour of the law.  But out of respect for the
Deemster, and regard for the school, he was not to be arrested on
condition that he was to be expelled.

For three days this circumstantial story was on everybody's lips, yet
the Deemster never heard it.  But he was one of those who learn ill
tidings without being told, and see disasters before they happen, so
when the Principal's letter came he showed no surprise.

Janet saw him coming downstairs dressed for dinner (he had dressed
for dinner during his married days and kept up the habit ever
afterwards, though he nearly always dined alone) just as old Willie
Killip, the postman, with his red lantern at his belt, came through
the open porch to the vestibule door.  Taking his letter and going
into the Library, he had stood by the writing desk under the
"Stranger's" picture, while he opened the envelope and looked at the
contents of it.  His face had fallen after he read the first page,
and it was the same as if the sun was setting on the man, but when he
turned the second it had lightened, and it was just as if the day was
dawning on him.

Then, without a moment's hesitation, he sat at the desk and wrote a
telegram for old Willie to take back.  It was to the Principal at
King William's, and there was only one line in it--

"Send him home--_Stowell_."

After that--Janet was ready to swear on the Holy Book to it--he rose
and looked up into the "Stranger's" face and said, in a low voice
that was like that of a prayer:

"It's all right, Isobel--it is well."




CHAPTER THREE

FATHERS AND SONS

Next day the Deemster drove to Douglas to meet his son coming back.
The weather was cold, he had to leave home in the grey of morning,
and he was driving in an open dog-cart, but the Deemster knew what he
was doing.  Ten minutes before the train came in from Castletown he
had drawn up in the station yard.  The passengers came through from
the platform and saw him there, and he sainted some of them.  Cæsar
Qualtrough was among them, a gross-bodied and dark-faced man, darker
than ever that day with a look of animosity and scorn.

When, at the tail of the crowd, Victor came, in the sour silence of
the disgraced, no longer wearing his college cap, and with his
discoloured college trunk being trundled behind him, the Deemster
said nothing, but he indicated the seat by his side, and the boy
climbed up to it.  Then with his white head erect and his strong eyes
shining he drove out of the station yard.

It was still early morning and he was in no hurry to return home.
For half an hour he passed slowly through the principal thoroughfares
of the town, bowing to everybody he knew and speaking to many.  It
was market day and he made for the open space about the old church on
the quay, where the farmers' wives were standing in rows with their
baskets of butter and eggs, the farmers' sons with their tipped-up
carts of vegetables, and the smaller of the farmers themselves, from
all parts of the island, with their carcases of sheep and oxen.
Without leaving his seat the Deemster bought of several of them and
had his purchases packed about the college trunk behind him.

It was office hours by this time and he began to call on his friends,
leaving Victor outside to take care of the horse and dog-cart.  His
first call was on the Attorney-General, Donald Wattleworth, who had
been an old school-fellow of his own at King William's, where forty
odd years ago he had saved him from many troubles.

The Attorney was now a small, dapper, very correct and rather
religious old gentleman (he had all his life worn a white tie and
elastic side-boots), with the round and wrinkled face that is
oftenest seen in a good old woman.  For a quarter of an hour the
Deemster talked with him on general subjects, his Courts and
forthcoming cases, without saying a word about the business which had
brought him to Douglas.  But the Attorney divined it.  From his chair
at his desk on the upper story he could see Victor, with his pale
face, in the dog-cart below, twiddling the slack of the reins in his
nervous fingers, and when the Deemster rose to go he followed him
downstairs to the street, and whispered to the boy from behind, as
his father was taking his seat in front,

"Cheer up, my lad!  Many a good case has a bad start, you know."

The Deemster's last call was at Government House, and again Victor,
to his relief, was left outside.  But when, ten minutes later, the
Governor, with his briar-root pipe in his hand, came into the porch
to see the Deemster off, and found Victor in the dog-cart, looking
cold and miserable, with his overcoat buttoned up to his throat, he
stepped out bareheaded, with the wind in his grey hair, and shook
hands with him, and said,

"Glad to see you again, my boy.  You remember my girl, Fenella?  Yes?
Well, she's at college now, but she'll be home for her holiday one of
these days--and then I must bring her over to see you.  Good-bye!"

The Deemster was satisfied.  Not a syllable had he said from first to
last about the bad story that had come from Castletown, but before he
left Douglas that day, it was dead and done for.

"Now we'll go home," he said, and for two hours thereafter, father
and son, sitting side by side, and never speaking except on
indifferent subjects, followed the high mountain road, with its far
view of Ireland and Scotland, like vanishing ghosts across a broken
sea, the deep declivity of the glen, with Dan Baldromma's flour mill
at the foot of it, and the turfy lanes of the Curraghs, where the
curlews were crying, until they came to the big gates of Ballamoar,
with the tall elms and the great silence inside of them, broken only
by the loud cawing of the startled rooks, and then to Janet, in her
lace cap, at the open door of the house, waiting for her boy and
scarcely knowing whether to laugh or cry over him.



II

Meantime there had been another and very different homecoming.  In a
corner of an open third-class carriage of the train that brought
Victor Stowell from Castletown there was a little servant girl with a
servant's tin box, tied about with a cord, on the seat beside her.
This was Bessie Collister, dismissed from the High Bailiff's service
and being sent home to her people.  She was very young, scarcely more
than fifteen, with coal-black eyes and eyebrows and bright
complexion--a bud of a girl just breaking into womanhood.

Dan Baldromma had no need to say she was not his daughter.  Her
fatherhood was doubtful.  Rumour attributed it to a dashing young
Irish Captain, who sixteen years before had put into Ramsey for
repairs after his ship, a coasting schooner had run on the Carrick
rock.  Half the girls of "the north" had gone crazy over this
intoxicating person, and in the wild conflict as to who should win
him Liza Corteen had both won and lost, for as soon as his ship was
ready for sea he had disappeared, and never afterwards been heard of.

Liza's baby had been born in the following spring, and two years
later Dan Collister, a miller from "the south" who had not much cause
to be proud of his own pedigree, had made a great virtue of marrying
her, child and all, being, as he said, on "conjergal" subjects a man
of liberal views and strong opinions.

In the fourteen years that followed Liza had learned the liberality
of Dan's views on marriage and Bessie the strength of his hand as
well as opinions.  But while the mother's nerves had been broken by
the reproaches about her "by-child," which had usually preceded her
husband's night-long nasal slumbers, the spirits of the girl had not
suffered much, except from fear of a certain strap which he had hung
in the ingle.

"The world will never grow cold on that child," people used to say in
her earliest days, and it seemed as if it was still true, even in the
depth of her present trouble.

The open railway carriage was full of farming people going up to
market, and among them were two buxom widows with their baskets of
butter and eggs on their broad knees and their faces resplendent from
much soap.  Facing these was a tough and rough old sinner who
bantered them, in language more proper to the stud and the farmyard,
on their late married lives and the necessity of beginning on fresh
ones.  The unvarnished gibes provoked loud laughter from the other
passengers, and Bessie's laugh was loudest of all.  This led to the
widows looking round in her direction, and presently, in the
recovered consciousness of her situation, she heard whispers of
"Johnny Qualtrough" and the "Dempster's son" and then turned back to
her window and cried.

There was no one to help her with her luggage when she had to change
at Douglas, so she carried her tin box across the platform to the
Ramsey train.  The north-going traffic was light at that hour, and
sitting in an empty compartment she had time to think of home and
what might happen when she got there.  This was a vision of Dan
Baldromma threatening, her mother pleading, herself screaming and all
the hurly-burly she had heard so often.

But even that did not altogether frighten her now, for she had one
source of solace which she had never had before.  She was wearing a
big hat with large red roses, a straw-coloured frock and openwork
stockings, with shoes that were much too thin for the on-coming
winter.  And looking down at these last and remembering she had
bought them out of her wages, expressly for that walk with Alick
Gell, she thought of something that was immeasurably more important
in her mind than the incident which had led to all the trouble--Alick
had kissed her!

She was still thinking of this, and tingling with the memory of it,
and telling herself how good she had been not to say who her boy was
when the "big ones" questioned her, and how she would never tell
that, 'deed no, never, no matter what might happen to other people,
when the train drew up suddenly at the station that was her
destination and she saw her mother, a weak-eyed woman, with a
miserable face, standing alone on the shingly platform.

"Sakes alive, girl, what have thou been doing now?" said Mrs.
Collister, as soon as the train had gone on.  "Hadn't I trouble
enough with thy father without this?"

But Bessie was in tears again by that time, so mother and daughter
lifted the tin box into a tailless market cart that stood waiting in
the road, climbed over the wheel to the plank seat across it, and
turned their horse's head towards home.

Dan Baldromma's mill stood face to the high road and back to the glen
and the mountains--a substantial structure with a thatched and
whitewashed dwelling-house attached, a few farm buildings and a patch
of garden, which, though warm and bright in summer under its mantle
of gillie-flower and fuchsia, looked bleak enough now with its row of
decapitated cabbage stalks and the straw roofs of its unprotected
beehives.

As mother and daughter came up in their springless cart they heard
the plash of the mill-wheel and the groan of the mill-stone, and by
that they knew that their lord and master was at work within.  So
they stabled their horse for themselves, tipped up their cart and
went into the kitchen--a bare yet clean and cosy place, with earthen
floor, open ingle and a hearth fire, over which a kettle hung by a
sooty chain.

But hardly had Bessie taken off her coat and hat and sat down to the
cup of tea her mother had made her when the throb of the mill-wheel
ceased, and Dan Baldromma's heavy step came over the cobbled "street"
outside to the kitchen door.

He was a stoutly-built man, short and gross, with heavy black
eyebrows, thick and threatening lips, a lowering expression, and a
loud and growling voice.  Seeing the girl at her meal he went over to
the ingle and stood with his back to the fire, and his big hands
behind him, while he fell on her with scorching sarcasm.

"Well!  Well!" he said.  "Back again, I see!  And you such a grand
woman grown since you were sitting and eating on that seat before.
Only sixteen years for Spring, yet sooreying (sweet-hearting)
already, I hear!  With no wooden-spoon man neither, like your
father--your stepfather, I mane!  The son and heir of one of the big
ones of the island, they're telling me!  And yet you're not thinking
mane of coming back to the house of a common man like me!  Wonderful!
Wonderful!"

Bessie felt as if her bread-and-butter were choking her, but Dan,
whose impure mind was not satisfied with the effect of his sarcasm,
began to lay out at her with a bludgeon.

"You fool!" he said.  "You've been mixing yourself up with bad doings
on the road, and now a dacent lad is lying at death's door through
you, and the High Bailiff is after flinging you out of his house as
unfit for his family--that's it, isn't it?"

Bessie had dropped her head on the table, but Mrs. Collister's
frightened face was gathering a look of courage.

"Aisy, man veen, aisy," said the mother.  "Take care of thy tongue,
Dan."

"My tongue?" said Dan.  "It's my character I have to take care of,
woman.  When a girl is carrying a man's name that has no legal claim
to it, he has a right to do that, I'm thinking."

"But the girl's only a child--only a child itself, man."

"Maybe so, but I've known girls before now, not much older than she
is, to bring disgrace into a dacent house and lave others to live
under it.  'What's bred in the bone comes out in the flesh,' they're
saying."

The woman flinched as if the lash of a whip had fallen on her face,
and Dan turned back to the girl.

"So you're a fine lady that belaves in the aristocracks, are you?
Well, I'm a plain man that doesn't, and nobody living in my house can
have any truck with them."

"But goodness me, Dan, the boy is not a dale older than herself,"
said Mrs. Collister.  "Nineteen years at the most, and a fine boy at
that."

"Chut!  Nineteen or ninety, it's all as one to me," said Dan, "and
this island will be knowing what sort of boy he is before he has done
with it."

The young cubs of the "big ones" began early.  They treated the
daughters of decent men as their fathers treated everybody--using
them, abusing them, and then treading on them like dirt.

"But Manx girl are hot young huzzies," said Dan, "and the half of
them ought to be ducked in the mill pond....  What did you expect
this one would do for you, girl, after you had been colloquing and
cooshing and kissing with him in the dark roads?  Marry you?  Make
you the mistress of Ballamoar?  Bessie Corteen, the by-child of Liza
Collister?  You toot!  You booby!  You boght!  You damned idiot!"

Just then there was the sound of wheels on the road, and Dan walked
to the door to look out.  It was the Deemster's dog-cart, coming down
the glen, with father and son sitting side by side.  The women heard
the Deemster's steady voice saluting the miller as he went by.

"Fine day, Mr. Collister!"

"Middlin', Dempster, middlin'," said Dan, in a voice that was like a
growl.  And then, the dog-cart being gone, he faced back to the girl
and said, with a bitter snort:

"So that's your man, is it--driving with the Dempster?"

"No, no," said the girl, lifting her face from the table.

"No?  Hasn't he been flung out of his college for it--for what came
of it, I mane?  And isn't the Dempster taking him home in disgrace?"

"It was a mistake--it wasn't the Dempster's son," said Bessie.

"Then who was it?"

There was no reply.

"Who was it?"

"I can't tell you."

"You mean you won't.  We'll see about that, though," said Dan, and
returning to the fireplace, he took a short, thick leather strap from
a nail inside the ingle.

At sight of this the girl got up and began to scream.  "Father!
Father!  Father!"

"Don't father me!  Who was it?" said Dan.

The blood was rising in the mother's pallid face.  "Collister," she
cried, "if thou touch the girl again, I'll walk straight out of thy
house."

"Walk, woman!  Do as you plaze!  But I must know who brought disgrace
on my name.  Who was it?"

"Don't!  Don't!  Don't!" cried the girl.

The mother stepped to the door.  "Collister," she repeated, "for
fourteen years thou's done as thou liked with me, and I've been
giving thee lave to do it, but lay another hand on my child..."

"No, no, don't go, mother.  I'll tell him," cried the girl.  "It was
.... it was Alick Gell."

"You mean the son of the Spaker?"

"Yes."

"That's good enough for me," said Dan, and then, with another snort,
half bitter and half triumphant, he tossed the strap on to the table,
went out of the house and into the stable.

An hour afterwards, in his billycock hat and blue suit of Manx
homespun, he was driving his market-cart up the long, straight,
shaded lane to the Speaker's ivy-covered mansion-house, with the
gravelled courtyard in front of it, in which two or three peacocks
strutted and screamed.



III

The Speaker had only just returned from Douglas.  There had been a
sitting of the Keys that day and he had hurried home to tell his wife
an exciting story.  It was about the Deemster.  The big man was
down--going down anyway!

Archibald Gell was a burly, full-bearded man of a high complexion.
Although he belonged to what we called the "aristocracy" of the
island, the plebeian lay close under his skin.  Rumour said he was
subject to paralysing brain-storms, and that he could be a
foul-mouthed man in his drink.  But he was generally calm and nearly
always sober.

His ruling passion was a passion for power, and his fiercest lust was
a lust of popularity.  The Deemster was his only serious rival in
either, and therefore the object of his deep and secret jealousy.  He
was jealous of the Deemster's dignity and influence, but above all
(though he had hitherto hidden it even from himself) of his son.

Stooping over the fire in the drawing-room to warm his hands after
his long journey, he was talking, with a certain note of
self-congratulation, of what he had heard in Douglas.  That ugly
incident at King William's had come to a head!  The Stowell boy had
been expelled, and the Deemster had had to drive into town to fetch
him home.  He, the Speaker, had not seen him there, but Cæsar
Qualtrough had.  Cæsar was a nasty customer to cross (he had had
experience of the man himself), and in the smoking-room at the Keys
he had bragged of what he could have done.  He could have put the
Deemster's son in jail!  Yes, ma'am, in jail!  If he had had a mind
for it young Stowell might have slept at Castle Rushen instead of
Ballamoar to-night.  And if he hadn't, why hadn't he?  Cæsar wouldn't
say, but everybody knew--he had a case coming on in the Courts
presently!

"Think of it," said the Speaker, "the first Judge in the island in
the pocket of a man like that!"

Mrs. Gell, who was a fat, easy-going, good-natured soul, with the
gentle eyes of a sheep (her hair was a little disordered at the
moment, for she had only just awakened from her afternoon sleep, and
was still wearing her morning slippers), began to make excuses.

"But mercy me, Archie," she said, "what does it amount to after
all--only a schoolboy squabble?"

"Don't talk nonsense, Bella," said the Speaker.  "It may have been a
little thing to begin with, but the biggest river that ever plunged
into the sea could have been put into a tea-cup somewhere."

This ugly business would go on, until heaven knew what it would come
to.  The Deemster, who had bought his son's safety from a blackguard
without bowels, would never be able to hold up his head again--he,
the Speaker never would, he knew that much anyway.  As for the boy
himself, he was done for.  Being expelled from King William's no
school or university across the water would want him, and if he ever
wished to be admitted to the Manx Bar it would be the duty of his own
father to refuse him.

"So that's the end of the big man, Bella--the beginning of the end
anyway."

Just then the peacocks screamed in the courtyard---they always
screamed when visitors were approaching.  Mrs. Gell looked up and the
Speaker walked to the window and looked out without seeing anybody.
But at the next moment the drawing-room door was thrust open and
their eldest daughter, Isabella, with wide eyes and a blank
expression was saying breathlessly,

"It's Alick.  He has run away from school."

Alick came behind her, a pitiful sight, his college cap in his hand,
his face pale, drawn and smudged with sweat, his hair disordered, his
clothes covered with dust, and his boots thick with soil.

"What's this she says--that you've run away?" said the Speaker.

"Yes, I have--I told her so myself," said Alick, who was half crying.

"Did you though?  And now perhaps you will tell me something--why?"

"Because Stowell had been expelled, and I couldn't stay when he was
gone."

"Couldn't you now?  And why couldn't you?"

"He was innocent."

"Innocent, was he?  Who says he was innocent?"

"I do, Sir, because .... it was _I_."

It was a sickening moment for the Speaker.  He gasped as if something
had smitten him in the mouth, and his burly figure almost staggered.

"You did it .... what Stowell was expelled for?" he stammered.

"Yes, Sir," said Alick, and then, still with the tremor of a sob in
his voice, he told his story.  It was the same that he had told twice
before, but with a sequel added.  Although he had confessed to the
Principal, they had expelled Stowell.  Not publicly perhaps, but it
had been expelling him all the same.  Four days they had kept him in
his study, without saying what they meant to do with him.  Then this
morning, while the boys were at prayers they had heard carriage
wheels come up to the door of the Principal's house, and when they
came out of Chapel the Study was empty and Stowell was gone.

"And then," said the Speaker (with a certain pomp of contempt now),
"without more ado you ran away?"

"Yes, Sir," answered the boy, "by the lavatory window when we were
breaking up after breakfast."

"Where did you get the money to travel with?"

"I had no money, Sir.  I walked."

"Walked from Castletown?  What have you eaten since breakfast?"

"Only what I got on the road, Sir."

"You mean .... begged?"

"I asked at a farm by Foxdale for a glass of milk and the farmer's
wife gave me some bread as well, Sir."

"Did she know who you were?"

"She asked me--I had to answer her."

"You told her you were my son?"

"Yes, Sir."

"And perhaps--feeling yourself such a fine fellow, what you were
doing there, and why you were running away from school?"

"Yes, Sir."

"You fool!  You infernal fool!"

The Speaker had talked himself out of breath and for a moment his
wife intervened.

"Alick," she said, "if it was you, as you say, who walked out with
the girl, who was she?"

"She was .... a servant girl, mother."

"But who?"

"Tut!" said the Speaker, "what does it matter who? .... You say you
confessed to the Principal?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Then if he chose to disregard your confession, and to act on his own
judgment, what did it matter to you?"

"It was wrong to expel Stowell for what I had done and I couldn't
stand it," said the boy.

"You couldn't stand it!  You dunce!  If you were younger I should
take the whip to you."

The Speaker was feeling the superiority of his son's position, but
that only made him the more furious.

"I suppose you know what this running away will mean when people come
to hear of it?"

Alick made no answer.

"You've given the story a fine start, it seems, and it won't take
long to travel."

Still Alick made no answer.

"Stowell will be the martyr and you'll be the culprit, and that ugly
incident of the boy with the broken skull will wear another
complexion."

"I don't care about that," cried Alick.

"You don't care!"

"I had to do my duty to my chum, Sir."

"And what about your duty to me, and to your mother and to your
sisters?  Was it your 'duty' to bring disgrace on all of us?"

Alick dropped his head.

"You shan't do that, though, if I can help it.  Go away and wash your
dirty face and get something on your stomach.  You're going back to
Castletown in the morning."

"I won't go back to school, Sir," said Alick.

"Won't you, though?  We'll see about that.  I'll take you back."

"Then I'll run away again, Sir."

"Where to, you jackass?  Not to this house, I promise you."

"I'll get a ship and go to sea, Sir."

"Then get a ship and go to sea, and to hell, too, if you want to.
You fool!  You damned blockhead!"

After the Speaker had swept the boy from the room, his mother was
crying.  "Only eighteen years for harvest," she was saying, as if
trying to excuse him.  And then, as if seeking to fix the blame
elsewhere, she added,

"Who was the girl, I wonder?"

"God's sake, woman," cried the Speaker, "what does it matter who she
was?  Some Castletown huzzy, I suppose."

The peacocks were screaming again; they had been screaming for some
time, and the front-door bell had been ringing, but in the hubbub
nobody had heard them.  But now the parlour-maid came to tell the
Speaker that Mr. Daniel Collister of Baldromma was in the porch and
asking to see him.



IV

Dan came into the room with his rolling walk, his eyes wild and dark,
his billy-cock hat in his hand and his black hair 'strooked' flat
across his forehead, where a wet brush had left it.

"Good evening, Mr. Spaker!  You too, Mistress Gell!  It's the twelfth
to-morrow, but I thought I would bring my Hollantide rent to-day."

"Sit down," said the Speaker, who had given him meagre welcome.

Dan drew a chair up to a table, took from the breast pocket of his
monkey-jacket a bulging parcel in a red print handkerchief (looking
like a roadman's dinner), untied the knots of it, and disclosed a
quantity of gold and silver coins, and a number of Manx bank notes
creased and soiled.  These he counted out with much deliberation amid
a silence like that which comes between thunderclaps--the Speaker,
standing by the fireplace, coughing to compose himself, his wife
blowing her nose to get rid of her tears, and no other sounds being
audible except the nasal breathing of Dan Baldromma, who had hair
about his nostrils.

"Count it for yourself; I belave you'll find it right, Sir."

"Quite right.  I suppose you'll want a receipt?"

"If you plaze."

The Speaker sat at a small desk, and, as well as he could (for his
hand was trembling), he wrote the receipt and handed it across the
table.

"And now about my lease," said Dan.

"What about it?" said the Speaker.

"It runs out a year to-day, Sir, and Willie Kerruish, the advocate,
was telling me at the Michaelmas mart you were not for renewing it.
Do you still hould to that, Mr. Spaker?"

"Certainly I do," said the Speaker.  "I don't want to enter into
discussions, but I think you'll be the better for another landlord
and I for another tenant."

There was another moment of silence, broken only by Dan's nasal
breathing, and then he said:

"Mr. Spaker, the Dempster's son has come home in disgrace, they're
saying."

"What's that got to do with it?" said the Speaker.

"My daughter has come home in disgrace, too--my wife's daughter, I
mane."

Mrs. Gell raised herself in her easy chair.  "Was it your girl,
then..." she began.

"It was, ma'am.  Bessie Corteen--Collister, they're calling her."

"What's all this to me?" said the Speaker.

"She's telling me it's a mistake about the Dempster's son, Sir.  It
was somebody else's lad did the mischief."

"I see you are well informed," said the Speaker.  "Well, what of it?"

"Cæsar Qualtrough might have prosecuted but he didn't, out of respect
for the Dempster," said Dan.

"So they _say_," said the Speaker.

"But if somebody gave him a scute into the truth he mightn't be so
lenient with another man--one other anyway."

The Speaker was silent.

"There have been bits of breezes in the Kays, they're telling me."

Still the Speaker was silent.

"Cæsar and me were middling well acquaint when I was milling at
Ballabeg and he was hutching at Port St. Mary--in fact we were same
as brothers."

"I see what you mean to do, Mr. Collister," said the Speaker, "but
you can save yourself the trouble.  My lad is in this house now if
you want to know, but I'm sending him to sea, and before you can get
to Castletown he will have left the island."

"And what will the island say to that, Sir?" said Dan.  "That
Archibald Gell, Spaker of the Kays, chairman of everything, and the
biggest man going, barring the Dempster, has had to send his son away
to save him from the lock-up."

The Speaker took two threatening strides forward, and Dan rose to his
feet.  There was silence again as the two men stood face to face, but
this time it was broken by the Speaker's breathing also.  Then he
turned aside and said, with a shamefaced look:

"I'll hear what Kerruish has to say.  I have to see him in the
morning."

"I lave it with you, Sir; I lave it with you," said Dan.

"Good-day, Mr. Collister."

"Good-day to you, Mr. Spaker!  And you, too, Mistress Gell!" said
Dan.  But having reached the door of the room he stopped and added:

"There's one thing more, though.  If my girl is to live with me she
must work for her meat, and there must be no more sooreying."

"That will be all right--I know my son," said the Speaker.

"And I know my step-daughter," said Dan.  "These things go on.  A
rolling snowball doesn't get much smaller.  Maybe that Captain out of
Ireland isn't gone from the island yet--his spirit, I mane.  Keep
your lad away from Baldromma.  It will be best, I promise you."

Then the peacocks in the courtyard screamed again and the jolting of
a springless cart was heard going over the gravel.  The two in the
drawing-room listened until the sound of the wheels had died away in
the lane to the high road, and then the Speaker said:

"That's what comes of having children!  We thought it bad for the
Deemster to be in the pocket of a man like Cæsar Qualtrough, but to
be under the harrow of Dan Baldromma!"

"Aw, dear!  Aw, dear!" said Mrs. Gell.

"He was right about Alick going to sea, though," said the Speaker,
and, touching the bell for the parlour-maid, he told her to tell his
son to come back to him.

Alick was in the dining-room by this time, washed and brushed and
doing his best to drink a pot of tea and eat a plate of
bread-and-butter, amid the remonstrances of his three sisters, who,
seeing events from their own point of view, were rating him roundly
on associating with a servant.

"I wonder you hadn't more respect for your sisters?" said Isabella.

"What are people to think of us--Fenella Stanley, for instance?" said
Adelaide.

"I declare I shall be ashamed to show my face in Government House
again," said Verbena.

"Oh, shut up and let a fellow eat," said Alick, and then something
about "first-class flunkeys."

But at that moment the parlour-maid came with his father's message
and he had to return to the drawing-room.

"On second thoughts," said the Speaker, "we have decided that you are
not to go to sea.  We have only one son, and I suppose we must do our
best with him.  You haven't brains enough for building, so, if you
are not to go back to school, you must stay on the land and learn to
look after these farms in Andreas."

"I'll do my best to please you, Sir," said Alick.

"But listen to this," said the Speaker, "Dan Baldromma has been here,
and we know who the girl was.  There is to be no more mischief in
that quarter.  You must never see her or hear from her again as long
as you live--is it a promise?"

"Yes, Sir," said Alick, and he meant to keep it.




CHAPTER FOUR

ENTER FENELLA STANLEY

The winter passed, the spring came and nothing was done for Victor.
His father made no effort to provide for his future, whether at
another school, at college, or in a profession.

"I wonder at the Dempster, I really do," said Auntie Kitty.

"Leave him alone," said Janet--it would all come right some day.

Left to himself, Victor became the great practical joker of the
countryside.  Every prank for which no other author could be found
was attributed to him.  If any pretentious person fell into a
ridiculous mare's nest people would say,

"But where was young Stowell while that was going on?"

In this dubious occupation of "putting the fun" on folks he soon
found the powerful assistance of Alick Gell.  That young gentleman,
for his training on the land, had been handed over to the charge of
old Tom Kermode, the Speaker's steward.  But Tom, good man, foresaw
the possibility of being supplanted in his position if the Speaker's
son acquired sufficient knowledge to take it, and therefore he put no
unnecessary obstacles in the way of the boy's industrious efforts not
to do so.  On the contrary he encouraged them, with the result that
Alick and Victor foregathered again, and having nothing better to do
than to make mischief, they proceeded to make it.

How much the Deemster heard of his son's doings nobody knew.  Twice a
day he sat at meat with him without speaking a word of reproof.  But
Janet saw that when report was loudest he wrote longer than usual in
his leather-bound book before going to bed, and that his head was
lower than ever in the morning.

At length Janet entered into a secret scheme with herself for lifting
it up again.  This consisted in prompting her dear boy to do
something, to make an effort, to justify himself.  So making excuse
of the Deemster's business she would take Victor's breakfast to his
bedroom before he had time to get up to it.

It was a bright room to the north-east, flooded with sunshine at that
season after she had drawn the blind, and fresh, after she had thrown
up the sash, with morning air that smacked of the blue sea (which
came humming down from the dim ghost of Galloway), and relished of
the sandy soil of Man, with its yellowing crops of rustling oats,
over which the larks and the linnets tumbled and sang.

Victor was always asleep when she went in at eight o'clock, for he
slept like a top, and after she had scolded him for lying late, he
would sit up in bed, with his sleepy eyes and tousled hair, to eat
his breakfast, while she turned his stockings, shook out his shirt,
gathered up his clothes (they were usually distributed all over the
room) and talked.

Victor noticed whatever she began upon she always ended with the same
subject.  It was Fenella Stanley.  That girl was splendid, and she
was getting on marvellously.  Still at college "across"?  Yes,
Newnham they were calling it, and she was carrying everything before
her--prizes, scholarships, honours--goodness knows what.

The island was ringing with her praise but Janet was hearing
everything direct from Miss Green, the Governor's housekeeper, with
whom she kept up a constant correspondence.  That woman worshipped
the girl--you never saw the like, never!  As for the Governor, it was
enough to bring tears into a woman's eyes to see how proud he was of
his daughter.  When he had news that she had taken a new honour it
was like new life to the old man.  You would think the sun was
shining all over the house, and that was saying something there--the
Keys being so troublesome.  Of course he was "longing" for his
daughter to come home to him, and that was only natural, but knowing
how hard she was working now--six in the morning until six in the
evening, Catherine Green was saying--he was waiting patiently.

"Aw, yes, yes, that's the way with fathers," said Janet.  "Big men as
they may be themselves, they are prouder of their children's
successes than of their own--far prouder."

The effect of Janet's scheme was the reverse of what she had
expected.  By a law of the heart of a boy, which the good soul knew
nothing of, Victor resented the industry, success and reputation of
Fenella Stanley.  It was a kind of rebuke to his own idleness.  The
girl was a bookworm and would develop into a blue-stocking!  He had
not seen her for years and did not want to see her, but in his mind's
eye he pictured her as she must be now--a pale-faced young person in
a short blue skirt and big boots, with cropped hair and perhaps
spectacles!

Describing this vision to Alick Gell, as they were drying themselves
on the shore after a swim, Victor said with emphasis that if there
was one thing he hated it was a woman who was half a man.

"Same here," said Alick, who had had liberal doses of the same
medicine at home, less delicately administered by his sister Isabella.

But where Janet failed, a greater advocate, nature itself, was soon
to succeed.  The boys were then in their nineteenth year, a pair of
full-grown, healthy, handsome lads as ever trod the heather, or
stripped to the sea, but there was a great world which had not yet
been revealed to either of them--the world of woman.  That world was
to be revealed to one of them now.



II

It was a late afternoon early in September.  The day had been
wonderful.  Over the bald crown above Druidsdale the sun came
slanting across the Irish Sea from a crimsoning sky beyond the purple
crests of the Morne mountains.  Stowell and Gell had been camping out
for two days in the Manx hills, and, parting at a junction of paths,
Gell had gone down towards Douglas while Stowell had dropped into the
cool dark depths of the glen that led homewards.

Victor was as brown as a berry.  He was wearing long, thick-soled
yellow boots almost up to his knees, with his trousers tucked into
them, a loose yellow shirt, rolled up to the elbows of his strong
round arms, no waistcoat, his Norfolk jacket thrown over his left
shoulder, and a knapsack strapped on his back.

With long, plunging strides he was coming down the glen, singing
sometimes in a voice that was partly drowned by the louder water
where it dipped into a dub, when, towards the Curragh end of it, on
the "brough" side of the river, he came upon a startling vision.

It was a girl.  She was about seventeen years of age, bare-headed and
bare-footed, and standing ankle-deep in the water.  Her lips, and a
little of the mouth at either side, were stained blue with
blackberries--she had clearly been picking them and had taken off
shoes and stockings to get at a laden bush.

She was splendidly tall, and had bronze brown hair, with a glint of
gold when the sun shone on it.  The sun was shining on it now,
through a gap in the thinning trees that overhung the glen, and with
the leaves pattering over her head, and the river running at her
feet, it was almost as if she herself were singing.

With her spare hand she was holding up her dress, which was partly of
lace--light and loose and semi-transparent--and when a breeze, which
was blowing from the sea, lapped it about her body there was a hint
of the white, round, beautiful form beneath.  Her eyes were dark and
brilliantly full, and her face was magnificently intellectual, so
clear-cut and clean.  And yet she was so feminine, so womanly, such a
girl!

She must have heard Stowell's footsteps, and perhaps his singing as
he approached, for she turned to look up at him--calmly, rather
seriously, a little anxiously but without the slightest confusion.
And he looked at her, pausing to do so, without being quite aware of
it, and feeling for one brief moment as if wind and water had
suddenly stopped and the world stood still.

There was a moment of silence, in which he felt a certain chill, and
she a certain warmth, and both a certain dryness at the throat.  The
girl was the first to recover self-control.  Her face sweetened to a
smile, and then, in a voice that was a little husky, and yet sounded
to him like music, she said, as if she had asked and answered an
earlier question for herself:

"But of course you don't know who _I_ am, do you?"

He did.  Although she was so utterly unlike what he had expected
(what he had told himself he expected) he knew--she was Fenella
Stanley.

As often as he thought of it afterwards he could never be quite sure
what he had said to her in those first moments.  He could only guess
at what it must have been by his vivid memory of what she had said in
reply.

She watched him, womanlike, for a moment longer, to see what
impression she had made upon him, now that she knew what impression
he had made upon her.  Then she glanced down at her bare feet, that
looked yellow on the pebbles in the running water, and then at her
shoes and stockings, which, with her parasol, lay on the bank, and
said:

"I suppose you ought to go away while I get out of this?"

"Why?"

He never knew what made him say that, but she glanced up at him
again, with the answering sunshine of another smile, and said:

"Well, you needn't, if you don't want to."

After that she stepped out of the river, and sat on the grass to dry
her feet and pull on her stockings.  As she did so, and he stood
watching, forgetting (such was the spell of things) to turn his eyes
away, she shot another look up at him, and said:

"I remember that the last time I was in these parts you ordered me
off, Sir."

"And the last time I was at Government House you turned me out of the
tennis court," he answered.

She laughed.  He laughed.  They both laughed together.  Also they
both trembled.  But by the time she had put on her shoes he was
feeling braver, so he went down on his knees to tie her laces.

It was a frightening ordeal, but he got through at last, and to cover
their embarrassment, while the lacing was going on, they came to
certain explanations.

Yesterday the Governor had telegraphed to the Deemster that he would
like to fulfil his promise to visit Ballamoar and stay the night if
convenient.  So they had driven over in the carriage and arrived
about two hours ago, and were going back to-morrow morning.

"Of course you were not there when we came," she said, "being, it
seems, a gentleman of gipsy habits, so when Janet (I mean Miss
Curphey) mentioned at tea that you were likely to come down the glen
about sunset....

"Then you were coming to meet me?" he said.

She laughed again, having said more than she had intended and finding
no way of escape from it.

When all was done and he had helped her up (how his fingers tingled!)
and they stood side by side for the first time (she was less than
half a head shorter than himself and her eyes seemed almost on the
level of his own) and they were ready to go, he suddenly remembered
that they were on the wrong side for the road.  So if she hadn't to
take off her boots and stockings and wade through the water again, or
else walk half a mile down the glen to the bridge, he would have to
carry her across the river.

Without more ado she let him do it--picking her up in his quivering
arms and striding through the water in his long boots.

Then being dropped to her feet she laughed again; and he laughed, and
they went on laughing, all the way down the glen road, and through
the watery lanes of the Curragh, where the sally bushes were singing
loud in the breeze from the sea--but not so loud as the hearts of
this pair of children.



III

That night, after dinner, leaving the Deemster and the Governor at
the table, discussing insular subjects (a constitutional change which
was then being mooted), Victor took Fenella out on to the piazza,
(his mother had called it so), the uncovered wooden terrace which
overlooked the coast.

He was in a dark blue jacket suit, not yet having possessed evening
wear, but she was in a gauzy light dress with satin slippers, and her
bronze-brown hair was curled about her face in bewitching ringlets.

The evening was very quiet, almost breathless, with hardly a leaf
stirring.  The revolving light in the lighthouse on the Point of Ayre
(seven miles away on its neck of land covered by a wilderness of
white stones) was answering to the far-off gleam of the light on the
Mull of Galloway, while the sky to the west was a slumberous red, as
if the night were dreaming of the departed day.

They had not yet recovered from their experience in the glen, and,
sitting out there in the moonlight (for the moon had just sailed
through a rack of cloud), they were still speaking involuntarily, and
then laughing nervously at nothing--nothing but that tingling sense
of sex which made them afraid of each other, that mysterious call of
man to maid which, when it first comes, is as pure as an angel's
whisper.

"What a wonderful day it has been!" she said,

"The most wonderful day I have ever known," he answered.

"And what a wonderful home you have here," she said.

"Haven't we?" he replied.  And then he told her that over there in
the dark lay Ireland, and over there Scotland, and over there
England, and straight ahead was Norway and the North Pole.

That caught them up into the zone of great things, the eternities,
the vast darkness out of which the generations come and towards which
they go; and, having found his voice at last, he began to tell her
how the island came to be peopled by its present race.

This was the very scene of the Norse invasion--the Vikings from
Iceland having landed on this spot a thousand years ago.  When the
old sea king (his name was Orry) came ashore at the Lhen (it was on a
starlight night like this) the native inhabitants of Man had gone
down to challenge him.  "Where do you come from?" they had cried, and
then, pointing to the milky way, he had answered, "That's the road to
my country."  But the native people had fought him to throw him back
into the sea--yes, men and women, too, they say.  This very ground
between them and the coast had been the battlefield, and it must
still be full of the dead who had died that day.

"What a wonderful story!" she said.

"Isn't it?"

"The women fought too, you say?"

"Thousands of them, side by side with their men, and they were the
mothers of the Manxmen of to-day."

"How glorious!  How perfectly glorious!"

And then, clasping her hands about her knee, and looking steadfastly
into the dark of the night, she, on her part, told him something.  It
was about a great new movement which was beginning in England for a
change in the condition of women.  Oh, it was wonderful!  Miss
Clough, the Principal, and all the girls at Newnham were ablaze with
it, and it was going to sweep through the world.  In the past the
attitude towards women of literature, law, even religion, had been so
unfair, so cruel.  She could cry to think of it--the long martyrdom
of woman through all the ages.

"Do you know," she said, "I think a good deal of the Bible itself is
very wicked towards women .... That's shocking, isn't it?"

"Oh, no, no," said Victor--he was struggling to follow her, and not
finding it easy.

"But all that will be changed some day," said Fenella.

It might require some terrible world-trouble to change it, some
cataclysm, some war, perhaps (she didn't know what), but it _would_
be changed--she was sure it would.  And then, when woman took her
rightful place beside man, as his equal, his comrade, his other self,
they would see what would happen.

"What?"

All the old laws, so far as they concerned the sexes (and which of
them didn't?) would have to be made afresh, and all the old tales
about men and women (and which of them were not?) would have to be
re-told.

"The laws made afresh, you say?"

"Yes, and some of the judges, too, perhaps."

"And all the old tales re-told?"

"Every one of them, and then they will be new ones, because woman
will have a new and far worthier place in them."

They had left the stained-glass door to the dining-room ajar, and at
a pause in Fenella's story they heard the voice of the Governor, in
conversation with the Deemster on the constitutional question, saying,

"Well, well, old friend, I don't suppose either the millennium will
dawn or the deluge come whether the Keys are reformed or not."

That led Victor to ask Fenella what her father thought of her
opinions.

"Oh well," she said, "he doesn't agree.  But then .... (her voice was
coming with a laugh from her throat now) I don't quite approve of
father."

This broke the spell of their serious talk, and he asked if she would
like to go down to an ancient church on the seaward boundary of the
old battlefield--it was a ruin and looked wonderful in the moonlight.

She said she would love to, and, slipping indoors to make ready, she
came back in a moment with a silk handkerchief about her head, which
made her face intoxicating to the boy who was waiting for it, and
feeling for the first time the thrilling, quivering call of body and
soul that is the secret of the continued race.  So off they went
together with a rhythmic stride, down the sandy road to the shore--he
bareheaded, and she in her white dress and the satin slippers in
which her footsteps made no noise.

The ruined church was on a lonesome spot on the edge of the sea, with
the sea's moan always over it, and the waves thundering in the dark
through the cavernous rocks beneath.

Fenella bore herself bravely until they reached the roofless chancel,
where an elm tree grew, and the moonlight, now coming and going among
the moving clouds, was playing upon the tomb of some old churchman
whose unearthed bones the antiquaries had lately covered with a stone
and surrounded by an iron railing, and then she clutched at Victor's
arm, held on tightly and trembled like a child.

That restored the balance of things a little, and going home (it was
his turn to hold on now) he could not help chaffing her on her
feminine fear.  Was that one of the old stories that would have to be
re-told .... when the great world-change came, the great cataclysm?

"Oh, that?  Well, of course .... (he believed she was blushing,
though in the darkness he could not see) women may not have the
strength and courage of men--the physical courage, I mean...."

"Only physical?" he asked.

She stammered again, and said that naturally men would always be men
and women, women.

"You don't want that altered, do you?" she said.

"Oh no, not I, not a bit," said Victor, and then there was more
laughter (rather tremulous laughter now) and less talking for the
next five minutes.

They had got back to the piazza by this time, and knowing that her
face was in the shaft of light that came through the glass door from
the dining-room, Fenella turned quickly and shot away upstairs.

For the first time in his life Victor did not sleep until after three
o'clock next morning.  He saw the moonlight creep across the
cocoa-nut matting on his bedroom floor and heard the clock on the
staircase landing strike every hour from eleven to three.

Now that he was alone he was feeling degraded and ashamed.  Here was
this splendid girl touching life at its core, dealing with the great
things, the everlasting things, attuning her heart to the future and
the big eternal problems .... while he!

But under all the self-reproach there was something joyous too,
something delicious, something that made him hot and dizzy and would
not let him sleep, because a blessed hymn of praise was singing
within, and it was so wonderful to be alive.

He could have kicked himself next morning when he awoke late, and
found the broad sunshine in his bedroom, and heard from Janet that
Fenella had been up two hours and all over the stables and the
plantation.

After breakfast (downstairs for him this time) the Governor's big
blue landau, with two fine Irish bays, driven by an English coachman,
came sweeping round to the front and he went out in the morning
sunshine, with the Deemster and Janet, to see their guests away.

The Governor shook hands with him warmly, but Fenella (who was
wearing a coat and some kind of transparent green scarf about her
neck, and thanked the Deemster and kissed Janet as she was stepping
into the carriage) looked another way when she was saying good-bye to
him.

He slammed the door to, and stepped back, and the carriage started,
and (while the other two went indoors) he stood and looked after it
as it went winding down the drive, amid the awakened clamour of the
rooks, until it came to the turn where the trees were to hide it, and
then Fenella faced round and waved a hand to him.  At the next moment
the carriage had gone--and then the sun went out, and the world was
dead.

That night after dinner Victor told his father that he would like to
go into the Attorney-General's office, as a first step towards taking
up the profession of the law.

"Good--very good," said the Deemster.




CHAPTER FIVE

THE STUDENT-AT-LAW

Fenella Stanley had not awakened early, as Janet had supposed--she
had never been to sleep.  Her bedroom had been to the north-east, and
she, too, had seen the moonlight creep across her floor; and when it
was gone, and all else was dark, she had felt the revolving light
from the stony neck of the Point of Ayre passing every other minute
over her closed eyelids.

She was too much of a woman not to know what was happening to her,
but none the less she was confused and startled.  Do what she would
to compose herself she could not lie quiet for more than a moment.
Her blood was alternately flowing through her veins like soft milk
and bounding to her heart like a geyser.

As soon as the daylight came and the rooks began to caw she got up
and dressed, and went through the sleeping house, with its drawn
blinds, and let herself out by the glass door to the piazza.

Of course she turned towards the shore.  It was glorious to be down
there alone, on the ribbed sand, with the salt air on her lips and
the odour of the seaweed in her nostrils and the rising sun
glistening in her eyes over the shimmering and murmuring sea.  But it
was still sweeter to return by the sandy road, past the chancel of
the old church (how silly to have been afraid of it!) and to see
footsteps here and there--his and hers.

The world was astir by this time, with the sun riding high and the
earth smoking from its night-long draughts of dew, the sheep munching
the wet grass in the fields on either side, and the cattle lowing in
the closed-up byres, waiting to be milked.  But the white blind of
Victor's room (she was sure it was Victor's) was still down, like a
closed eyelid, and she had half a mind to throw a handful of gravel
at it and then dart indoors.

Back in the house there were some embarrassing moments.  Breakfast
was rather a trying time after Victor came down, looking a little
sheepish, and that last moment on the path was difficult, when he was
holding the carriage door open and saying good-bye to her; but she
could not deny herself that wave of the hand as they turned the
corner of the drive--she was perfectly sure he must be looking after
them.

After that--misery!  Every day at Government House seemed to bring
her an increasing heartache, and when she returned to College a
fortnight later, and fell back into the swing of her former life
there (the glowing and thrilling life she had described to Victor) a
bitter struggle with herself began.

It was a struggle between the mysterious new-born desires of her
awakening womanhood and the task she had supposed to be her duty--to
consecrate her whole life to the liberation of her sex, giving up,
like a nun if need be, all the joys that were for ever whispering in
the ears of women, that she might devote herself body and soul to the
salvation of her suffering sisters.

Three months passed in which Fenella believed herself to be the
unhappiest girl in the world.  Moments of guilty joy and defiance
mingled with hours of self-reproach.  And then dear, good people were
sometimes so cruel!  Miss Green, her father's housekeeper, never
wrote without saying something about Victor Stowell.  He was a
student-at-law now, and was getting along wonderfully.

Once Miss Green enclosed a letter from Janet asking Fenella for her
photograph.  For nearly a week that was a frightful ordeal, but in
the end the woman triumphed over the nun and she sent the picture.

"Dear Janet," she wrote, "it was very sweet of you to wish for my
photograph to remind you of that dear and charming day I spent at
Ballamoar, so I have been into Cambridge and had one specially taken
for you, in the dress I wore on that lovely August afternoon which I
shall never forget...."

It had been a tingling delight to write that letter, but the moment
she had posted it, with the new Cambridge photograph, she could have
died of vexation and shame--it must be so utterly obvious whom she
had sent them to.

As the Christmas vacation approached she began to be afraid of
herself.  If she returned to the island she would be sure to see
Victor Stowell (he must be in Douglas now) and that would be the end
of everything.

After a tragic struggle, and many secret tears, she wrote to her
father to say what numbers of the Newnham girls were going to Italy
for the holidays and how she would love to see the pictures at
Florence.  To her consternation the Governor answered immediately,
saying,

"Excellent idea!  It will do you good, and I shall be happy to get
away from 'the Kays' for a month or two, so I am writing at once to
engage rooms at the Washington."

She could have cried aloud after reading this letter, but there was
no help for it now.

Truly, the heart of a girl is a deep riddle and only He Who made can
read it.



II

In the Attorney-General's office Victor Stowell was going from
strength to strength.  There was a vast deal of ordinary drudgery in
his probationary stage, but he was bearing it with amazing patience.
His natural talents were recognised as astonishing and he was being
promoted by rapid degrees.  After a few months the Attorney wrote to
the Deemster:

"Unless I am mistaken your boy is going to be a great lawyer--the
root of the matter seems to be in him."

Not content with the routine work of the office he took up (by help
of some scheme of University extension) the higher education which
had been cut short by his dismissal from King William's, and in due
course obtained degrees.  One day, after talking with Victor, the
Bishop of the island was heard to say:

"If that young fellow had been sent up to Oxford, as he ought to have
been, he might have taken a first-class in _Literae Humaniores_ and
became the most brilliant man of his year."

The Attorney-General's office was a large one, and it contained
several other students-at-law.  Among them now was Alick Gell, who
had prevailed upon his mother to prevail upon his father to permit
him to follow Stowell.

"God's sake, woman," the Speaker had said, "let him go then, and make
one more rascally Manx lawyer."

But neither Alick's industrious idleness, nor the distractions of a
little holiday town in its season, could tempt Stowell from his
studies.  His successes seemed lightly won, but Alick, who lodged
with him in Athol Street, knew that he was a hard worker.  He worked
early and late as if inspired by a great hope, a great ideal.

His only recreation was to spend his week-ends at home.  When he
arrived on the Saturday afternoons he usually found his father, who
was looking younger every day, humming to himself as he worked in an
old coat among the flowers in the conservatory.  At night they dined
together, and after dinner, if the evenings were cool, the Deemster
would call on him to stir the peats and draw up to the fire, and then
the old man would talk.

It was wonderful talking, but nearly always on the same subject--the
great Manx trials, the great crimes (often led up to by great
temptations), the great advocates and the great Deemsters.  Victor
noticed that whatever the Deemster began with he usually came round
to the same conclusion--the power and sanctity of Justice.  After an
hour, or more, he would rise in his stately way, to go to the blue
law-papers for his next Court which his clerk, old Joshua Scarf, had
laid out under the lamp on the library table, saying:

"That's how it is, you see.  Justice is the strongest and most sacred
thing in the world, and in the end it must prevail."

But Victor's greatest joy in his weekly visits to Ballamoar was to
light his candle at ten o'clock on the mahogany table on the landing
under the clock and fly off to his bedroom, for Janet would be there
at that hour, blowing up his fire, turning down his bed, opening his
bag to take out his night-gear and ready to talk on a still greater
subject.

With the clairvoyance of the heart of a woman who had never had a
lover of her own ("not exactly a real lover," she used to say) she
had penetrated the mystery of the change in Victor.  She loved to
dream about the glories of his future career (even her devotion to
the Deemster was in danger of being eclipsed by that) but above
everything else, about the woman who was to be his wife.

In some deep womanlike way, unknown to man, she identified herself
with Fenella Stanley and courted Victor for her in her absence.  She
had visions of their marriage day, and particularly of the day after
it, when they would come home, that lovely and beloved pair, to this
very house, this very room, this very bed, and she would spread the
sheets for them.

"Is that you, dear?" she would say, down on her knees at the fire, as
he came in with his candle.

And then he, too, would play his little part, asking about the
servants, the tenants, Robbie Creer, and his son Robin (now a big
fellow and the Deemster's coachman) and Alice and "Auntie Kitty," and
even the Manx cat with her six tailless kittens, and then, as if
casually, about Fenella.

"Any news from Miss Green lately, Janet?"

One night Janet had something better than news--a letter and a
photograph.

"There!  What do you think of that, now?"

Victor read the letter in its bold, clear, unaffected handwriting,
and then holding the photograph under the lamp in his trembling
fingers (Janet was sure they were trembling) he said, in a voice that
was also trembling:

"Don't you think she's like my mother--just a little like?"

"'Deed she is, dear," said Janet.  "You've put the very name to it.
And that's to say she's like the loveliest woman that ever walked the
world--in this island anyway."

Victor could never trust his voice too soon after Janet said things
like that (she was often saying them), but after a while he laughed
and answered:

"I notice she doesn't walk the island too often, though.  She hasn't
come here for ages."

"Oh, but she will, boy, she will," said Janet, and then she left him,
for he was almost undressed by this time, to get into bed and dream.



III

At length, Victor Stowell's term as a student-at-law came to an end
and he was examined for the Manx bar.  The examiner was the junior
Deemster of the island--Deemster Taubman, an elderly man with a
yellow and wrinkled face which put you in mind of sour cream.  He was
a bachelor, notoriously hard on the offences of women, having been
jilted, so rumor said, by one of them (a well-to-do widow), on whose
person or fortune he had set his heart or expectations.

Stowell and Gell went up together, being students of the same year,
and Deemster Taubman received them at his home, two mornings running,
in his dressing-gown and slippers.  Stowell's fame had gone before
him, so he got off lightly; but Gell came in for a double dose of the
examiner's severity.

"Mr. Gell," said Deemster Taubman, "if somebody consulted you in the
circumstance that he had lent five hundred pounds on a promissory
note, payable upon demand, but without security, to a rascal (say a
widow woman) who refused to pay and declared her intention of leaving
the island to-morrow and living abroad, what would you advise your
client to do for the recovery of his money?"

Alick had not the ghost of an idea, but knowing Deemster Taubman was
vain, and thinking to flatter him, he said,

"I should advise my client, your Honour, to lay the facts, in an _ex
parte_ petition before your Honour at your Honour's next Court" (it
was to be held a fortnight later) "and be perfectly satisfied with
your Honour's judgment."

"Dunce!" said Deemster Taubman, and sitting down to his desk, he
advised the Governor to admit Mr. Stowell but remand Mr. Gell for
three months' further study.

Victor telegraphed the good news to his father, packed up his
belongings in his lodging at Athol Street, and took the next train
back to Ballamoar.  Young Robbie Creer met him at the station with
the dog-cart, and took up his luggage, but Victor was too excited to
ride further, so he walked home by a short cut across the Curragh.

His spirits were high, for after many a sickening heartache from hope
deferred (the harder to bear because it had to be concealed) he had
done something to justify himself.  It wasn't much, it was only a
beginning, but he saw himself going to Government House one day soon
on a thrilling errand that would bring somebody back to the island
who had been too long away from it.

Of course he must speak to his own father first, and naturally he
must tell Janet.  But seeing no difficulties in these quarters he
went swinging along the Curragh lane, with the bees humming in the
gold of the gorse on either side of him and the sea singing under a
silver haze beyond, until he came to the wicket gate on the west of
the tall elms and passed through to the silence inside of them.

He found the Deemster in the conservatory, re-potting geraniums, and
when he came up behind with a merry shout, his father turned with
glad eyes, a little moist, wiped his soiled fingers on his old coat
and shook hands with him (for the first time in his life) saying, in
a thick voice,

"Good--very good!"

They dined together, as usual, and when they had drawn up at opposite
cheeks of the hearth, with the peat fire between them, the Deemster
talked as Victor thought he had never heard him talk before.

It was the proper aspiration of every young advocate to become a
Judge, and there was no position of more dignity and authority.
Diplomatists, statesmen, prime ministers and even presidents might be
influenced in their conduct by fears or hopes, or questions of
policy, but the Judge alone of all men was free to do the right, as
God gave him to see the right, no matter if the sky should fall.

"But if the position of the Judge is high," said the Deemster, "still
higher is his responsibility.  Woe to the Judge who permits personal
interests to pervert his judgment and thrice woe to him who commits a
crime against Justice."

Victor found it impossible to break in on that high theme with
mention of his personal matter, so, as soon as the clock on the
landing began to warn for ten he leapt up, snatched his candle, and
flew off to his bedroom in the hope of talk of quite another kind
with Janet.

But Janet was not there, and neither was his bed turned down as
usual, nor his night-gear laid out, nor his lamp lighted.  He had
asked for her soon after his arrival and been told that she had gone
to her room early in the afternoon, and had not since been heard of.

"Headache," thought Victor, remembering that she was subject to this
malady, and without more thought of the matter, he tumbled into bed
and fell asleep.

But the first sight that met his eyes when he opened them in the
morning was Janet, with a face dissolved in tears, and the tray in
her hand, asking him in a muffled voice to sit up to his breakfast.

"Lord alive, Janet, what's amiss?" he asked, but she only shook her
head and called on him to eat.

"Tell me what's happened," he said, but not a word would she say
until he had taken his breakfast.

He gulped down some of the food, under protest, Janet standing over
him, and then came a tide of lamentation.

"God comfort you, my boy!  God strengthen and comfort you!" said
Janet.

In the whirl of his stunned senses, Victor caught at the first
subject of his thoughts.

"Is it about Fenella?" he asked, and Janet nodded and-wiped her eyes.

"Is she--dead?"

Janet threw up her hands.  "Thank the Lord, no, not that, anyway."

"Is she ill?"

"Not that either."

"Then why make all this fuss?  What does it matter to me?"

"It matters more to you than to anybody else in the world, dear,"
said Janet.

Victor took her by the shoulders as she stood by his bed.  "In the
name of goodness, Janet, what is it?" he said.

It came at last, a broken story, through many gusts of breath, all
pretences down between them now and their hearts naked before each
other.

Fenella Stanley, who, since she left Newnham, had been working (as he
knew) as a voluntary assistant at some Women's Settlement in London,
had just been offered and had accepted the position of its resident
Lady Warden, and signed on for seven years.

"Seven years, you say?"

"Seven years, dear."

The Governor had prayed and protested, saying he had only one
daughter, and asking if she meant that he was to live the rest of his
life alone, but Fenella, who had written heart-breaking letters, had
held to her purpose.  It was like taking the veil, like going into a
nunnery; the girl was lost to them, they had seen the last of her.

"I had it all from Catherine Green," said Janet.

Willie Killip, the postman, had given her the letter just when she
was standing at the porch, looking down the Curragh lane for Victor,
and seeing him coming along with his high step and the sunset behind
him, swishing the heads off the cushags with his cane.

"I couldn't find it in my heart to tell you last night, and you
looking so happy, so I ran away to my room, and it's a sorrowful
woman I am to tell you this morning."

She knew it would be bitter hard to him--as hard as it must have been
to Jacob to serve seven years for Rachel and then lose her, and that
was the saddest story in the old Book, she thought.

"But we must bear it as well as we can, dear, and--who knows?--it may
all be for the best some day."

Victor, resting on his elbow, had listened with mouth agape.  The
flaming light which had crimsoned his sky for five long years,
sustaining him, inspiring him, had died out in an instant.  For some
moments he did not speak, and in the intervals of Janet's
lamentations nothing was audible but the cry of some sea-gulls who
had come up from the sea, where a storm was rising.  Then he began to
laugh.  It was wild, unnatural laughter, beginning thick in his
throat and ending with a scream.

"Lord, what a joke!" he cried.  "What a damned funny joke!"

But at the next moment he broke into a stifling sob, and fell face
down on to the pillow and soaked it with his tears.

Janet hung over him like a mother-bird over a broken nest, her
wrinkled face working hard with many emotions--sorrow for her boy and
even anger with Fenella.

"Aw, dear! aw, dear!" she moaned, "many a time I've wished I had been
your real mother, dear; but never so much as now that I might have a
right to comfort you."

At that word, though sadly spoken, Victor raised himself from his
pillow, brushed his eyes fiercely and said, in a firm, decided voice,

"That's all right, mother.  I've been a fool.  But it shall never
happen again--never!"




CHAPTER SIX

THE WORLD OF WOMAN

Victor Stowell spent his first two hours after Janet left him in
destroying everything which might remind him of Fenella.  Her
picture, which Janet had framed and hung over his mantel-piece, he
put face-down in a drawer.  The flowers she had placed in front of it
he flung out of the window.  A box full of newspaper cuttings and
extracts from books dealing with the hardships of the laws relating
to women (the collection of five laborious years) he stuffed into the
grate and set fire to.

But having done all this he found he had done nothing.  Only once,
since her childhood, had Fenella been to Ballamoar, yet she had left
her ghost all over it.  He could not sit on the piazza, or walk down
the sandy road to the sea, without being ripped and raked by the
thought of her.  And sight of the turn of the drive at which she had
waved her hand, and turned the glory of her face on him, was enough
to make the bluest sky a blank.

For a long month he went about with a look too dark for so young a
face and a step too heavy for so light a foot, blackening his fate
and his future.  He never doubted that he had lost something that
could never be regained.  Without blaming Fenella for so much as a
moment he felt humiliated and ashamed, and like a fool who had built
his house upon the sand.  God, how hollow living seemed!  Life had
lost its savour; effort was useless and there was nothing left in the
world but dead-sea fruit.

How much the Deemster had learnt of his trouble he never knew, but
one night, as they drew up to the cheeks of the hearth after dinner,
he said:

"Victor, how would you like to go round the world?  Travel is good
for a young man.  It helps him to get things into proportion."

Victor leapt at the prospect of escaping from Ballamoar, but thought
it seemly to say something about the expense.

"That needn't trouble you," said the Deemster, "and you wouldn't be
beholden to me either, for there is something I have never told you."

His mother had had a fortune of her own, and the last act of her
sweet life had been to make it over to her new-born son, at the
discretion of his father, signing her dear will a few minutes before
she died, against every prayer and protest, in the tragic and
unrecognizable handwriting of the dying.

"It was five hundred a year then," said the Deemster, "but I've not
touched it for twenty-four years, so it's nine hundred now."

"That's water enough to his wheel, I'm thinking," said Dan Baldromma,
when he heard of it, and Cæsar Qualtrough was known to say:

"It's a horse that'll drive him to glory or the devil, and I belave
in my heart I'm knowing which."

Two months later Victor Stowell was ready for his journey.  Alick
Gell was to go with him--that gentleman having scrambled through his
examination and prevailed on his mother to prevail on his father to
permit him to follow Stowell.

"God's sake, woman," the Speaker had said again, "let him go, and
give him the allowance he asks for, and bother me no more about him."

Turning westward the young travellers crossed the Atlantic; stood in
awe on the ship's deck at their first sight of the new world, with
its great statue of Liberty to guard its portals; passed over the
breathless American continent, where life scours and roars through
Time like a Neap tide on a shingly coast, casting up its pebbles like
spray; then through Japan, where it flows silent and deep, like a
mill race under adumbrous overgrowth; and so on through China, India
and Egypt and back through Europe.

It was a wonderful tour--to Gell like sitting in the bow of a boat
where the tumult of life was for ever smiting his face in freshening
waves; to Stowell (for the first months at least) like sitting
miserably in the stern, with only the backwash visible that was
carrying him away, with every heave of the sea, from something he had
left and lost.

But before long Stowell's heavy spirit regained its wings.  Although
he could not have admitted it even to himself without a sense of
self-betrayal, Fenella Stanley's face, in the throng of other and
nearer faces, became fainter day by day.  There are no more
infallible physicians for the heart-wounds inflicted by women than
women themselves, and when a man is young, and in the first short
period of virginal manhood, the world is full of them.

So it came to pass that whatever else the young men saw that was
wonderful and marvellous in the countries they passed through, they
were always seeing women's eyes to light and warm them.  And being
handsome and winsome themselves their interest was rewarded according
to the conditions--sometimes with a look, sometimes with a smile, and
sometimes in the freer communities, with a handful of confetti or a
bunch of spring flowers flung in their faces, or perhaps the tap of a
light hand on their shoulders.

Thus the thought of Fenella Stanley, steadily worn down in Victor's
mind, became more and more remote as time and distance separated
them, until at length there were moments when it seemed like a
shadowy memory.

Stowell and Gell were two years away, and when they returned home the
old island seemed to them to have dwarfed and dwindled, the very
mountains looking small and squat, and the insular affairs, which had
once loomed large, to have become little, mean and almost foolish.

"Now they'll get to work; you'll see they will," said Janet, and for
the first weeks it looked as if they would.

For the better prosecution of their profession, as well as to remove
the sense of rivalry, they took chambers in different towns, Stowell
in Old Post Office Place in Ramsey, and Gell in Preaching House Lane
in Douglas---two outer rooms each for offices and two inner ones for
residential apartments.

But having ordered their furniture and desks, inscribed their names
in brass on their door-posts ("VICTOR STOWELL, Advocate"), engaged
junior assistants to sit on high stools and take the names of the
clients who might call, and arranged for sleeping-out housekeepers to
attend to their domestic necessities (Victor's was a comfortable
elderly body, Mrs. Quayle, once a servant of his mother's at
Ballamoar, afterwards married to a fisherman, and then left a widow,
like so many of her class, when our hungry sea had claimed her man),
they made no attempt to practise, being too well off to take the
cases of petty larceny and minor misdemeanour which usually fall to
the High Bailiff's Court, and nobody offering them the cases proper
to the Deemster's.

Those were the days of Bar dinners (social functions much in favour
with our unbriefed advocates), and one such function was held in
honour of the returned travellers.  At this dinner Stowell, being the
principal speaker, gave a racy account of the worlds they had
wandered through, not forgetting the world of women--the sleepy
daintiness of the Japanese, the warm comeliness of the Italian, the
vivacious loveliness of the French, and above all, the frank
splendour of the American women, with their free step, their upturned
faces and their conquering eyes.

That was felt by various young Manxmen to be a feast that could be
partaken of more than once, so a club was straightway founded for the
furtherance of such studies.  It met once a week at Mount Murray, an
old house a few miles out of Douglas, in the middle of a forest of
oak and pine trees, now an inn, but formerly the home of a branch of
the Athols, when they were the Lords of Man, and kept a swashbuckler
court of half-pay officers who had come to end their days on the
island because the living and liquor were cheap.

One room of this house, the dining-room, still remained as it used to
be when the old bloods routed and shouted there, though its
coat-of-arms was now discoloured by damp and its table was as
worm-eaten as their coffins must have been.  And here it was that the
young bloods of the "Ellan Vannin" (the Isle of Man) held their
weekly revel--riding out in the early evening on their hired horses,
twenty or thirty together, sitting late over their cups and pipes,
and (the last toast drunk and the last story told) breaking up in the
dark of the morning, stumbling out to the front, where a line of
lanterns would be lining the path, the horses champing the gravel and
the sleepy stable-boys chewing their quids to keep themselves awake,
and then leaping into their saddles, singing their last song at the
full bellows of their lungs in the wide clearing of the firs to the
wondering sky, and galloping home, like so many Gilpins (as many of
them as were sober enough to get there at the same time as their
mounts) and clattering up the steep and stony streets of Douglas to
the scandal of its awakened inhabitants.

Victor Stowell was president of the "Ellan Vannin," and in that
character he made one contribution to its dare-devil jollity, which
terminated its existence and led to other consequences more material
to this story.



II

In his heavy days at Ballamoar, before he went abroad, his father's
house had been like a dam to which the troubled waters of the island
flowed--the little jealousies and envies of the island community, the
bickerings of church and chapel, of town and country, of town and
town, not to speak of the darker maelstrom of more unworthy quarrels.
While the Deemster had moved through all this with his calm dignity
as the great mediator, the great pacifier, Victor with his quick
brain and wounded heart had stood by, seeing all and saying nothing.
But now, making a call upon his memory, for the amusement of his
fellow clubmen, out of sheer high spirits and with no thought of
evil, he composed a number of four-line "Limericks" on the big-wigs
of the island.

Such scorching irony and biting satire had never been heard in the
island before.  If any pompous or hypocritical person (by preference
a parson, a local preacher, a High Bailiff or a Key) had a dark
secret, which he would have given his soul's salvation not to have
disclosed, it was held up, under some thin disguise, to withering
ridicule.

A long series of these reckless lampoons Victor fired off weekly over
the worm-eaten table at Mount Murray, to the delirious delight of the
clubmen, who, learning them by heart, carried them to their little
world outside, with the result that they ran over the island like a
fiery cross and set the Manx people aroar with laughter.

The good and the unco' good were scandalized, but the victims were
scarified.  And to put an end to their enemy, and terminate his
hostilities, these latter, laying their heads together to tar him
with his own brush, found a hopeful agency to their hand in the
person of a good-looking young woman of doubtful reputation called
Fanny, who kept a house of questionable fame in the unlit reaches of
the harbour south of the bridge.

One early morning word went through the town like a searching wind
that Fanny's house had been raided by the police, in the middle of
the night, about the hour when the Clubmen usually clattered back to
Douglas.  The raid had been intended to capture Stowell, but had
failed in its chief object--that young gentleman having gone on, when
some of his comrades had stopped, put up his horse at his
job-master's and proceeded to Gell's chambers where he slept on his
nights in town.  Others of his company had also escaped by means of a
free fight, in which they had used their hunting crops and the police
their truncheons.  But Alick Gell, with his supernatural capacity for
getting into a scrape, had been arrested and carried off, with Fanny
herself, to the Douglas lock-up.

Next day these two were brought up in the Magistrate's Court, which
was presided over by his Worship the Colonel of the "Nunnery," a
worthy and dignified man, to whom the turn of recent events was
shocking.  The old Court-house was crowded with the excited
townspeople, and as many of the Clubmen were present as dare show
their bandaged heads out of their bedrooms.

When the case was called, and the two defendants entered the dock,
they made a grotesque and rather pitiful contrast--Gell in his tall,
slim, fair-haired gentlemanliness, and Fanny in her warm fat
comeliness, decked out in some gaudy finery which she had sent home
for, having been carried off in the night with streaming locks and
naked bosom.

In the place of the Attorney-General, the prosecutor was a
full-bodied, elderly advocate named Hudgeon, who had been the subject
of one of the most withering of the lampoons.  He opened with bitter
severity, spoke of the case as the worst of the kind the island had
known; referred to the "most unholy hour of the morning" which had
lately been selected for scenes of unseemly riot; said his "righteous
indignation" was roused at such disgraceful doings, and finally hoped
the Court would, for the credit of lawyers "hereafter" make an
example, "without respect of persons," of the representative of a
group of young roysterers, who were a disgrace to the law, and had
nothing better to do (so rumour and report were saying) than to
traduce the good names of their elders and betters.

When he had examined the constables and closed his case it looked as
if Gell were in danger of Castle Rushen, and the consequent wrecking
of his career at the Bar, and that nothing was before Fanny but
banishment from the island, with such solace as the bribe of her
employers might bring her.

But then, to a rustle of whispering, Stowell, who was in wig and gown
for the first time, got up for the defence.  It had been expected
that he would do so, and many old advocates who had heard much of
him, had left their offices, and filled the advocates' box, to see
for themselves what mettle he was made of.

They had not long to wait.  In five minutes he had made such play
with his "learned friend's" "unholy hour of the morning," "his
righteous indignation" and his "hereafter" for lawyers (not without
reference to a traditional personage with horns and a fork) that the
merriment of the people in Court rose from a titter to a roar, which
the ushers were powerless to suppress.  Again and again the writhing
prosecutor, with flaming face and foaming and spluttering mouth,
appealed in vain to the Bench, until at length, getting no
protection, and being lashed by a wit more cutting than a whip, he
gathered up his papers and, leaving the case to his clerk, fled from
the Court like an infuriated bat, saying he would never again set
foot in it.

Then Stowell, calling back the constables, confused them, made them
contradict themselves, and each other, and step down at last like men
whose brains had fallen into their boots.  After that he called Gell
and caused him to look like a harmless innocent who had strayed out
of a sheepfold into a shambles.  And finally he called Fanny, and
getting quickly on the woman's side of her, he so coaxed and cajoled
and flattered and then frightened her, that she seemed to be on the
point of blurting out the whole plot, and giving away the names of
half the big men in the island.

His Worship of the Nunnery closed up the case quickly, saying "young
men will be young men," but regretting that the eminent talents
exhibited in the defence were not being employed in the service of
the island.

The Court-house emptied to a babel of talking and a burst of
irrepressible laughter, and that was the end of the "Ellan Vannin."
But the one ineffaceable effect of the incident, most material to
this story, was that Alick Gell, who was still as innocent as the
baby of a girl, had acquired a reputation for dark misdoings
(especially with women) whereof anything might be expected in the
future.

After the insular newspapers had dwelt with becoming severity on this
aspect of the "distressing proceedings," the Speaker walked over in
full-bearded dignity to remonstrate with the Deemster.

"Your son is dragging my lad down to the dirt," he said, "and before
long I shall not be able to show my face anywhere."

"What do you wish me to do, Mr. Speaker?" asked the Deemster.

"Do?  Do?  I don't know what I want you to do," said the Speaker.

"I thought you didn't," said the Deemster, and then the full-bearded
dignity disappeared.

Concerning Victor, although he had made the island laugh (the
shortest cut to popularity), opinions were widely divided.

"There's only the breadth of a hair between that young man and a
scoundrel," said Hudgeon, the advocate.

"Lave him rope and he'll hang himself," said Cæsar Qualtrough, from
behind his pipe in the smoking-room of the Keys.

"Clever!  Clever uncommon!  But you'll see, you'll see," said the
Speaker.

"I've not lost faith in that young fellow yet," said the Governor.
"Some great fact will awaken a sense of responsibility and make a man
of him."

The great fact was not long in coming, but few could have foreseen
the source from which it came.



III

With the first breath of the first summer after their return to the
island Stowell and Gell went up into the glen to camp.  They had no
tent; two hammocks swung from neighbouring trees served them for beds
and the horizontal boughs of other trees for wardrobes.

There, for a long month, amidst the scent of the honeysuckle, the
gorse and the heather, and the smell of the bracken and the pine,
they fished, they shot, they smoked, they talked.  Late in the
evening, after they had rolled themselves into their hammocks, they
heard the murmuring of the trees down the length of the glen, like
near and distant sea-waves, and saw, above the soaring pine-trunks,
the gleaming of the sky with its stars.  As they shouted their last
"Good-night" to each other from the depths of their swaying beds the
dogs would be barking at Dan Baldromma's mill at the bottom of the
glen and the water would be plashing in the topmost fall of it.  And
then night would come, perfect night, and the silence of unbroken
sleep.

Awaking with the dawn they would see the last stars pale out and hear
the first birds begin to call; then the cock would crow at old Will
Skillicorne's croft on the "brough," the sheep would bleat in the
fields beyond, the squirrels would squeak in the branches over their
heads and the fish would leap in the river below.  And then, as the
sun came striding down on them from the hilltops to the east, they
would tumble out of their hammocks, strip and plunge into the glen
stream--the deep, round, blue dubs of it, in which the glistening
water would lash their bodies like a living element.  And then they
would run up to the headland (still in the state of nature) and race
over the heather like wild horses in the fresh and nipping air.

They were doing this one midsummer morning when they had an
embarrassing experience, which, in the devious ways of destiny, was
not to be without its results.  Flying headlong down the naked side
of the glen (for sake of the faster run) they suddenly became aware
of somebody coming up.  It was a young woman in a sunbonnet.  She was
driving four or five heifers to the mountain.  Swishing a twig in her
hand and calling to her cattle, she was making straight for their
camping-place.

The young men looked around, but there was no escape on any side, so
down they went full length on their faces in the long grass (how
short!) and buried their noses in the earth.

In that position of blind helplessness, there was nothing to do but
wait until the girl and her cattle had passed, and hope to be
unobserved.  They could hear the many feet of the heifers, the
flapping of their tails (the flies must be pestering them) and the
frequent calls of the girl.  On she came, with a most deliberate
slowness, and her voice, which had been clear and sharp when she was
lower down the glen, seemed to them to have a gurgling note in it as
she came nearer to where they lay.

"Come out of that, you gawk, and get along, will you?" she cried, and
Victor could not be quite sure that it was only the cattle she was
calling to.

At one moment, when they thought the girl and the cattle must be very
close, there was a sickening silence, and then the young men
remembered their breeches which were hanging open over a bough and
their shirts which were dangling at the end of it.

"Get up, stupid!  What are you lying there for?" cried the girl, and
then came another swish of the twig and a further thudding of the
feet of the heifers.

"The devil must be in that girl," thought Victor, and he would have
given something to look up, but dare not, so he lay still and
listened, telling himself that never before had two poor men been in
such an unfair and ridiculous predicament.

At length the feet of the cattle sounded faint over the rippling of
the river, and the girl's voice thin through the pattering of the
leaves.  And then the two sons of Adam rose cautiously from the
grass, slithered down the glen-side and slipped into the essential
part of their garments.

Half-an-hour later, the lark being loud in the sky, and the world
astir and decent, they were cooking their breakfast (Gell holding a
frying-pan over a crackling gorse fire, and Stowell, in his
Wellington boots, striding about with a tea-pot) when they heard the
girl coming back.  And being now encased in the close armour of their
clothes they felt that the offensive had changed its front and
stepped boldly forward to face her.

She was a strapping girl of three or four and twenty, full-blooded
and full-bosomed, with coal-black hair and gleaming black eyes under
her sun-bonnet, which was turned back from her forehead, showing a
comely face of a fresh complexion, with eager mouth and warm red
lips.  Her sleeves were rolled back above her elbows, leaving her
round arms bare and sun-brown; her woollen petticoat was tucked up,
at one side, into her waist, and as she came swinging down the glen
with a jaunty step, her hips moved, with her whole body, to a rhythm
of health and happiness.

"Attractive young person, eh?" said Victor.

But Gell, after a first glance, went back without a word to his
frying-pan, leaving his comrade, who was still carrying his teapot,
to meet the girl, who came on with an unconcerned and unconscious
air, humming to herself at intervals, as if totally unaware of the
presence of either of them.

"Nice morning, miss," said Victor, stepping out into the path.

The girl made a start of surprise, looked him over from head to foot,
glanced at his companion, whose face was to the fire, recognised
both, smiled and answered:

"Yes, Sir, nice, very nice."

Then followed a little fencing, which was intended by Victor to find
out if the girl had seen them.

Came up this way a while ago, didn't she?  Aw, yes, she did, to take
last year's heifers to graze on the mountains.  Seen anything
hereabouts--that is to say on the tops?  Aw, no, nothing at all--had
he?  Well, yes, he thought he'd seen something running on the ridge
just over the waterfall.

The girl gave him a deliberate glance from her dark eyes, then
dropped them demurely and said, with an innocent air,

"Must have been some of the young colts broken out of the top field,
I suppose."

"That's all right," thought Victor, not knowing the ways of women
though he thought himself so wise in them.

After that, feeling braver, he began to make play with the girl,
asking her how far she had come, and if she wouldn't be lonesome
going back without company.

She looked at him quizzically for a moment, and then said, with her
eyes full of merriment,

"What sort of company, sir?"

"Well, mine for instance," he answered.

She laughed, a fresh and merry laugh from her throat, and said,

"You daren't come home with me, Sir."

"Why daren't I?"

"You'd be afraid of father.  He's not used of young men coming about
the place, and he'd frighten the life out of you."

Victor put down his tea-pot and made a stride forward.  "Come
on--where is he?"

But the girl swung away, with another laugh, crying over her shoulder,

"Aw, no, no, plaze, plaze!"

"Ah, then it's you that are afraid, eh?" said Victor.

"It's not that," replied the girl.

"What is it?" said Victor.

She gave him another deliberate glance from her dark eyes--he thought
he could feel the warm glow of her body across the distance dividing
them--and said,

"The old man might be sending somebody else up with the heifers next
time, and then...."

"What then?"

She laughed again with eyes full of mischief, and seemed to prepare
to fly.

"Then maybe I'd be missing seeing something," she said, and shot away
at a bound.

Victor stood for a moment looking down the glen.

"God, what a girl!" he said.  "I've a good mind to go after her."

"I shouldn't if I were you," said Gell.  "You know who she is?"

"Who?"

"Bessie Collister."

"The little thing who was in Castletown?"

"Yes."

"Then I suppose she belongs to you?"

"Not a bit.  I haven't spoken to her from that day to this," said
Gell, and then he told of the promise he had made to his father.

"But Lord alive, that was when you were a lad."

"Maybe so, but 'as long as you live'--that was the word, and I mean
to keep it.  Besides, there's Dan Baldromma."

"That blatherskite?" said Victor.

"He'd be an ugly customer if anything went wrong, you know."

"But, good Lord, man, what is going to go wrong?"

When they had finished breakfast and Gell was washing up at the
water's edge, Victor was on a boulder, looking down the glen again,
and saying, as if to himself,

"My God, what a girl, though!  Such lips, such flesh, such...."

"I say, old fellow!" cried Gell.

Victor leapt down and laughed to cover his confusion.

"Well, why not?  We're all creatures of earth, aren't we?"




CHAPTER SEVEN

THE DAY OF TEMPTATION

Fenella Stanley had been two and a half years at the head of the
Women's Settlement.  Her work as Lady Warden had been successful.  It
had been a great, human, palpitating experience.  There were days,
and even weeks, when she felt that it had brought her a little nearer
to the soul of the universe and helped her to touch hands across the
ages with the great women who had walked through Gethsemane for the
poor, despoiled and despairing victims of their own sex.

But nevertheless it had left her with a certain restlessness which at
first she found it hard to understand.  Only little by little did she
come to realise that nature, with its almighty voice, was calling to
her, and that under all the thrill of self-sacrifice she was
suffering from the gnawing hunger of an underfed heart.

The seven years that had passed since her last visit to the island
had produced their physical effects.  From a slim and beautiful
school-girl she had developed into a full and splendid woman.  When
the ladies of her Committee (matrons chiefly) saw the swing of her
free step and the untamed glance of her eye they would say,

"She's a fine worker, but we shall never be able to keep her--you'll
see we shall not."

And as often as the men of the Committee (clergymen generally, but
manly persons, for the most part, not too remote from the facts of
life) came within range of the glow and flame of her womanhood, they
would think,

"That splendid girl ought to become the mother of children."

During the first year of her wardenship her chief touch with home
(her father being estranged) had been through correspondence with his
housekeeper.  Miss Green's letters were principally about the
Governor, but they contained a good deal about Victor Stowell also.
Victor had been called to the Bar, but for some reason which nobody
could fathom he seemed to have lost heart and hope and the Deemster
had sent him round the world.

Fenella found herself tingling with a kind of secret joy at this
news.  She was utterly ashamed of the impulse to smile at the thought
of Victor's sufferings, yet do what she would she could not conquer
it.

Her tours abroad with her father had ceased by this time, but in her
second year at the Settlement she took holiday with a girl friend,
going through Switzerland and Italy and as far afield as Egypt.
During that journey fate played some tantalizing pranks with her.

The first of them was at Cairo, where, going into Cook's, to enter
her name for a passage to Italy, her breath was almost smitten out of
her body by the sight of Victor's name, in his own bold handwriting,
in the book above her own--he had that day sailed for Naples.

The second was at Naples itself (she would have died rather than
admit to herself that she was following him), where she saw his name
again, with Alick Gell's, in the Visitors' List, and being a young
woman of independent character, marched up to his hotel to ask for
him--he had gone on to Rome.

The third, and most trying, was in the railway station at Zurich,
where stepping out of the train from Florence she collided on the
crowded platform with the Attorney-General and his comfortable old
wife from the Isle of Man, and was told that young Stowell and young
Gell had that moment left by train for Paris.

But back in London she found her correspondence with Miss Green even
more intoxicating than before, and every new letter seemed like a
hawser drawing her home.  Victor Stowell had returned to the island,
but he was not showing much sign of settling to work.  He seemed to
have no aim, no object, no ambition.  In fact it was the common
opinion that the young man was going steadily to the dogs.

"So if you ever had any thoughts in that direction, dear," said Miss
Green, "what a lucky escape you had (though we didn't think so at the
time) when you signed on at the Settlement!"

But the conquering pull of the hawser that was dragging her home came
in the letters of Isabella Gell, with whom she had always kept up a
desultory correspondence.

The Deemster was failing fast ("and no wonder!"); and Janet Curphey,
who had been such a bustling body, was always falling asleep over her
needles; and the Speaker (after a violent altercation in the Keys)
had had a profuse bleeding at the nose, which Dr. Clucas said was to
be taken as a warning.

But the only exciting news in the island just now was about Victor
Stowell.  Really, he was becoming impossible!  Not content with
making her brother Alick the scapegoat of his own misdoings in a
disgraceful affair of some sort (her father had forbidden Alick the
house ever since, and her mother was always moping with her feet
inside the fender), he was behaving scandalously.  A good-looking
woman couldn't pass him on the road without his eyes following her!
Any common thing out of a thatched cottage, if she only had a pretty
face, was good enough for him now!!  The simpletons!!  Perhaps they
expected him to marry them, and give them his name and position?  But
not he!!  Indeed no!!  And heaven pity the poor girl of a better
class who ever took him for a husband!!!

Fenella laughed--seeing through the feminine spitefulness of these
letters as the sun sees through glass.  So mistress Isabella herself
had been casting eyes in that direction!  What fun!  She had visions
of the Gell girls having differences among themselves about Victor
Stowell.  The idea of his marrying any of them, and keeping step for
the rest of his life with the conventions of the Gell family, was too
funny for anything.

But those Manx country girls, with their black eyes and eager mouths,
were quite a different proposition.  Fenella had visions of them
also, fresh as milk and warm as young heifers, watching for Victor at
their dairy doors or from the shade of the apple trees in their
orchards, and before she was aware of what was happening to her she
was aflame with jealousy.

That Isabella Gell was a dunce!  It was nonsense to say that the Manx
country girls out of the thatched cottages expected Victor to marry
them.  Of course they didn't, and neither did they want his name or
his position.  What they really wanted was Victor himself, to flirt
with and flatter them and make love to them, perhaps.  But good
gracious, what a shocking thing!  That should never happen--never
while she was about!

Of course this meant that she must go back to save Victor.  Naturally
she could not expect to do so over a blind distance of three hundred
miles, while those Manx country girls in their new Whitsuntide hats
were shooting glances at him every Sunday in Church, or perhaps
hanging about for him on week-evenings, in their wicked sun-bonnets,
and even putting up their chins to be kissed in those shady lanes at
the back of Ballamoar, when the sun would be softening, and the
wood-pigeons would be cooing, and things would be coming together for
the night.

That settled matters!  Her womanhood was awake by this time.  Seven
years of self-sacrifice had not been sufficient to quell it.  After a
certain struggle, and perhaps a certain shame, she put in her
resignation.

Her Committee did not express as much surprise as she had expected.
The ladies hoped her native island would provide a little world, a
little microcosm, in which she could still carry on her work for
women, (she had given that as one of her excuses), and the gentlemen
had no doubt her father, "and others," would receive her back "with
open arms."

She was to leave the Settlement at the close of the half year, that
is to say at the end of July, but she decided to say nothing, either
to her father or to Miss Green, about her return to the island until
the time came for it at the beginning of August.

She was thinking of Victor again, and cherishing a secret hope of
taking him unawares somewhere--of giving him another surprise, such
as she gave him that day in the glen, when he came down bareheaded,
with the sea wind in his dark hair, and then stopped suddenly at the
sight of her, with that entrancing look of surprise and wonder.

And if any of those Manx country girls were about him when that
happened .... Well, they would disappear like a shot.  Of course they
would!



II

Meantime, another woman was hearing black stories about Victor, and
that was Janet.  She believed them, she disbelieved them, she dreaded
them as possibilities and resented them as slanders.  But finally she
concluded that, whether they were true or false, she must tell Victor
all about them.

Yet how was she to do so?  How put a name to the evil things that
were being said of him--she who had been the same as a mother to him
all the way up since he was a child, and held him in her arms for his
christening?

For weeks her soft heart fought with her maidenly modesty, but at
length her heart prevailed.  She could not see her dear boy walk
blindfold into danger.  Whatever the consequences she must speak to
him, warn him, stop him if necessary.

But where and when and how was she to do so?  To write was impossible
(nobody knew what might become of a letter) and Victor had long
discontinued his week-end visits to Ballamoar.

One day the Deemster told her to prepare a room for the Governor who
was coming to visit him, and seizing her opportunity she said,

"And wouldn't it be nice to ask Victor to meet him, your Honour?"

The Deemster paused for a moment, then bowed his head and answered,

"Do as you please, Miss Curphey."

Five minutes afterwards Janet was writing in hot haste to Ramsey.

"He is to come on Saturday, dear, but mind you come on Friday, so
that I may have you all to myself for a while before the great men
take you from me."

Victor came on Friday evening and found Janet alone, the Deemster
being away for an important Court and likely to sleep the night in
Douglas.  She was in her own little sitting-room--a soft, cushiony
chamber full of embroidered screens and pictures of himself as a
child worked out in coloured silk.  A tea-tray, ready laid, was on a
table by her side, and she rose with a trembling cry as he bounded in
and kissed her.

Tea was a long but tremulous joy to her, and by the time it was over
the darkness was gathering.  The maid removed the tray and was about
to bring in a lamp, but Janet, being artful, said:

"No, Jane, not yet.  It would be a pity to shut out this lovely
twilight.  Don't you think so, dear?"

Victor agreed, not knowing what was coming, and for an hour longer
they sat at opposite sides of the table, with their faces to the
lawn, while the rooks cawed out their last congress, and the thrush
sang its last song, and Janet talked on indifferent matters--whether
Mrs. Quayle (his sleeping-out housekeeper) was making him comfortable
at Ramsey, and if Robbie Creer should not be told to leave butter and
fresh eggs for him on market-day.

But when, the darkness having deepened, there was no longer any
danger that Victor could see her face, Janet (trembling with fear of
her nursling now that he had grown to be a man) plunged into her
tragic subject.

People were talking and talking.  The Manx ones were terrible for
talking.  Really, it ought to be possible to put the law on people
who talked and talked.

"Who are they talking about now, Janet?  Is it about me?" said Victor.

"Well, yes .... yes, it's about you, dear."

Oh, nothing serious, not to say serious!  Just a few flighty girls
boasting about the attentions he was paying them.  And then older
people, who ought to know better, gibble-gabbling about the dangers
to young women--as if the dangers to young men were not greater,
sometimes far greater.

"Not that I don't sympathise with the girls," said Janet, "living
here, poor things, on this sandy headland, while the best of the Manx
boys are going away to America, year after year, and never a man
creature younger than their fathers and grandfathers about to pass
the time of day with, except the heavy-footed omathauns that are
left."

What wonder that when a young man of another sort came about, and
showed them the courtesy a man always shows to a woman, whatever she
is, when he is a gentleman born--just a smile, or a nod, or a kind
word on the road, or the lifting of his hat, or a hand over a stile
perhaps--what wonder if the poor foolish young things began to dream
dreams and see visions.

"But that's just where the danger comes in, dear," said Janet.  "Oh,
I'm a woman myself, and I was young once, you know, and perhaps I
remember how the heavens seem to open for a girl when she thinks two
eyes look at her with love, and she feels as if she could give
herself away, with everything she is or will be, and care nothing for
the future.  But only think what a terrible thing it would be if some
simple girl of that sort got into trouble on your account."

"Don't be afraid of that, Janet," said Victor in a low voice.  "No
girl in the island, or in the world either, has ever come to any harm
through me--or ever will do."

There came the sound of a faint gasp in the darkness, and then Janet
cried:

"God bless you for saying that, dear!  I knew you would!  And don't
think your silly old Janet believed the lying stories they told of
you.  'Deed no, that she didn't and never will do, never!  But all
the same a young man can't be too careful!"

There were bad girls about also--real scheming, designing huzzies!
Some of them were good-looking young vixens too, for it wasn't the
good ones only that God made beautiful.  And when a man was young and
handsome and clever and charming and well-off and had all the world
before him, they threw themselves in his way, and didn't mind what
disgrace they got into if they could only compel him to marry them.

"But think of a slut like that coming to live as mistress here--here
in the house of Isobel Stowell!"

Then the men folk of such women were as bad as they were.  There was
a wicked, lying, evil spirit abroad these days that Jack was as good
as his master, and if you were up you had to be pulled down, and if
you were big you had to be made little.

"Only think what a cry these people would make if anything happened,"
said Janet, "wrecking your career perhaps, and making promotion
impossible."

"Don't be afraid of that either, Janet.  I can take care of myself,
you know."

"So you can, dear," said Janet, "but then think of your father.
Forty years a judge, and not a breath of scandal has ever touched
him!  But that's just why some of these dirts would like to destroy
him, calling to him in the Courts themselves, perhaps, with all the
dirty tongues at them, to come down from the judgment-seat and set
his own house in order."

"My father can take care of himself, too, Janet," said Victor.

"I know, dear, I know," said Janet.  "But think what he'll suffer if
any sort of trouble falls on his son!  More, far more, than if it
fell on himself.  That's the way with fathers, isn't it?  Always has
been, I suppose, since the days of David.  Do you remember his
lamentations over his son Absalom?  I declare I feel fit enough to
cry in Church itself whenever the Vicar reads it: 'O my son Absalom!
Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son.'"

There was silence for a moment, for Victor found it difficult to
speak, and then Janet began to plead with him in the name of his
family also.

"The Deemster is seventy years old now," she said, "and he has four
hundred years of the Ballamoars behind him, and there has never been
a stain on the name of any of them.  That's always been a kind of
religion in your family, hasn't it--that if a man belongs to the
breed of the Ballamoars he will do the right--he can be trusted?
That's something to be born to, isn't it?  It seems to me it is more
worth having than all the jewels and gold and titles and honours the
world has in it.  Oh, my dear, my dear, you know what your father is;
he'll say nothing, and you haven't a mother to speak to you; so don't
be vexed with your old Janet who loves you, and would die for you, if
she could save you from trouble and disgrace; but think what a
terrible, fearful, shocking thing it would be for you, and for your
father, and for your family, and .... yes, for the island itself if
anything should happen now."

"Nothing _shall_ happen--I give you my word for that, Janet," said
Victor.

"God bless you!" said Janet, and rising and reaching over in the
darkness she kissed him--her face was wet.

After that she laughed, in a nervous way, and said she wasn't a
Puritan either, like some of the people in those parts whom she saw
on Sunday mornings, walking from chapel in their chapel hats, after
preaching and praying against "carnal transgression" and "bodily
indulgence" and "giving way to the temptations of the flesh"--as if
they hadn't as many children at home as there were chickens in a
good-sized hen-roost.

"Young men are young men and girls are girls," said Janet, "and some
of these Manx girls are that pretty and smart that they are enough to
tempt a saint.  And if David was tempted by the beauty of
Bathsheba--and we're told he was a man after God's own heart--what
better can the Lord expect of poor lads these days who are making no
such pretensions?"

She was only an old maid herself, but she supposed it was natural for
a young man to be tempted by the beauty of a young woman, or the Lord
wouldn't have allowed it to go on so long.  But the moral of that was
that it was better for a man to marry.

"So find a good woman and marry her, dear.  The Deemster will be
delighted, having only yourself to follow him yet.  And as for you,"
she added (her voice was breaking again), "you may not think it now,
being so young and strong, but when you are as old as I am .... and
feeling feebler every year .... and you are looking to the dark day
that is coming .... and no one of your own to close your eyes for you
.... only hired servants, or strangers, perhaps...."

It was Victor's turn to rise now, and to stop her speaking by taking
her in his arms.  After a moment, not without a tremor in his own
voice also, he said,

"I shall never marry, and you know why, Janet.  But neither will I
bring shame on my father, or stain my name, as God is my help and
witness."

The rooks were silent in the elms by this time, but the gong was
sounding in the hall, so, laughing and crying together, and with all
her trouble gone like chased clouds, Janet ran off to her room to
wipe her eyes and fix her cap before showing her face at supper.



III

Next morning the Deemster returned from Douglas, and in the
afternoon, the Governor arrived.  They took tea on the piazza, the
days being long and the evenings warm.

The Deemster was uneasy about the case they had tried the day before,
and talked much about it.  A farmer had killed a girl on his farm
after every appearance of gross ill-usage.  The crime and the motive
had been clear and therefore the law could show no clemency.  But
there had been external circumstances which might have affected the
man's conduct.  Down to ten years before he had been a right-living
man, clean and sober and honest and even religious.  Then he had been
thrown by a young horse and kicked on the head and had had to undergo
an operation.  After he came out of the hospital his whole character
was found to have changed.  He had become drunken, dishonest, a
sensualist and a foul-mouthed blasphemer, and finally he had
committed the crime for which he now stood condemned.

"It makes me tremble to think of it," said the Deemster, "that a mere
physical accident, a mere chance, or a mere spasm of animal instinct,
may cause any of us at any time to act in a way that is utterly
contrary to our moral character and most sincere resolutions."

"It's true, though," said the Governor, "and it doesn't require the
kick of a horse to make a man act in opposition to his character.
The loudest voice a man hears is the call of his physical nature, and
law and religion have just got to make up their minds to it."

Next morning, Sunday morning, they went to church.  Janet drove in
the carriage by way of the high road, but the three men walked down
the grassy lane at the back, which, with its gorse hedges on either
side, looked like a long green picture in a golden frame.  The
Deemster, who walked between the Governor and Victor, was more than
usually bent and solemn.  He had had an anonymous letter about his
son that morning--he had lately had shoals of them.

The morning was warm and quiet; the clover fields were sleeping in
the sunlight to the lullaby of the bees; the slumberous mountains
behind were hidden in a palpitating haze, and against the broad
stretch of the empty sea in front stood the gaunt square tower from
which the far-off sound of the church bells was coming.

Nowhere in the island could they have found a more tragic
illustration of the law of life they had talked about the evening
before than in the person of the Vicar of the Church they were going
to.

His name was Cowley, and down to middle life he had been all that a
clergyman should be.  But then he had lost a son under circumstances
of tragic sorrow.  The boy had been threatened with a consumption, so
the father had sent him to sea, and going to town to meet him on his
return to the island, he had met his body instead, as it was being
brought ashore from his ship, which was lying at anchor in the bay.

The sailors had said that at sight of them and their burthen, Parson
Cowley had fallen to the stones of Ramsey harbour like a dead man,
and it was long before they could bring him to, or staunch the wound
on his forehead.  What is certain is that after his recovery he began
to drink, and that for fifteen years he had been an inveterate
drunkard.

This had long been a cause of grief and perhaps of shame to his
parishioners; but it had never lessened their love of him, for they
knew that in all else he was still a true Christian.  If any lone
"widow man" lay dying in his mud cabin on the Curragh, Parson Cowley
would be there to sit up all the night through with him; and if any
barefooted children were going to bed hungry in the one-roomed hovel
that was their living-room, sleeping-room, birth-room and death-room
combined, Parson Cowley would be seen carrying them the supper from
his own larder.

But his weakness had become woeful, and after a shocking moment in
which he had staggered and fallen before the altar, a new Bishop, who
knew nothing of the origin of his infirmity, and was only conscious
of the scandal of it, had threatened that if the like scene ever
occurred again he would not only forbid him to exercise his office,
but call upon the Governor (in whose gift it was) to remove him from
his living.

The bells were loud when the three men reached the white-washed
church on the cliff, with the sea singing on the beach below it, and
Illiam Christian, the shoemaker and parish clerk, standing bareheaded
at the bottom of the outside steps to the tower to give warning to
the bell-ringers that the Governor had arrived.

In expectation of his visit the church was crowded, and with Victor
going first to show the way, the Governor next, and the Deemster
last, with his white head down, the company from Ballamoar walked up
the aisle to the family pew, in which Janet, in her black silk
mantle, was already seated.

The Deemster's pew was close to the communion rails, and horizontal
to the church with the reading-desk and pulpit in the open space in
front of it, and a marble tablet on the wall behind, containing the
names of a long line of the Ballamoars, going as far back as the
sixteenth century.

The vestry was at the western end of the church, under the tower, and
as soon as the bells stopped and the clergy came out, it was seen
that the Vicar was far from sober.  Nevertheless he kept himself
erect while coming through the church behind his choir and curate,
and tottered into the carved chair within the rail of the communion.

The curate took the prayers, and might have taken the rest of the
service also, but the Vicar, thinking his duty compelled him to take
his part in the presence of the Governor, rose to read the lessons.
With difficulty he reached the reading-desk, which was close to the
Deemster's pew, and opened the Book and gave out the place.  But
hardly had he begun, in a husky and indistinct voice, with "Here
beginneth the first chapter of the Second Book of Samuel" (for it was
the sixth Sunday after Trinity) when he stopped as if unable to go
farther.

For a moment he fumbled with his spectacles, taking them off and
wiping them on the sleeve of his surplice, and then he began afresh.
But scarcely had he said, in a still thicker voice, "Now it came to
pass" .... when he stopped again, as if the words of the Book before
him had run into each other and become an unreadable jumble.

After that he looked helplessly about him for an instant, as if
wondering what to do.  Then he grasped the reading-desk with his two
trembling hands, and the perspiration was seen to be breaking in
beads from his forehead.

A breathless silence passed over the church.  The congregation saw
what was happening, and dropped their heads, as if knowing that for
their beloved old Vicar this (before the eyes of the Governor) was
the end of everything.

But suddenly they became aware that something was happening.
Quietly, noiselessly, almost before they were conscious of what he
was doing, Victor Stowell, who had been sitting at the end of the
Deemster's pew, had risen, stepped across to the reading-desk, put a
soft hand on the Vicar's arm, and was reading the lesson for him.


    "_Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and
    in their death they were not divided .... I am distressed for
    thee, my brother Jonathan; thy love to me was wonderful, passing
    the love of women._"


People who were there that morning said afterwards that never before
had the sublime lament of the great King, the great warrior and the
great poet, for his dead friend and dead enemy been read as it was
read that day by the young voice, so rich and resonant, that was
ringing through the old church.

But it was not that alone that was welling through every bosom.  It
was the thrilling certainty that out of the greatness of his heart
the son of the Deemster (of whom too many of them had been talking
ill) had covered the nakedness of the poor stricken sinner who had
sunk back in his surplice to a seat behind him.

When the service was over, and the clergy had returned to the vestry,
the congregation remained standing until the Governor had left the
church.  But nobody looked at him now, for all eyes were on the two
who followed him--the Deemster and Victor.

The Deemster had taken his son's arm as he stepped out of his pew,
and as he walked down the aisle, through the lines of his people, his
head was up and his eyes were shining.

"Did thou see that, Mistress?" said Robbie Creer, in triumphant tones
to Janet Curphey, as she was stepping back, with a beaming face, into
her carriage at the gate.

"Thou need have no fear of thy lad, I tell thee.  _The Ballamoar will
out!_"

But the day of temptation was coming, and too soon it came.




CHAPTER EIGHT

THE CALL OF BESSIE COLLISTER

It was the first Saturday in August, when the throbbing and thunging
of the vast machinery of the mills and factories of the English
industrial counties comes to a temporary stop, and for three days at
least, tens of thousands of its servers, male and female, pour into
the island for health and holiday.

Stowell and Gell had never yet seen the inrushing of the liberated
ones, so with no other thought, and little thinking what fierce game
fate was playing with them, they had come into Douglas that day, in
flannels and straw hats, in eager spirits and with high steps, to
look on its sights and scenes.

It was late afternoon, and they made first for the pier, where a
crowd of people had already assembled to witness the arrival of an
incoming steamer.

She was densely crowded.  Every inch of her deck seemed to be packed
with passengers, chiefly young girls, as the young men thought, some
of them handsome, many of them pretty, all of them comely.  With
sparkling eyes and laughing mouths they shouted their salutations to
their friends on the pier, while they untied the handkerchiefs which
they had bound about their heads to keep down their hair in the
breeze on the sea, and pinned on their hats before landing.

The young men found the scene delightful.  A little crude, perhaps a
little common, even a little coarse, but still delightful.

Then they walked along the promenade, and that, too, was crowded.
From the water's edge to the round hill-tops at the back of the town,
every thoroughfare seemed to be thrilling with joyous activity.
Hackney carriages, piled high with luggage and higher still with
passengers, were sweeping round the curve of the bay; windows and
doors were open and filled with faces, and the whole sea-front, from
end to end, seemed to be as full of women's eyes as a midnight sky of
stars.

For tea they went up to Castle Mona--a grave-looking mansion in the
middle of the bay, built for a royal residence by one of the Earls of
Derby when they were lords of Man before the Athols, but now declined
to the condition of an hotel for English visitors, with its wooded
slopes to the sea (wherein more than one of our old Manx Kings may
have pondered the problems of his island kingdom), transformed into a
public tea-garden, on which pretty women were sitting under coloured
sunshades and a string band from London was playing the latest airs
from Paris.

The young men took a table at the seaward end of the lawn, with the
rowing boats skimming the fringe of the water in front, the white
yachts scudding across the breast of the bay, the brown-sailed
luggers dropping out of the harbour with the first flood of the
flowing tide; and then the human tide of joyous life running fast on
the promenade below--girls chiefly, as they thought, usually in white
frocks, white stockings and white shoes, skipping along like human
daisy-chains with their arms entwined about each other's waists, and
sometimes turning their heads over their shoulders to look up at them
and laugh.

The sun went down behind the hills at the back of the town, the
string band stopped, the coloured sunshades disappeared, the gong was
sounded from the hall of the hotel and they went indoors for dinner.

They sat by an open window of the stately dining-room (wherein our
old Earls and their Countesses once kept court), and being in higher
spirits than ever by this time, they ate of every dish that was put
before them, drank a bottle of champagne, toasted each other and
every pretty woman they could remember of the many they had seen that
day ("Here's to that fine girl with the black eyes who was standing
by the funnel"), and looked at intervals at the scenes outside until
the light failed and the darkness claimed them.

At one moment they saw the dark hull of another steamer, lit up in
every port-hole, gliding towards the pier, and at the next (or what
seemed like the next), shooting across the white sheet of light from
the uncovered windows of their dining-room, a large blue landau,
drawn by a pair of Irish bays, driven by a liveried coachman.  Gell
leapt up to look at it.

"Vic," he cried, "I think that must be the Governor's carriage."

"It is," said Stowell.

"And that's the Governor himself inside of it."

"No doubt."

"And the lady sitting beside him is .... yes, no .... yes ..... upon
my soul I believe it was his daughter."

"Impossible," said Stowell, and, remembering what Janet had told him,
he thought no more of the matter.

They returned to the lawn to smoke after dinner, and then the sky was
dark and the stars had begun to appear; the tide was up but the sea
was silent; the rowing-boats were lying on the shingle of the beach;
the yachts were at anchor in the bay; the last of the fishing-boats,
each with a lamp in its binnacle, were doubling the black brow of the
head, and from the farthest rock of it the revolving light in the
lighthouse was sweeping the darkness from the face of the town as
with an illuminated fan.  The young men were enraptured.  It was
wonderful!  It was enchanting!  It was like walking on the terrace at
Monte Carlo!


Then suddenly, as at the striking of a clock, the town itself began
to flame.  One by one the façades of the theatres and dancing palaces
that lined the front were lit up by electricity.  It raced along like
ignited gunpowder and in a few minutes the broad curve of the bay
from headland to headland, was sparkling and blazing under ten
thousand lights.

It was now the beginning of night in the little gay town.  The young
men could hear the creak of the iron turn-stile to one of the
dancing-halls near at hand, and the shuffling of the feet of the
multitudes who were passing through it, and then, a few minutes
later, the muffled music of the orchestra and the deadened drumming
of the dancing within.

That was more than they could bear, in their present state of
excitement, without taking part in the scene of it, so within five
minutes more, they were passing through the turn-stile themselves and
hurrying down a tunnel of trees, lit up by coloured lamps, to the
open door of the dancing-hall--deep in a dark garden which seemed to
sleep in shadow on either side of them.

The vast place, decorated in gold and domed with glass, was crowded,
but going up into the gallery the young men secured seats by the
front rail and were able to look down.  What a spectacle!  Never
before, they thought, though they had travelled round the world, had
they seen anything to compare with it.  To the clash of the brass
instruments and the boom of the big drums, five thousand young men
and young women were dancing on the floor below.  Most of the men
wore flannels and coloured waist-scarves, and most of the girls were
in muslin and straw hats.  They were only the workers from the mills
and factories of Lancashire and Yorkshire, but the flush of the sun
and the sea was in their faces and the joy and health of young life
was in their blood.

Stowell felt himself becoming giddy.  Waves of perfume were floating
up to him, with the warmth of women's bright eyes, red lips and
joyous laughter.  His nerves were quivering; his pulses were beating
with a pounding rush.  He was beginning to feel afraid of himself and
he had an almost irresistable impulse to get up and go.



II

One other person important to this story had come to Douglas that
day--Bessie Collister.  During the first three years after her return
home from Castletown she had lived in physical fear of Dan Baldromma;
but during the next three years, having grown big and strong and
become useful on the farm, she had been more than able to hold her
own with him, and he had even been compelled to pay her wages.

"I don't know in the world what's coming over the girls," he would
say.  "In my young days they were content with priddhas and herrings
three times a day, and welcome, but nothing will do now, if it's your
own daughter itself, but ten pounds a year per annum, and as much
loaf bread and butcher's mate as would fill the inside of a lime
kiln."

"Aw, but the girl's smart though," Mrs. Collister would answer.

"I'm saying nothing against her," Dan would reply.  "A middling good
girl enough, and handy with the bases, but imperent grown--imperent
uncommon and bad with the tongue."

There was scarcely a farmer on the island who would not have given
Bessie twice the wages Dan paid her, but she remained at home, partly
for reasons of her own and partly to protect her mother from Dan's
brutalities by holding over his head the threat of leaving him.

Mrs. Collister, who had been stricken with sciatica and was hobbling
about on a stick, had by this time taken refuge from her life-long
martyrdom in religion, having joined the "Primitives," whose chapel
(a whitewashed barn) stood at the opposite angle of the glen and the
high road.  She had tried to induce her daughter to follow her there,
but Bessie had refused, having come to the conclusion that the
"locals" on the "plan-beg," whose favourite subject was the
crucifixion of the flesh, were always preaching at her mother, or
pointing at her.

So on Sunday mornings when the church bells were ringing across the
Curragh, and the chapel-going women of the parish were going by with
their hymn-books in their handkerchiefs, and old Will Skillicorne,
who was a class-leader, was coming down from his thatched cottage in
his tall beaver, black frock coat and black kid gloves, Bessie, in
her sunbonnet and a pair of Dan's old boots, and with her skirt
tucked up over her linsey-wolsey petticoat, would be seen feeding the
pigs or washing out a bowl of potatoes at the pump.

And on Sunday evenings, while the Primitives were singing a hymn
outside their chapel before going in for service, she would be
tripping past, lightly shod, and wearing a hat with an ostrich
feather, on her way to town, where a German band played sacred music
on the promenade, and young people, walking arm-in-arm, laughed and
"glimed" at each other under the gas-light.

"I wonder at herself though, bringing up her daughter like a haythen
in a Christian land," old Will would say.  "But then what can you
expect from a child of sin and a son of Belial"--the latter being a
dig at Dan, whose lusty voice could always be heard over the singing,
reading aloud to himself in the kitchen the "Rights of Man" or "The
Mistakes of Moses."

Bessie was a full-developed and warm-blooded woman by this time,
living all day and every day in the natural world of the farmyard,
ready to break loose at the first touch of the hand of a live man if
only he were the right one, and having no better relief for the fever
of her womanhood than an occasional dance in the big barn at Kirk
Michael Fair.

But then came her adventure with Stowell and Gell in the glen and it
altered everything.  Running down in her excitement she told her
mother what had happened, and her mother, in a moment of tenderness,
told Dan, and Dan, in the impurity of his heart, drew his own
conclusions.

"It's the Spaker's son again," he said, making a noise in his
nostrils.

The young men had camped out there expressly to meet Bessie, and it
wasn't the first time the girl had gone up to them.

"Goodness sakes, man veen, how do thou know that?  And what's the
harm done anyway?" said Mrs. Collister.

"Wait and see what's the harm, woman.  Girls is not to trust when a
wastrel like that is about.  We've known it before now, haven't we?"

To one other person Bessie told the story of the glen, and that was
her chief friend, Susie Stephen, the English barmaid at the Ginger
Hall Inn--a girl of fair complexion and some good looks who had
shocked the young wives of the parish by wearing short frocks,
transparent stockings and a blouse cut low over the bosom.

It was at closing-time a few nights after the event, and as the girls
stood whispering together by the half-open door, with the lights put
out in the bar behind them, they squealed with laughter, laid hold of
each other and shuddered.

The young men had gone from the glen by that time, but the August
holidays were coming, so they decided to go up to Douglas on the
Saturday following to dance off their excitement.

At five o'clock that day, having milked her cows, and given a drink
of meal and water to her calves, Bessie was in her bedroom making
ready for her journey.

It was a stuffy little one-eyed chamber over the dairy, entered from
the first landing of the stairs, open to the whitewashed scraas
(which gave it a turfy odour), having a skylight in the thatch, a
truckle bed, a deal table for wash-stand and a few dried sheepskins
on the floor for rugs.

Bessie threw off the big unlaced boots and the other garments of the
cow-house, kicking the one into a corner and throwing the others in a
disorderly mass on to the bed over her pink-and-white sunbonnet,
washed to the waist and then folded her arms over each other in their
warmth and roundness and laughed to herself in sheer joy of bounding
health and conscious beauty.

While doing so she heard her step-father's voice in the kitchen
below, loud as usual and as full of protest, but she had a matter of
more moment to think of now--what to wear out of her scanty wardrobe.

The question was easily decided.  After putting on white rubber shoes
and white stockings, she drew aside a sheet on the wall that ran on a
string and took down a white woollen skirt and a new cream-coloured
blouse cut low at the neck like Susie's.

But the anchor of her hope was her hat, which she was to wear for the
first time, having bought it the day before in Ramsey.  It was shaped
like a shell, with a round lip in front, and to find the proper angle
for it on her head was a perplexing problem.  So she stood long and
twisted about before an unframed sheet of silvered glass which hung
by a nail on the wall, with a lash comb in her hand, a number of
hat-pins across her mouth, while the floor creaked under her, and the
conversation went on below.

She got it right at last, just tilted a little aside, to look pert
and saucy, with her black hair, which was long and wavy, creeping up
to it like a cushion.  And then, standing off from her glass to look
at it again over her shoulder, with eyes that danced with delight,
she turned to the door and walked with a buoyant step downstairs.



III

Dan Baldromma also had made an engagement for that day, handbills
having been distributed in Ramsey during the morning saying that "Mr.
Daniel Collister of Baldromma" would deliver an address in the
market-place at seven o'clock in the evening.

At five Dan had strapped down the lever which stopped the flow of
water on to his overshot wheel and stepped into the dwelling-house,
where Liza, his wife, had laid tea for two and was blowing up a fire
of dry gorse to boil the kettle.

"Tell your girl to put a lil rub on my Sunday boots," he said.

"But she's upstairs dressing for Douglas," said Mrs. Collister.

"You don't say?" said Dan.  "So that's the way she's earning her
living?"

"Chut, man," said Mrs. Collister.  "If a girl's in life she wants
aisement sometimes, doesn't she?  And her ragging and tearing to keep
the farm going, and a big wash coming on next week, too."

"Well, that's good!  That's rich!  I thought it was myself that was
keeping the farm going.  Douglas, you say?  Well, well!  I wonder at
you, encouraging your girl to go to such places, and you a bound
Methodist.  Tell her to put a rub on my boots, ma'am."

"I'll do it myself, Dan," said Mrs. Collister.  "It's little enough
time the girl will have to catch the train, and her fixing on her new
hat, too."

"New hat, eh?"

"Aw, yes, man, the one she bought at Miss Corkill's yesterday."

"What a woman!  And you telling me, when you got five goolden
sovereigns out of me on Monday that she was for wearing it at the
Sulby Anniversary.  I wonder you are not afraid for your quarterly
ticket."

"But it was only the girl's half year's wages, and the labourer is
worthy of his hire.  Thou art always saying so at the Cross anyway."

"Hould thy tongue, woman, and don't be milking that ould cow any
more--it's dry, I tell thee."

It was at this moment that Bessie came downstairs, and Dan, who was
on the three-legged stool before the fire, making wry faces as he
dragged off his mill-boots with a boot-jack, fell on her at first
with his favourite weapon, irony.

"Aw, the smart you are in your new hat, girl--smart tremenjous!"

"I didn't think you'd have the taste to like it," said Bessie,
sitting at the table.

"Taste, is it?" said Dan.  "Aw, the grand we are!  The pride that's
in some ones is extraordinary though.  There'll be no holding you!
You'll be going up and up!  Your mother has always been used of a
poor man's house and the wind above the thatch.  But you'll be
wanting feather beds and marble halls, I'm thinking."

"They won't be yours to find then, so you needn't worry," said Bessie.

"You think not?  I'm not so sure of that.  Man is born to trouble as
the sparks fly upwards .... So you're for Douglas, are you?"

"Yes, I am, if you'll let me take my tea in time for the train."

"Aisy, bogh, aisy!" said Mrs. Collister.

"Well, you're your own woman now, so I suppose you've got lave to
go," said Dan.

And then rising to his stockinged feet, his face hard and all his
irony gone, he added, "But I'm my own man, too, and this is my own
house, I'm thinking, and if you're not home for eleven o'clock
to-night, my door will be shut on you."

Bessie leapt up from the table.

"Shut your door if you like.  There'll be lots of ones to open
theirs," she cried, and swept out of the house.

"There you are, woman!" said Dan.  "What did I say?  Imperent
uncommon and dirty with the tongue!  She'll have to clane it this
time though.  If she's not back for eleven she'll take the road and
no more two words about it."

Mrs. Collister struggled to her feet and followed Bessie, pretending
she had forgotten something.

"Bessie!  Bessie!"

Bessie stopped at the end of the "street" and her mother hobbled up
to her.

"Be home for eleven, bogh," she whispered.  "It's freckened mortal I
am that himself has some bad schame on."

"What schame?" asked Bessie.

"I don't know what, but something, so give him no chance."

"What do I care about his chance?"

"Aw, bolla veen, bolla veen, haven't I enough to bear with thy father
and thee?  Catch the ten train back--promise me, promise me."

"Very well, I promise," said Bessie, and at the next moment she was
gone.

Five minutes later, arm-in-arm with Susie, she was swinging down the
road to the railway station for Douglas.

The little gay town, when they reached it, was at full tide, with
pianos banging in the open-windowed houses, guitars twanging in the
streets, and lines of young men marching along the pavements and
singing in chorus.  The girls, fresh from their twinkling village by
the lonely hills, with the river burrowing under the darkness of the
bridge, were almost dizzy with the sights and sounds.

When they came skipping down the steep streets to the front, and
plunged into the electric light which illuminated the bay, they could
scarcely restrain themselves from running.  And when, bubbling with
the animal life which had been suppressed, famished and starved in
them, they passed through the turn-stile to the dancing-palace and
hurried down the tunnel of trees, lit by coloured lamps, and saw the
stream of white light which came from the open door, and heard the
crash of the band and the drumming of the dancers within, their feet
were scarcely touching the ground and they felt as if they wanted to
fly.  And when at last, having entered the hall, the whole blazing
scene burst on them in a blinding flash, they drew up with a
breathless gasp.

"Oh!  Oh!"

One moment they stood by the door with blinking and sparkling eyes,
their linked arms quivering in close grip.  Then Bessie, who was the
first to recover from the intoxicating shock, looked up and around,
and saw Stowell and Gell sitting in the gallery.

"Good sakes alive," she whispered, "they're there!"

"Who?  The gentlemen?"

"Yes, in the front row.  Be quiet, girl.  They see us.  Don't look
up.  They might come down."

And then the girls laughed with glee at their conscious make-believe,
and their arms quivered again to the rush of their warm blood.



IV

"Alick, isn't that our young friend of the glen?"

"Bessie Collister?  Where?"

"Down there, standing with the fair girl, just inside the door."

"Well, yes, upon my word, I think it is!"

"I've a great mind to go down to them.  Let us go."

"No?  Really?  In a place like this?"

"Why not, man?"

"Well, if you don't mind, I don't."

A few minutes later, in an interval between the dances, Victor,
coming behind Bessie, touched her on the shoulder.

"How are those sweet-smelling heifers----still grazing on the
mountains?"

Bessie, who had watched the young men coming downstairs, and felt
them at her back, turned with a look of surprise, then laughed
merrily and introduced Susie.  For a few nervous moments there were
the light nothings which at such times are the only wisdom.  Then the
violins began to flourish for another dance, and the two couples
paired off--Victor with Bessie and Susie with Gell.

Victor took Bessie's hand with a certain delicacy to which she was
quite unaccustomed and which flattered her greatly.  The dance was a
waltz, and she had never waltzed before, so they had to go carefully
at first, but when the dance was coming to an end she was swinging to
the rhythm of the orchestra as if she had waltzed a hundred times.

In the interval the two couples came together again, and there was
much general chatter and laughter.  Gell joined freely in both, and
if at first he had had any backward thoughts of the promise he had
given to his father they were gone by this time.

Another dance began and without changing partners they set off
afresh, Stowell taking Bessie's hand with a firmer grasp and Bessie
holding to his shoulder with a stronger sense of possession.  His
nerves were tingling.  Turning round and round among women's smiling
faces, and with Bessie's smiling face by his side, he had the sense
of sweeping his partner along with an energy of physical power he had
never felt before.

When the orchestra stopped the second time and they went in search of
their companions, they discovered Susie on a seat, panting and
perspiring, and Gell fanning her with the brim of his straw hat.

Victor's excitement was becoming feverish.  He wanted Bessie to
himself, and during the third dance he felt himself dragging her to
the opposite side of the hall.  She knew what he was doing, and found
it enchanting to be carried off by sheer force.

When the dance came to an end Victor put Bessie's moist hand through
his arm and walked up and down with her.  Her throat was throbbing
and her breast rising and falling under her low-cut blouse.  They
spoke little, but sometimes he turned his head to look at her, and
then she turned her eyes to his.  He thought her black eyes were
looking blacker than ever.

The evening was now at its zenith, and the orchestra was tuning up
for the "shadow-dance."  The white lights on the walls went out, and
over the arc lamps in the glass roof a number of coloured disks were
passed, to throw shadows over the dancers, as of the sunrise, the
sunset, the moon and the night with its stars.  The dance itself was
of a nondescript kind in which at intervals, the man, with a whoop,
lifted his partner off her feet and swung her round him in his
arms--a sort of symbol of marriage by capture.

When the shadow-dance ended there was much hand-clapping among the
dancers.  It had to be repeated, this time with a more rapid movement
and to the accompaniment of a song, which, being sung by the men in
chorus, made the hall throb like the inside of a drum.  Many of the
dancers fell out exhausted, but Victor and Bessie kept up to the last.

Then the big side doors were thrown open, and amid a babel of noise,
cries and laughter, nearly all the dancers trooped out of the hall
into the garden to cool.  Victor gave his arm to Bessie and they went
out also.

Lights gleamed here and there in the darkness of the trees, throwing
shadows full of mystery and charm.  After a while the orchestra
within was heard beginning again, and most of the dancers hastened
back to the hall, but Victor said,

"Let us stay out a little longer."

Bessie agreed and for some minutes more they wandered through the
garden, in and out of the electric light, with the low murmur of the
sea coming to them from the shore and the muffled music from the hall.

She was breathing deeply, and he was feeling a little dizzy.  They
found themselves talking in whispers, both in the Anglo-Manx, and
then laughing nervously.

"Did you raelly, raelly see the young colts racing on the tops,
though?"

"'Deed no, not I, woman.  But I belave in my heart I know who did."

"Who?"

"Why you!"

At that word, and the touch of his hand about her waist, she made a
nervous laugh, and turned to him, her eyes closed, her lips parted
and her white teeth showing, and they drew together in a long kiss.

At the next moment a clock struck coldly through the still air from
the tower of a neighboring church and Bessie broke away.

"Gracious me, that must be ten o'clock.  I have to catch the ten
train home."

"You can't now.  It's impossible," he said, and he tried to hold her.

"I must--I promised," she cried, and she bounded off.  He called and
followed a few steps, but she was gone.

Feeling like a torn wound he returned to the dancing-hall.  The scene
was the same as before but it seemed crude and tame and even dead to
him now.  Where was Gell?  He must have gone to see the fair girl off
by the ten train.  He would come back presently.

Victor returned to the hotel.  To compose his nerves while he waited
he called for another half bottle of wine, and drank it, iced.  The
music was still murmuring in his ears.  After a while it stopped;
there were a few bars of the National Anthem, and then the pattering
like rain of innumerable feet on the paved way from the dancing-hall
to the promenade.  It was now a few minutes to eleven, and
remembering that that was the hour of the last train to the north he
walked up to the station.

A noisy throng was on the platform, chiefly young Manx farming people
of both sexes, returning to their homes in the country.  The open
third-class carriages were full of them, all talking and laughing
together.

Victor walked down the line of the train and looked into each of the
dim-lit carriages for Bessie, thinking it impossible that she could
have caught the earlier one.  Not finding her, he inquired if the ten
train had left promptly and was told it had been half-an-hour late.
She must have gone.

He got into an empty first-class compartment, folded his arms and
closed his eyes and the train started.  While it ran into the dark
country the farming people, being unable to talk with comfort, sang.
Over the rolling of the wheels their singing came in a dull roar, and
when the train stopped at the wayside stations it went up in the
sudden silence in a wild discord of male and female voices.

Victor was beginning to feel cold.  He put up the window.  His brain
which had been blurred was becoming lucid.  He recalled the scenes he
had taken part in and some of them seemed to him now to have been
crude and common and even a little vulgar.  He thought of Bessie and
felt ashamed.

When the train drew up at the station for the glen he turned his face
from the direction of the mill, and to defeat a desire to look at it
he opened the window at the other side of the carriage and put out
his head.

The free air was refreshing to body and brain, but when his eyes had
become accustomed to the darkness he saw the broad belt of the trees
of Ballamoar.  That brought a stabbing memory of Janet and the
promise he had given her, and then of the Deemster and his
conversation with the Governor.

He began to shiver, and to feel as if he were awakening from a fit of
moral intoxication.  To-morrow he would go home, and since he could
not trust himself any longer, he would put himself out of the reach
of temptation by living at Ballamoar in future.

When the train drew up at Ramsey it was half-past twelve.  As he
walked out of the quiet station into the echoing streets of the
sleeping town he was drawing a deep breath and saying to himself:

"Thank God!"

It was all over.




CHAPTER NINE

THE MASTER OF MAN

Dan Baldromma's meeting in the market-place had not been the success
he had expected.  Standing on the steps of the town lamp, between the
Saddle Inn and the Ship Store, he had discoursed on the rights of the
labourer to the land he cultivated.

The Earth was the Lord's, and the fulness thereof.  Therefore it
could not belong to the big ones who were adding field to
field--least of all to their wastrels of sons who were doing nothing
but hang about the roads and the glens to ruin the daughters of
decent men.  The moral of this was that the land belonged to the
people and the time was coming when they would pay no rent for it.

Dan's audience of Manx farmers had listened to this new gospel with
Manx stolidity, but a group of young English visitors, clerks from
the cotton factories, looking down from the balcony of the Saddle
Inn, had received it with open derision.

Dan had ignored their opposition as long as possible, merely saying,
when his audience laughed at their sallies,

"We must make allowance for some ones, comrades--children still,
they've not been rocked enough."

But when at length they had called him Bradlaugh Junior and Ingersoll
the Second and told him to keep his tongue off better men, Dan had
looked up at the balcony and cried,

"If you're calling me by them honoured names I'm taking my hat off to
you" (suiting the action to the word), "but if you're saying you are
better men we'll be going into a back coort somewheres and taking off
our jackets and westcots."

To preserve the peace the police had had to put an end to the
meeting, whereupon Dan, spitting contemptuously and snorting about
"The Cottonies" and "the Cotton balls," had harnessed his horse at
the Plough Inn and driven home in a dull rage.

It had been ten o'clock when he got back to Baldromma, and after
unharnessing his horse in his undrained stable, and wiping his best
boots with a wisp of straw, he had stepped round to the kitchen.

His wife was there, beating time on the hearthstone to a long-drawn
Methodist hymn while she stirred the porridge in a pot that hung over
a slow peat fire.

  "_Tell me the old, old story, ....
  Of Jesus and His love._"


"Your daughter isn't back then?" said Dan with a growl.

"Be raisonable, man," said Mrs. Collister.  "Eleven o'clock thou
said, and it's only a piece after ten yet."

She poured out the porridge and hobbled to the dairy for a basin of
milk, and then Dan, after a sour silence, sat down to his supper.

"They were telling me in Ramsey," he said, making noises with his
spoon, "that the Spaker's son went up to Douglas to-day."

"Like enough!" said Mrs. Collister.

"I'll go bail your girl went up to meet him."

"Sakes alive, man veen, what for should thou be saying that?"

"She's fit enough for it anyway."

"But what has the girl done?  Twenty-four years for Spring and not a
man at her yet."

"Chut!  Once they cut the cables that sort is the worst that's going.
She'd be an angel itself though to stand up against a waistrel like
yander."

"Bessie will be home for eleven," said Mrs. Collister.

"She'd better, or she'll find Dan Baldromma a man of his word, ma'am."

After that there was another sour silence in which both watched the
open-faced clock whose pendulum swung by the wall.  Tick, tick tick,
said the clock.  To the man it was going slowly, to the woman it
seemed to fly.  But hardly had the fingers pointed to eleven, or the
chain begun to shake for the first stroke of the hour, when Dan was
at the door, bolting and locking it.

"Will thou not give the girl a few minutes' grace, even?"

"Not half a minute."

"But the ten train hasn't whistled at the bridge yet."

"I've nothing to do with trains, Misthress Collister.  Eleven
o'clock, I said, and now it's eleven and better."

"But surely thou'll never shut thy door on a poor girl in the middle
of the night?"

"There's others that's open to her--she said so herself, remember.
She's not for coming home to-night, so take your candle and get to
bed, woman."

"But the train must be late--I'll wait up myself for her."

"You might burn your candle to the snuff--she's not for coming, I
tell you."

"But she promised me--faithfully promised me...."

"Get to bed, ma'am.  I wonder you're not thinking shame, making
excuses for the bad doings of your by-child, and you a Methodist."

The woman was on the verge of tears.

"Shame enough it is, Dan Collister, when a mother has to shut her
heart to her own child if she's not to show disrespect to her
husband."

In the intimacy of the bedroom Dan threw off all disguise.  Winding
his silver-lever watch and hanging it with its Albert on a hook in
the bed-post, and then sitting on the side of the bed to undress, he
almost crowed over his prospects.  That son of the Speaker would have
to pay for his whistle this time!  Baldromma would be his by
heirship, and a father had a right to damages for the loss of the
services of his daughter.

"There'll be no more rent going paying by me, I'm thinking," said Dan.

So that was his scheme!  Mrs. Collister stood long in her cotton
nightdress, fumbling with the strings of her night-cap, and wondering
if she could ever lie down with the man again.

"Are you never for putting out that candle and coming to bed, woman?"

Half-an-hour passed and the mother lay still and listened.  Dan was
asleep by this time and breathing audibly, but there was no sound
outside save the slipping of the water from the fixed wheel and the
stamping of the horse in the stable.  At last came the whistling of
the train, and a few minutes later, Bessie's step on the "street" and
then the rattling of the latch of the kitchen door.

Mrs. Collister tried to slip out of bed without awakening Dan, but
her sciatica had made her limbs stiff and she knocked over the
candlestick that stood on a chair beside her.  This awakened her
husband, and hearing the noise downstairs, he rolled out of bed,
saying, in a threatening voice,

"Lie thou there--I'll settle her."

He went out to the stairhead, slamming the bedroom door behind him,
threw up the sash of a window on the landing, and shouted into the
darkness:

"Who's there?"

"Me, of course," cried Bessie.

A fierce altercation followed, in which Dan's voice was harsh and
coarse, and Bessie's shrill with anger.

"Then find your bed where you've found your company," shouted Dan.
And shutting down the window with a crash he returned to the bedroom.

The mother heard Bessie going off, and the fading sound of the girl's
footsteps tore her terribly.  But after a few minutes more Dan was
making noise in his nostrils again and she got up and crept
downstairs to the kitchen (where the dull red of the dying turf left
just enough light to see by), slid the bolts back noiselessly, opened
the door and called in a whisper:

"Bessie!"

No answer came back to her, so she stepped out to the end of the
cobbled way, barefooted and in her nightdress and nightcap, and
called again:

"Bessie!  Bessie!"

Still there was no reply; so she returned to the kitchen, leaving the
door on the latch, and sat for a long hour in a rocking chair by the
hearth (souvenir of the days when Bessie was a child, and she had
rocked her to sleep in it), fighting, in the misery of her heart,
with the black thought which Dan had put there.

At length she remembered Susie and persuaded herself that Bessie must
have gone to the Ginger Hall to sleep.

"Yes, Bessie must have gone to Susie."

Being comforted by this thought, and feeling cold, for the fire had
gone out, she crept upstairs.  It was hard to go by Bessie's room on
the landing.  Every night for years she had stopped there on her way
to bed.  And in the winter, when the wind in the trees in the glen
made a roar like the sea, she had called through the closed door:
"Art thou warm enough, Bessie, or will I bring thee my flannel
petticoat?"  And now the door was open and the room was empty!

Dan was still asleep when she got back to the bedroom and her
approach did not awaken him, so she fumbled her way to the bed
(knowing where she was when her feet touched the warm sheepskin that
lay by the side of it) and then opened the clothes and crept in.

The cold air she brought with her awakened Dan, and he turned on the
pillow and said,

"You've not been letting in that girl of yours, have you?"

"No!"

Dan made a grunt of satisfaction, and then said, with his face to the
wall,

"Remember, you'll have to be up early to milk for yourself in the
morning."

"Yes."

Then came a yawn, and then a snore, and then silence fell on the
little house.



II

Bessie had run all the way to the station and then found that the
train had nearly half-an-hour to wait for the passengers by the last
of the day's steamers.  The carriages were full of English visitors,
but there were very few Manx people and she could not see Susie
anywhere.  This vexed her with the thought of having to tear herself
away a good hour earlier than anybody else.  It was all her mother's
fault--getting her to make that ridiculous promise.

From such thoughts, as the train ran into the country, her mind swung
back to the memory of Stowell.  She recalled his looks, his smile,
his whole person, and every word he had said to her down to the
moment of that burning kiss.

What pleased her most was the certainty that he had never kissed a
girl before.  The trembling of his lips, when they were lip to lip,
told her that.  And in spite of all that had been said of him she was
sure he had never had a woman in his arms until to-night--never!

And she?  Well, she had never before been kissed by a man.  Alick
Gell?  She was only a child then.  Kiss-in-the-ring at Michael Fair?
Chut!  A girl felt that no more than the wind blowing over her bare
cheek.

By the clocks at the wayside stations she saw she was going to be
late getting home, but she didn't care.  Dan Baldromma wasn't fool
enough to shut her out.  But let him if he liked to!  Where would he
go to get another girl to work for her wages--summer and winter, as
if the creatures had been her own, up all hours calving, and out
before the dawn in the lambing season, when the hoar-frost was on the
fields?

It was twenty minutes past eleven when she got down at the glen
station, and there was Susie getting down also!  Susie was in the
sulks.  Not only had Bessie deliberately lost her in the
dancing-hall, but after she had hurried away to catch the ten train,
knowing Bessie had promised to return by it, she had had to come back
alone!

This added to Bessie's vexation, and when she reached the house, and
found the door locked on her, it expressed itself in her hand when
she rattled the kitchen latch.

Then came the scene with Dan Baldromma who shouted down at her from
the upper window as if she had been a thief--it was suffocating!  And
when he said, "Find your bed where you've found your company," and
banged down the sash on her, she flung away, crying, as well as she
could for the anger that was choking her,

"So I will, and you'll be sorry for it some day."

At that moment she meant to sleep with Susie at the Ginger Hall Inn,
and offer herself next day to one or other of the farmers who had so
often asked for her.  But she had not gone many steps before she
reflected that all the farmers' houses would be full now and nobody
could take her in until Michaelmas.

No matter!  She might have been no better off.  Those old farmers
were all the same.  If it wasn't the bullying of brutes like Dan
Baldromma it was the meanness of old hypocrites like Teare of
Lezayre, who laid foundation stones, and put purses of money on top
of them, and then went home and gave his girls cold potatoes and salt
herrings for supper!

That made her think of young Willie Teare.  She had met him in Ramsey
the day before, when he had said he was tired of slaving for his
father, and meant to set up in a farm for himself as soon as he could
find the right wife.  But no thank you, no marrying with a farmer for
her!  After a woman had worn herself to the bone, keeping things
together and gathering the stock, and she was doubled up with
sciatica, and ought to be in bed, with somebody to wait on her, the
husband was nagging and ragging her from morning to night.  That was
marriage!  Hadn't she seen enough of it?

Bessie had reached the Ginger Hall by this time, and, seeing a light
in Susie's window, she was about to call up when (with Dan's insult
'Find your bed, etc.' still rankling in her mind) a startling thought
seized her and made her heart leap and the hot blood to rush through
and through her.  There was one way to escape from Dan Baldromma and
his tyrannies--Mr. Stowell!

Mr. Stowell would return by the last train to Ramsey, having bachelor
rooms there, in which he lived alone--so people were saying.  If she
were to meet him on his arrival and tell him what had happened he
would find some way out for her.  Of course he would!  She was sure
he would!

Ashamed?  Why should she be?  People had said all they could say
about a girl like her while she was a baby in arms, and who was there
to say anything now?

And then Mr. Stowell wouldn't care either.  He was rich, therefore he
had no need to be afraid of anybody.  And if he were fond of a girl
he would stand up for her and defy the whole island--that was the
sort of young man he was!

The last train could not reach Ramsey before midnight, and it might
be later.  It was only half-past eleven yet.  There was still time.
Why shouldn't she?

"'Find your bed,' indeed!  We'll see!  We'll see!"

Three-quarters of an hour later she was approaching Ramsey.  The
stars had gone out; the night was becoming gloomy; she was tired and
her spirit of defiance was breaking down under a chilling thought.
What if Mr. Stowell did not want her?  It was one thing for a young
man to amuse himself with a girl in the glen or in a dancing-hall,
but to become responsible for her....

"If he felt like that and found me in Ramsey what would he think?"

Afraid and ashamed she was slowing down with the thought of returning
to the Ginger Hall when she heard the train whistle behind her, and
looking back, saw its fiery head forging through the darkness.  That
sent the hot blood bounding to her heart again, and within a few
minutes she was walking slowly down the main street of the town,
which was all shut up and silent.

She knew where Mr. Stowell's rooms were--in Old Post Office
Place--and that he would have to come this way to get to them.  She
heard the train drawing up in the station, the passengers trooping
out, parting in the square and shouting their good-nights as they
went off by the streets to the north and south.  One group was coming
behind, on the other side of the way, laughing over something they
had seen at a place of entertainment.  They passed and turned down a
side street and the echo of their voices died away at the back of the
houses.

Then came a few moments of sickening silence.  Bessie, as she walked
on, could hear nothing more, and another chilling thought came to
her.  What if Mr. Stowell had not returned by the train and were
sleeping the night in Douglas?

All her courage and defiance ebbed away, and she saw herself for the
first time as she was--a miserable girl, cast out of her
step-father's house, in which she had worked so hard but in which
nothing belonged to her, homeless, penniless (for she had spent her
half-year's wages on her clothes) without a shelter, in the middle of
the night, alone!

It was beginning to rain and Bessie was crying.  All at once she
heard a firm step behind her.  It was he!  She was sure of it!  Her
heart again beat high and all her nerves began to tingle.  He was
overtaking her.  She turned her head aside and wiped her eyes.  He
was walking beside her.  She could hear his breathing.

"Bessie!"

"Mr. Stowell!"

"Good gracious, girl, what are you doing here?"

And then she told him.



III

"The brute!  The beast!  Did you tell him your train was late?"

"No.  He ought to have known that for himself."

"So he ought.  You are quite right there, Bessie.  But didn't your
mother...."

"Mother is afraid of her life of the man.  She daren't say anything."

"Was there any other house he might have thought you would go to--any
neighbour's, any relation's?"

"I have no relations, Sir."

"Ah! .... Then he deliberately shut you out of his house in the
middle of the night, knowing you had nowhere else to go to?"

"Yes!"

"The damned scoundrel!"

Bessie, who had been crying again, was looking up at him with wet but
shining eyes.

"Well, what are you going to do now?  Do you know anybody in town who
can take you in for to-night?"

"No."

"Then I must knock up one of the Inns for you.  Here's the old
Plough--what do you say to the Plough?"

"Dan Baldromma goes there--Mrs. Beatty would get into trouble."

"The Saddle then?"

"I go there myself, every market-day, with butter and eggs--people
would be talking."

There was only the Mitre Hotel left, and Stowell himself shrank from
that.  To go to the Mitre with a girl at this time of night would be
like shouting into the mouth of a megaphone.  Within twenty-four
hours the whole town would hear the story, with every explanation
except the right one.

"But, good heavens, girl, I can't go home and go to bed and leave you
to walk about in the streets."

"I'll do whatever you think best, Sir," said Bessie, crying again and
stammering.

They were at the corner of Old Post Office Place by this time, and,
after a moment's hesitation, he took the girl's hand and drew it
through his arm and then turned quickly in the opposite direction,
saying:

"Come, then, let us think."

It was still raining but Stowell was scarcely aware of that.  With
the girl walking close by his side he was only conscious of a return
of the faint dizziness he had felt in the garden at Douglas.  To
conquer this and to keep up his indignation about Dan Baldromma,
while they walked round the square of streets, he asked what the man
had said when he finally shut down the window.

"He said I was to find my bed where I had found my company," said
Bessie, stammering again and with her head down.

"Meaning that you had been in bad company?"

"Yes."

"The foul-minded ruffian!"

His nerves were quivering, and he knew that the hot tide of his
indignation was ebbing rapidly.  Suddenly an idea came to him and he
felt an immense relief--Mrs. Quayle!  She was a good, religious
woman, who had seen sorrow herself, and that was the best kind to go
to in a time of trouble.  She would take Bessie in for to-night, and
to-morrow they would all three go back together to Baldromma, and
then--then he would tell that old blackguard what he thought of him.

"That's it, Bessie!  I wonder why in the world I didn't think of it
before?"

Bessie was answering "Yes" and "Yes," but her beaming eyes were
looking sideways up at him, and the blood was pounding through his
body with a rush.

They had got back to the corner of Old Post Office Place when Stowell
stopped and said:

"Wait!  Mrs. Quayle's house is rather a long way off--one of the
little fishermen's cottages on the south beach, you know.  I'm not
quite sure that she has a second bed.  And then she might be alarmed
if two of us turned up at this time of night.  What if I run over
first and make sure?"

Again Bessie answered "Yes" and "Yes."

"But it's raining heavily now, and, of course, you can't stay out in
the streets any longer.  Here are my rooms--just here.  Why shouldn't
you step in and wait?  I shall have to go upstairs for an overcoat
anyway."

Bessie showed no embarrassment, and Victor felt at first that what he
was doing was something a little courageous and rather noble.  But as
soon as they reached the door, and he began to fumble with his key to
open it, he became nervous and a voice within him seemed to say,
"Take care!"

"Come in," he said bravely, but when Bessie brushed him on entering
the house he trembled, and from that moment onwards he was conscious
of a struggle between his blood and his brain.

As he was closing the door on the inside he saw that there was a
letter in the letter-box at the back of it, but he left it there, and
held out his hand to Bessie to guide her up the stairs, saying:

"It's dark here.  Give me your hand.  Now come this way.  Don't be
afraid.  You shan't fall.  I'll take care of you."

There were two short flights and then a landing, from which a door
opened on either side--on the right to Victor's offices, on the left
to his living-rooms.  He opened the door on the left, leaving Bessie
to stand on the landing until he had found matches and lit the gas.

He was long in finding them, and while rummaging in the dark room he
heard the girl's quick breathing behind him.

"Ah, here they are at last!" he cried in a tremulous voice, and then
he lit up a branch under a white globe on one side of the mantelpiece.

"Now you can come in," he said, and turning to the window he loosened
the cord of the Venetian blind and it came clattering down.

Bessie stepped into the room.  It was a warm and cosy chamber, with a
thick Persian carpet, two easy chairs, an open bookcase full of law
books, a desk-table with ink-stand, writing-pad and reading-lamp
(looking so orderly as to suggest that no work was done there) and a
large pier-glass with a small bust of a pretty Neapolitan girl and a
little silver-cased clock in front of it.  The clock was striking one.

"One o'clock!  It was stupid to stay out in the streets so long,
wasn't it?"

"Yes."

"Your hat is dripping.  Hadn't you better take it off for the few
minutes you'll have to stay?"

"Should I?"

"Do; and I'll light the gas-fire--a bachelor has to have gas-fires,
you know."

While he was down on his knees lighting the fire, and regulating its
burning from blue to red, Bessie, with trembling fingers, was drawing
the pins out of her hat--the wonderful new hat of a few hours ago,
now wet and bedraggled.  In doing so she pulled down her hair and
made a faint cry,

"Oh!"

"Don't mind that at this time of night," said Victor.  But at sight
of the girl's face, now framed in its shower of waving black hair,
his nervousness increased.  He had always thought her a good-looking
girl, but he had never known before that she was beautiful.

"My coat is wet, too.  I must change it," he said, getting up and
going towards his bedroom door.  "It would be foolish to put an
overcoat over a wet jacket, wouldn't it?"

"Yes."

"But your blouse seems to be soaking.  Why shouldn't you take it off
and dry it at the fire while I'm away at Mrs. Quayle's?"

"Should I?"

"Why not?"

While he was in the inner room, opening and closing his wardrobe, and
changing his wet coat for a dry one, he kept on talking.  Mrs. Quayle
was a good creature who had lost her husband in that January gale a
few years ago.  She would take Bessie in--he was sure she would.  But
this was only to drown the clamour of two voices within himself, one
of which was saying, "Must you go?" and the other "Certainly you
must!  Be a man and play the game, for God's sake."

When he returned to the sitting-room the breath was almost smitten
out of his body by what he saw.  Bessie had taken off her blouse, and
was kneeling by the fire to dry it.  She did not raise her eyes to
his, and after a first glance he did not look at her.  Opening the
outer door to the landing, where the hat-rail stood, he pulled on a
cap and dragged on an ulster, saying, in a nervous voice,

"It's only a hop-skip-and-a-jump to Mrs. Quayle's.  I shall be back
presently."

Suddenly there came a flash of lightning which lit up the dark
bedroom, and then a clap of thunder, loud and long, which rattled the
window frames.

"It would be foolish to go out in a storm like that, wouldn't it?" he
said.

"'Deed it would," said Bessie.  She had risen with a start, but now
she knelt again and held her steaming blouse before the fire.

Stowell took off his cap and ulster and dropped them on to a chair.
Then he walked about the room, trying to keep his eyes from the girl,
and to fill the difficult silence by talking on indifferent
subjects--other storms he had seen in other countries.

After a while the thunder went off in the direction of Ireland, its
echo becoming fainter and fainter in the sonority of the sea.

"It's gone--now I can go," he said.

But hardly had he taken up his cap again when the rain, which had
ceased for a moment, came in a sudden torrent.

"Only a thunder shower--it will soon be over," he said.

But the rain went on and on.  Good Lord, were the very forces of
nature conspiring to keep him there all night?

It was half-past one by the clock on the mantelpiece, and the rain
was still pelting on the pavement of the street outside with a sound
like that of an army in retreat.  Stowell was feeling alternately hot
and cold, and the voice within him was saying, "Must you go?  You
would be drenched through before you got back from Mrs. Quayle's, and
the girl would be as wet in getting there as if you had dropped her
into the sea."  After a few minutes more he said,

"Bessie, I'm afraid we shall have to give up the idea of going to
Mrs. Quayle's."

"Yes?"

"But you can stay here, and I can go over to the Mitre."

"No, no."

"It's nothing--only two yards away."

Johnny Kelly, the boots, slept on the ground floor--he could get him
up without ringing the bell.  Of course he would have to tell the old
man some cock-and-bull story--that he had lost his key or something.

"But it's the very thing.  I wonder I didn't think of it before."

He half hoped and half feared she might make some further protest.
But she did not, so he picked up his cap and ulster and was making
for the door when he thought of the gas.  Would Bessie, who had been
brought up in a thatched cottage, know how to put it out?

"Well, no, no," she stammered.

"It's quite simple.  You turn the tap, so...."

He had to kneel by her side to show her, and he was feeling the warm
glow he had felt in the glen.

"But not being used of it...."

"Then I know--the reading-lamp!"

He leapt up to light it, and having done so, he turned out the branch
under the white globe, saying, with a laugh, it was lucky he had
thought of the lamp, for if old Johnny had seen the light in the
window the story of the key would have sounded thin, wouldn't it?

Then she laughed too, and they laughed together, but their laughter
broke into a sharp and breathless silence.

He carried the lamp into the bedroom, put it on the table by the
bedside and then pulled down the white window-blind, breaking the
cord by the tug of his trembling fingers.  He was feeling as if
another storm, a storm of emotions, were now thundering within him.
"Must you go?"  "You must!  You shall!  Good Lord, could a man of any
conscience .... Never!  Never!"

When he returned to the sitting-room Bessie had risen to her feet.
She was standing at the opposite side of the mantelpiece and the
intoxicating red light of the fire was over her.  Stowell thought he
had never seen anything so beautiful.  But he could not trust himself
to look twice.

"You'll be all right here, Bessie," he said, in a loud voice,
snatching up his coat and cap and making for the door.  "You can let
yourself out of the house as early as you like in the morning; and if
you decide to go back to that damned old devil at Baldromma you can
tell him from me where you passed the night, and I'll stand up for
you--why shouldn't I?"

Then he heard a breathless cry behind him, and then the words,

"Must you go?"

He stopped and turned.  Was it Bessie who had spoken?  She had taken
a step towards him, was breathing irregularly and looking at him with
gleaming eyes.

He felt as if the floor were rocking under his feet, as if the walls
were reeling round him, as if he were seeing the face of woman for
the first time.

At the next moment they were clasped in each other's arms.




CHAPTER TEN

THE CALL OF THE BALLAMOARS

"What a mistake!  What a hideous blunder!"

Stowell, who had slept little, was awakening as from a bad dream.  A
dull lead-coloured light was filtering through the white window-blind.

He could not help seeing it--Bessie was not as pretty as he had
thought.  There was something common about her beauty when she was
asleep which had been effaced by her eyes while she was awake.

Ashamed to look any longer he stepped into the sitting-room.  A close
odour hung in the air.  The gas fire was still burning, and Bessie's
blouse was lying, where she had flung it, on the floor.  With a sense
of moral and physical suffocation, he went downstairs and out into
the streets.

The morning was fine and the dawn was breaking, but the town was
still asleep.  So great was the upheaval within himself that in some
vague way he expected everything to look changed.  But no, everything
was the same--the shops, the signs, the lamps, which had not yet been
put out.  There was no sound except that of his own footsteps on the
pavement, and to deaden this he walked in the middle of the streets.

He wanted to be alone, to leave the town behind him.  Turning
northward he crossed the harbour bridge and made for the red pier
which stood out into the bay with a light-house at the end of it.

The tide hummed far off on the shore.  It was the bottom of the ebb.
Trading schooners were lying half on their sides in the mud.
Seagulls were calling over it.  Sand, slime, sea-wrack and the broken
refuse of the town lay uncovered at the harbour's mouth, and the last
draught of the ebbing water was playing about them with a guttural
sound.

When he came to the light-house he saw that some fragments of stone
and glass were lying about, but his mind was too confused to ask
itself what had happened.  He sat down on the light-house steps,
looked down into the harbour-basin and tried to think.

Good Lord, what a fool he had been!  To ask the girl into his rooms,
being who and what she was, alone, in the middle of the night, just
after he had formed the resolution to go home and put himself out of
the reach of temptation .... what a fool!

He thought of the stories people had told of him and how he had
justified the very ugliest and worst of them .... what a fool!

He remembered what he had said to Janet, that no girl on the island
or in the world had ever come to any harm through him, or ever
should.  That was only a little while ago and now .... what a fool!

He recalled the white heat of his indignation against Dan Baldromma
for what he had done to his step-daughter.  That was only last night,
and now he himself .... what a fool!  What a fool!

Then the sense of his folly gave way to a sense of shame.  Down to
yesterday he had lived a decent life.  Reckless, heedless, careless,
stupid perhaps, but decent anyway.  And now .... what shame!

The light was then clearing, and raising his eyes he saw on the south
beach a one-story fisherman's cottage from which the smoke was
rising.  It was Mrs. Quayle's cottage.  She was making her early
breakfast, and presently she would go to his room to make his.  He
shuddered at a vision of what she would find there--the close air,
the gas fire, the girl's blouse on the floor, the girl herself ....
how degrading it all was!

He saw Dan Baldromma ferreting out the facts (as of course he would,
having to find excuses for his own barbarity), and then blazoning
them abroad to his own disgrace and the discredit of his class.  Or
worse--a hundredfold worse--holding them as a threat over his father.
What a disgusting bog he had strayed into!

He saw the truth leaking out one way or other and putting an end to
his career at the bar.  It was not the same here as in the greater
communities, where a man might commit a fault and then submerge it in
the fathomless tide of life.  In this little island, where everybody
knew everybody, it was the man himself who was submerged.

If the story of last night became known to anyone it would become
known to everyone, from the Governor himself to the meanest beggar on
the roads.  No position of honour or authority would ever be possible
to him after that.  The black fact would be a clanking chain which he
would have to drag after him as long as he lived.

When he thought of this--that the event of one night might alter the
whole course of his life, and bring scandal upon the Deemster, and
that it was due to a miserable accident in the first instance--the
accident of meeting Bessie on the streets after midnight--he was
filled with a fierce and consuming rage, and for one bad moment he
had an almost uncontrollable desire to return to his rooms and drive
her out of them.

That horrified him.  He hated himself for it, and after a while his
self-pity gave place to pity for the girl.

"Good heavens, what are my risks compared to hers?" he asked himself.

The poor girl had so many excuses.  Back in the past, before she was
born even, she had been condemned and branded, and the damned
hypocritical world had been deepening the injury every day since.  If
he had found her in the streets it was only because her brutal
step-father had turned her from his door.  And if she had come into
his rooms it was because she had no other shelter.

She had been a good girl too.  No other man had been allowed to lead
her astray.  He could hear her voice still, repeating his own words
after him: "You _will_ stand up for me, won't you?" and he had
promised that he would.  He could not cast her off now without being
a scoundrel.  Could the son of Deemster Stowell be a scoundrel?

"No, by God!"

A few minutes later he saw himself going back to Bessie and saying,
"Look here, my dear girl.  It was neither your fault nor mine, but
take this, and this, and remember if you ever find it is not enough,
there'll be more where that comes from."

But no, he could not do that either.  If he made the girl take money
he would put her in the position of a harlot; and once a woman
accepted that position there was no bottom to the unguessed depths to
which she might descend.

Bessie's future stood up before him like a spectre.  Other men, each
more brutal than the last, quarrels, violence, all the miseries of
such a life--until some day, perhaps, some hideous fact with which he
had had nothing to do, would look at him with accusing eyes and say,

"You are responsible for this, because you were the first."

Down to that moment he had been thinking of the event of last night
as a blunder, but now he saw it as a crime.  To prevent the possible
consequences of that crime he must keep the girl with him, take care
of her, protect her as the saying was.

But no, that was impossible also.  Justification for such a relation
there might be--no doubt was--where law or custom or other impediment
were keeping apart a man and woman who belonged together.  But to put
a girl into the position of a mistress, because she was unworthy to
be a wife, and to hide her away behind a curtain of duplicity and
lies, was to destroy her body and soul.

Again Bessie's future stood up before him as a spectre--that
high-spirited girl who, but for him, might have married a decent man
of her own class, and held her head proud, declining, after a few
vain months of fine clothes and idleness, to the condition of a
slattern, and going down to the dirt and degeneration of drink.

And then he saw that what had happened last night was not merely a
crime--it was a sin.

But what was he to do?  What?  What?

Just at that moment the sun had come up out of the sea in crimsoning
clouds, and the white mist that is the shroud of night had risen
above the houses of the town, the steeples of the churches, the hills
and the mountain tops, and was vanishing away in that new birth of
morning light that is the world's daily resurrection.

"I know!  I know!" he thought, and he leapt to his feet.

He had remembered something that Janet had said about the men of his
family--that it had always been a kind of religion with them to do
the right.  Four hundred years of the Ballamoars and not a stain on
the name of any of them!  That was something to be born to, wasn't
it?  It was worth all the titles and honours the world had in it.

And then, in that moment of strange and solemn splendour, when the
things of the other world appear to be as real as the things of this
one, it seemed as if the Ballamoars were calling to him!  Four
hundred years of the dead Ballamoars were calling to the last of
their sons--"_Do the right!_"

"I must marry that girl," he told himself.

But at the next moment there came, with the shock of a blow, the
memory of his mother.

Marriage had always been associated in his mind with such different
conditions.  Such a different woman; somebody who would be your
equal, perhaps your superior; somebody who would sustain and inspire
you; somebody who would help you feel the throbbing pulse of life,
and listen to all the suffering hearts that beat; somebody who, if
she had to go before you, would leave behind her, for as long as your
life should last, the fragrance of flowers and the halo of a holy
saint.

That was marriage as he had always thought of it.  And now this
girl--illiterate, inadequate, with that mother, that father .... in
the presence of the Deemster .... the home of Isobel Stanley .... Oh,
God!

Then a mocking voice seemed to say,

"Good Lord, what a joke!  If every man who ever made a tragic blunder
(there have been hundreds of thousands of you) had acted on your
exaggerated sense of responsibility, what a mess the old world would
be in by this time!  Why, there is scarcely a man alive who would not
laugh at you and call you a fool."

"Let them," he thought, for louder at that moment than any other
voice was the voice that cried,

"_Do the right!_"

The marriage need not take place immediately.  Bessie could be
educated.  She was bright; there was no saying how quickly she might
develop.  That would soften the blow to his father, and anyhow the
Deemster would see that he was trying to be true to his blood, his
race.

"Yes, yes, I must do the right; whatever it may cost me."

But then came another chilling thought.  Love!  There could be no
love in such a marriage.  This brought, with the pain of a bleeding
wound, the memory of Fenella.

In spite of all he had said to himself through so many years he had
never really been reconciled to the loss of her.  Down in some dark
and secret chamber of his consciousness there had always been a
phantom hope that notwithstanding her devotion to her work for women,
and the dedication to celibacy (as stern as the consecration of the
veil) which she believed to be demanded by it, Fenella would return
to the island, and his great love would be rewarded.

That had been the real cause of his idleness.  He had been waiting,
waiting, waiting for Fenella to come back and make it worth while
.... and now .... by his own act .... the consequences of it .... Oh,
God!  Oh, God!

For the first time, save once since he was a child, he felt tears in
his eyes, but he brushed them away impatiently.

"It's too late to think of that now," he thought.

A duty claimed him.  He must put such dreams away.  Besides where was
the merit of doing the right if you had not to sacrifice something?
Love might be the light of life, but men and women all the world over
had for one reason or other to marry without it.  Millions of hearts
in all ages were like old battlefields, with dead things, which
nobody knew of, lying about in the dark places.  And yet the world
went on.

He might have struggles, heart-aches, heart-hunger, and more than he
could do to keep the pot boiling, with the fire out and the hearth
cold, but nobody need know anything about that.  This girl need never
know.  Fenella need never know.  Nobody need know.  It was a matter
for himself only.

"Yes, yes, I must do the right," he kept on saying, "whatever it may
cost me."

Having arrived at this decision he felt an immense relief and got up
to go back.

The windows of the town were reflecting the morning sun and the smoke
was rising from the chimneys.  He saw an elderly woman, with a little
shawl pinned over her head and under her chin, trudging along past
the storm-cone station on the other side of the harbour.  It was Mrs.
Quayle, on her way to his rooms.  But he shuddered no longer at the
thought of her.  She was a good creature and when she heard what he
meant to do she would help him with the care of Bessie.

As he walked towards the town he told himself he had another reason
now for setting to work in earnest--he had to justify what he was
going to do in the eyes of the island and of the Deemster.  Therefore
the event of last night might be a good thing after all, little as he
had thought so.

At the mouth of the bridge he met the harbour-master, whose face wore
a look of dismay.

"This is a ter'ble shocking thing that has happened in the night, Mr.
Stowell."

Stowell caught his breath and asked "What?"

"Why, the light-house.  Struck by lightning in the storm.  Didn't you
see it, Sir?"

"Oh yes, of course, certainly."

"I'm just after telegraphing to the Governor and the
Receiver-General.  The old light has gone out with the tide, Sir, and
it will be middlin' bad for the boats coming in at night until we get
a new one."

"It will, Captain, it will.  Good-morning!"

His eyes were positively shining with joy as he walked sharply
through the town, and as he opened his door he was saying to himself
again,

"I must do the right, _whatever_ it may cost me."

He was closing the door on the inside when he saw in the letter-box
the letter which had caught his eye last night.  Now he could open it.

It was marked "Immediate."  Recognising the Ballamoar crest and
Janet's handwriting, he trembled and turned pale.


    "A line in frantic haste, dear, to say I have just heard from
    Miss Green that Fenella is crossing by the steamer due to arrive
    at eight o'clock this evening.  She has left her Settlement and
    is coming back to stay in the island for good.  I thought you
    might like to go up to Douglas to meet her.  Trust me, dear, she
    will be simply delighted.

    "Robbie Creer is taking this into town by hand, so that you may
    receive it at the earliest possible moment.  I am frightfully
    excited, and oh, so glad and happy."


Stowell reeled and laid hold of the hand-rail.  And when at length he
went upstairs he staggered as if he were carrying a crushing load.


END OF FIRST BOOK




_SECOND BOOK_

THE RECKONING


CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE RETURN OF FENELLA

"Fate has played me a scurvy trick," thought Stowell.  "No matter!
I'll go on."

Within an hour he settled Bessie Collister temporarily with Mrs.
Quayle.  He told her they were to be married ultimately, but meantime
(that she might feel more comfortable in her new condition) he
intended to find some suitable place in which she would complete her
education.

He tried to say this tenderly so as not to hurt the girl's pride, and
even affectionately, so as to convey the idea that it was she who
would be doing the favour.  But a certain shallowness in Bessie's
nature disappointed him.  While he unfolded his plans she said "Yes"
and "yes," looking alternately surprised and startled, but it was
with a troubled face, rather than a glad one, that she went off with
Mrs. Quayle, whose own face was grave also.

Two days later Stowell went up to see Gell.  He had determined to say
nothing about his intimate relations with Bessie.  Why should he?  If
it was his duty to marry the girl, it was equally his duty to protect
her honour--the honour of the woman who was to become his wife.

Gell was astounded.  He listened, with a twinkling eye, to Stowell's
story of how he had come upon Bessie in the street, after midnight,
friendless and homeless, being shut out by her abominable father, and
how he had taken her to Mrs. Quayle's.  But when Stowell went on to
say that, feeling a certain responsibility for the girl's misfortune,
having been a principal cause of it (by keeping her out too late at
night) and having seen something of her since, he had come to like
and even to love her, and had made up his mind to marry her, Gell
broke into exclamations of astonishment which cut Stowell to the
quick.

"But Bessie?  Bessie Collister?  Do you really mean it?"

"Why not?"

"Well .... it is not for me to say why not.  She was a sort of old
flame of my own, you know."

Stowell flinched at this, but went on with his story.  For Bessie's
sake he had decided to put back the marriage until she could be
educated a little.  And if Gell knew of any school, not too well
known, and far enough away....

"Why, yes, of course I do," said Gell.

It was that of the Misses Brown at Derby Haven--a remote village at
the south of the island.  Two old maids who had formerly been
governesses to his sisters.  Only yesterday the elder of them had
written asking if there was anything he could put in her way.  It
looked like the very thing.  At all events he would go down and see.
And if Stowell wished to keep things quiet for a while, as of course
he would, if it was only for the sake of the Deemster, he was ready
to act as go-between.

"What a good fellow you are, Alick!"

"Not a bit!  It's no more than you would have done for me--less than
you've done already."

Next day Stowell had a letter from Gell saying he had arranged
everything.  The Misses Brown, who had no other pupil at present,
would be only too delighted.  Bessie might be sent up at any time and
he would see her to her destination.

Within a week the girl was despatched to Douglas, with such
belongings as Mrs. Quayle had bought for her, and in due course
Stowell had a second letter from Gell, saying,

"It's all right.  I've delivered the goods!  Of course I made no
unnecessary explanations, and old Miss Brown, smelling a secret,
thinks I am to be the happy man.  What larks!  But I don't mind if
you don't.  Bessie looked a little wistful when I came away, so I had
to promise to run down and see her sometimes.  That's all right, I
suppose?"

Then Stowell set to work.  Letting it be known that he was willing to
accept cases of all kinds it was not long before he was fully
occupied.  Common assault, drunkenness, petty larceny--he took
anything and everything that came his way.  He did his work well.  In
a little while people began to whisper that he was a chip of the old
block and to employ the Deemster's son was to ensure success.

Meantime he saw nothing of Fenella.  Having made up his mind to do
the right thing he tried his best to banish all thought of her.  But
everybody was talking of the Governor's daughter.  She was beautiful;
she was charming; she was wonderful!  Oh, the joy of it all!  But the
pain and the misery of it, also!

One day he met Janet driving in the street, and after she had asked
if he had received her letter, and he had answered no, it had arrived
too late, she said,

"But of course you'll call, dear.  I'm sure she'll expect it."

The Governor sent out invitations to a garden-party in honour of his
daughter's return home, but Stowell excused himself on the ground of
urgent work.  A little later Fenella herself issued invitations to a
meeting towards the establishment of a League for the Protection of
Women, but again Stowell excused himself--a case in the Courts.

Still later he went out to Ballamoar to see his father, whom he had
neglected of late, and the Deemster (who looked older and feebler and
had a duller light in his great but melancholy eyes) flamed up with a
kind of youth when he talked of Fenella.

"It's extraordinary," he said.  "Do you know, Victor, she is the only
woman I have ever met who has reminded me of your mother?  And if I
close my eyes when she is speaking, I can almost persuade myself it
is the same."

Stowell began to think he hated the very name of Fenella.  But there
were moments when he felt that he could have given the whole world,
if he had possessed it, just to look upon her face.

One day Gell came to "report progress" about Bessie.  She was getting
on all right, but "longing" a little in those unaccustomed
surroundings, so he had to go down in the evenings sometimes to take
her out for walks.

"We'll have to be careful about that, though," he said, "for what do
you think?"

"What?"

"Dan Baldromma suspects _me_, and is having me watched."

Stowell was startled and ashamed.  Where had his head been that he
had not thought of this before?  He had got up from his desk and was
looking vacantly out of the window when he became aware that the
Governor's big blue landau was drawing up in the street below.

At the next moment there was a light step on the stairs, and at the
next the door of his room was opened by his young clerk, and through
the doorway came someone who was like a vision from a thousand of his
dreams, but now grown in her stately height out of the beauty of a
bewitching girl into the full bloom of womanly loveliness.

It was Fenella Stanley.



II

"You wouldn't come to see me, so I've come to see you."

Stowell never knew what answer he made when he took her outstretched
hand; but after a moment he said,

"You know my friend Gell?"

"Indeed I do .... And how's Isabella? .... And Adelaide? .... And
Verbena?"

While Fenella was talking to Gell, Stowell had time to look at her.
She was the most beautiful woman in the world!  Those dark eyes,
beaming with bluish opal; those lips like an opening rose; that
spacious forehead, with its brown hair shot with gold--they had not
told him the half.

Gell made shift to answer for the sisters he had not seen for months,
and then went off.

And then Fenella, taking the chair that Stowell had set for her, and
dropping her voice to a deeper note, said,

"And now to business.  You know we've established on the island a
branch of the Women's Protection League?"

"I know."

"One of its objects is to protect women from the law."

"The law?"

"Yes, sir, the law," said Fenella smiling.  "Your law can be very
cruel sometimes--especially to women.  But our first case is not one
of that kind.  It is a case in which the law, if rightly guided, can
best do justice by showing mercy."

A young wife in Castletown had killed her husband.  She had already
appeared at the High Bailiff's Court and been committed for trial to
the Court of General Gaol Delivery--the Manx Court of Assize.

"There seems to be no question of her guilt," said Fenella, "so we
can neither expect nor desire that she should escape punishment
altogether.  The poor thing--she's scarcely more than a girl--will
say nothing in self-defence, but when we remember how the soul of a
woman shrinks from a crime of that kind we feel that she must have
suffered some great injustice, some secret wrong, which, if it could
be brought out in Court...."

"I see," said Stowell.

Fenella paused a moment and then said, in a voice that was becoming
tremulous,

"Therefore we have thought that for this case we need an advocate who
loves women as women and can see into the heart of a woman when she's
down and done, because God has made him so.  And that's why...."

"Yes?"

"That's why I've brought this first case to you."

Stowell could scarcely speak to answer her.  But after a moment he
stammered that he would do his utmost; and then Fenella brought out
of her hand-bag some printed papers that were a report of the
preliminary inquiry.

"I'll read them to-night," he said, putting them into his breast
pocket.

"Of course you'll require to see the prisoner?"

"Yes."

"She hasn't opened her lips yet, but you must get her to speak."

"I'll try."

"That's all for the present," said Fenella, rising; and at the next
moment she was smiling again, and her eyes were beginning to glow.

"So this is where you live?"

"No, this is my office; I live at the other side of the house."

"Really?  I wonder...."

"You would like to see my living rooms?"

"I'd love to.  I've always wanted to see how young bachelors live
alone."

"Come this way then."

Stowell had not realised what he was doing for himself until he was
on the landing, with the key in the lock, and Fenella behind him, but
then came a stabbing memory of another woman in the same position.

"Come in," he cried (his voice was quivering now), and drawing up the
Venetian blind he let in a flood of sunshine and the soft song of the
sea.

"What a comfy little room!" said Fenella.

As she looked around her eyes seemed to light up everything.

"It's easy to see that you've been racing all over the earth, sir.
That Neapolitan girl on the mantelpiece came from Rome, didn't she?"

"She did."

"And that lamp from Venice, and that silver bowl from Cairo, and that
cedar-wood photograph frame from Sorrento?"

"Quite right."

"Books!  Books!  Books!  All law books, I see.  Not a human thing
among them, I'll be bound.  And yet they're all terribly, fearfully,
tragically human, I suppose?"

"That's so."

"Gas fire?  So you have a gas fire for the cold wet nights?"

"Yes, a bachelor has to have...."  But another stabbing memory came,
and he could get no further.

"And so this is where you sit alone until all hours of the
night--reading, reading, reading?"

He tried to speak but could not.  She glanced at the bedroom door
which stood open, and said, with eyes that seemed to laugh,

"Is that your....?"

He nodded, breathing deeply, and trying to turn his eyes away.

"May I perhaps....?"

"If you would like to."

"What fun!"

She stood in the doorway, looking into the room for a moment, with
the sunlight on her bronze-brown hair, and then, turning back to him
with the warmer sunshine of her smile, she said,

"Well, you young bachelors know how to make yourselves comfortable, I
must say.  But I seem to scent a woman about this place."

He found himself stammering: "There's my housekeeper, Mrs. Quayle.
She comes every morning...."

"Ah, that accounts for it."

She walked downstairs by his side, and said, as he opened the
carriage door for her,

"You'll do your best for that poor girl?"

"My very best."

"And by the way, the Deemster has invited the Governor and me to
Ballamoar.  We go on Monday and stay a week.  Of course you'll be
there?"

"I'm afraid...."

"Oh, but you must."

"I'll .... I'll try."

"Au revoir!"

He stood, after the carriage had gone until it had crossed to the
other side of the square, where, from the shade of the inside (it had
been closed in the meantime) Fenella reached her smiling face forward
and bowed to him again.  Then he went back to his room--now empty,
silent and dead.

Oh, God, why had that senseless thing been allowed to happen!  Lord,
what a little step in front of him on life's highway a man was
permitted to see!

Stowell did not return to his office that afternoon.  His young clerk
locked up, left the keys, went downstairs and shut the door after
him, but still he sat in the gathering darkness like a man nursing an
incurable wound.  He would never forgive himself for allowing Fenella
to come into his rooms--never!

"You fool!" he thought, leaping up at last.  "What's done is done,
and all you've got to do now is to stand up to it."

Then he lit the gas and taking the report out of his pocket he began
to read it.  What a shock!  As, little by little, through the
thick-set hedge of question and answer, the story of the wretched
young wife came out to him, he saw, to his horror, that it was the
story of Bessie Collister as he had imagined it might be if he
deserted her.

What devil out of hell had brought this case to him as a punishment?
By the hand of Fenella, too!  No matter!  If the unseen powers were
concerning themselves with his miserable misdoings perhaps it was
only to strengthen him in his resolution--to compel him to go on.

Suffer?  Of course he would suffer!  It was only right that he should
suffer.  And as for the haunting presence of Fenella's face in that
room, there was a way to banish that.

So, sitting at his desk, he wrote,


    "DEAR BESSIE,--Please go into Castletown to-morrow and have your
    photograph taken, and send it on to me immediately."


After that he felt more at ease and sat down before the fire to study
his case.



III

"I must not go to Ballamoar while she's there.  It would be madness,"
thought Stowell.

To escape from the temptation he made a still deeper plunge into the
cauldron of work, going to Courts all over the island and winning his
cases everywhere.

Twice he went to Castle Rushen to see the young wife in her cell.
What happened there was made known to the frequenters of the "Manx
Arms" by Tommy Vondy, the gaoler.  Tommy, who had been coachman at
Ballamoar in the "Stranger's" days, and appointed to his present post
by the Deemster's influence, was accustomed to scenes of loud
lamentation.  But having listened outside the cell door, and even
taken a peep or two through the grill, he was "free to confess" that
"the young Master" could not get a word out of the prisoner.

As the week of Fenella's visit to Ballamoar was coming to a close,
Stowell's nervousness became feverish.  One day, as he was walking
down the street, a dog-cart drew up by his side and a voice called,

"Mr. Stowell!"

It was Dr. Clucas, a jovial, rubicund full-bearded man of middle age,
not liable to alarms.

"I've just been out to Ballamoar to see the Deemster, and I think
perhaps you ought to keep in touch with him."

"Is my father....?"

"Oh no, nothing serious, no immediate danger.  Still, at his age, you
know...."

"I'll go home to-morrow," said Stowell.

On the following afternoon he walked to Ballamoar.  It was a bright
day in early September.  There was a hot hum of bees on the gorse
hedges and the light rattle of the reaper in the fields, but inside
the tall elms there was the usual silence, unbroken even by the
cawing of the rooks.

The house, too, when he reached it, seemed to be deserted.  The front
door was open but the rooms were empty.

"Janet!" he cried, but there came no answer.  Then he heard a burst
of laughter from the back, and going through the dining-room to the
piazza, he saw what was happening.

The yellow corn field which had been waving to a light breeze when he
was there a fortnight before, was now bare save for the stooks which
were dotted over part of it, and in the corner nearest to the mansion
house a group of persons stood waiting for the cutting of the last
armful of the crop--the Deemster, leaning on his stick; the Governor
smoking his briar-root pipe; Parson Cowley, with his round red face;
Janet in her lace cap; the house servants in their white aprons;
Robbie Creer, in his sleeve waistcoat; young Robbie, stripped to the
shirt; a large company of farm lads and farm girls, and--Fenella, in
a sunbonnet and with a sickle in her hand.  It was the Melliah--the
harvest home.

"Now for it," cried Robbie, "strike them from their legs, miss."  And
at a stroke from her sickle Fenella brought the last sheaf to the
ground.

Then there was a shout of "Hurrah for the Melliah!" and at the next
moment Robbie was dipping mugs into a pail and handing them round to
the males of the company, saying, when he came to the Parson,

"The Parson was the first man that ever threw water in my face"
(meaning his baptism), "but there's a jug of good Manx ale for his
own."

The rough jest was received with laughter, and then the Deemster,
being called for, spoke a few words with his calm dignity, leaning
both hands on his stick:

"'Custom must be indulged with custom, or custom will weep.'  So says
our old Manx proverb.  The sun is going west on me, and I cannot hope
to see many more Melliahs.  But I trust my dear son, when he comes
after me, will encourage you to keep up all that is good in our old
traditions."

Then there was another shout, followed by some wild horseplay, with
the farm-boys vaulting the stocks and the girls stretching straw
ropes to trip them up, while the Deemster and his company turned back
to the house.

Fenella, coming along in her sun bonnet (a little awry) and with her
sheaf over her arm, was the first to see Victor, and she cried,

"At last!  The Stranger has come at last!"

Janet was in raptures, and the Deemster said, while his slow eyes
smiled,

"You are sleeping at home to-night, Victor?"

"Yes, father."

"Good!"

After saluting everybody Victor found himself walking by Fenella's
side, and she was saying in a low voice, with a side-long glance,

"And how do you like me in a sun bonnet, sir?  You rather fancy sun
bonnets, I believe."  But at that moment a wasp had settled on her
arm and he was too busy removing it to reply.

At dinner that night Stowell found himself drawn into the home
atmosphere as never before since his days as a student-at-law.  The
dining-table was bright with silver and many candles, and the wood
fire, crackling on the hearth, filled the low-ceiled room with the
resinous odour of the pine.

Everybody except himself and the doctor (who had arrived as they were
sitting down) had dressed.  The beauty of Fenella, who came in with
the Deemster, seemed to be softened and heightened by her pale pink
evening gown--like the beauty of a flower-bud when it opens and
becomes a rose.

With Janet's complete approval Fenella had taken control of
everything, and as Victor entered she said,

"That's your place, Mr. Stranger," putting him at the end of the
table, with Janet and the doctor on either side.

She herself sat by the Deemster, whose powerful face wore an
expression of suffering, although, as often as she spoke to him, he
turned to her and smiled.

"She's lovelier than ever, really," whispered Janet, and then (with
that clairvoyance in the heart of a woman which enables her to read
mysteries without knowing it), "What a pity she ever went away!"

As a sequel to the Melliah the talk during dinner was of the ancient
customs and old life of the island.  The Deemster, who could have
told most, said little, but the Governor spoke of the riots of the
Manx people (especially the copper riot when they wanted to burn down
Government House), and Janet of the roysterers and haffsters of the
Athols who kept racehorses and fought duels--her mother in her
girlhood had seen the blue mark of the bullet on the dead forehead of
one of them.

Such sweetness, such nobility, the men, the women, and the manners!
Fenella joined in the talk with great animation, but Stowell was
silent and in pain.  Here they were, his family and friends, without
a suspicion that some day, perhaps soon, he would bring quite another
atmosphere into this house, this room.  Visions of the mill, the
miller, his wife and his daughter rose before him, and he felt like a
traitor.

But it was not until they went into the library (it was library and
drawing-room combined) that he knew the full depth of his
humiliation.  The Deemster, who was by the fire, asked Fenella to
sing to them, and she did so, sitting at the piano, with Doctor
Clucas (who in his youth had been the best dancer in the island)
tripping about her with old-fashioned gallantry to find the music and
turn over the leaves.

"This is for the Stranger," she said (cutting deeper than she knew),
and then followed a series of old Manx ballads, some of them like the
wailing of the wind among the rushes on the Curraghs, and some like
the dancing of the water in the harbour before a fresh breeze on a
summer day.

Then the doctor brought out from a cupboard a few faded sheets
inscribed "Isobel Stowell," and Fenella sang "Allan Water" and "Annie
Laurie."  And then the Deemster closed his eyes, and it seemed to
Victor who sat on a hassock by his side, that his father's
blue-veined hands trembled on his knees.

"And this is for myself," said Fenella, dropping into a deeper tone
as she sang:

  _Less than the weed that grows beside thy door....
  Even less am I._"


Victor wanted to fly out of the room and burst into tears.  But just
then the clock on the landing struck, and Fenella rose from the piano.

"Ten o'clock!  Time to go upstairs, Deemster."

The old man seemed to like to be controlled by the young woman, and
leaning on her arm, he bowed all around in his stately way, and
permitted himself to be led from the room.

Then the Governor (being a privileged person) lit his pipe with a
piece of red turf from the fire, and Janet whispered to the maid who
had come back for the coffee-tray,

"See that Mr. Victor's night-things are laid out, Jane."

But Victor himself was in the hall, helping the Doctor with his
overcoat, and saying,

"Can you take me back to town with you?"

"Certainly, if you'll wait at the lodge while I look in on the
cowman's wife."

"Why, what's this mischief you are plotting?"  It was Fenella coming
downstairs.

The doctor explained, and Victor said,

"There's that case.  It comes on soon.  I must see the poor woman
again in the morning."

"Well, if you must, you must, and I'll go down to the gate with you,"
said Fenella.  And putting something over her head she walked by his
side (the doctor having gone on), taking his arm unasked and keeping
step with him.

"I was just wanting a word with you."

"Yes?"

"It's about your father.  You must really come back to live with him."

"Has he asked...."

"Not to say asked!  'Victor doesn't come to see me very
often'--that's all."

"After this case is over I'll...."

"Do.  You can't think how much it will mean to him."

On the way back to Ramsey, with the lamps of the dog-cart opening up
the dark road in front of them, Stowell was silent, but the doctor
talked continuously, and always on the same subject.

"I've seen something of the ladies in my time, Mr. Stowell, sir, but
I really think .... yes, sir I really do think...." and then
rapturous praises of Fenella.  They rang like joy-bells in Stowell's
ear but struck like minute-bells also.

When he closed the street door to his chambers he found a large
envelope in the letter-box behind it.  Bessie's photograph!  As he
held it under the gas globe in his cold room the pictured face gave
him a shock.  Beautiful?  Yes, but there was something common in its
beauty which he had never observed before.

His first impulse was to hide the photograph out of sight.  But at
the next moment he tore open the cedar-wood frame on the mantelpiece,
removed the portrait it contained, inserted Bessie's in its place,
and then put it to stand on the table by the side of his bed.

"There!  That shall be the last face I see at night and the first I
see in the morning!"

But oh vain and foolish thought!  With the first sleep of the night
another face was in his dream.




CHAPTER TWELVE

THE DEATH OF THE DEEMSTER

The Deemster had not intended to sit at the next Court of General
Gaol Delivery, and had already arranged for the second Deemster to
take his place, but when, next morning at breakfast, he heard from
Fenella that Victor was to plead, he determined to preside.

"I must hear Victor's first case at the General Gaol," he said.

"We shall have to be careful, then," said Dr. Clucas.  "No
excitement, your Honour!  No more heart-strain!"

On the morning of the trial he was up early.  Janet heard him humming
to himself in the conservatory as he cut the flowers for the vase in
front of his young wife's picture.  When he was ready to go she
helped him on with his overcoat, turning up the collar and putting a
muffler about his neck.  And when young Robbie came round with the
dog-cart he stepped up into it with surprising strength.

And then Janet, who had smuggled a brandy-flask into the luncheon
basket at the back of the dog-cart, stood with a swollen heart and
watched the old man as he went off in the morning mist, with the
awakened rooks cawing over the unseen tops of the trees.

Three hours later, the Deemster arrived at Castletown.  The sun was
up, and there was a crowd at the castle gate.  All hats were off as
he passed through the Judge's private passage-way to the dark
robing-room with its deeply recessed window.  The Governor, in
General's uniform, was there already, for he sat also in the high
court of the island.

A few minutes later they were in the Court-house.  It was densely
crowded, and all rose as they entered.  But at that moment the
Deemster was conscious of one presence only--his own youth in wig and
gown (himself as he used to be forty years before) in the curved
benches for the advocates immediately below.  It was Victor.

Then the prisoner was brought in--a forlorn-looking creature of three
or four-and-twenty, not without traces of former comeliness, but now
a rag of a woman, ill-clad and slatternly.

When asked to plead she said nothing, therefore the customary plea of
Not Guilty was made for her, and without more ado the
Attorney-General embarked on the history of her crime.

It was not a case for refinement; the crime was palpable; it had no
redeeming feature, and for the protection of life in the island it
called for the extreme penalty of the law.

Then, with the usual long pauses, the woman's story was raked out of
the witnesses--her neighbours in the low streets that crept under the
Castle walls, the police and the doctor.  She had been an orphan from
her birth, brought up at the expense of the parish by a woman who had
ill-treated her.  As a young servant-girl she had been "taken
advantage of" in the big house she lived in, perhaps by the footman,
more probably by an officer of the regiment then garrisoned in the
town.  Finally she had married the dead man, lived a cat-and-dog life
with him (there was a dark record of drink and assaults) and at last
stabbed him to the heart in a fatal quarrel and been found standing
over his body with a table-knife in her hand.

Stowell's cross-examination consisted of three questions only.  When
the dead man was found had he anything in his hand?  "Yes, a poker,"
said the policeman.  When the prisoner was arrested were there any
wounds on her?  "Yes, three on the head," said the doctor.  Were
there any wounds on the dead man's body except the heart-stab from
which he died?  "None whatever."

"Ah!" said the Deemster, and he reached forward to make a note.

When the Court adjourned for luncheon, the case for the Crown was
over, and it almost seemed as if the rope of the hangman were already
about the prisoner's neck.

Stowell did not leave the Court-house.  He sat in his place with
folded arms and closed eyes.  Tommy Vondy, the gaoler, looked in on
him sitting alone, and presently returned (from the direction of the
Deemster's room) with a plate of sandwiches and something in a glass,
but he sent back both untouched.

When the Court resumed it appeared to be still more crowded and
excited than before.  As the Deemster took his seat, he saw that his
son's face was strongly illumined by the sun (which was now streaming
from a lantern light in the roof) and that it was pale and drawn.
Immediately behind Victor a lady was sitting--it was Fenella Stanley.

Then Stowell rose for the defence.  There was a hush, and the
Deemster found himself breathing audibly and wishing that he could
pour something of himself into his son--himself as he used to be in
the old days when God had given him strength.

But that was only for a moment.  Stowell began slowly, almost
nervously, but was soon speaking with complete command, and the
Deemster, who had been bending forward, leaned back.

He did not intend to call witnesses.  Neither would he put the
prisoner into the box.  He would content himself with the evidence
for the Crown.  He knew no more about the crime than the jury did.
The accused had told him nothing, and degraded as they might think
her, he had not thought it right to invade the sanctity of a woman's
soul.  That she had killed her husband was clear.  If killing him was
a crime she was guilty.  But was it a crime?  To answer that let the
jury follow him while he did his best to piece together, from the
evidence before them, the torn manuscript of this poor creature's
story.

Then followed such speaking as none could remember to have heard in
that court before.  Flash after flash of spiritual light seemed to
recreate the stages of the prisoner's life.  First, as the child, who
should have been happy as the birds and bright as the flowers, but
had never known one hour of the love and guidance of her natural
protectors.  Next, as the young girl, pretty perhaps, with the light
of love dawning on her, but betrayed and abandoned.  Next, as the
deserted creature, braving out her disgrace with "Wait!  only wait!
My gentleman will come back and marry me yet!"  Next, as the badgered
and shame-ridden woman, with all hope gone, saying to her despairing
heart, "What do I care what happens to me now?  Not a toss!" and then
marrying (as the last cover for a hunted dog) the brute who
afterwards had beaten her, brutalized her, cursed her, taught her to
drink, and brought her down, down, down to .... what they saw.

Kill him?  Yes, she had killed him--there couldn't be a doubt about
that.  But if she had three wounds on her body, and he had only the
wound from which he died, was it not clear as noonday that she had
been the victim of a murderous assault, and had struck back to save
her life?  If so her act was not murder and the only righteous
verdict would be Not Guilty.

For the last passage of his defence Stowell faced full upon the jury,
and spoke in a ringing and searching voice:

"Long ago, in Galilee, out of the supreme compassion which covered
with forgiveness the transgressions of one who had sinned much but
loved much, it was said, 'Let him that is without sin among you cast
the first stone.'  We have all done something we would fain forget,
and when we lay our heads on our pillow we pray that the darkness may
hide it.  But does anybody doubt that if the all-seeing Justice could
enter this Court this day another figure would be standing there in
the dock by the side of that unhappy woman--a man in scarlet uniform
perhaps, with decorations on his breast, and that the Deemster would
have to say to him, 'You did this, for you were the first.'  Mercy,
then--mercy for the beaten, the broken, the scapegoat, the sinner."

People said afterwards that Stowell was a full half minute in his
seat before anybody seemed to be aware that he was no longer speaking.

The spectators had listened without making a sound; the jury (a panel
of stolid Manx farmers) had sat without moving a muscle; the prisoner
had raised her head for the first time during the trial and then
dropped it lower than before and her shoulders had shaken as if from
inaudible sobs; the Governor, who had all day been drawing
geometrical patterns on the sheet of foolscap in front of him, had
let his pencil fall and stared down at the paper, and the Deemster
had looked up at the lantern light from which the sunlight (it had
moved on) was now streaming upon his face, showing at last a solitary
tear that was rolling slowly down his cheek to the end of his
firm-set mouth.

Then there was a rustle, as if the windows of a room on the edge of
the sea had suddenly been thrown open.  The Attorney-General was
speaking again.  After the defence they had just listened to (there
being no evidence to rebut) he would waive his right of reply--the
Crown desired justice, not revenge.

The Deemster's summing-up was the shortest that had ever been heard
from him.  There were legal reasons which justified the taking of
human life, but the cases to which they applied were few.  If the
jury thought the prisoner had wilfully killed her husband they would
find her Guilty.  If they were satisfied from what they had heard
that she had reasonable grounds for thinking that a felony was being
committed upon her which endangered her own life they would find her
Not Guilty.

Without leaving their box the jury promptly gave a verdict of Not
Guilty; and then the Deemster in a loud, clear, almost triumphant
voice said:

"Let the prisoner be discharged."

A few minutes later there was a scene of excitement on the green
within the Castle walls.  The spectators, being turned out of the
Court-house with difficulty, were waiting for the chief actors in the
life-drama to come down the stone steps, and from the private door to
the Deemster's room.

"Wonderful!  He snatched the woman out of the jaws of death, Sir!"
"The Deemster's a grand man, but he'll have to be looking to his
laurels!"  "Man alive, that was a speech that must have been dear to
a father's heart, though!"

Stowell was one of the first to appear.  He looked pale, almost ill,
and was carrying his soft felt hat in his hand, for the Courthouse
had been close and there was perspiration on his forehead still.  A
way was made for him and he passed through the courtyard without
speaking or making sign, until he came under the arch of the
Portcullis and there he was stopped by someone.  It was Fenella.  She
was waiting for the Governor and hoping she might come upon Stowell
also.  Her eyes were red and swollen.

"How magnificent you were!" she said.  And then with a half-tremulous
laugh: "But how could you see into a woman's heart like that?  I
shall always be afraid of you in future, Sir!"

The Deemster came next.  He was muffled in his great-coat and scarf,
and was walking heavily on his stick, but there was a proud look in
his uplifted face.  With his left hand he grasped Victor's right, but
he did not look at him, and he passed on without a word.  Fenella
followed, offering her arm, but he insisted on giving his--the grand
old gentleman to the last.

But this time the Attorney-General had taken possession of Stowell.
He had lost his case, but one of his "boys" had won it.  "I've just
been telling your father I always knew the root of the matter was in
you," he said, and then others gathered around.

The Governor came last, having had documents to sign, and taking
Stowell's arm, he carried him away, saying, "Come along--they'll kill
you."

The Deemster's dog-cart had now gone, but the Governor's carriage was
at the gate, with Fenella inside.

"Don't forget your promise about Ballamoar," she said.

"I'm going to-morrow," said Stowell.

Just then there was a commotion among the crowd.  The liberated woman
was coming out of the Castle, surrounded by a tumultuous company of
her friends from the back streets.  She saw Stowell by the carriage
door, and breaking away from her companions she rushed up to him,
threw herself at his feet, laid hold of his hand and covered it with
kisses.

"That settles it," said Fenella, in a thick voice, after the woman
had been carried off.  "Now you know what the future of your life is
to be--that of the champion of wronged and helpless women."

At the railway station, and in the railway carriage, Stowell's fellow
advocates overwhelmed him with congratulations, but he hardly heard
them.  At last he folded his arms and closed his eyes, and, thinking
he was tired, they left off troubling him.

On arriving at Ramsey his pulses were beating fast, and on going down
the High Street, past the Old Plough Inn, he hardly felt the ground
under his feet.

Clashing his door behind him he went into his bedroom and threw
himself down on his bed.  An immense joy had taken possession of him.
Ambition, dead so long, had been restored to vivid life under
Fenella's last words.

And then came a shock.  Turning to the table by his bedside, his eyes
fell on the photograph that stood upon it.

Bessie Collister!



II

The Deemster had a cheerful homegoing.  Young Robbie Creer said
afterwards that he had never seen the old man so strong and hearty.
Driving himself, he saluted everybody on the roads, always by name
and generally in the Anglo-Manx.  All the way back it was "How do,
John?" or "Grand day done, Mr. Killip."

Janet was waiting for him at the porch of Ballamoar.

"You must be tired after your long day, your Honour?"

"Not at all!"

"And Victor--how did he get on, Sir?"

"Wonderfully!  Won his case and covered himself with honour."

At dinner (he insisted on Janet dining with him) he talked of nothing
but Victor and the trial.

"He has got his foot on the ladder now, Miss Curphey, and there is no
height to which he may not ascend."

Janet could do nothing but wipe her shining eyes and say,

"Aw, well now!  Think of that now!"  And then, with a wise shake of
her old head, "But nobody can say I didn't know he would make us
proud of him some day."

Night fell.  Janet began to be afraid of the Deemster's excitement.
She remembered Doctor Clucas's order (privately given to her) to
knock at the Deemster's door between six and seven every morning,
and, if she got no answer, to go into the room.  She would do so
to-morrow.

After Janet had gone to bed the Deemster sat at his desk in the
Library and wrote for a long time in his leather-bound book.  When he
rose the clock on the landing was striking twelve.

He closed the book, but instead of putting it under lock and key, as
he had always done before, he left it open on the desk, merely
shutting the lid on it.  Then with a long look round the room he put
out the lamps and turned to go upstairs.

The reaction had begun by this time, and he staggered a little and
laid hold of the handrail.  He paused three times on the stairs, but
his weakness did not frighten him.  Lighting his candle on the
landing, he wound the clock, extinguished the lamp that stood by it
and faced the last flight with a smile.  All was silent in the house
now.

On reaching his own bedroom he paused again, and then stepped down
the corridor to Victor's.  The door was ajar.  He pushed it open,
took a step into the empty room and looked round--at the cocoa-nut
matting, the rugs, the bed in the shadow, the discoloured school
trunk in the corner.  And then he smiled again.  But he was breathing
deeply at intervals and had the look of a man who knew that he was
doing familiar things for the last time.

The window in his own room was open, and the smell of tropical plants
(especially the magnolia, with its sleep-inducing odour) was coming
up from the garden.  He remembered that his own father had brought
them from the East long ago, when he was himself a boy.

The sky was dark, but the hidden moon broke through silvery clouds
for a moment, and, looking through the surrounding blackness, he saw
the bald crown of Snaefell, far beyond the trees and above the glen.
He remembered that he had seen it so all the way up since he was a
child.

He closed the curtains slowly and taking his candle again he walked
around the room and looked long at the pictures on the walls.  They
were chiefly portraits or miniatures of Victor, at various periods of
childhood and youth--the latest being a photograph sent home to him
from abroad.

That was the last oscillation of the pendulum.  When he was about to
prepare for bed he found his strength exhausted, and he was compelled
to sit several times while he undressed.  But he continued to smile,
and when he lay down at length and put his head on the-pillow he did
it with a will.

Then he closed his eyes, and drew a deep breath, as one who has gone
through a long day's labour but has seen it finish up well at the
end.  And then he closed his eyes and the surge of sleep passed over
him.

Outside the house everything seemed to slumber.  It was a night
strangely calm and dark.  The tall elms stood like soundless
sentinels in the darkness.  Not a leaf stirred.  The rivers flowed
without noise, as if a supernatural hand had been laid on them to
silence them.  The only sound was the slow boom of the sea, which
seemed to come up out of the ground and to be the pulse of the earth
itself.  The deep mystery of night was over all.

Towards morning there was a faint waft of wind in the trees and along
the grass.  Was it the movement in the earth's bosom of the new day
about to be born?  Or some invisible presence striding along with
noiseless footsteps?

Within the house everything seemed to sleep.  But the Deemster lay
dead.



III

"Mr. Victor, Sir!  Mr. Victor!"

It was Robbie Creer, who, after knocking in vain at Stowell's door in
the grey hours of morning, was shouting up at his window.  He had
driven into town in the dog-cart and the little mare was steaming
with perspiration.

Stowell threw up the window and heard the dread news.  After a moment
he answered, in a voice that sounded strange in Robbie's ears:

"Wait for me.  I will go back with you."

When he was ready to go he wrote a message to Fenella, and left it
for Mrs. Quayle to send off as soon as the telegraph office opened:

"_He has gone, heaven, forgive me.  I am going home now._"

It was Sunday morning, and the sleeping streets echoed to the rattle
of the flying wheels.  When they got into the country (they were
taking the shortest cuts) the farms were lying idle and quiet.
Stowell sat with folded arms while they raced past the whitewashed
cottages with thatched roofs, and scattered flocks of geese that went
off with screams and stretched necks.

On arriving at Ballamoar he paused before entering the house.  The
pastoral tranquillity of the place was heart-breaking.  The sun had
risen, the rooks were cawing, the linnets were twittering in the
eaves, a kitten was playing with a butterfly in the porch--it was
just as if nothing had happened during the night.

Janet was in his father's room, with red eyes and a handkerchief in
her hand.  She did not speak, but her silence seemed to say, "Why
didn't you come before?"

Stowell advanced to the side of the bed.  The august face on the
pillow, in the majesty and tranquillity of death, had never before
looked so calm and noble, but that also seemed to say: "Why didn't
you come before?"  He reached over and put his lips to the cold
forehead.  And then, with head down, he hurried from the room.

He could never afterwards remember what he did during the rest of
that day--only that to escape from the vague cheerfulness, the hushed
bustle, the half-smothered hysteria, which come to a house after a
death, he had strolled along the shore and past the ruined church in
which he had walked with Fenella.

At length Janet came to him in the library to say "Good-night" and to
sob out something about not grieving too much.  And then he was left
alone.

Sitting at the desk, where his father had sat the night before, he
took up the leather-bound book and read it from end to end--not
without a sense of looking into the sanctuary of another soul, where
only God's eyes should see.

It was a large volume, of some five hundred quarto pages, with
"Isobel's Diary" inscribed on its first page, and these words below:


    "Inasmuch as I cannot believe that my beloved companion who has
    died to-day is lost to me even in this life, and being convinced
    that the divine purpose in leaving me behind is that I may care
    for and guard her child, I dedicate this book to the record of my
    sacred duty."


Then followed, in the Deemster's steady handwriting, a daily entry,
sometimes only a phrase or a line, sometimes a page, but always about
his son:


    "This morning in the library, making my desk under your portrait
    his altar, Parson Cowley baptised your boy--Janet Curphey
    standing godmother, and the Attorney his other sponsor.  We
    called him Victor, so the last of your dear wishes has been
    fulfilled."


Stowell looked up and around him.  He was on the very spot of that
scene of so many years ago.  Then came records of his childhood, his
childish talk, his childish rhymes, his childish ailments:


    "Your boy contracted a cold yesterday, and fearing it might
    develop into bronchitis, I sat up most of the night that I might
    go into the nursery at intervals to mend the fire under the steam
    kettle, Janet being worn out and sleepy.  Thank God his breathing
    is better this morning!"


Stowell felt as if he were choking.  Then came the records of his
school-days; his expulsion; the slack times before he set to work;
the bright ones when he was a student-at-law; the dark ones when he
was going headlong to the dogs.  After these latter entries it would
be:


    "A son is a separate being, Isobel.  I can only stand and wait."


Or sometimes, as if for comfort, a line from one of the great books,
not rarely the Bible:


    "Thy way is in the sea, and thy path is the great waters, and thy
    footsteps are not known."


It was now the middle of the night.  A dog was howling somewhere in
the farm.  Stowell paused and thought of the superstition about a
howling dog and a dead body.  When he resumed his reading he turned
the pages with a trembling hand:


    "It is six months since Victor returned to the island and he has
    only been here twice.  I had hoped he would come to live with me
    at Ballamoar.  But I must not complain.  Nature looks forward,
    not backward.  No son can love his father as the father loves the
    son.  That is the law of life, Isobel, and we who are fathers
    must reconcile ourselves to it."


Stowell felt his head reel and his eyes swim.  If he had only known.
If somebody had only told him!

The fire behind him had gone out by this time and he had begun to
shiver.  But he turned back to the book for the few remaining pages.
And then came a shock.  They were all about Fenella, and the
Deemster's hope that she and his son would marry.


    "Never were two young people better matched to the outer eye,
    Isobel--that splendid girl with her conquering loveliness or your
    son with his mother's face.  Her influence on him seems to be
    wonderful.  She has only been a month back from London, but he is
    like a new man already."


Overwhelmed with confusion Stowell tried to close the book, but he
could not do so.


    "A man looks for a woman who is a heroine, and a woman for a man
    who is a hero, and please God these two have found each other."


Then came a glowing account of the trial at Castle Rushen, and then:


    "So it's all well at last, Isobel.  Your son can do without me
    now.  He needs his father no longer.  With that fine woman by his
    side he will go up and up.  They will marry and carry on the
    tradition of the Ballamoars.  It is the dearest wish of my heart
    that they should do so."


There was only one entry after that, and it ran:


    "I am tired and my work is done.  Now I can rejoin you, having
    waited so long.  When I close my eyes to-night I shall see your
    face--I know I shall.  So Good-night, Isobel!  Or should I say,
    Good-morning?"


The clock on the landing was striking three--the most solemn hour of
day and night, for it is the hour between.  Stowell, with a heavy
heart, the book in one hand and his candle in the other, was going to
bed.  Reaching the door of his father's room he dropped to his knees.

"Forgive me!  Forgive me!  Forgive me!"

But after a while a light seemed to break on him.  Where his father
now was he would know that there was no help for it--that he, too,
must follow the line of honour.

"Yes," he thought, rising and going on to his own room.  "I must do
the right, whatever it may cost me."



IV

On the morning of the burial, Stowell received a letter from Bessie
Collister:


    "Dere Victor,

    "I am sorry to here from Alick about the death of the Deemster
    you must feel it verry much the loss of such a good kinde father
    everrybody is talking about him and saying he was the best
    gentleman that everr was thank you for the nice cloths Mrs.
    Quayle bought me.  Alick is very kinde--

    "Bessie."


The poor, illiterate, inadequate, ill-spent message made Stowell's
heart grow cold, and with a certain shame he read it by stealth and
then smuggled it away.

The news of the Deemster's death had fallen on the Manx people like a
thunder-bolt.  The one great man of Man had gone.  It was almost as
if the island had lost its soul.

No work was done on the day of the funeral.  At ten o'clock in the
morning the whole population seemed to be crossing the Curragh lanes
to Ballamoar.  By eleven the broad lawn was covered with a vast
company of all classes, from the officials to the crofters.  A long
line of carriages, cars and stiff carts, lined the roads that
surrounded the house.

The day had broken fair, with a kind of mild brightness, but out on
that sandy headland the wind had risen and white wreaths of mist were
floating over the land.  It was late September and the leaves were
falling rapidly.

Nobody entered the house.  According to Manx custom all stood
outside.  At half-past eleven the front door was opened and the body
was brought out, under a pall, and laid on four chairs in front of
it.  A moment later Victor Stowell came behind, bare-headed and very
pale.  A wide space was left for him by the bier.  A creeper that
covered the house was blood-red at his back.

Somebody started a hymn--"Abide with me"--and it was taken up by the
vast company in front.  The rooks swirled and screamed over the heads
of the singers.  The bald head of old Snaefell looked down through
the trees.

Then the procession was formed.  It took the grassy lane at the back
by which the Deemster had always gone to church.  Everybody walked,
and six sets of bearers claimed the right "to carry the old man home."

They sang two hymns on the way: "Lead, Kindly Light" and "Rock of
Ages."  Between the verses the wind whistled through the gorse hedges
on either side.  Sometimes it raised the skirt of the pall and showed
the bare oak beneath.

When they reached the cross roads in front of the church the bell
began to toll.  At that moment a white mist was driving across the
church tower and almost obscuring it.

The Bishop of the island was at the gate, waiting for the procession,
but Parson Cowley, pale and trembling, was also there, and he would
have fought to the death for his right to bury the Deemster.

"I am the Resurrection and the Life," he began in his quavering
voice, as the procession came up, and at the next moment the mists
vanished.  The little churchyard with its weather-beaten stones,
seemed to look up at the wonderful sky and out on the sightless sea.
The bearers had to bend their knees as they passed through the low
door.

Every seat in the body of the church was occupied, and great numbers
had to remain outside.  But Victor Stowell sat alone in the pew of
the Ballamoars with the marble tablet on the wall behind him--four
hundred years of his family and he the last of them.  During the
reading of the Epistle the lashing and wailing of the wind outside
almost drowned the Bishop's voice.

The service ended with the singing of another hymn, "O God our help
in ages past."  Everybody knew the words, and they were taken up by
the people outside:

  "_Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
  Bears all its sons away._"


Thus far Victor Stowell had gone through everything in a kind of
stupor.  He was conscious that the island was there to do honour to
her greatest son, but that was nothing to him now.  When he came to
himself he was standing by the open vault of the Stowells.  A line of
stones lay over the closed part of it, some of them old and worn and
with the lettering almost obliterated.  But a cross of white marble,
which had been dislodged from its place, lay at his feet, and it bore
the words:


    "_To the dear memory of Isabel, the beloved wife of Douglas
    Stowell, Deemster of this Isle._"


Victor's throat was throbbing.  He was losing (what no man can lose
twice) his father and greatest friend, whose slightest word and wish
should be as sacred to him as his soul.

He heard the words "dust to dust" and they were like the
reverberation of eternity.  Then came a dead void, after Parson
Cowley's voice had ceased, and it was just as if the pulse of the
world had stopped.

And then, at that last moment as he stepped forward and looked down,
and everybody fell back for him, and only the sea's boom was audible
as it beat on the cliffs below, somebody (he did not turn to look,
for he knew who it was) coming up to his side, and putting her arm
through his, said in a tremulous voice,

"He is better there.  In their death they are not divided."

It was Fenella.

At the next moment, something he could not resist, something
unconquerable and overwhelming, made him put his arms about her and
kiss her.




CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE SAVING OF KATE KINKADE

The Governor was waiting for Stowell at the side gate to Ballamoar.

"You look ill, my boy, and no wonder," he said.  "Fenella and I are
to take a short cruise in the yacht before the autumn ends.  You must
come along with us."

For the farmers and fishermen who had travelled long distances a meal
had been provided in the barn--a kind of robustious after-wake for
the Deemster, presided over by the elder and younger Robbie Creers.

Alick Gell alone returned with Stowell to the house.  In his black
frock coat and tall silk hat he had walked back from the Church by
Stowell's side, snuffling audibly but saying nothing.  To Stowell's
relief he was still silent through luncheon and for several hours
afterwards.  It was not until they were in the porch, and Gell was on
the point of going, that anything of consequence was said.

"What about Bessie?" asked Stowell.

"Oh, Bessie?" said Gell (he looked a little confused) "Bessie's all
right, I think.  But there's trouble coming in that quarter, I'm
afraid."

"What trouble?"

"As we were walking along Langness yesterday--I went down to tell her
about the Deemster--we met Cæsar Qualtrough coming from the farm."

"Qualtrough?"

"You know--father of the young scoundrel who got us into that scrape
at King William's."

"I remember."

"He's a friend of Dan Baldromma's, and Dan is a tenant of my father's
and .... But good Lord, what matter!  I've worse things than that to
worry about."

As Gell was going out of the gate, the night was falling and the
stars were out, and he was saying to himself, "Does he really care
for the girl, or is it only a sense of duty?"

And Stowell, as he closed the door and went back into the house
(empty and vault-like now, as a house is on the first night after the
being who has been the soul of it has been left outside) was
thinking, "I can't allow Alick to be my scapegoat any longer."

But at the next moment he was thinking of Fenella.  With mingled
shame and joy he was asking himself what was being thought of the
incident in the churchyard--by Fenella herself, by the Governor, by
everybody.

Next day the Attorney-General came with the will.  Except for a few
legacies to servants, the Deemster had left everything to his son.

"So, with your mother's fortune, you are one of the rich men of the
island, now, Victor.  A great responsibility, my boy!  I pray God you
may choose the right partner.  But" (with a meaning smile) "that will
be all right, I think."

During the next days Stowell occupied himself with Joshua Scarff, the
Deemster's clerk (a tall, thin, elderly man wearing dark spectacles)
in paying-off the legacies.  Only one of these gave him any anxiety.
This was Janet's, and it was accompanied by a pension, in case Victor
should decide to superannuate her.  Against doing so all his heart
cried out, but something whispered that if Janet were gone it might
be the easier for Bessie.

Janet was in floods of tears at the possibility.

"I couldn't have believed it of the Deemster!" she said.  "I really
couldn't!  You can keep the legacy, dear.  I have no use for it
except to give it back to you.  But I won't leave Ballamoar.  'Deed,
I won't!  Not until another woman comes to be mistress in it, and
wants me to go.  And she never will, the darling--I'll trust her for
that, anyway."

A day or two later Stowell was in his father's room, when he came
upon an envelope inscribed: "_To be opened by my son._"  It contained
a ring, a beautiful and valuable gem, with a note saying:


"_This was your mother's engagement ring.  I wish you to give it to
Fenella Stanley.  Take it yourself._"


Stowell was stupefied.  Struggling with a sense of his duty to the
girl whom he had sent to Derby Haven he had been telling himself that
he must never see Fenella again.  But here was a sacred command from
the dead.

For three days he thought he could not possibly go to Government
House.  On the fourth day he went.

The beauty and charm of the atmosphere of Fenella's home were
heart-breaking.  And Fenella herself, in a soft tea-gown, was almost
more than he could bear to look upon.

She, too, seemed embarrassed, and when Miss Green (an English
counterpart of Janet) left them alone with each other, and he gave
her the ring, saying what his father had told him to do with it, her
embarrassment increased.

She held it in her fingers, turned it over and looked at it, and
said, "How lovely!  How good of him!"  And then, trembling and
tingling, and with a slightly heightened colour, she looked at
Stowell.

Suddenly a thought flashed upon him.  Why had his father told him to
take the ring to her himself?  The answer was speaking in Fenella's
eyes--that, at the topmost moment of their love, he should put it on.

At the next instant the Governor entered the drawing-room, and
Fenella, holding up her hand (she had put the ring on for herself by
this time) cried:

"See what the Deemster has left to me!"

"Beautiful!" said the Governor, and then he looked from Stowell to
his daughter.

Stowell rose to go.  He had the sense of flying from the house.
Fenella must have thought him a fool.  The Governor must have thought
him a fool.  But better be a fool than a traitor!

A week passed and then an idea came to him.  He would tell the truth
to Bessie's people--the whole truth if necessary.  That would commit
him once for all to the line of honour.  Having taken that public
plunge there could be no looking back, and the bitter struggle
between his passion and his duty would then be over.

With a certain pride at the thought of being about to do an heroic
thing he set out one day for Ramsey, intending to return by
Baldromma.  But on entering his outer office his young clerk told him
that Mr. Daniel Collister was in his private room, that he had been
waiting there for two hours, and refusing to go away.

Dan, with his short, gross figure, was standing astride on the
hearthrug, and without so much as a bow he plunged into his business.

A respectable man's house was in disgrace.  His step-daughter had run
away.  Been carried off by a scoundrel--there couldn't be a doubt of
it.  A month gone and not the whisper of a word from her.  The mother
was broken-hearted, so he had been traipsing the island over to find
the girl.

"I belave I'm on the track of her at last though.  She's down
Castletown way, and the man that's been the cause of her trouble
isn't far off, I'm thinking."

"And whom do you say it is, Mr. Collister?"

"Somebody that's middling close to yourself, sir--Mr. Alick Gell, the
son of the Spaker."

"No, no, no!"

"Who else then?"

Stowell tried to speak but could not.

"Wasn't he the cause of her disgrace at the High Bailiff's?  And
hasn't he been keeping up his bad character ever since--standing by
the side of disorderly walkers in the Douglas Coorts, they're saying?"

He must have promised to marry the girl.  But he hadn't.  He (Dan)
had been to the Registrar's at Douglas and found that out.

"The toot!  The boght!  The booby!  I was warning her enough.  The
man that takes advantage of a dacent girl isn't much for marrying her
afterwards."

Remembering Dan's share in the catastrophe, Stowell was feeling the
vertigo of a temptation to take the gross creature by the neck and
fling him through the window.

"Why do you come to me?" he asked.

"To ask you to tell your friend that he's got to make an honest woman
of the girl."

"Is that all you are thinking about?"

Dan drew a quick breath, then dug both hands into the upright pockets
of his trousers, thrust forward his thick neck, with a gesture
peculiar to the bull, and answered:

"No, I'm thinking of myself as well, and what for shouldn't I?  I'm
going to stand up for my own rights, too.  The man that treats my
girl like that has got to marry her, and I'm not going to be
satisfied with nothing less."

Then picking up his billycock hat and making for the door he said:

"I lave it with you, Mr. Stowell, Sir.  If the Dempster was the grand
gentleman people are saying, his son will be seeing justice done to
me and mine.  If not, the island will be too hot for the guilty man,
I'm thinking."

When Dan had gone Stowell felt sick and dizzy, and as if he were
drawing back from the edge of a precipice.  His heroic act of
self-sacrifice had dwindled to a ridiculous weakness.

This man, with his blatant vulgarity of mind and soul, at Ballamoar!
His father-in-law!  A member of his family!  Riding over him with a
degrading tyranny!  In the dining-room, with his broad buttocks to
the fire--never, never, never!

Hardly had Dan's footsteps ceased on the stair when the young clerk
came from the outer office in great excitement.

"His Excellency is here.  He's coming upstairs, Sir."



II

"Helloa, I've found you."

The Governor was in yachting costume.

"Well, the yacht is lying outside, and Fenella and I are doing a
little circumnavigating of the island, so come along."

Stowell tried to excuse himself, but the Governor would listen to no
excuses.

"Everybody says you are looking like a ghost these days, and so you
are.  Therefore come, let's get a breath of sea-air into you."

"But your Excellency...."

"I've brought one of the ship's boys ashore for your bag, so pack it
quick...."

"But really...."

"Where's your bedroom and I'll pack it myself."

"No, no!  But if I must...."

"That's better!  I'll smoke a pipe and wait for you."

"After all, why not?" thought Stowell, as he packed his bag and put
on flannels and a blue jacket.  This flying away from Fenella was
unworthy of a man.  It was cowardly, contemptible.  He must learn to
resist temptation.

Half an hour later he was riding with the Governor in a dinghy over
the fresh waters of the bay towards a large white yacht, "The
Fenella," with the red ensign fluttering over her.  The gangway was
open and as Stowell stepped on to the spotless deck of the ship, her
namesake, also in yachting costume, was waiting to receive him.

The mainsail, mizzen and jib being set, the grey-bearded captain, in
blue with brass buttons, called on his boys to swing the dinghy up to
the davits and haul in the anchor.  In a few minutes more, to the
hiss and simmer of the sea, the yacht was running free before the
wind, leaving the town to the south behind it.

The bell rang for luncheon, and with the Governor and Fenella,
Stowell crossed to the companion and went down to the saloon.  Books
and field-glasses were lying about the sofas and the table was
glistening with silver and glass.  Blue silk curtains, with the
sunlight shining through them, were fluttering over the skylight and
the port-holes.  How fresh!  How charming!

When they came up on deck an hour afterwards they were doubling the
Point of Ayre, and the lighthouse at the northernmost end of it was
looking like a marble column with a glittering eye.  Towards six
o'clock they cast anchor for the night off Peel.

The sun was then setting, and the herring fleet (a hundred boats)
going out for the night were passing in front of the red sky like a
flight of black birds.  By the time dinner was over the drowsy spirit
of the sunset had died over the waters behind them, the twilight had
deepened to a ghostly grey, and the moon had risen over the little
fishing town in front and the gaunt walls of the ruined Peel Castle
which stands on an island rock.

The Governor, who had sent ashore for the day's newspapers, remained
in the cabin to read them.  But Stowell and Fenella sat on deck under
the moon and the stars.  The air had become very quiet.  There was no
sound anywhere except the tranquil wash of the waves against the
yacht and the whispering of the sea outside.

Fenella talked and laughed.  Stowell laughed and talked.  They found
it so easy to talk to each other.

The night wore on.  The moon going westward made the broken walls of
the Castle stand up black above the shore, with its empty
window-sockets like eyes looking from the lighter sky.

Stowell talked of the old ruin and its legendary and historical
associations--St. Patrick, the spectre hound (_the Mauthe Doa_), the
ecclesiastical prison and the graves in the roofless Cathedral.

"But I'll tell you a story that beats all that," he said.

"About a woman of course?" said Fenella.

"Yes--a fallen woman."

"Ah!"

"Her name was Kate Kinrade.  She gave birth to an illegitimate child,
and the Bishop--he was a saint--thinking that her conduct tended to
the dishonour of the Christian name, ordered that, for the saving of
her soul, she should be dragged after a boat across the bay of Peel
on the fair of St. Patrick at the height of the market."

"And was she?"

"The fishermen refused at first to carry out the censure, and then
excused themselves on the ground that St. Patrick's day was too
tempestuous.  But being threatened with fines, they did it at
last--in the depth of winter."

Fenella's gaiety had gone.  Stowell gazed at her face in the
moonlight.  It was quivering and her bosom was heaving.

"And the Bishop was a saint, you say?"

"If ever there was one."

"He ordered the woman to be dragged through the sea at the tail of a
boat?"

"Yes."

"And what did he do to _the man_?"

Stowell gasped.  There was silence for a moment, and then the
Governor's voice came from the skylight of the cabin:

"Are you people never going to turn in?"

"Presently."

"I am, anyway."

It was late.  The lights of the little town had blinked out one by
one.  Only the red light on the stone pier was burning.

Fenella recovered her gaiety after a while, shouted for echoes to the
Castle rock, and then took Stowell's arm to go down the companion.

On reaching the darkened saloon she stepped on tiptoe and dropped her
voice under pretence of not disturbing her father, who would be
asleep.  At the door of her cabin she ceased laughing and said,

"Hush!  I'm going to say something."

"What?"

"I don't know if you're aware of it, but ever since I came home
you've been calling me 'Miss Stanley,' and I've been calling
you--anything."

"Well?"

"We used to call each other by our Christian names before.  Couldn't
we go back to that?"

"Would you like to?"

There was a pause, and then, in a whisper,

"Victor!"

"Fenella!"

"Good-night!"

It had been like a kiss.

Stowell went to his cabin in rapture, in pain, with a delicious
thrill and a sense of stifling hypocrisy.  What a hypocrite he had
been!  It was not to resist temptation but to dally with it that he
had come on this cruise.

He was there under false pretences.  He had pledged himself to the
girl at Derby Haven, and yet....

Thank God, he had gone no farther!  There was only one way of escape
from the perpetual fire of temptation--to hasten his marriage with
Bessie Collister.  He must see her as soon as possible and suggest
that they should marry immediately.  It was heart-breaking, but there
was no help for it, if he was to stand upright as an honourable man.

Dan Baldromma?  Well, what of him?  He could shut the door on Dan--of
course he could!

Next morning Stowell was the first on deck.  The air was salt and
chill; the day had not yet opened its eyes; there was a whirring of
wings and a calling of sea-birds; and through a sleepy white mist,
that might have been the smoke of the moon, the herring fleet were
coming like pale ghosts back to harbour.

A fresh breeze sprang up with the sunrise and the Captain lifted
anchor and stood out towards the south.  Sheep were bleating on the
head-land of Contrary, and as they opened the broad bay of the
Niarbyl the thatched cottages under the cliffs were smoking for
breakfast.

When they reached Port Erin the Governor came up and ordered anchor
to be cast again, saying they would lie there and go out with the
herring fleet in the evening.

Seeing his opportunity, Stowell said he would like to go ashore for a
few hours--a little business.

"Mind you're back by four o'clock then--we'll sail at high-water."

As Stowell was being sculled ashore in the dinghy he was saying to
himself:

"No Kate Kinrade for me--never, never!"



III

An hour later Stowell was in Derby Haven, a little fishing village,
smelling of sea-wrack and echoing with the cry of gulls.

The Misses Brown, in their oiled ringlets and faded satin dresses,
received him, in their old maids' sitting-room, with much ceremony,
and he speedily realised that Gell, in trying to shield him, had gone
farther than he expected.

"You wish to see Miss Collister?  Well, since you are such a close
friend of Mr. Gell there can be no objection....  Bessie!  A
gentleman to see you."

Stowell heard Bessie coming downstairs with great alacrity, but on
seeing him she drew up with a certain embarrassment.

"Oh, it's you?"

She was shorter than he had thought, and the impression made by her
photograph of something common in her beauty was deepened by the
reality.

"Should we take a walk?" he said.

She hesitated for a moment, then went upstairs and returned presently
in a round hat and a close-fitting costume which sat awkwardly upon
her.  What a change!  Where was the free, warm, natural, full-bosomed
girl with bare neck and sunburnt arms who had fascinated him in the
glen?

They took the unfrequented path on the western side of Langness--a
long serpentine tongue of land which protruded from the open mouth of
the sea.  He tried to begin upon the subject of his errand but found
it impossible to do so.

"Bye and bye," he thought, "bye and bye."

Bessie kept step with him, but was almost silent.  He asked if she
was comfortable in her new quarters, and she said they were lonesome
after the farm, but old Miss Brown was a dear and Miss Ethel a "dozey
duck."

The common expression humiliated him.  He inquired if she had been
able to relieve her mother's anxiety, and she answered no, how could
she, without letting her stepfather know where she was?

"They're telling me he's travelling the island over looking for me,
but I don't know why.  He was always dead nuts on me when I was at
home."

Again he felt ashamed.  He found it impossible to keep up a
conversation with the girl.  To attempt to do so was like throwing a
stone into the sand--no echo, no response.

Only once did Bessie say anything for herself.  She was walking on
the landward side of the path, and seeing an old man, with a pair of
horses, grubbing a hungry-looking field, with a cloud of sea-gulls
swirling behind him, she said it was dirty land, full of scutch, and
the farmer was laying it open to the frosts of winter.

Stowell was feeling the sweat on his forehead.  How was it possible
to lift up a girl like this?  She would be the farm girl to the last.
Good Lord, what magic was there in marriage to change people and
ensure their happiness?

Ballamoar?  That lonesome place inside the tall trees!  He might shut
out her family, but would not she--illiterate, uninteresting,
inadequate--shut out his friends?  And then, he and she together
there, with nothing in common, alone, in the long nights of winter
.... Oh God!

Ashamed of thinking like that of the girl, and having reached the
lighthouse by this time, he drew her arm through his and turned to go
back.  The warmth of the contact revived a little of the former
thrill, and he laughed and talked.

The voice of the sea was low that day, and across the bay came shouts
and cheers in fresh young voices--the boys of King William's were
playing football.  That brought memories to both of them and he began
to talk about Gell.

"Dear old Alick, he's such a good fellow, isn't he?"

"'Deed he is," said Bessie.

"By the way, he's a sort of old flame of yours, I believe," said
Stowell, looking sideways at the girl, and Bessie blushed and
laughed, but made no answer.

Those black eyes, those full red lips.  Yes, this was the girl who....

But the idea of a marriage founded on the passion which had brought
them together revolted him now, and he let Bessie's arm fall to his
side.

When they got back to the old maid's cottage he had still said
nothing of what he had come to say.  "Later on," he was telling
himself, but a secret voice inside was whispering, "Never!  It is
impossible!"

The elder of the Miss Browns followed him to the gate to ask if he
did not see a great improvement in her charge, and when he said that
Bessie seemed to be a little subdued, she cried:

"Bessie?  Oh dear no, not generally!  Ask Mr. Gell."

Perhaps the girl was not well to-day--they had thought she had not
been very well lately.

"And how is she getting on with...." (the word stuck in his throat)
"with her lessons?"

"Wonderfully!  Of course she has long arrears to make up, but the way
she works to fit herself for her new station .... well, it's enough
to make a person cry, really."

Stowell felt as if something were taking him by the throat.

"In fact my sister and I used to wonder and wonder what she did with
her bedroom candles until we found out she was sitting up after
everybody had gone to sleep to learn her grammar and spelling."

Stowell felt as if something had struck him in the face.  Every hard
thought about Bessie seemed to be wiped out of his mind in a moment.

Going back to Port Erin (he walked all the way) he could think of
nothing but that girl sitting up in her bedroom to educate herself,
in her poor little way, that she might become worthy to be his wife.

If he disappointed her now what would become of her?  Would she kill
herself?  Would the world kill her?  Kate Kinrade?  The days of the
Bishop and the woman were not over yet.

No, he must keep his pledge, and make no more wry faces about it.  If
it had been his duty before it was more than ever his duty now.

But Fenella?

He must put her out of his mind for ever.  He would be the most
unhappy man alive, but then his own happiness was not the only thing
he had to think about.  He could not live any longer under false
pretences.  He must find some way of telling Fenella that he had
engaged himself while she was away--that he was a pledged man.

But what then?  There would be nothing more between them as long as
they lived--not a smile or the clasp of a hand!  She whom he had
loved so long, never having loved anybody else!  It would be like
signing his death-warrant.

The dead leaves from the roadside were driving over his feet; his
eyes ached and his throat throbbed, but he gulped down his emotion.
After all he would be the only sufferer!  Thank God for that anyway!

As he reached Port Erin, he saw the white sails of the yacht against
the blue sea and sky.

"Yes, I must tell Fenella--I must tell her to-night," he thought.




CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE EVERLASTING SONG OF THE SEA

"Ah, here you are at last!  Just in time!  A breeze sprang up an hour
ago, and the Captain would have gone without you but for me.  The
herring fleet have gone already.  Look, there they are, sailing into
the sunset."

Fenella was in high spirits.  Having prevailed upon the Governor to
let them have a real night with the herrings (turning the yacht into
a fishing boat) she had borrowed a net and hired fishermen's
clothes--oilskins and a sou'-wester for herself and a "ganzy" and big
boots for Stowell.

It was impossible to resist the contagion of Fenella's gaiety.  "Why
try?" thought Stowell.  It would be his last night of happiness.
To-morrow he would have to bury it for ever.

In a few minutes, having cleared the harbour, they had opened the
land on either side and were standing out for the fishing ground.
Within two hours, in the midst of the fleet, they were sailing over
the Carlingford sands, midway between the island and Ireland, and the
sea-birds skimming above the water were showing them the shoal.

Dinner was over, and Stowell, in jersey and big boots up to his
thighs, saw Fenella come on deck in her oilskin coat and
sou'-wester--with the new and surprising beauty which fresh garments,
whatever they are, give to every woman in the eyes of the man who
loves her.

What shouts!  What laughter!  Stowell kept saying to himself:

"Why not?  It will soon be over."

They slackened sail and waited for the sun to go down before shooting
their nets.  Presently the great ball of flame descended into the
sea, the admiral of the fleet ran his flag to his masthead, and the
Captain cried, "Shoot!"

Then the brown net, with its floats, was dropped over the stern
(Fenella taking a hand and shouting with the men), the foresail was
hauled down, and the mizzen set to keep the ship head to the wind.
And then, all being snug for the night, came the fisherman's prayer:

"_Dy hannie Patrick Noo shin as nyn maaty_" (May St. Patrick bless us
and our boat) with something about the living and the dead--the crew
and the fish.

After that came the throwing of the salt, a more robustious and less
religious ceremony, which threw Fenella into fits of laughter.

"What does it mean?" she asked.

"Goodness knows!"

"How delightful!"

The grey twilight came down from the northern heavens, and then night
fell--a dark night without moon but with a world of stars.  Stowell
and Fenella were leaning over the side to watch the phosphorescent
gleams which, like flashes of light under the surface, came from the
fish that were darting away from the prow.

"Isn't it wonderful--the fish going on and on to the goal of their
perpetual travels?" said Fenella.

"They always come back to the place they were spawned, though," said
Stowell.

"Like humans, are they?  You remember--'Back to the heart's place
here I keep for thee.'"

Stowell felt as if a hand were at his throat again.  "Bye and bye,"
he thought.  Before they turned in for the night he would tell her
everything.

Suddenly there was a crash at the stern--the anchor had been lifted
up and then banged down on the deck.

"What's that?" cried Fenella.

"They're proving the nets to see if the fish are coming," said
Stowell, and hurrying aft together they found the water milky white
and full of irridescent rays.

A couple of warps of the net were hauled aboard, and twelve or
fifteen herring fell on to the deck.  Fenella picked them up,
wriggling, cheeping and twisting in her hands and threw them into a
basket--she was in a fever of excitement.

After that several of the boats that were fishing alongside called
across to know the result of the proving, and the Captain answered
them in Manx, with the crude symbolism of the sea.

"Let me do it next time," said Fenella.

"Do you think you can, miss?" asked the Captain.

"She can do anything," said Stowell, and when the next boat called,
Fenella (with Stowell to prompt her) stood ready to reply.

"_R'ou promal, bhoy?_" cried the voice out of the darkness.

"What's he saying?  Quick!"

"He's asking were you proving, boy.  Say '_Va_--I was.'"

Fenella put her open palms at each side of her mouth, under her
sou'-wester, and cried, "_Va!_"

"_Quoid oo er y piyr?_"

"He asks what you found in your net.  Say '_Pohnnar_--a child.'"

"Oh my goodness!  _Pohnnar_," cried Fenella.

"_Cre'n eash dy pohnnar?_"

"He asks what is the age of your child.  Say '_Dussan ny
quieg-yeig_--twelve to fifteen.'"

"My goodness gracious!  _Dussan ny quieg-yeig_," cried Fenella.

By this time everybody was in convulsions of laughter, and Stowell
could scarcely resist the impulse to throw his arms about Fenella and
kiss her.  "Soon!  Soon!  I must tell her soon!" he thought.

The wind had dropped and a great stillness had fallen on the sea.
The glow from the lights of the Dublin was in the western sky; the
revolving light of the Chicken Rock (the most southerly point of Man)
was in the east; and for two miles round lay the herring boats, with
their watch-lights burning on the roofs of their net houses, and
looking like stars which had fallen from the darkening sky on to the
bosom of the sea.

Fenella began to sing, and before Stowell knew what he was doing he
was singing with her:

  She: _Oh Molla-caraine, where got you your gold?_
  He: _Lone, lone, you have left me here._


It was entrancing--the hour, the surroundings, the charm and sonority
of the sea!  "But this is madness," thought Stowell.  It would only
make it the harder to do--what he had to do.

Nevertheless he went on, and when they came to the end of another
Manx ballad _Kiree fo naightey_ (the sheep under the snow) he said:

"Would you like to know where that old song was written?"

"Where?"

"In Castle Rushen--by a poor wretch whose life had been sworn away by
a vindictive woman."

"And what had he done to her?  Betrayed her, and then deserted her
for another woman, I suppose.  That's the one thing a woman can never
forgive--never should, perhaps."

"I must tell her soon," thought Stowell.  But he could think of no
way to begin--no natural way to lead up to what he had to say.

The night was now very dark and silent.  The majesty and solemnity
around were grand and moving.  Fenella, who had been laughing all the
evening, was serious enough at last.

"It's almost as if the sea, grown old, had gone to sleep with the
going down of the sun, isn't it?" she said.

"The sea isn't always like this, though," said Stowell.

"No, it can be very cruel, can't it?  Rolling on and on, with its
incessant, monotonous roar through the ages!  What heartless things
it has done!  Millions and millions of women have prayed and it has
no heed to them."

"How can I do it?  How can I do it?" Stowell was asking himself.

"Oh, what a thing it is to be a sailor's wife!" said Fenella.  "Only
think of her with her little brood, in her cottage at Peel, perhaps,
when a sudden storm comes on!  Giving the children their supper and
washing them and undressing them, and hearing them say their prayers
and hushing them to sleep, and then going downstairs to the kitchen,
and listening to the roar of the sea on the castle rocks, and
thinking of her man out here in the darkness, struggling between life
and death."

Stowell knew, though he dare not look, that she was brushing her
handkerchief over her eyes.

"Victor," she said, "don't you think women are rather brave
creatures?"

"The bravest creatures in the world!" he answered.

"I knew you would say that," said Fenella, in a low voice.  "And
that's why I always think of you as their champion, fighting their
battles for them when they are wronged and helpless."

Stowell felt as if he were choking.  He could not go on with this
hypocrisy any longer.  He must tell her now.  It would be like
committing suicide, but what must be, must be.

"Fenella...."

But just then the loud voice of the Captain cried "Strike!" and at
the next moment Fenella was flying aft, to tug at the net and shake
out the herrings that came up with it.

What shouts!  What screams!  What peals of laughter!

It was midnight before the joy and bustle of the catch were over, and
the net was shot again.  The Governor was then smoking his last pipe
in the Captain's cabin, and Stowell, with Fenella on his arm, was
walking to and fro on the deck.

"Need I tell her at all?" he was thinking.

He felt as if he were being swept along by an irresistible flood.  He
could not doom himself to death.  With Fenella by his side he could
think of nobody and nothing but her.  Sometimes, when they crossed
the light from the skylight, they turned their faces towards each
other and smiled.

After a while Stowell found himself bantering Fenella.  Catching a
flash of her ring (his mother's ring) on the hand that was on his
arm, he pretended it was gone and asked if it had fallen off while
she was pulling at the net.

"Gone!  The ring you ga-- .... I mean the Deemster gave me!  No, here
it is!  What a shock!  I should have died if I had lost it."

She was radiant; he was reckless; the little trick had uncovered
their hearts to each other.

They heard a step on the other side of the deck.

"Fenella!"

It was the Governor going down the companion.  "Time to turn in,
girl!  We are to breakfast at Port St. Mary at nine in the morning,
you know."

"I'm coming, father."

"Good-night, Stowell!"

"Good-night, Sir!"

But he could not let Fenella go.  It was a sin to go to bed at all on
such a heavenly night.  At last, at the top of the companion, he
loosed her arm, with a slow asundering, and said,

"The Governor says we are to breakfast at Port St. Mary--do you think
we shall if this calm continues?"

She laughed (her laugh seemed to come up from her heart) and said,
"I'm not worrying about that."

"No?"

"When a woman has all she wants in the world in one place why should
she wish to go to another?"

"And have you?"

"Good-night!" she said, holding out both hands.

He caught them, and the touch communicated fire.  At the next moment
he had lifted her hands to his lips.

She drew them down, and his hands with them, pressed them to her
breast and then broke away, and was gone in an instant.

Stowell gasped.  "She loves me!  She loves me!  She loves me!"

Nothing else mattered!  Let the world rip!



II

Stowell did not go below that night.  For two hours he tramped the
deck, laughing to himself like a lunatic.

"She loves me!  She loves me!  She loves me!"

When the watch had to be changed at two o'clock he sent the man to
his berth and took his place.  And when the dawn broke and the lamps
of the fishing fleet blinked out, and the boats showed grey, like
ghosts, on the colourless waste around, and the monotonous chanting
of the crews far and near told him the nets were being hauled in, he
shouted down the fo'c'sle for the men.  And when they came on deck he
helped them to haul in their own net and to empty their catch (it was
the Governor's order) into the first "Nickey" that came along.

The grey sky in the east had reddened to a flame by this time.  Then
up from the round rim of the sea rose the everlasting sun, and lo, it
was day!  God, what an enchanted world it was!  All the glory and
majesty of the sea seemed to be singing hymns to the same tune as
that of his own heart:

"She loves me!  She loves me!  She loves me!"

A light wind sprang up, a cool blowing from the south, just enough to
ripple the surface of the water.  Already some of the fishing boats
had swung about and were standing off for home.  Stowell helped to
haul the mainsail, and shouted with the men as they pulled at the
ropes and the white canvas rose above them.

"She loves me!  She loves me!  She loves me!"

Within half an hour the wind had freshened to a summer gale and they
were running before a roaring sea.  The sails bellied out, the yacht
listed over, the scuppers were half full of water, but Stowell would
not go below.  For a long hour more he held on and looked around at
the fishing boats as they flew together in the brilliant sunshine
between the two immensities of sky and sea.

"She loves me!  She loves me!  She loves me!"

Helloa!  Here was his own little island with the sun riding over the
mountain-tops!  The plunging and rearing of the yacht gave the notion
that the mountains were nodding to him.  "Good morning, son."  What
nonsense came into a man's head when his heart was glad!

"She loves me!  She loves me!  She loves me!"

Ah, here were the cliffs of the Calf, with their hoary heads in the
flying sky and their feet in the thunder of the sea!  And here was
the brown-belted lighthouse of the Chicken Rock, which Fenella and he
had picked up last night!  And here was the shoulder of Spanish Head,
and here was the belly of the Chasms, ringing with the cry of ten
thousand sea fowl!

"She loves me!  She loves me!  She loves me!"

Suddenly there came a shock.  They were opening the bay of Port St.
Mary, with the little fishing town lying asleep along its sheltered
arm, when he saw across the Poolvaish (the pool of death) the grey
walls of Castle Rushen, and the long reach of Langness.  And then
memory flowed back on him like a tidal wave.

Derby Haven!  The old maids' house!  The girl burning her candle in
her bedroom to educate herself that she might become worthy to be his
wife!

"Oh God!  Oh God!"

If Fenella loved him he had stolen her love.  He had no right to it,
being married already, virtually married--bound by every tie that
could hold an honourable man.

He felt like a traitor--a traitor to Fenella now.  He recalled what
he had said last night.  One step more and----

Thank God, he had gone no farther!  If he had allowed Fenella to
engage herself to him, and then the facts about Bessie Collister had
become known, as they might have done through Dan Baldromma----

He must go.  He must go immediately.  His miserable mistake must not
bring disgrace on Fenella also.

The yacht was sliding into the slack water of the bay, and the
row-boats of the fish-buyers, each flying its little flag, were
coming out to meet the fishing boats, when Stowell went down to the
saloon--still dark with its blue silk curtains over skylight and
portholes.

He took off his fisherman's clothes, put on his own, and sat down at
the table to scribble a note to the Governor:


    "Excuse me!  I must go up to Douglas by the first train.  Have
    just remembered an important engagement.

    Hope to call at Government Office to-morrow."


As he was leaving the saloon he looked back towards the cabin in
which Fenella lay asleep.  His eyes were wet, his heart throbbed
painfully, he felt as if he were being banished from her presence as
by a curse.  Renunciation--life-long renunciation--that was all that
was left to him now.

The fleet were in harbour when he went on deck, a hundred boats
huddled together.  And when he stepped ashore the fish salesmen were
selling the night's catch by auction, and the bronze-faced and
heavy-bearded fishermen, in their big boots, were counting their
herrings in mixed English and Manx:

"Nane, jeer, three, kiare, quieg .... warp, tally!"




CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THE WOMAN'S SECRET

When Stowell awoke next morning at Ballamoar a flock of sheep,
liberated from a barn, were bleating before a barking dog.  He had
passed a restless night.  All his soul revolted against the
renunciation he had imposed upon himself.  It was like life-long
imprisonment.  Yet what was he to do?  He must decide and decide
quickly.

Suddenly he thought of the Governor.  The strong sense and practical
wisdom of the Governor might help him to a decision.  But Fenella's
father!  How could he tell his story to Fenella's father?

At last an idea came to him whereby he could obtain the Governor's
counsel without betraying his secret.  He was at the crisis.  On what
he did now the future of his life depended.  And not his own life,
only, but Fenella's also, perhaps, and .... Bessie Collister's.

At three o'clock he was at the Government offices in Douglas.  Police
inspectors were at the door and moving about in the corridors.  One
of them took him up to the Governor's room--a large chamber
overlooking the street and noisy from the tram-cars that ran under
the windows.  The Governor's iron-grey head was bent over a
desk-table.

"Sit down--I shall not be long."

Stowell felt his heart sink in advance.  Never would he be able to
say what he had come to say.

"Well, you gave us the slip nicely, didn't you?" said the Governor,
raising his head from his papers.

"I'm sorry, Sir," said Stowell (he felt his lip trembling).  "It was
an important matter, and I've come to town to-day to ask your advice
on it."

"Something you've been consulted about?"

"Well .... yes."

"I'm no authority on law, you know."

"It's not so much a matter of law, Sir, as of morality--what an
honourable man ought to do under difficult circumstances."

The Governor looked up sharply.  Stowell struggled on.

"A client .... I should say a friend .... engaged himself to a young
woman awhile ago, and now, owing to circumstances which have arisen
since, he finds it difficult to decide whether it is his duty to
marry her."

"Manxman?"

"Yes."

"What class?"

Stowell felt his voice as well as his lips trembling.  "Oh, good
enough class, I think."

The Governor picked up his pipe from the table, charged it, lighted
it, turned his chair towards the fireplace, threw his leg over the
rail-fender and said:

"Fire away."

Then trembling and ashamed, but making a strong call on his
resolution, Stowell told his own story--as if it had been that of
another man.

When he had come to an end there was a long silence.  The Governor
pulled hard at his pipe and there was no other sound in the room
except the rattle of the tram-cars in the street.

Stowell felt hot, his lips felt dry, and pushing back his black hair,
he found sweat on his forehead.

"It was a shocking blunder, of course," he said.  "My man doesn't
defend himself.  Still he thinks the circumstances...."

"You mean it wasn't deliberate?"

"Good Lord, no!"

"In fact a kind of accident?"

"One might say so."

"Any harm done?"

"Harm?"  Stowell turned white and began to stammer.  "I .... no, that
is to say .... no, I've never heard...."

"And yet he promised to marry the girl?"

"He felt responsible for her.  He couldn't be a scoundrel."

"Did he care for her--love her?"

"I can't say that, Sir.  He might have thought he did."

"And now he loves another woman?"

"With all his heart and soul, Sir."

"But" (the Governor was puffing placidly) "he has promised to marry
the little farm girl, and she's away somewhere educating herself to
become his wife?"

"That's it, Sir," said Stowell (his head was down), "and now he is
asking himself what it is his duty to do.  I have told him it is his
duty as a man of honour to carry out his promise--to marry the girl,
whatever the consequences to himself.  Am I right, Sir?"

There was another moment of silence, and then the Governor, taking
his pipe out of his mouth, and bringing his open palm down on the
table, said:

"No!"

"No?"

"It would be marrying the wrong woman, wouldn't it?"

"Well .... yes, one might say that, Sir."

"Then it would be a crime."

"A crime?"

"A three-fold crime."

The Governor rose, crossed the floor, then drew up in front of
Stowell and spoke with sudden energy.

"First, against the girl herself.  She's an attractive young person,
I suppose, eh?"

Stowell nodded.

"But uneducated, illiterate, out of another world, as they say?"

Stowell nodded again.

"Then does your man suppose that by sending her to school for a few
months he will bridge the gulf between them?  Is that how he expects
to make her happy?  Ten to one the girl will be a miserable outsider
in her husband's house to the last day of her life.  But that's not
the worst, by a long way."

"No?"

"If he marries her it will out of a sense of duty will it not?"

"Ye-es."

"Well, what woman on God's earth wants to be married out of a sense
of duty?  And if he loves another woman do you think his wife will
not find it out some day?  Of course she will!  And when she does
what do you think will happen?  I'll tell you what will happen.  If
she's one of the sensitive kind she'll feel herself crushed,
superfluous, and pine away and die of grief and shame, or perhaps
take a dose of something .... we've heard of such happenings, haven't
we?  And if she's a woman of the other sort she'll go farther."

"You mean...."

"Suspicion, jealousy, envy!  She may not care a brass farthing about
her husband, but her pride as a wife will be wounded.  She won't give
him a day's peace, or herself either.  He'll never be an hour out of
her sight but she'll think he's with the other woman.  And
then--what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander!  If he has
another woman as likely as not she'll have another man--we've heard
of that, too, haven't we?"

Stowell dropped his head.  His heart was beating high, and he was
afraid his face was betraying it.  The Governor touched him on the
shoulder, and continued,

"In the next place, it would be a crime against the man himself.
He's a young fellow of some prospects, I suppose?"

"I .... I think so."

"And the girl has some family, hasn't she?"

"Yes."

"They may be good and worthy folk of whom he would have no reason to
be ashamed.  But isn't it just as likely that they are people of
quite another kidney?  Sisters and brothers and cousins to the tenth
degree?  Some vulgar and rapacious old father, perhaps, who hasn't
taken too much trouble to keep the girl out of temptation while she
has been at home, but freezes on to her fast enough after she has
made a good marriage.  Possible, isn't it?"

"Quite possible, sir."

"Well, what are your man's own friends going to do with him with a
menagerie like that at his heels?  No, he has fettered himself for
life to failure as well as misery, and while his wife is railing at
him about the other woman he is reproaching her with standing in his
light.  So the end of his noble endeavour is that he has set up a
little private hell for himself in the house he calls his home."

Stowell was wincing at every word, but all the same he knew that his
eyes were shining.  The Governor looked sharply up at him for a
moment, lit his pipe afresh and said,

"Then there's the other woman.  I suppose her case is worthy of some
consideration?"

"Indeed, yes."

"If she cares for the man...."

"I can't say that, Sir."

"Well, if she does, she too will suffer, will she not?  And what has
she done to deserve suffering?  Nothing at all!  She's the innocent
scapegoat, isn't she?"

"That's true."

"Fine woman, I suppose?"

"The finest woman in the world, Sir."

"Just so!  But your man would doom her to renunciation--a solitary
life of sorrow and regret.  And so the only result of his
praiseworthy principles, his sense of duty, as you say, and all the
rest of it, is that he will have ruined three lives--the life of the
woman he marries and does not love, the life of the woman he loves
and does not marry, and his own life also."

"Then you think, Sir .... you think he should stop even yet?"

"Even at the church door, at the altar-steps--if there's no harm
done, and he is sure she is the wrong woman."

Stowell felt as if the vapours which had clouded his brain so long
had been swept away as by a mountain breeze, but he thought it
necessary to keep up the disguise.

"I feel you must be right, sir," rising to go.  "At all events I
cannot argue against you.  But I think you'll agree that .... that if
my man can wipe out this bad passage in his life without injury to
anybody and without scandal .... I think you will agree that his
first duty is to tell the woman he loves...."

"Eh?  What the deuce .... Good heavens, no!"

"But surely he couldn't ask a pure-minded girl...."

"To take the other woman's leavings?  Certainly he couldn't if she
knew anything about it.  But why should she?  Why should a
pure-minded girl, as you say, be told about something that happened
before she came on to the scene?"

Stowell's scruples were overcome.  He had argued against himself, but
he knew well that he had wished to be beaten.  He was going off when
the Governor, following him to the door, laid a hand on his shoulder
and said,

"When a man has done wrong the thing he has got to do next is to say
nothing about it.  That's what your man has got to do now.  It's the
woman secret, isn't it?  Very well, he must never reveal it to
anybody--never, under any circumstances--never in this world!"



II

Next day, at Ballamoar, after many fruitless efforts to begin,
Stowell was writing to Bessie Collister.


    "DEAR BESSIE,--I am sorry to send you this letter and it is very
    painful for me to write it.  But I cannot allow you to look
    forward any longer to something which can never happen.

    "The truth is--I must tell you the truth, Bessie--since you went
    to Derby Haven I have found that I do not love you as I ought, to
    become your husband.  That being so, I cannot do you the great
    wrong of marrying you.  It would not be either for your good or
    for mine.  And since I cannot marry you I feel that we must part.
    I am miserable when I say this, but I see that in justice to you,
    as well as to myself, nothing else can be...."


He could go no further.  A wave of tenderness towards Bessie came
over him.  He had visions of the girl receiving and reading his
letter.  It would be at night in her little bedroom, perhaps--the
room in which she burnt her candle to learn her lessons.

No, it would be too cruel, too cowardly.  He would not write--he
would go to Derby Haven and break the news to the girl himself.

But that evoked other and more fearful visions.  They would be
walking along the sandy path at Langness with the stark white
lighthouse at the end of it.  "Bessie," he would be saying, "We must
part; it will be better for both of us.  It has all been my fault.
You have nothing to reproach yourself with.  But you must try to
forget me, and if there is anything else I can do...."  And then the
reproaches, the recriminations, the tears, the supplications, the
appeals: "Don't throw me over!  You promised to stand up for me, you
know.  I will be good."

It would be terrible.  It would make his heart bleed.  Nevertheless
he must bear it.  It was a part of his punishment.

He had torn up his letter and was putting his hand on the bell to
order the dog-cart to be brought round to take him to the railway
station, when a servant came into the room and said,

"Mr. Alick Gell to see you, sir."

Gell came in with a gloomy and half-shamefaced look.  His tall figure
was bent, his fair hair was disordered, and his voice trembled as he
said,

"Can't we take a walk in the wood, old fellow?  I have something to
say."

"I don't know how to tell you," he began.  They were crossing the
lawn towards the plantation.  "Its about Bessie."

"Bessie?"

"I .... I'm madly in love with her."

Stowell stopped and looked without speaking into Gell's twitching
face.

"I knew you wouldn't be able to believe it, but don't look at me like
that."

"Tell me," said Stowell.

And then, stammering and trembling, Gell told his story.  He didn't
know how it began.  Perhaps it was pity.  He had been sorry for the
girl, over there in that lonely place, so he went down at first just
to cheer her up.  Then he had found himself going frequently, buying
her presents and taking her out for walks.  When he had realised how
things were he had tried to pull up, but it was too late.  He had
struggled to be loyal--to strengthen himself by talking of
Stowell--praising him to the girl, excusing him for not coming to see
her--but it was useless.  His pity had developed into love, and
before he had known what he was doing Bessie was in his arms.  At the
next instant he had felt like a traitor.  He was frantically happy
and yet he wanted to kill himself.

"It was terrible," he said.  "I couldn't sleep at night for thinking
of it.  Bessie wanted you to be told.  In fact she wrote you a
letter, saying we couldn't help loving each other, and asking you to
release her.  But I couldn't let her go that far.  'Then go to
Ballamoar and tell him yourself,' she said.  And at last I've come.
And now .... now you know."

Stowell listened in silence.  His first feeling was one of wounded
pride.  He had really been a great fool about the girl!  What
fathomless depths of conceit had led him to think she would break her
heart if he gave her up?  And then the long struggle between his love
and his duty--what a mountebank Fate seemed to have made of him!  But
his next feeling was one of relief--boundless, inexpressible relief.
The iron chain he had been dragging after him had been broken.  He
was free!

Gell, who was breathing hard, was watching Stowell from under his
cap, which was pulled down over his forehead.  They were walking in a
path that was thick with fallen leaves, and there was no sound for
some moments but that of the rustling under their feet.

"Why don't you speak, old fellow?  I've behaved like a cad, I know.
But for God's sake, don't torture me.  Strike me in the face with
your fist.  I would rather that--upon my soul, I would."

"Alick," said Stowell, putting his arm through Gell's.  "I'm going to
tell you something."

"What?"

"Do you know what I was on the point of doing when you came?  Going
down to Derby Haven to ask Bessie to let me off."

"Is that true?  You're not saying it merely to .... But why?"

"Because what's happened to her has happened to me also--I love
somebody else."

"No?  Really? .... But who .... who is the other girl? .... Is it
.... It's Fenella, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"How splendid!  I'm glad!  And of course I congratulate you .... No?
.... You've not asked her yet?  But that will be all right--of course
it will!"

Taking off his cap to fan himself with, Gell broke into fits of half
hysterical laughter.  Then he said:

"You don't mind my saying something now that it's all over?  No?
Well, to tell you the truth I could never believe you really cared
for Bessie.  I thought you were only marrying her as a sort of duty,
having got her into trouble with Dan Baldromma.  And it was
so--partly so--wasn't it?  That didn't excuse me, though, did it?
Lord, what a relief!  I feel as if you had lifted ten tons off my
head."

A dark memory came to Stowell.  "Has she told him?"

"Bessie will be relieved, too, and just as glad as I am.  Do you
know, there's a heart of gold in that girl.  She's never had a dog's
chance yet.  Not much education, I admit, but such spirit, such
character!  Such a woman too--you said so yourself, remember."

A still darker memory of something the Governor had said came to
Stowell.  "Didn't you say Bessie had written to me?" he asked.

"Yes, she did, yesterday; but I destroyed her letter."

"Do you know, I wrote to Bessie to-day, and I destroyed my letter
also."

"No?  What fun if your letters had crossed in the post," said Gell,
and tossing his cap into the air, he broke into still louder peals of
laughter.

Again Stowell felt immense relief.  It was impossible that Bessie
could have told him.  And if she hadn't, why should he?  Why injure
the girl in Gell's eyes?  Why tarnish his faith in her?  It was the
woman's secret, therefore he must never reveal it--never in this
world.

They were walking on.  Gell with a high step was kicking up the
withered leaves.

"What about your people?" asked Stowell.

"Ah, that's what I've got to find out.  I'm going home now to tell
them.  My mother is always advising me to marry and settle down, but
of course she'll jib at Bessie, and the sisters will follow suit.  As
for my father, he has only one son, as he says, and I must have a
better allowance.  He cut it down after that affair in the Courts,
you know."

They were at the gate to the road, and pulling it open, Gell said:

"Phew!  How different I feel from what I did when I was coming in
here half an hour ago!  I thought you would kick me out the minute I
had told you.  But now we're going to be better friends than ever,
aren't we?"

"Good-bye and good luck, old fellow," said Stowell.

"Good-bye, and God bless you, old chap," said Gell.

Stowell stood at the gate and watched him going off with long
strides, his shoulders working vigorously.

"Never again!  We can never be the same friends again," thought
Stowell, as he turned back to the house.

He was feeling like a man who in a moment of passion has secretly
wronged his life-long friend and can never look straight into his
eyes again.

But the sense of a barrier between Gell and himself was soon wiped
out by the memory of Fenella.  He was free to love her at last!  No
more hypocrisy!  No more self-denial!  No more struggles between
passion and duty!  The past was dead.  Life from that day forward was
beginning again for all of them.

"Was that Alick Gell in the wood with you?" asked Janet, who had come
to the door to call Stowell in to tea.

"Yes."

"Goodness me!  He must be a happy boy.  He was laughing enough,
anyway."



III

Stowell went to bed early that night, slept soundly and was up with
the coming of light in the morning.

The farm lads were not yet astir, but going round to the stable he
saddled a horse for himself (a young chestnut mare that had been born
on one of his own birthdays) and set off for a ride to relieve the
intoxication of his spirits.

The air was keen, but both he and his horse sniffed it with delight.
As they passed out of Ballamoar the sun rose and played among the red
and yellow leaves of the plantation, for the summer was going out in
a blaze of glory.  They crossed the Curragh, dipped into the glen,
and climbed the corkscrew path to the mountain.

Stowell thought he had never felt so well.  And the little mare,
catching the contagion of his high spirits, snorted and swung her
head at every stride and dug her feet into the ringing ground.

"Helloa, Molly, here we are at the top!"

Looking hack he saw the flat plain below, dotted over with farms,
each with its little farmhouse surrounded by its clump of sheltering
trees.  God, how good to think that every one of them was a home of
love!  Love!  That was the great uniter, the great comforter, the
great liberator, the great redeemer!

And to think that all this had been going on since the beginning of
the world!  That generation after generation some boy had come up
this lovely glen to court his girl!  Lord, what a glorious place the
world was, after all!

His eyes were beaming like the sunshine, and to make his joy complete
he galloped over the mountain-tops until he came to a point at which
he could look down on Douglas and catch a glimpse of Fenella's home
in the midst of its trees.

  "_Peace in her chamber, wheresoe'er it be,
        A holy place...._"


Then back to Ballamoar at a brisk canter, with the air musical with
the calls of cattle, the bleating of sheep and the songs of birds.
And then breakfast for a hungry man--cowrie and eggs and fresh butter
and honey and junket, which the Manx called pinjean.

At three o'clock in the afternoon he was on his way to Government
House, and by that time the intoxication of his high spirits had
suffered a check.

What had Fenella thought of his flight from the yacht?  Had she
believed his excuse for it?  What interpretation had she put upon his
intention of calling at Government Offices the following day?  And
the Governor--had he seen through the thin disguise of that story?

But the cruellest question of all, and the hardest to answer, was
whether after all, even now that he was free, he had any right to ask
Fenella to become his wife?  He, a sin-soiled man, and she a
stainless woman!

He felt as if he ought to purge his soul by telling Fenella
everything.  Yet how could he do that without inflicting an incurable
wound on her faith in him?  And then what had the Governor said?
"Never under any circumstances."

As he walked up the carriage drive to Government House he saw the
Governor's tall figure, and the Attorney-General's short one, through
the windows of the smoking-room.  The Governor came to the door to
meet him.

"The very man we were talking about.  Come in!  Sit down.  We have
something to propose to you."

The Governor was going up to London on urgent business at the Home
Office and the Attorney had to go with him.  In these circumstances
it had been necessary to arrange that the Court of General Gaol
Delivery (interrupted by the Deemster's death, but now summoned to
resume) should sit without the Governor, and the Attorney had been
suggesting that Stowell should represent him in an important case.

"What is it, Sir?" asked Stowell.

"Murder again, my boy; but of a different kind this time."

A Peel fisherman had killed his wife with shocking brutality, yet
everybody seemed to sympathise with him, and there was a danger that
a Manx jury might let him off.

"Splendid opportunity to uphold law and order!  You'll take the case?"

"With pleasure!"

"Good!  The Attorney will send you the papers.  And now, I suppose,
you would like to see Fenella?"

"May I?"

"Why not?  You'll find her in the drawing-room."

On his way to the drawing-room Stowell met Miss Green coming out of
it.  She smiled at him, and said, in a half-whisper,

"I think you are expected."

When he opened the door he saw Fenella sitting with her back to him
at a little desk on one side of the bay window, with a glint of its
light on her bronze-brown hair.

"Who is it?" she said as he entered.  But at the next moment she
seemed to know, and, rising, she turned round to him and smiled.

He thought she had never looked so beautiful.  He wanted to crush her
in his arms, and at the same time to fall at her feet and kiss the
hem of her dress.

There was a moment of passionate silence.  He stepped towards her but
stopped when two or three paces away.  A riot of conflicting emotions
were going on within him.  He felt strong, he felt weak, he felt
brave, he felt cowardly, he felt proud, he felt ashamed.

Still nothing was said by either of them.  Her eyes were glistening,
she was breathing quickly and her bosom was heaving.  He saw her
moving towards him.  Her hand was trailing along the desk.  He felt
as if she were drawing him to her, and by a nervous, but irresistible
impulse he held out his arms.

"Fenella," he said, hardly audibly.

At the next moment, as in a flash of light, she sprang upon his
breast, and at the next her arms were about his neck, his own were
around her waist, her mouth was to his mouth, and the world had
melted away.

Ten minutes later, with faces aflame, they went, hand in hand, into
the smoking-room.  The Governor wheeled about on his revolving chair
to look at them.

"Well," he said, "it's easy to see what you two have come about.  But
not for six months!  I won't agree to a day less, remember."




CHAPTER SIXTEEN

AT THE SPEAKER'S

Before Alick Gell reached his father's house another had been there
on the same errand.

Earlier in the afternoon Dan Baldromma, while running his hands
through the ground flour in the mill, with the wheel throbbing and
the stones groaning about him, had been struck by a new idea.

"Liza," he said, returning to the dwelling house and standing with
his back to the fire and his big hands behind him, "that young
wastrel ought to be freckened into marrying the girl, and I'm
thinking I know the way to do it, too."

"It's like thou do, Dan," said Mrs. Collister.

Dan's device was of the simplest.  It was that of sending the mother
of Bessie Collister to the mother of Alick Gell to threaten and
intimidate her.

"But sakes alive, man, that's an ugly job, isn't it?"

"It's got to be done, woman, or there'll be worse to do next, I tell
thee.  Thou don't want to see thy daughter where her mother was
before her."

"Well, well, if I must, I must," said Mrs. Collister.  "But, aw dear,
aw dear!  If thou hadn't thrown the girl into the way of temptation
by shutting the door on her...."

"Hould thy whist, woman, and do as I tell thee, and that will be the
best night's work I ever done for her."

Half an hour later, having swept the earthen floor, hung the kettle
on its sooty chain, and laid the table for Dan's tea, Mrs. Collister
toiled upstairs to dress for her journey, and came down in the poke
bonnet and satin mantle which she wore to chapel on Sunday.

Meantime Dan had harnessed the old mare to the stiff cart and brought
it round to the door.  Having helped his wife over the wheel and put
the rope reins in her hands, he gave her his parting instructions.

"See thou stand up for thy rights, now!  This is thy chance and
thou's got to make the best of it!"

"Aw well, we'll see," said the old woman, and then the stiff cart
rattled over the cobbled "street" on its way to the Speaker's.

In her comfortable sitting-room, thickly carpeted and plentifully
cushioned, Mrs. Gell was awakened from her afternoon nap by the
scream of the peacocks.

"It's Mistress Daniel Collister of Baldromma to see you, ma'am," said
the maid.

At the next moment, Mrs. Collister, with a timid air, hobbled into
the room on her stick, and the two mothers came face to face.

"You wish to speak to me," said Mrs. Gell.

"If you plaze, ma'am," said Mrs. Collister, huskily.

Isabella Gell, a sour-faced young woman, came into the room and stood
behind her mother's chair.  Mrs. Collister took the seat that was
assigned to her, and fumbled the ribbons of her bonnet to loosen them.

"It's about my daughter, ma'am."

"Well?"

"My daughter and your son, ma'am."

"Eh?"

"Cæsar Qualtrough of the Kays has seen them together.  They're living
down Castletown way, they're saying."

"Living .... my son and your daughter?"

"So they're saying, ma'am."

"I don't believe it!  I don't believe a word of it!"

"I wish in my heart I could say the same, ma'am.  But it's truth
enough, I'm fearing."

"And if it is--I don't say it is, but if it is--why have you come to
me?"

Then trembling all over, Mrs. Collister continued her story.  Her
poor girl was in trouble.  When a girl was in trouble the world could
be cruel hard on her.  Nobody would think the cruel hard it could be.
If a girl did wrong it was because somebody she was fond of had
promised to marry her.  What else would she do it for?  When a young
man had behaved like that to a poor girl he ought to keep his word to
her.  And if he had a mother, and she was a good Christian woman....

Mrs. Gell, who was beating her foot on the carpet, broke in
impatiently.

"In short, you think my son ought to marry your daughter?"

"It's nothing but right, ma'am."

"And you've come here to ask me to tell him to do so?"

"If you plaze, ma'am."

"Well, I never!" said Isabella.

"She's a mother herself, I was thinking, and if one of her own girls
was in the same position...."

"The idea!" said Isabella.

"Mrs. Collister," said Mrs. Gell, with a proud lift of her head, "I
was sorry when I heard of the trouble your daughter had brought on
you, but what you are doing now is a piece of great assurance."

"But Bessie is a good girl, ma'am.  And if she married your son you
would never have raison to be ashamed of her."

"Good indeed!  If a girl isn't ashamed to be living with a young man
the less said about her goodness the better."

"Aw well, ma'am," said Mrs. Collister (her faltering tongue had
become firmer and her timid eyes had begun to flash), "if she's
living with the young man, he's living with her, and the shame is the
same for both, I'm thinking."

Mrs. Gell drew herself up in her chair.

"I'm astonished at you, Mrs. Collister!  A woman yourself, and not
seeing the difference."

"Aw yes, difference enough, ma'am!  And when a young man doesn't keep
his word it's the woman that's knowing it best by the trouble that's
coming on her."

Mrs. Gell, whose anger was rising, lifted her chin again and said,
"If your daughter is in trouble, Mrs. Collister, how are we to know
that she had not brought it on her own head, just to get Alick to
marry her?"

"The creature!" said Isabella.

"And how are we to know that you and your husband have not encouraged
the girl in her wickedness just to get our son for your son-in-law?"

"Aw well, ma'am," said Mrs. Collister (she was fumbling at the
strings of her bonnet to tighten them), "if you are thinking as bad
of me as that...."

"You talk of the danger to your daughter if my son doesn't marry
her," said Mrs. Gell.  "But what of the danger to my son if he does?
His life will be ruined.  He will never be able to raise his head in
the island again.  His father will disown him.  Marry your daughter
indeed!  Not only will I not ask him to marry her, but if I see the
slightest danger of his doing anything so foolish I will do
everything I can to prevent it."

"Aw well, we'll say no more, ma'am," said Mrs. Collister, and she
shuffled to her feet.

But Mrs. Gell was up before her.

"Alexander Gell, son of the Speaker and grandson of Archdeacon
Mylechreest, married to the step-daughter of Dan Baldromma and the
nameless offspring of Liza Collister....

"Ma'am!"

Mrs. Collister had hobbled to the door, and was going out, humbled
and beaten, when Mrs. Gell's last words cut her to the quick.  For
more than twenty years she had taken the punishment of her own sin
and bowed her head to the lash of it, but at this insult to her child
the weak and timid creature turned about, as brave as a lion and as
fierce as a fury.

"I'm not your quality, I know that, ma'am," she said, breathing
quickly, "but a day is coming, and maybe it's near, when we'll be
standing together where we'll both be equal.  Just two old mothers,
and nothing else between us.  If you've loved your son, I've loved my
daughter, whatever she is, ma'am.  And when the One who reads all
hearts is after asking me what I did for my child in the day of her
trouble, I'll be telling Him I came here to beg you on my knees to
save her from a life of sin and shame, and you wouldn't, because your
worldly pride prevented.  And then it's Himself, ma'am, will be
judging between us!"



II

There had been a sitting of the Keys that day, and when the Speaker
returned home he found his wife on the sofa with a damp handkerchief
over her forehead and a bottle of smelling-salts in her hand.  She
told him what had happened.

"Well, well," he said, "so that's what it means.  But there's no
knowing what hedge the hare will jump from."

His figure was less burly than before, his head was more bald and his
full beard was whiter, but his eyes flashed with the same
ungovernable fire.

"That girl must be a thoroughly bad one," said Mrs. Gell.  "It's not
the first time she has got our Alick into trouble, remember.  We must
save our son from the designing young huzzy."

"Tut!  It's not the girl I'm troubling about."

"Who else, then?"

"The man!  I might have expected as much, though!"

Coming home in the train he had had some talk with Kerruish, his
advocate and agent.  Dan Baldromma, who was back with his rent, was
refusing to pay, and saying "Let the Spaker fetch me to Coort, and
I'll tell him the raison."

"Then can't you settle with the man, Archie?"

"Settle with Dan?  I'll settle with Alick first, Bella, and if he has
given that scoundrel the whip hand of me I'll break every bone in his
body."

"But it may not be true.  It cannot be true.  Unless Alick tells me
so himself I'll never believe a word of it."

They were at tea in the dining-room, country fashion, the Speaker at
the head of the table with a plate of fish before him, and his wife
and daughters at either side, when Alick entered.

"Helloa!" he cried, with a forced gaiety.  But only his mother
responded to his greeting and made room for him by her side.  She saw
that he was paler and thinner, and that his hand trembled when he
took his cup.

The Speaker, who had turned his rough shoulder to his son, tried to
restrain himself from breaking out on him until the meal would be
over and he could take him into his own room, but before long his
impatience overcame him.

"What's this we're hearing about you--that you are carrying on with a
girl?"

"Do you mean Bessie Collister, Sir?" said Alick.

"Certainly I mean Bessie Collister.  And I thought you gave me your
word that you would see no more of her."

"But that was the promise of a boy, Sir.  Did you expect it to bind
the man also?"

"The man?  The man!" said the Speaker, mimicking his son's voice in a
mincing treble.  "Do you call yourself a man, bringing disgrace on
your name and family."

"What disgrace, Sir?"

"What disgrace?  All the island seems to have heard of it.  Is it
necessary to tell you?  Living secret, so they say, with a woman who
isn't fit company for your mother and sisters."

"If anybody told you that, Sir," said Alick (his lower lip was
trembling), "he told you a lie--a damned lie, Sir!"

"There!" cried Mrs. Gell, turning to her husband.  "What did I say?
It isn't true, you see."

"Of course it isn't true, mother; and the best proof that I'm not
behaving dishonourably to Bessie Collister is that I intend to marry
her."

It was a sickening moment for Mrs. Gell, and the Speaker, for an
instant, was dumbfounded.

"Eh?  What?  You intend to marry...."

"Yes, Sir; and that's why I'm here to-day--to bring you the news, and
to ask you to restore the allowance you cut down in the spring, you
know."

"That .... that .... that bast--...."

"Archie!" cried Mrs. Gell, indicating their daughters.

"Bessie is a good girl, father," said Alick.  "What happened before
she was born wasn't her fault, Sir."

"So you've come to bring us the news and to ask me to double your
allowance?

"If you please, Sir.  You couldn't wish your son and his wife...."

"His wife!  There you are, Bella!  That's what I've been working day
and night thirty years for--to see my son throw half my earnings--all
that I can't will away from him--into the hands of a man like Dan
Baldromma!"

"But Alick will be reasonable," said Mrs. Gell.  "He'll give the girl
up."

"He'll have to do that, and quick too, or I'll cut off his allowance
altogether."

"Do you mean it, Sir?" said Alick--he was pushing his chair back.

"Do I mean it?  Certainly I mean it.  You'll give the girl up or
never another penny of mine shall you see as long as I live!"

"All right," said Alick, rising from the table, "I'll earn my own
living."

The Speaker broke into a peal of scornful laughter.  "You earn your
living!  That's rich!"

"Give her up?" cried Alick.  "I'll break stones on the highway or
porter on the pier before I'll give up her little finger!"

"You fool!  You confounded fool!  But no fear!  She'll give you up
when she finds you've lost your income."

"Will she?  I'll trust her for that, Sir."

"Then get away back to her--you'll not be the first by a long way."

Alick, who had been trying to laugh, stopped his laughter suddenly,
and said, "What do you mean by that, Sir?"

"Mean?  Do you want me to tell you what I mean?"

"Archie," cried Mrs. Gell, and again she indicated their daughters.

"Get out of this, will you?" cried the Speaker to the girls, who had
been sitting with their noses in their teacups.

The girls fled from the room, but stood outside to listen.

"Father," said Alick, "you must tell me what you mean."

"Mean!  Mean!  Don't stand there cross-examining your own father.
You know what I mean!  If half they say about the young b-- .... is
true she's fit enough for it, anyway."

"If any other man had said that," said Alick, quivering, "I should
have knocked him down, Sir."

"What's that?  You threaten me?" cried the Speaker.  His voice was
like the scream of a sea-gull, and making a step towards Alick he
lifted his clenched fist to him.

Mrs. Gell intervened, and Alick retreated a pace or two.

"Take care, Sir," he said.  "You can't treat me like that now.  I'm
not a child any longer."

"Then get away to your woman .... and to hell, if you want to."

"There was no need to tell me twice, Sir.  I'm going.  And as God is
my witness, I'll never set foot in this house again."

At the next moment the peacocks were screaming outside, and the
Speaker, who had thrown up the window, was shouting through it in a
broken roar,

"Alick!  Alick Gell!  Come back, you damned scoundrel!  Alick!
Alexander...."

They had to carry him upstairs and send for Dr. Clucas.  It had been
another of his paralysing brain-storms.  It was not to be expected
that he could bear many more of them.




CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THE BURNING BOAT

Two days later, Gell was stepping into the train for Castletown on
his way to Derby Haven.

"Give me up because my income is gone?  Not Bessie!  Not Bessie
Collister!"

But Bessie had gone through deep waters since he had seen her last.

From the first Victor Stowell had disappointed her.  To live in the
dark--hidden away, unrecognised, suppressed--it had not been
according to her expectations.  Her pride, too, had been wounded by
being sent back to school.  It was true that without being asked, Mr.
Stowell had promised to marry her at some future time, but perhaps
that was only because he was the son of the Deemster and therefore
afraid of her step-father and of the cry there would be all over the
island if anything became known.

If it had only been Alick!  Alick would not have been ashamed of her.
He would have taken her just as she was and never seen any
shortcomings.

After the first days at Derby Haven she had found herself looking
forward to Alick's visits.  When she knew he was coming everything
brightened up in her eyes and even her tiresome lessons became
delightful.  Before long she felt her heart leap up whenever the
Misses Brown called, "Bessie, a gentleman to see you!"

It is easy to kindle a fire on a warm hearth.  Alick had been
Bessie's first sweetheart, perhaps her only one.  Suddenly a
wonderful thing happened to her.  She found herself in love.  She had
thought she had always been in love with somebody, but now she
realized that she had never been in love before.  She was in love
with Alick Gell.  And she wished to become his wife.

That altered everything.  She began to see how ignorant she was
compared with Alick and how much she was beneath him.  She remembered
his three tall sisters who held their heads so high at anniversaries
and bazaars, and thought what a shocking thing it would be if they
were able to look down on her.  How she worked to be worthy of him!

She had no qualms about Stowell.  Her only anxiety was about Alick.
She was certain that he loved her, yet what a fight she had for him!
He was always talking about Stowell, and praising him up to her.
When he excused his friend for not coming to see her she was quite
sure it was all nonsense.  And when he gave her presents and said
they were from Stowell she knew where they came from.

One day he brought a wrist-watch with the usual message, and after he
had put it on (how his hands were trembling!) she tried to thank him,
but didn't know how to do so.

At last an idea occurred to her.  They were walking on the Langness,
just by the ruin of a windmill, whose walls and roof had been carried
away by a gale.

"Alick," she said, "I wonder if my new watch is right by the clock at
Castle Rushen?"

Alick put his hands to his eyes like blinkers (for the sun was
setting) and looked across the bay.  While he did so, Bessie slipped
off on tiptoe and hid behind the walls of the windmill.  As soon as
she was missed there was a laugh and a shout and then a chase.
Bessie dodged and Alick doubled, Bessie dodged again, but at length
she slipped into a hole, and at the next moment Alick caught her up
and kissed her.

"Now, what have you done?" she said, and her face was suffused with
blushes.

After that there could be no disguise between them.  Bessie felt no
shame, and it never occurred to her that she had been guilty of
treason.  But Gell talked about disloyalty and said he would never be
at ease until she had made a clean breast of it to Stowell.

"Then go and tell him we couldn't help loving each other," she said.

When he was gone she was very happy.  Mr. Stowell would give her up.
Of course he would.  What had happened between them was dead and
buried.  Whatever else he was Victor Stowell was a gentleman.  He
would say nothing to Alick.

Then came a shock.  On the following morning she felt unwell.  She
had often felt unwell since she came to Derby Haven, and the Misses
Brown, simple old maids, seeing no cause except the change in the
girl's way of life, wanted to send for a doctor.  But doctors were
associated in Bessie's mind with death.  If you saw a doctor going
into a farmhouse one day you saw a coffin going in the next.

Chemists were not open to the same objection.  Often on market days,
after she had sold out her basket of butter and eggs, she had called
at the chemist's at Ramsey for medicine for her mother.  So, saying
nothing to her housemates, she slipped round to the chemist's at
Castletown and asked for a bottle of mixture.

The chemist, an elderly man with a fatherly face, smiled at her, and
said:

"But what is it for, miss?"

Bessie described her symptoms, and then the smiling face was grave.

"Are you a married woman, ma'am?" asked the chemist.

Bessie caught her breath, stared at the man for a moment with eyes
full of fear, and then turned and fled out of the shop.

All that day she felt dizzy and deaf.  The earth seemed to be
slipping from under her.  Memories of what she had heard from older
women came springing to the surface of her mind, and she asked
herself why she had not thought of this before.  For a long time she
struggled to persuade herself that the chemist was wrong, but
conviction forced itself upon her at last.

Then she asked herself what she was to do, and remembering what she
had learned as a child at home of her mother's miserable life before
her marriage, she found only one answer to that question.  She must
ask Mr. Stowell to marry her.  The thought of parting from Alick was
heart-breaking.  But the most terrible thing was that she found
herself hoping that Stowell would refuse to release her.

It had been a wretched day, dark and cheerless, with driving mist and
drizzling rain.  Towards nightfall the old maids lighted a fire for
her in the sitting-room, which was full of quaint nicknacks and old
glass and china.  The tide, which was at the bottom of the ebb, was
sobbing against the unseen breakwater, and the gulls on the cobbles
of the shore were calling continually.

Bessie was crouching over the fire with her chin in her hand when she
heard the sneck of the garden gate, a quick step on the gravel, a
light knock at the front door, a familiar voice in the lobby, and
then old Miss Ethel saying behind her:

"A gentleman to see you, Bessie."

Her heart did not leap up as before, and she did not rise with her
former alacrity, but Alick Gell came into the room like a rush of
wind.

"What's this--unwell?" he cried.

"It's nothing!  I shall be better in the morning," she said.

"Of course you will."

And then, after a kiss, Gell sat on a low stool at Bessie's feet,
stretched his long legs towards the fire, and began to pour out his
story.

He had seen Stowell and the matter had turned out just as she had
expected.  Splendid fellow!  Best chap in the world, bar none!

"But what do you think, Bess?  The most extraordinary coincidence!
Dear old Vic, he has been busy falling in love, too!  Fact!  Fenella
Stanley, daughter of the Governor!  Magnificent girl, and Vic is
madly in love with her!  So there's to be no heart-breaking on either
side, and that's the best of it.  Makes one think there must be
something in Providence, doesn't it?"

He was laughing so loud that the china in the room rang, but Bessie
was turning cold with terror.

"And .... what about your father?" she faltered.

"My father?"

"Well .... to tell you the truth there was a bit of a breeze there,"
he said, and then followed the story of the scene at the Speaker's.

"But no matter!  I'm not without money, so we can be married at once,
and the sooner the better."

"But Alick," she said (he was stroking her hand and she was trying to
draw it away), "do you think it's best?"

"Best?  Why, of course I think it's best.  Don't you?"

She did not reply.

"Don't you?" he said again, and then, getting no answer, he became
aware that she, who had been so eager for their marriage before he
went to Ballamoar, was now holding back.

"Bessie," he said, "has anything happened while I've been away?"

"No!  Oh no!"

"You're .... you're not thinking of the loss of the income, are you?"

"No, no; 'deed!, no!"

"I knew you wouldn't.  When my father taunted me with that, saying
you would give me up as soon as you knew my allowance was gone, I
said, 'Not Bessie!  I'll trust her for that, Sir.'"

Bessie began to cry.  Alick was bewildered.

"What is it, then?  Tell me!  Are you .... are you thinking of
Stowell?"

At that name she was seized by the mad impulse which comes to people
on dizzy heights when they wish to throw themselves over--she wanted
to blurt out the truth, to confess everything.  But before she could
speak Alick was saying,

"I shouldn't blame you if you were.  I'm not his equal--I know that,
Bessie.  But even if he were free I shouldn't give you up to him now.
No, by God, not to him or to anyone."

His voice was breaking.  She looked at him.  There were tears in his
eyes.  She could bear up no longer.  With the cry of a drowning soul
she flung her arms about him and sobbed on his breast.

An hour later, having comforted and quietened her, Gell was going off
with swinging strides through the mist to catch the last train back
to Douglas.

"She was thinking of me--that was it," he was telling himself.
"Thought I would come to regret the sacrifice and wanted to save me
from being cut off by my family.  So unselfish!  Never thinking of
herself, bless her!"

And Bessie, in her bedroom was saying to herself, "He's that fond of
me that he'll forgive me, whatever happens."

She lay a long time awake, with her arms under her head, looking up
at the ceiling.

"Yes, Alick will forgive me, whatever happens," she thought.

And then she blew out her candle, buried her head in her pillow, and
fell asleep.



II

When Gell reached the railway-station he found the carriages waiting
at the platform, half-full of impatient passengers.  A trial, which
was going on in the Castle, was nearing its close, and the
station-master had received orders that the last train to town was to
be kept back for the Judges and advocates.

"The Peel fisherman," thought Gell.  And, remembering that this was
the case in which Stowell was to represent the Attorney-General, he
walked over to the Court-house, whose lantern-light was showing like
a hazy white cloud above the Castle walls.

The little place was thick with sea mist, hot with the acid odour of
perspiration, and densely crowded but breathlessly silent.  The trial
was over, the prisoner had been found guilty, and the Deemster (it
was Deemster Taubman, sitting with the Clerk of the Rolls as Acting
Governor) was beginning to pronounce sentence:

"Prisoner at the bar, it will be my duty to communicate to the proper
quarter the Jury's recommendation to mercy, but I can hold out no
hope that it will be of any avail.  You have been found guilty of the
wilful murder of your wife, therefore I bid you prepare...."

And then followed those dread words in that dead stillness, which
bring thoughts of the day of doom.

Gell caught one glimpse of the prisoner, as he stood in the dock, in
his fisherman's guernsey, looking steadfastly into the face of his
Judge, and another glimpse as a way was cleared through the
spectators and he walked with a strong step to the door leading to
the cells.

Then the court-house cleared to a low rumble that was like the
muffled murmuring that is heard after a funeral.

Gell asked for Stowell, and was told that his friend had gone down to
the Deemster's room with one of the advocates for the defence to draw
up the terms of the recommendation.  Therefore he returned to the
station with a group of his fellow advocates, and on the way back he
heard the story of the trial--little knowing how close it was to come
to him.

The prisoner (his name was Morrison) had married the murdered woman
in the winter.  She had been a comely girl who had always borne a
good character.  On their wedding morning they had received many
presents, one of them being a fishing-boat.  This had been the gift
of a distant relation of the bride's, a middle-aged man who had since
married a rich widow.

At Easter, Morrison had gone off with the fleet to the mackerel
fishing at Kinsale, and while there he had received an anonymous
letter.  It told him that his young wife had given birth, less than
six months after their marriage, to a still-born child.

Morrison had said nothing about the letter, but he had made inquiries
about the man who had given him the boat, and been told that he had
borne a bad reputation.

At the end of the mackerel season Morrison had returned to the island
with the rest of the fleet, and for everybody else there had been the
usual joyful homecoming.

It had been late at night on the first of June, when the stars were
out and the moon was in its first quarter.  As soon as the boats had
been sighted outside the Castle Rock the sound signal had gone up
from the Rocket House, and within five minutes the fishermen's wives
had come flying down to the quay, with their little shawls thrown
over their heads and pinned under their chins.

Then, as the boats had come gliding into harbour, there had been the
shrill questions of the women ashore and the deep-toned answers of
the man afloat:

"Are you there, Bill?"  "Is it yourself, Nancy?"

Some of the younger women, who had had babies born while their
husbands had been away, had brought them down with them, and one
young wife, holding up her little one for her man to see, by the
light of the moon and the harbour-master's lantern, had cried:

"Here he is, boy!  What do you think of him?"

Almost before the boats could be brought to their moorings the
fishermen had leapt ashore in their long boots and gone off home with
their wives, laughing and talking.

Morrison had not gone.  His wife had not been down to meet him.
Somebody had shouted from the quay that she was still keeping her bed
and was waiting at home for him.  But he had been in no hurry to go
to her.  When everything was quiet he had shouldered his boat to the
top of the harbour, unstepped her mast, and run her ashore on the dry
bank above the bridge.

Then going back to the quay, which was now deserted, he had broken
the padlock of an open yard for ship's stores, taken possession of a
barrel of pitch, rolled it down to the bank by the bridge, fixed it
under his boat, pulled out its plug, applied a match to it, and then
waited until both barrel and boat were afire and burning fiercely.

After that he had walked home through the little sleeping town to his
house in the middle of a cobweb of streets at the back of the beach.
Opening the door (it had been left on the latch for him) he had
bolted it on the inside, and then going to the bedroom and finding
his young wife in bed, with a frightened look under a timid smile, he
had charged her with her unchastity, compelled her to confess to it,
and then strangled her to death with his big hands--the marks of his
broad thumbs, black with tar, being on her throat and bosom.

In the middle of the night the fishermen who lived in the streets
nearest to the harbour, awakened by a red glow in their bedrooms, had
said to their wives:

"What for are they burning the gorse on Peel hill at this time of the
year?"

But others, who were neighbours of Morrison's, having heard cries
from his house in the night, had gathered in front of his door in the
morning, and, getting no answer to their knocking, had burst it open
and found the woman lying dead on the bed and the man huddled up on
the floor at the foot of it.  And when they had pushed him and roused
him he had lifted his haggard face and said,

"I've killed my sweetheart."

Such was the fisherman's story, and when the defence had concluded
their case, asking for an acquittal on the ground of unbearable moral
provocation, and saying that never could there have been better
grounds for the application of the unwritten law, the Jury was
obviously impressed, and somebody at the back of the court was saying,

"If they hang him for that they'll hang a man for anything."

Against this sympathy for the accused, Stowell had risen to make his
reply for the Crown.

He did not deny the dead woman's transgression.  It was true that she
must have known when she married the prisoner that she was about to
become the mother of a child by another man.  But if that moral fact
could be urged against the wife, was there nothing of the same kind
that could be advanced in her favour?

She had been cruelly betrayed and abandoned.  Looking to the future
she had seen the contempt of her little world before her.  What had
happened?  In the dark hour of her desertion the prisoner had come
with the offer of his love and protection.  It was in evidence that
for a time she had held back and that he had pressed himself upon
her.  None could know the secret of the dead woman's soul, but was it
unreasonable to think that standing between the two fires of public
scorn and the prisoner's affection she had said to herself, as poor
misguided women in like cases did every day: "He loves me so much
that he will forgive me whatever happens."

But had he forgiven her?  No, he had killed her, wilfully, cruelly,
brutally, not in the heat of blood, but after long deliberation--he,
the big powerful brute and she the weak, helpless, half-naked
woman--the woman who had been faithful to him since the day he
married her, the woman he had sworn to love and cherish until death
parted them.

No, the plea of moral justification was rotten to the heart's core,
and had nothing to say for itself in a Court of Law.  The defence had
urged that it was founded on the laws of nature--that marriage
implied chastity on the woman's part, and this woman had come to her
husband unchaste.  On the contrary, it was founded on the barbarous
law of man--the infamous theory that a wife was the property of her
husband and he was at liberty to do as he liked with her.

A wife was not the property of her husband.  He was not at liberty to
do as he liked with her.  There was no such thing as the unwritten
law.  What was not written was not law.  And if, as the result of the
verdict in that court, it should go forth that any man had a right to
kill his wife in any circumstances--to be judge and jury and accuser
and executioner over her--the reign of law and order in this island
would be at an end, no woman's life would be secure, the daughter of
no member of that jury would any longer be safe, and human society
would dissolve into a welter of civilised savagery--the worst
savagery of all.

The effect of Stowell's reply had been overwhelming.  The jury had
either been frightened or convinced, and even the prisoner himself,
during the more intimate passages, had held down his head as if he
felt himself to be the vilest scoundrel on earth.

Among the advocates (they had reached the station by this time, got
into their carriages, and lit up their pipes) opinion was more
divided.  The younger men were enthusiastic, but some of the older
ones thought the closing speech for the Crown had been false in logic
and bad in law.

One of the latter, with a special cock of the hat, (it was old
Hudgeon, the young men called him "Fanny" now), sat with his shaven
chin on the top of his stick and said:

"Well, it's a big gospel the young man has got to live up to, with
all his tall talk about women.  But we'll see!  We'll see!"

Gell, who was wildly excited by his friend's success, was walking to
and fro on the platform waiting for Stowell's arrival.  When he came
(he was the last to come) he had a graver look on his face than Gell
had ever seen there before, except once, and he seemed to be
painfully preoccupied.

"Ah, is it you?" he had said, when Gell laid hold of him--he had
started as if he had seen a ghost.

They got into the train together and had a carriage to themselves.
Gell began with his congratulations, but Stowell brushed them aside,
and said:

"What happened with your father?"

Gell told his story as he had told it at Derby Haven--that the
Speaker had cut up badly and turned him out of the house.

"But what do I care?  Not a ha'porth!  Best thing that ever happened
to me, perhaps."

"And Bessie?"

"Oh, Bessie?  Well, that's all right now.  A bit troubled at first
about my being cut off by the family and losing my income.  Just like
a woman!  So unselfish!"

There was silence for some time after that save for the rumble of the
carriage wheels.  Then Gell said he was sorry he had told Bessie
about the loss of the income.  She would always be thinking he would
regret the sacrifice he had made for her.  If he could only find some
way of showing her it didn't matter, because he could always get
plenty of money....

"And why can't you?" said Stowell.

"How?"

"It's two pounds a week you draw on me for Miss Brown, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"Then I'll make it ten on condition that you don't pay me back a
penny until I ask for it."

"What a good chap...."  But Gell could get no farther--his eyes were
full and his throat was hurting him.

On arriving at Douglas he saw Stowell across the platform to the
northern train, and just as it was about to start, he said:

"By the way, old man, you don't mind my saying something?"

"Not a bit!  What is it?"

"You've hanged that poor devil of a Peel fisherman, and I suppose he
deserved it.  But I caught a glimpse of him as he was going down to
the cells, and I thought he looked a fine fellow."

"He _is_ a fine fellow."

"Do _you_ say that?  He made a big mistake in killing the wife,
though, didn't he?  If I had been in his place do you know what _I_
should have done?"

"What?"

"_Killed the other man._"

Stowell drew back in his seat and at the next moment the train
started.

As it ran into the country a black thought, a vague shadow of
something, was swirling like a bat in the darkness of Stowell's
brain.  That was not the first time it had come to him.  It had come
to him in Court, while he was speaking, startling him, stifling him,
almost compelling him to sit down.

"But Bessie's case was different," he thought.  "She was not
deserted.  She sent Alick to me herself.  Therefore it's impossible,
quite impossible."

Nevertheless, he slept badly that night, and as often as he awoke he
had the sense of a red glow in his bedroom and of being blinded by
the fierce glare from a burning boat.




CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

THE GREAT WINTER

"Come in, my boy.  Sit down.  Take a cigarette.  I have important
news for you."

The Governor had returned from London and was calling Stowell into
his smoking-room.

"First, about that recommendation to mercy.  It has gone through.
The death sentence has been commuted to ten years' imprisonment."

"I am glad, Sir--very glad."

"Next, your speech, deputizing for the Attorney, was reported--part
of it--in the London newspapers and made a good impression."

"I'm very proud, Sir."

"I dined with the Home Secretary the following night, and the Lord
Chief Justice, who was among the guests, was warm in his approval.
Acid old fellow with noisy false teeth, but quite enthusiastic about
your defence of law and order.  Crime was contagious like disease,
and there was an epidemic of violence in the world now.  If society
was to be saved from anarchy then law alone could save it.  Some of
their English courts--judges as well as juries--had been criminally
indulgent to crimes of passion.  Our little Manx court had shown them
a good example."

"That is very encouraging, Sir."

"Very!  And now the last thing I have to tell you is that Tynwald
Court this morning voted a sum for a memorial to your father, leaving
the form of it to me.  I've decided on a portrait by Mylechreest,
your Manx artist, to be hung in the Court-house at Castle Rushen.
Mylechreest knew the Deemster (saw him at his last Court, in fact)
and thinks he can paint the portrait from memory.  But if you have
any photographs let him have them without delay.  And now off you go!
Somebody's waiting for you in the drawing-room."

During the next six months Stowell worked as he had never worked
before.  Four hours a day at his office or in the Courts, and
uncounted hours at home.  Janet used to say she could never look out
of her bedroom window at night without seeing his light from the
library on the lawn.

Nevertheless he was at Government House every day, and Fenella and he
had their cheerful hours together.

Winter came on.  It was such a winter as nobody in the island could
remember to have seen before.  First wind that lashed the sea into
loud cries about the coast, blew over the Curraghs with a perpetual
wailing, ran up the glen with a roar, and brought the "boys" out of
their beds to hold the roofs on their houses by throwing ropes over
the thatch and fastening them down, with stones.

Then rain that deluged the low-lying lands, so that women had to go
to market in boats; and then mist that hid the island for a week and
brought more ships ashore than anybody had seen since the days of the
ten black brothers of Jurby who (long suspected of wrecking) were
caught stuffing the box tombs in the churchyard with rolls of Irish
cloth.

But neither wind, nor rain, nor mist, kept Stowell from Fenella.

Clad in boots up to his thighs, with an oilskin coat tightly belted
about the waist and a sou'wester strapped down from crown to chin, he
would cross the mountains on his young chestnut mare, with the island
roaring about him like a living thing, and arrive at Fenella's door
with his horse's flanks steaming and his own face ablaze.

After the wind and the rain came a long frost, which laid its unseen
hand on the rivers and waterfalls, making a deep hush that was like a
great peace after a great war.  In the middle of the island (the
valley of Baldwin) there was a tarn into which the mountains drained,
and as soon as this was frozen over Stowell and Fenella skated on it.

What a delight!  The ice humming under their feet like a muffled
drum; the air ringing to their voices like a cup; the sun sparkling
in the hoar frost on the bare boughs of the trees; the blue sky
sailing over the hilltops, capped with white clouds that looked like
soft lamb's wool.

God, how good it was to be alive!

Then came a great snow that brought a still deeper silence, broken at
Ballamoar only by the skid of the steel runners of the stiff carts,
whose wheels had been removed, and the smothered calling of the
cattle which had been shut up in the houses.

But what rapture!  Every morning the farmers looked out of their
windows, thick with ice, to see if the snow had gone, but as Stowell
drew his blind and the snow light of the winter's sun came pouring in
upon him, he thought only of another joyous day with Fenella.

Then up to Injebreck in white sweaters and woollen helmets to fly
down the long slopes on ski, with all the world around them robed and
veiled like a bride.

There was a broad ridge on the top, a great divide, separating the
north of the island from the south, and as they skimmed across it
from sight of eastern to sight of western sea, it was just as if they
were sailing through the sky with the white round hills for clouds
and the earth lying somewhere far below.

They were doing this one day when Stowell came upon a place where the
snow was honeycombed with holes.

"Helloa!  There's something here!" he cried.

Digging into the snow he found a buried sheep, still alive but unable
to stand.  So, taking it by its front and back legs he swung it over
his head on to his shoulders and carried it to a shepherd's hut a
mile away, where a turf fire was burning, and dogs, with snow on
their snouts, were barking about a pen of bleating sheep that had
been similarly recovered.

His delight at this rescue was so boisterous that he went back and
back for hours and brought in other and other sheep.

Fenella, who followed him with his ski staffs, was in raptures.  This
was a new side of Victor Stowell, and she had a woman's joy in it.
He was not only clever, he was strong.  He could not only make
speeches (as nobody else in the world could), he could ride and skate
and ski, and (if he liked) he could lift a woman in his arms and
throw her over his shoulder.  Something would come of this some
day--she was sure it would.

They were at the top of the pass, stamping the snow off their ski,
and shaking it out of their gloves, before going down to the
Governor's carriage which (also on runners) was waiting for them at
the inn at the bottom of the hill.  The sun was setting and the red
light of it was flushing Fenella's face.  She looked sideways at
Stowell with a mischievous light in her eyes and said,

"Now I know what you are, Sir."

"Yes?"

"You are not a lawyer, really."

"No?"

"You're an old Viking, born a thousand years after your time."

"You don't say."

"Yes," she said, making ready for flight, "one of those sea robbers
you told me of, who came to take possession of the island and capture
its women."

"Really?"

"I dare say you're sorry you're not back with your ridiculous old
ancestors, catching a woman for your wife."

"Not a bit!  I've caught one already."

"Eh?  What?  If you mean .... Don't be too sure, Sir!  You've not
caught me yet!"

"Haven't I?  Look out then--I'm going to catch you now."

"Catch me!" she cried, and away she flew down the slopes, laughing,
screaming, rocking, reeling, and leaping over the drifts, until at
length she tumbled into a deep one, with head down and ski in air,
and came up half blind, with Stowell's arms about her and his lips
kissing the snow off her chin and nose.

What a winter!  Could there be any sorrow or sin or crime in the
world at all?  And what did it want its prisons and courts for?

But the thaw came at length, and then the noises of the garrulous old
island began again with the rattle of the cart wheels, the rumble of
the rivers running to the sea, and the mooing and bleating of the
liberated cattle and sheep, coming out of their Ark and going back to
the discoloured grass of the fields.

Stowell and Fenella felt as if they were descending to a world of
reality from a world of dreams.

"Good-night!"

They were in the porch at Government House after the last of their
winter expeditions.  He was crushing her in his arms again, to the
ruin of her beautiful hair, and whispering of the time that was
coming when there would be no need for such partings.

"Three months yet, Sir!"

"Heavens, what an age!"

And then home to Ballamoar, with his young chestnut under him
sniffing the night air, and over his head a paradise of stars.



II

"_Come immediately.  Important news for you._"

It was a telegram from the Governor, who had been in London again.
Stowell went up to Douglas by the first train.

"It's about the Deemstership."

"Ah!"

"Old Taubman, as you know, has been complaining of overwork ever
since your father died.  The winter had crippled him and he is down
with rheumatism.  Fortnightly courts being postponed, cases in
arrears--it was necessary to do something.  So I went up to Whitehall
last week and told them a successor would have to be appointed.  They
asked me to recommend a name and I recommended yours."

"Mine, Sir?"

"Yours!  It was all right, too, until I had to tell them your age,
and then--phew!  A judge and not yet thirty!  I stood to my ground,
said this was the age of youth, quoted the classical examples.
Anyhow, there was my recommendation--take it or leave it."

"And what was the result, Sir?"

"The result was that the Lord Chief was consulted, and then our
insignificance saved us.  Yes, there was precedent enough for young
judges in colonies and dependencies.  And this being a case of a
worthy son succeeding a worthy father .... and so on and so forth."

"Well?"

"Well, the end of it is that you are to go up to see the Home
Secretary after the House has risen at Easter."

Stowell's heart was beating high, yet he hardly knew whether he was
more proud than afraid.  He mumbled something about the claims of his
seniors at the bar.

"Oh yes, I know!  All the old stick-in-the-muds!  But keep your end
up in London and I'll keep mine up here."

"You are very good, Sir.  You have always been good to me."

The Governor, who had been rattling on, in a rush of high spirits,
suddenly became grave and spoke slowly.

"Not at all," he said.  "And I'm not thinking of you as .... what you
are going to be.  I'm thinking of you as your father's son, and
expecting you to live up to your traditions.  We want the spirit of
the great Deemster in the island these days.  Violence!  Violence!
Violence!  I agree with the Lord Chief.  It seems as if the world is
getting out of hand.  Justice is the only thing that can save it from
anarchy--utter anarchy and ruin.  Let's have no more recommendations
to mercy!  When people commit crime let them suffer.  When they take
life--no matter who or what they are--let them die for it."

"And by the way" (Stowell was leaving the room), "your father's
portrait is finished.  We must unveil it before you go up to London."

Trembling all over, Stowell went into the library to tell Fenella.

"How splendid!" she said.  She was glowing with excitement.  "You've
done magnificent work for women as an advocate, but only think what
you will be able to do as a judge!  There isn't a poor, wronged girl
in the island who won't know that she has a friend on the Bench!"


END OF SECOND BOOK




_THIRD BOOK_

THE CONSEQUENCE


CHAPTER NINETEEN

THE EVE OF MARY

Bessie Collister had passed through a very different winter.

When she read in the insular newspaper the long report of the trial
of the Peel fisherman she was terrified.  Men did not forgive their
wives, then, in such cases?  On the contrary the more they loved them
the less they forgave them.

Gell came bounding into the sitting-room while she had the newspaper
in her hand and before she had time to hide it away he saw what she
had been reading.

"Terrible, isn't it?" he said.  "Poor devil, I was sorry for him.
When a woman deceives a man like that the law ought to allow him to
put her away.  He did wrong, of course, but he had no legal
remedy--not an atom.  Old Vic made out a magnificent case for the
woman, but she deserved all she got, I'm afraid."

Bessie gave a frightened cry, and then Gell said, as if to conciliate
her.

"I'll tell you what, though.  If the woman was guilty there was
somebody else who was ten times guiltier, and that was the other man.
The scoundrel!  The treacherous, deceitful scoundrel, skulking away
in the dark!  I should like to choke the life out of him.  That's
what I said to Stowell going up in the train.  'If I had been in the
husband's place do you know what I should have done?' I said.  'I
should have killed the other man.'"

Bessie's terror increased ten-fold.  Dread of what Gell might do sat
on her like a nightmare.  To marry him seemed to be impossible, yet
not to marry him, now that she loved him so much, seemed to be
impossible also.

A secret hope came to her.  It was early days yet.  Perhaps something
would happen to her bye-and-bye, which, being over and done with,
would leave her free to marry Alick with a clean heart and conscience.

To help it to come to pass, she stayed indoors, took no exercise, and
ate as little as possible.  Her health declined, and her face in the
glass began to look peaky.  She took a fierce joy in these signs of
increasing weakness.  The Miss Browns kept a few chickens in their
back garden, and one morning, after the snow had begun to fall, they
found Bessie in bare feet going out to feed them.

"Bessie, what are you doing?" they cried.

"It's nothing," she said.  "I'm used of it, you know.  I was eight
years old before I wore shoe or stocking."

Meantime she was putting Gell off and off.  "Time enough yet, boy,"
she would say as often as he asked her.

"She's thinking of me again," thought Gell, and he began on a long
series of fictions to account for his new-found prosperity.  He was
getting along wonderfully in his profession, and was better off now
than he had been before he lost his allowance.  But still it was
"Bye-and-bye!  Time enough yet, boy!"

One day Gell came with an almost irresistible story.  He had bespoken
a house in Athol Street.  It was just what they wanted.  Close to the
Law Library and nearly opposite the new Court House.  Two rooms on
the ground floor for his offices, two on the first floor for their
living apartments, and two on the top for the kitchen and for the
maid.

It is the temptation that no woman can resist--the desire to have a
home that shall be all her own--and for a few weeks Bessie fell to
it.  Evening after evening, she and Alick sat side by side in the
sitting-room making catalogues of all they would require to set up a
household.  Gell took charge of the tables and chairs and
side-boards.  Bessie was the authority on the blankets and linen.  It
was such a delight to construct a home from memory!  And then what
laughs and thrills and shamefaced looks when, in spite of all their
thinking, they remembered some intimate and essential thing which
they had hitherto forgotten.

"Sakes alive, boy, you've forgotten the bedstead."

"Lord, so I have.  We shall want a bedstead, shan't we?"

But even this fierce gambling with her fate broke down at last with
Bessie.  The certainty had fallen on her.  The natural strength of
her constitution had withstood all the attacks she had made upon it.
Whether she married Gell, or did not marry him, there was nothing
before her except suffering and disgrace.  How could she keep his
love against the shame that was striding down on her?

Christmas had come.  It was Christmas Eve.  The Manx people call it
Oie'l Verry (the Eve of Mary), and during the last hour before
midnight they take possession of their parish churches, over the
heads of their clergy, for the singing of their ancient Manx carvals
(carols).  The old Miss Browns were to keep Oie'l Verry at their
church in Castletown.  They had always done so, and this time Bessie
was to go with them.

It was a clear cold winter's night with crisp snow underfoot, and
overhead a world of piercing stars.

As the two old maids in their long black boas, and Bessie in a
fur-lined coat which Gell had sent as a Christmas present, crossed
the foot-bridge over the harbour and walked under the blind walls of
the dark castle, the great clock in the square tower was striking
eleven.  But it was bright enough in the market place, with the light
from the church windows on the white ground, and people hurrying to
church at a quick trot and stamping the snow off their boots at the
door.

It was brighter still inside, for the altar and pulpit had been
decorated with ivy and holly, and, though the church was lit by gas,
most of the worshippers, according to ancient custom, had brought
candles also.

The church was very full, but the old Miss Browns, with Bessie behind
them, walked up the aisle to the pew under the reading-desk which
they had always rented.  The congregation about them was a strangely
mixed one, and the atmosphere was half solemn and half hilarious.

The gallery was occupied by farm lads and fisher-lads chiefly, and
they were craning their necks to catch glimpses of the girls in the
pews below, while the girls themselves (as often as they could do so
without being observed by their elders) were glancing up with
gleaming eyes.  In the body of the church there were middle-aged
folks with soberer faces, and in the front seats sat old people, with
slower and duller eyes and cheeks scored deep with wrinkles--the
mysterious hieroglyphics of life's troubled story, sickness and
death, husbands lost at half-tide and children gone before them.

An opening hymn had just been sung, the last notes of the organ were
dying down, the clergyman, in his surplice, was sitting by the side
of the altar, and the first of the carol singers had risen in his
pew, candle in hand, to sing his carval.

He was a rugged old man from the mountains of Rushen, half landsman
and half seaman, and his carol (which he sang in the Manx, while the
tallow guttered down on his discoloured fingers) was a catalogue of
all the bad women mentioned in the Bible, from Eve, the mother of
mankind, who brought evil into the world, to "that graceless wench,
Salome."

After that came similar carols, sung by similar carol-singers and
received by the boys in the gallery with gusts of laughter which the
Clerk tried in vain to suppress.  But at last there came a carval
sung in chorus by twelve young girls with sweet young voices and
faces that were chaste and pure and full of joy--all carrying their
candles as they walked slowly up the aisle from the western end of
the church to the altar steps.

Their carol was an account of the Nativity, scarcely less crude than
the carols that had gone before it, though the singers seemed to know
nothing of that--how Joseph, being a just man, had espoused a virgin,
and finding she was with child before he married her, he had wished
to put her away, but the angel of the Lord had appeared to him and
told him not to, and how at last he had carried his wife and child
away into the land of Egypt, out of reach of the wrath of Herod the
King, who was trying to disgrace and destroy them.

A little before midnight the clergyman rose and asked for silence.
And then, while all heads were bowed and there was a solemn hush
within, the great clock of the Castle struck twelve in the darkness
outside.  After that the organ pealed out "Hark, the herald angels
sing," and everybody who had a candle extinguished it, and all stood
up and sang.

The bells were ringing joyfully as the congregation trooped out of
the church, but for some while longer they moved about on the
crinkling snow in front of it, saluting and shaking hands, everybody
with everybody.

"A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to yea."

"Same to you, and many of them."

They saluted and shook hands with Bessie also.

Then the Verger put out the lights in the church behind them, and in
the sudden darkness the crowd broke up, one more Oie'l Verry over,
and under the slow descent of the starlight the cheerful voices and
crinkling footsteps went their various ways home.

Back at Derby Haven, Bessie, who had been on the point of crying
during the latter part of the service, ran up to her room, flung
herself face down on her bed and burst into a flood of tears.

If she, too, could only fly away, and stay away, until her trouble
was over!  But how could she do that?  And where could she go to?



II

Two months passed.  Bessie's time was fast approaching, and the
nearer it came the more she was terrified by the signs of it.  The
symptoms of coming maternity which are a joy and a pride to married
mothers were a dread and a terror to her.  Had she brought herself so
low that she could not live through the time that was before her?  At
one moment she thought of going to Fenella.  Everybody said how good
Miss Stanley was to girls in trouble.  But when she remembered
Fenella's relation to Stowell, and Stowell's to Gell, and her own to
all three, she told herself that Fenella Stanley was the one woman in
the world whom she must never come face to face with.

At length, thinking death was certain, she saw only one thing left to
do--to go back to her mother.  It was not thus that she had expected
to return, but nothing else was possible now.  In her helplessness
and ignorance, having no one to reassure her, the high-spirited girl
became a child again.  Twenty years of her life slipped back at a
stride, and she felt as she used to do when she ran bare-foot on the
roads and fell and bruised her knees, or tore her little hairy legs
in the gorse and then went home to lie on her mother's lap and be
rocked before the fire and comforted.

But going home had its terrors also.  There was Dan Baldromma!  What
could she do?  Was there no way out for her?

One day the elder of the Miss Browns (she gave music lessons to old
pupils at their own homes) came back from Castletown with a "shocking
story."  It was about a witch-doctor at Cregnaish--a remote village
at the southernmost extremity of the island, where the inhabitants
were supposed to be descended from a crew of Spanish sailors who had
been wrecked on the rocky coast below.

The witch-doctor was a woman, seventy years of age, and commonly
called Nan.  Hitherto she had lived by curing ringworms on children
and blood-letting in strong men by means of charms that were half in
Latin and half in Manx.  But now young wives were going to her to be
cured of barrenness, or for mixtures to make their husbands love
them; and worst of all, the young girls from all parts of the island
were flocking to her to be told their fortunes--whether their boys at
the mackerel fishing were true to them, or going astray with the
Irish girls of Kinsale and Cork.

"It's shocking, this witchcraft," said old Miss Brown.  "In my young
days it was given for law that the women who practised such arts
should stand in a white sheet on a platform in the marketplace with
the words _For Charming_ and _Sorcery_ in capital letters on their
breasts."

Bessie said nothing, but next day, after breakfast, making excuse of
her need of a walk, she hurried out, took train to Port Erin, and
climbed, with many pauses, the zigzag path up the Mull Hills to where
a Druids' circle sits on the brow, and Cregnaish (like a gipsy
encampment of mud huts thatched with straw) sprawls over the breast
of them.

It was a fine spring morning, with the sea lying still on either side
of the uplands, and the sun, through clouds of broken crimson,
peering over the shoulder of the Calf like a blood-shot eye.

Bessie had no need to ask her way to the witch-doctor's house, for
troops of young girls were coming down from it, generally in pairs,
whispering and laughing merrily.  At length she came upon it--a
one-storey thatched cottage with a queue of girls outside.

When the last of the girls had gone, and Bessie still stood waiting
on the opposite side of the rutted space which served for a road, a
wisp of a woman, with hair and eyebrows as black as a shoe, but a
face as wrinkled as the trunk of the trammon tree, came to the door
and said,

"Come in, my fine young woman.  There's nothing to be freckened of."

It was Nan, the witch-doctor, and Bessie followed her into the house.

The inside was a single room with a fire at one end and a bed at the
other.  The floor was of hardened clay and the scraas of the roof
were so low overhead that a tall man could scarcely have stood erect
under them.  Bundles of herbs hung from nails in the sooty rafters
and when the old woman closed the door, Bessie saw that the _Crosh
cuirn_ (the cross of mountain ash) was standing at the back of it.

"I'm in trouble, ma'am," said Bessie, who was on the verge of tears,
"and I'm wanting to know what to do and what is to happen to me."

The witch-doctor, whose quick eyes had taken in the situation at a
glance, said,

"Aw yes, bogh, trouble enough.  But knock that cat off the cheer in
the choillagh and sit down and make yourself comfortable."

Bessie loosened her fur-lined cloak and sat in the ingle, with the
fire at her feet and a peep of the blue sky coming down on her from
the wide chimney.

"They were telling me a fine young woman was coming," said the
witch-doctor (she meant the invisible powers), "and it was wondering
and wondering I was would she have strength to climb the brews.  But
here you are, my chree, and now a cup o' tay will do no harm at all."

Bessie tried to refuse, but the old woman said,

"Chut!  A cup o' tay is nothing and here's my taypot on the warm turf
and the tay at the best, too."

While Bessie sipped at her cup the witch-doctor went on talking, but
she took quick glances at the girl from time to time and sometimes
asked a question.

At length she bolted the door, drew a thick blind over the window,
knelt before the hearth, and called on Bessie to do the same, so that
they were kneeling side by side, with no light in the darkened room
except the red glow from the fire on their faces and the blue streak
from the sky behind the smoke from the chimney.

After that the witch-doctor mumbled some rhymes about St. Patrick and
the blessed St. Bridget, then put her ear to the ground, saying she
was listening to the _Sheean ny Feaynid_, the invisible beings who
were always wandering over the world.  And then she began on the
fortune, which Bessie, who was trembling, interrupted with
involuntary cries.

"There's a fair young man in your life, my chree (_Yes_) and if
you're not his equal you're the apple of his eye.  There's a poor
ould woman, too, and she praying and praying for her bogh-millish to
come home to her (_Oh!_) and the longing that's taking the woman at
times is pitiful to see.  'Where is my wandering girl to-night,'
she's singing when she's sitting by her fireside; and when she's
going to bed she's saying, 'In Jesu's keeping nought can harm my
erring child.'"

At this Bessie broke down utterly, and the witch-doctor had to stop
for a moment.  Then she began again in a different strain,

"There's an ould man too .... yes .... no .... (_Yes, yes!_) as
imperent as sin and as bould as a white stone, and with a vice at him
as loud as a trambone.  Aw, yes, woman-bogh, yes, there's trouble
coming on you, but take heart, gel, for things will come out right
before long and it's a proud woman you're going to be some day.  But
you must go home to the mother, my chree, and never take rest till
you're laying your head under the same roof with her."

"And will the young man be true to me whatever happens?"

"True as true, my chree, and his heart that warm to you at last that
it will be like gorse and ling burning on the mountains."

"And will the old man be able to do him any injury?"

"Lough bless me, no!  Neither to him nor you, gel.  Roaring and
tearing and mad as a wasp, maybe, but nothing to do no harm at all."

Bessie had crossed the old woman's palm with sixpence as she came
into the house, but she emptied her purse into it going out, and then
went down the hill with a light step and a lighter heart.

Alick Gell was at Derby Haven when she got back, having been waiting
for more than an hour.  Seeing her coming down the road with her face
aglow, he dashed off to meet her, and broke into a flood of joyous
words.

"Helloa!  Here you are at last!  Looking as fresh as a flower, too?
What did I say?  Didn't I tell you that you had only to get about and
take exercise and you would be as right as rain in no time?  But,
look here, Bess" (he had drawn her arm through his), "you've kept me
waiting all winter and now that you're getting better I'm going to
stand no more nonsense."

Bessie was laughing.

"I'm not!  Upon my soul, I'm not!  You wouldn't let me put up the
banns at Malew, thinking Dan Baldromma would hear of them through
Cæsar Qualtrough, and come here making a noise at Miss Brown's,
though he has no more right over you than the Coroner, and no more
power over me than a tomtit.  But there are other ways of marrying
besides being called in church, and one of them is by Bishop's
licence."

"Bishop's licence?"

"Certainly!  You just go up to the Registrar's in Douglas, sign your
names in a book, pay a few pounds, get the Bishop's certificate, and
then you can be married wherever you like and as quietly as you
please.  And that's what we're going to do now."

"Now?  You mean to-day?"

"Well, no, not to-day.  I have to go to the Castle this afternoon.
They're unveiling a portrait of the old Deemster.  And what do you
think, Bess?"

"What?"

"There's a whisper that Stowell is to be made Deemster in succession
to his father.  Glorious, isn't it?  Splendid chap!  Straight as a
die!  Rather young, certainly, but there's not one of the old gang
fit to hold a candle to him.  He's to go up to London to-morrow, so I
want to see the last of him.  But I'll be down by the first train
after the boat sails in the morning, and then we'll go back to
Douglas together."

They had reached the gate of the old maid's house by this time and
Gell was looking at his watch.

"Pshew!  I must be off!  Ceremony begins at three and it's that
already.  Wouldn't miss it for worlds.  By-bye! ... Another one! ....
Oh, but you must, though."

Bessie looked after him as he hurried down the road, swinging his
arms and pitching his shoulders, as he always did when his heart was
glad.  Then she went indoors, ran upstairs and set herself to think
things out.

She must go before Alick could get back.  When he arrived to-morrow
she must be on her way to her mother's.  It was earlier than she had
intended, but there was no help for that now.  And then it would be
all right in the end--the _Sheean ny Feaynid_ (the Voices of
Infinity) had said so.

After her child had been born her mother would take it and bring it
up as her own--she had heard of such things happening in Manx houses,
hadn't she?  And when all was over and everything was covered up, she
would come back, and then .... then Alick and she would be married.

In the light of what the witch-doctor had said it seemed to her so
natural, so simple, so sure.  But later in the evening, it tore her
heart woefully to think of Alick coming from Douglas on the following
day and finding her gone.  So she wrote this note and stole out and
posted it:


    "Don't come to-morrow.  I'll be writing again in the morning,
    telling you the reason why."





CHAPTER TWENTY

VICTOR STOWELL'S VOW

The old Court-house at Castle Rushen was full to overflowing.  Nearly
all the great people of the island were there--the Legislative
Council, the Keys, the leaders of the Bar, the more prominent members
of the clergy, the long line of insular officials, with their wives
and daughters.

A pale shaft of spring sunshine from the lantern light was on the new
portrait of the Deemster, which had been hung on the eastern wall and
was still covered by a white sheet.

The time of waiting for the proceedings to begin was passed in a low
buzz of conversation, chiefly on one subject.  "Is it true that he is
to follow his father?"  "So they say."  "So young and with so many
before him--I call it shocking."  "So do I, but then he's the son of
the old Deemster, and is to marry the daughter of the Governor."

At the last moment Stowell and Fenella arrived and were shown into
seats reserved for them at the end of the Jury-box.  Then the
conversation (among the women at least) took another turn.  "Well,
they're a lovely pair--I will say that for them."

The Governor, accompanied by the Bishop and the Attorney-General,
stepped on to the crimson-covered dais, and the proceedings commenced.

The Governor's own speech was a short one.  They had gathered to do
honour to the memory of one of the most honoured of their countrymen.
The memory of its great men was a nation's greatest inheritance.  If
that was true of the larger communities it was no less true of the
little realm of Man.

"Hence the island," said the Governor, "is doing a service to itself
in setting up in this Court-house, the scene of his principal
activities, the memorial to its great Deemster which I have now the
honour to unveil."

When the Governor pulled a cord and the white sheet fell from the
face of the picture there was a gasp of astonishment.  The impression
of reality was startling.  The Deemster had been painted in wig and
gown and as if sitting on the bench in that very Court-house.  The
powerful yet melancholy eyes, the drawn yet firm-set mouth, the
suggestion of suffering yet strength--it was just as he had been seen
there last, summing up after the trial of the woman who had killed
her husband.

As soon as the spectators, who had risen, had resumed their seats,
the Governor called on the Attorney-General.

The old man was deeply moved.  The Deemster had been his oldest and
dearest friend.  It was difficult for him to remember a time when
they had not been friends and impossible to recall an hour in which
their friendship had been darkened by so much as a cloud.  If it was
true that the memory of its great men was a nation's greatest
inheritage, the island had a great heritage in the memory of Deemster
Stowell.  He had been great as a lawyer, great as a judge, great as a
gentleman, as a friend, as a lover, as a husband, and (with a glance
in the direction of the jury-box) as a father also.

"I pray and believe," said the Attorney, "that this memorial to our
great Deemster may be a stimulus and an inspiration to all our young
men whatsoever, particularly to such as are in the profession of the
Bar, and especially to one who bears his name, has inherited many of
his splendid talents, and may yet be called, please God, to fill his
place and follow in his footsteps."

When the old man sat down there was general applause, a little
damped, perhaps, by the last of his references, and then followed the
event of the afternoon.

By the blind instinct that animates a crowd, all eyes turned in the
direction of Victor Stowell.  He sat by Fenella's side, breathing
audibly with head down and hands clasped tightly about one of his
knees.

There was a pause and then a low stamping of feet and Fenella
whispered,

"They want you to speak, dear."

But Stowell did not seem to hear, and at length the Governor called
on him by name.

When he rose he looked pale and much older, and bore a resemblance to
the picture of his father on the opposite wall which few had observed
before.

He began in a low tense voice, thanking His Excellency for asking him
to speak, but saying he would have given a great deal not to do so.

"The only excuse I can have for standing here to-day," he said, "is
that I may thank you, Sir, and this company, and my countrymen and
countrywomen generally, in the name of one whose voice, so often
heard within these walls, must now be silent."

After that he paused, as if not quite sure that he ought to go
further, and then continued,

"If my father was a great Judge, it was chiefly because he was a
great lover of Justice.  Justice was the most sacred thing on earth
to him, and no man ever held higher the dignity and duty of a Judge.
Woe to the Judge who permitted personal motives to pervert his
judgment, and thrice woe to him who committed a crime against
justice.  Therefore, if I know my father's heart and have any right
to speak for him, I will say that what you have done this afternoon
is not so much to perpetuate the memory of Douglas Stowell, Deemster
of Man, as to set up in this old Court-house, which has witnessed so
many tragic scenes, an altar to the spirit of Justice, so that no
Judge, following him in his place, may ever forget that his first and
last and only duty is to be just and fear not."

He paused again and seemed to be about to stop, but, in a voice so
low as to be scarcely audible, he said,

"As for myself I hardly dare to speak at all.  What my dear master
has said of me makes it difficult to say anything.  Some people seem
to think it is a great advantage to a young man to be the son of a
great father.  But if it is a great help it is also a great
responsibility and may sometimes be the source of a great sorrow.  I
never knew what my father had been to me until I lost him.  I had
always been proud of him, but I had rarely or never given him reason
to be proud of me.  That is a fault I cannot repair now.  But there
is one thing I can do and one thing only.  I can take my solemn
vow--and here and now I do so--that whatever the capacity in which my
duty calls me to this place, I will never wilfully do anything in the
future, with my father's face on the wall in front of me, that shall
be unworthy of my father's son."

There were husky cheers and some clapping of hands when Stowell sat
down, but most of the men were clearing their throats and wiping the
mist off their spectacles, and nearly all of the women were coughing
and drying their eyes.

Others were to have spoken but the Governor closed up the proceedings
quickly, and then there was a general conversazione.

The officials were talking in groups:--"Wonderful!  The Governor and
the old Attorney were grand, but the young man was wonderful!"  "We
might go farther and fare worse."  "Like his father, you say?" (it
was the Attorney-General) "so like what his father was at his age
that sometimes when I look at him I think I'm a young man myself
again, and then it's a shock to go home and see an old man's face in
the glass."

A group of old ladies had gathered about Fenella, whose great eyes
were ablaze.

"It was beautiful, my dear, but there was just one other person who
ought to have been here to hear it."

"Who?"

"The old Deemster himself, dear."

"But he was," said Fenella.

The Governor drew Stowell aside.  "It's all right, my boy!  Must have
been instinct, but you touched your people on their tenderest place.
Pretty hard on you, perhaps, but I knew what I was doing.  The
opposition in the island is as dead as a door nail already.  Get into
the saddle in London and you'll never hear another word about it."

There were only two dissentients.

"Aw well, we'll see, we'll see," said the Speaker--he was going out
of the Castle (head down and his big beard on his breast), with old
Hudgeon the advocate.

As he passed through the outer gate his son Alick came running
hotfoot up to it.

It was a cruel moment.



II

Victor Stowell left the island for London at nine o'clock next
morning.  The first bell of the steamer had been rung, the mails were
aboard, and the more tardy of the passengers were hurrying to the
gangway, with their porters behind them, when the Governor's carriage
drew up and Stowell leapt out of it.

A large company of the younger advocates (all former members of the
"Ellan Vannin") were waiting for him.

"Come to see me off?  Yes?  Jolly good of you," said Stowell, and he
stood talking to them at the top of the pier steps till the second
bell had been rung.

Down to that moment nobody had said a word about the object of his
journey, although every eye betrayed knowledge of it.  But just as he
was crossing the gangway to the steamer one of the advocates (a
little fat man with the reputation of a wag) cried, with a broad
smatch of the Anglo-Manx,

"Bring it back in your bres' pockat, boy"--meaning the King's
commission for the Deemstership.

"You go bail," said Stowell, and there was general laughter.

He was settling himself with his portmanteau in the deck cabin that
had been reserved for him when somebody darkened the doorway.

"Helloa!"

It was Gell.  His cheeks were white, his face looked troubled, and he
was breathing rapidly as if he had been running.

"What's amiss?" said Stowell.  "Something has happened to you.  What
is it?"

Gell stepped into the cabin, and with a suspicion of tears both in
his eyes and voice, told his story.

It was Bessie again.  He didn't know what had come over the girl.
She had been holding off all winter.  First one excuse, then another.

"I've done all I can think of.  Taken a house in Athol Street and
furnished it beautifully (thanks to you, old fellow), but it's no
use, seemingly."

"When did you see her last?"

"Yesterday, and I thought I had settled everything at last.  She
wouldn't be called in church, so I arranged that I was to go down to
Derby Haven this morning, as soon as your boat sailed, and we were to
come up to the Registrar's to sign for a Bishop's license.  And now,
by the first post .... this."

With a trembling hand Gell took out of his pocket the letter which
Bessie had written the night before and handed it to Stowell.

With a momentary uneasiness Stowell read the letter.

"Reason?  What is it likely to be, think you?"

"I don't know.  I can't say.  It's a mystery.  I've racked my brains
and can only think of one thing now."

"And what's that?"

"That she finds out at last that she doesn't care enough for me to
marry me."

"Nonsense, old fellow."

"What else can it be?  There can be nothing else, can there?"

Stowell's uneasiness increased.  "What do you intend to do?"

"Go down just the same.  I've been telegraphing saying I'm coming.
That's why I'm late getting down to the boat."

"And if she persists?"

"Give her up and clear out, I suppose."

"You mean leave the island?"

"Why shouldn't I?  I've only been a stick-in-the-mud here and
couldn't do much worse anywhere else, could I?  Besides" (his voice
was breaking) "there's my father.  You remember what he said.  I
couldn't face it out if the girl threw me over."

"She's not well, is she?"

"Not very."

"Nothing serious?"

"No--nothing, the Miss Browns think, that we might not expect after
such a change in her life and condition."

"Then that's it!  Cheer up, old man!  It will all come right yet.
Women suffer from so many things that we men know nothing about."

"If I could only think that...."

"You may--of course you may."

"Victor," said Gell, taking Stowell's hand, "will you do one thing
more for me?"

"Certainly--what is it?"

"Nobody can read a woman as you can--everybody says that.  If Bessie
gives me the same answer to-day will you go down to Derby Haven with
me when you come back, and find out what's amiss with her?"

"Assuredly I will .... that is to say .... if you think...."

"Is it a promise?"

"Undoubtedly.  It shall be the first thing I do when I return to the
island."

"All ashore!  All ashore!"

A sailor was shouting on the deck outside the cabin door, and the
third bell was ringing.

Gell was the last to cross the gangway.

"Good-bye and God bless you, and good luck in London!  You deserve
every bit of it!"

At the next moment the gangway was pulled in, the ropes were thrown
aboard, and the steamer was gliding away.

The young advocates on the pier-head were beginning to make a
demonstration.  One of them (the wag of course) was singing a
sentimental farewell in a doleful voice and the others were joining
in the chorus:

  "_Better lo'ed ye canna be,
  Will ye no come back again?_"


Some of the other passengers (English commercial travellers
apparently) were looking on, so to turn the edge of the joke Stowell
sang also, and when his deep baritone was heard above the rest there
was a burst of laughter.

"Good-bye!  Good-luck!  Bring it back, boy!"

Gell was standing at the sea-end of the pier, waving his cap and
struggling to smile.  At sight of his face Stowell felt ashamed of
his own happiness.  A vague shadow of something that had come to him
before came again, with a shudder such as one feels when a bat
strikes one in the dusk.

At the next moment it was gone.  The steamer was swinging round the
breakwater and opening the bay, and he was looking for a long white
house (Government House) which stood on the heights above the town.
He had slept there last night, and this morning Fenella, parting from
him in the porch, while the Governor's high-stepping horses were
champing on the gravel outside, had promised to signal to him when
she saw the steamer clearing the harbour.

Ah, there she was, waving a white scarf from an upper window.
Stowell stood by the rail at the stern and waved back his
handkerchief.  Fenella!  He could see nothing but her dark eyes and
beaming smile, and Gell's sad face was forgotten.

It was a fine fresh morning, with the sun filtering through a veil of
haze and the world answering to the call of Spring.  As the boat
sailed on, the island seemed to recede and shrink and then sink into
the sea until only the tops of the mountains were visible--looking
like a dim grey ghost that was lying at full stretch in the sky.

At length it was gone; the sea-gulls which had followed the steamer
out had made their last swirl round and turned towards the land, but
Stowell was still looking back from the rail at the stern.

The dear little island!  How good it had been to him!  How eager he
would be to return to it!

The sun broke clear, the waters widened and widened, the glistening
blue waves rolled on and on, the ship rose and fell to the rhythm of
the flowing tide, the throb of the engines beat time to the deep
surge of the sea, and the still deeper surge of youth and love and
health and hope within him.

Dear God, how happy he was!  What had he done to deserve such
happiness?




CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

MOTHER'S LAW OR JUDGE'S LAW?

Bessie had passed a miserable night.  Having been awake until after
five in the morning she was asleep at nine when somebody knocked at
her bedroom door.  It was old Miss Ethel with a telegram.  Bessie
opened it with trembling fingers.


    "_Nonsense dear am coming up as arranged Alick._"


With fingers that trembled still more noticeably Bessie returned the
telegram to its envelope and slid it under her pillow, saying (with a
twitching of the mouth which always came when she was telling an
untruth),

"It's from Mr. Gell.  He wants me to meet him in Douglas.  I am to go
up immediately."

"That's nice," said Miss Ethel.  "The change will do you a world of
good, dear.  I'll run down and hurry your breakfast, so that you can
catch the ten-thirty."

Bessie dressed hastily, put a few things into a little handbag, and
then sat down to write her promised letter.  It was a terrible
ordeal.  What could she say that would not betray her secret?  At
length she wrote:


    "DEAR ALICK,--Do forgive me.  I must go away for a little while.
    It is all my health.  I have been ill all winter and suffered
    more than anybody can know.  But God is good, and I will get my
    health and strength back soon, and then I will return and we can
    be married and everything will be alright.  Do not think I do not
    love you because I am leaving you like this.  I have never loved
    you so dear as now.  But I am depressed, and I cannot get away
    from my thoughts.  And please, Alick dear, don't try to find me.
    I shall be quite alright, and I shall think of you every night
    before I go to sleep, and every morning when I awake.  So now I
    must close with all my love and kisses.

    --BESSIE, xxxxx"


Having written her letter, and blotted it with many tears, she pinned
it to the top of her pillow, without remembering that the telegram
lay underneath.  Then she hurried downstairs, swallowed a mouthful of
breakfast standing, said good-bye to her old housemates with an
effort at gaiety, and set off as for the railway station.

She had no intention of going there.  The morning haze was thick on
the edge of the sea, and as soon as she was out of sight of the house
she slipped across the fields to a winding lane which led to the open
country.

During the night, crying a good deal and stifling her sobs under the
bed-clothes, she had thought out all her plans.  It was still two
months before her time, and to be separated from Alick as long as
that was too painful to think about.  It was also too dangerous.
Long before the end of that time he would search for her and find
her, and then her secret would become known, and that would be the
end of everything.

She had been to blame, but what had she done to be so unhappy?  Why
should Nature be so cruel to a girl?  Was there no way of escape from
it?

At length a light had dawned on her.  Remembering what she had heard
of women doing (wives as well as unmarried girls) to get rid of
children who were not wanted, she determined that her own child
should be still-born.  Why not?  It threatened to separate her from
Alick--to turn his love for her into hatred.  Why should it come into
the world to ruin her life, and his also?

Yes, she would tire herself out, expose herself to some great strain,
some fearful exhaustion, and thereby bring on a sudden and serious
illness.  Instead of taking the train she would walk all the way home
to her mother's house--twenty odd miles, fifteen of them over a steep
and rugged mountain road.  It would be dangerous to a girl in her
condition, but not half so dangerous as marrying Alick now, and
running the risk of an end like that of the poor young wife of the
Peel fisherman.

And then it would be so much fairer.  If her fault, her misfortune,
could be wiped out before she married Alick, nobody could say she had
deceived her husband.

Such was the wild gamble with life and death which Bessie had decided
upon at the prompting of love and shame and fear.  The consequences
were not long in coming.

The winding lane had to cross the railway line near to a village
station before it reached the open country, and coming sharply upon
the level-crossing at a quick turning she found the gates closed and
a train drawing up at the platform.

She knew at once that this must be the train from Douglas which Alick
Gell was to travel by, and in a moment she saw him.  He was sitting
alone in a first-class carriage, looking pale and troubled.  In the
next compartment were four or five young advocates from the south
side of the island, who had been up to see Stowell off by the
steamer.  They were smoking and laughing, and one of them, who
appeared to have been drinking also, seeing Bessie coming up to the
gate, dropped his window and swung off his hat to her.

Bessie dropped back to the partial cover of the fence.  Only her fear
of attracting attention restrained her from flying off altogether.
Alick had not yet seen her.  It tore her terribly to see how ill he
looked.  He was only three or four yards away from her.  His head was
down.  At one moment he took off his cap and ran his fingers through
his fair hair as if his head were aching.  She could scarcely resist
an impulse to pass through the turnstile and hurry up to him.  One
look, one smile, one word, and she would have thrown everything to
the winds even yet.

But no, the guard waved his flag, the engine whistled, the train
jerked backward, then forward, and at the next instant it had slid
out of the station.  Alick had not seen her.  He was gone.  It had
been like a stab at her heart to see him go.



II

Half an hour later she was on the rugged mountain road that led to
her mother's house in the north of the island.  Her first fear was
the fear of being overtaken and carried back.  At Silverburn, where a
deep river gurgles under the shadow of a dark bridge, she heard the
crack of whips, the clatter of horses' hoofs and the whoop of loud
voices.

It was nothing.  Only two farm shandries, the first containing a
couple of full-blooded farm girls, and the second a couple of lusty
farm lads, racing home after market, laughing wildly and shouting to
each in the free language of the countryside.  It was like something
out of her former life--one of the outbreaks of animal instinct that
had brought her to where she was.

But no matter!  She would be a proud and happy woman yet--the _Sheean
ny Feaynid_ had said so.

After the fear of being pursued came the fear of being lost--becoming
an outcast and a wanderer.  She had toiled up to the Black Fort on
the breast of the hill.  The morning haze had vanished by this time,
the sun had come out, the larks were singing in the cloudless sky,
the smell of spring was rising from the young grass in the fields,
the roadsides were yellow with primroses and daffodils, and the whole
world was looking glad with the promise of the beautiful new year
that was already on the wing.  It was heart-breaking.

Feeling hot and tired after her climb, she sat on a stone.  The sea
was open from that point, and on the farthest rim of it she could see
a red-funnelled steamer and two black shafts of smoke.  Stowell!
Never before had she thought bitterly of him.  But he was there,
going up to London in comfort, in luxury, while she....

It was cruel.  But crueller than her bitter thoughts of Stowell were
her tender thoughts of Gell.  He would be at Derby Haven now, reading
(with that twitching of the lower lip which she knew so well) the
letter she had left behind for him, while she was here, running away
from the arms of the man who loved her.  But no matter about that,
either!  One day, two days, three days, a week perhaps, and she would
return to him.  She was to be a proud and happy woman yet--the
_Sheean ny Feaynid_ had said so.

Hours passed.  The road stretched out and out, became steeper and
steeper.  Bessie felt more and more tired.  She was often compelled
to sit by the wayside, and sometimes, being worn out by the want of
sleep, she fell into a doze.  The sky darkened and dropped; the sun
went down behind the mountains to the west with a straight black bar
across its face that was like a heavy lid over a sullen eye.  Would
she be able to reach home that night?  She would!  She must!  Alick
was waiting for her to come back.  She dare not keep him long.

Evening had closed in before she reached the top of the hill.  It was
a long waste of bracken and black rock, with no farms anywhere, and
only a few thatched cottages that crouched in the sheltered places
like frightened cattle in a storm.  Feeling weak and faint from long
climbing and want of food, she was about to sit down again and cry,
having lost hope of reaching her mother's house that night, when she
came upon a little lamb, scarcely a month old, which had strayed away
from the flock and was too tired to go farther.

The poor creature bleated piteously into her face, and she lifted it
up in her arms and carried it a long half mile (the lost carrying the
lost, the desolate comforting the desolate) until she came to a high
gate at which a mother sheep was plunging furiously in her efforts to
get out to them.  Bessie put the lamb to its feet, and it clambered
through the bars, plucked at the teat, and then there was peace and
silence.

This strengthened her and she went on for some time longer with a
cheerful heart.  Yes, she must reach home that night.  And if it was
as late as midnight before she got there, so much the better!  Nobody
must see her come, and then her mother would be able to conceal
everything.

Night fell.  It began to rain and the wind to rise.  She had never
been afraid of darkness or bad weather, but now she took a wild
delight in them.  Remembering what other women had done, she took off
her shoes and walked on the wet roads in her stockings.  It was risky
but she cared nothing about that.  It might bring on a fever, but she
was strong--she would soon get over it.

Farmers returning empty from market offered her a lift, but she
declined and toiled on.  The lighted windows of the farmhouses,
gleaming through the darkness, called her into warmth and shelter,
but she struggled along.  The soles of her stockings were soon worn
to shreds and the stones of the roads were beginning to cut her feet,
but she would not put on her shoes.  In her frenzy she hardly felt
the pain.  And besides, what she was suffering for Alick was as
nothing compared to what Alick had suffered for her.  Only one night!
It would soon be over.

She had walked at her slow pace down a deep descent and through a
long valley when she came upon an inn and a big barn that was a scene
of great festivity.  She knew what it was.  It was one of the
"Bachelors' Balls" which, beginning with _Oiel Thomase Dhoo_ (the Eve
of Black Thomas) and going on through the spring of the year, the
unmarried men in remote places gave to the unmarried girls of the
parish.

The rain was now falling in torrents and the wind had risen to the
strength of a gale, but it must have been close and hot inside the
barn, for as Bessie passed on the other side of the way, the doors
were thrown open.  The rude place was densely crowded.  Stable lamps
hung from the rough-hewn rafters.  At one end the musicians sat on a
platform raised on barrels; at the other end girls in white blouses
were serving tea from a long plank covered with a table-cloth and
resting on trestles.  In the space between, a dense group of young
men and women were dancing with furious energy.

This, too, was like something out of her own life.  Ah, if somebody
had only told her ....

But what matter!  She would be a proud and happy woman yet--the
_Sheean ny Feaynid_ had said so.

It was now midnight by the wrist-watch that Alick had given her, and
she had still another hill to climb, steeper than the last if
shorter.  While she was going up the rain flogged her face as with
whipcord, and, when she reached the top, the wind, sweeping across
the low-lying lands from the sea, tore at her skirts as if it were
trying to strip her naked.  At one moment it brought her to her
knees, and she thought she would never be able to rise to her feet
again.  It was very dark.  She was feeling weak and helpless.

Once more she remembered Stowell.  He would be on his way to London
now.  She could see him (Alick had often painted such pictures)
sitting in a brightly-lit first-class railway carriage, smoking
cigarettes and sipping coffee.

At this thought her whole soul rose in revolt.  Why was he there
while she was here?  She had never loved him; he had never loved her;
they had both done wrong.  But why for the same fault should there be
such different punishment?

People who went to churches and chapels talked of nature and God.
They said God was good and He was the God of nature.  It was a lie--a
deception!  If God was good He was not the God of nature.  If He was
the God of nature He was not good.  Nature was cruel and pitiless.
Only to a man was it kind.  If you were a woman it had no mercy on
you.  It never forgot you; it never forgave you.  Therefore a woman
had a right to fight it, and when it threatened to destroy her
happiness, and the happiness of those who loved her, she had a right
to kill it.

That was what she was doing now.  Perhaps she had done it already.
The heavy burden that had been lying so long under her heart had
given no sign of life for hours.  So much the better!  That passage
in her life must be dead and buried.  Victor Stowell must be wiped
out for ever.  Then she could marry Alick Gell with a clean heart and
conscience.

Therefore, courage, courage!  She would be a proud and happy woman
yet--the _Sheean ny Feaynid_ had said so.

Only the great thing was to get home before daybreak, so that nobody
might see her until all was over.

Somewhere in the dead and vacant dawn a pale, forlorn-looking woman,
whom nobody could have known for Bessie Collister, was approaching
the village of the glen.  She had been eighteen hours on her journey,
most of the time on her feet.  Her fur-lined cloak was sodden and
heavy.  Her black hair had been torn from its knot and was hanging
dank over her neck and shoulders.  Her feet, in her dry boots, were
cold and bleeding.  A silk scarf which had been tied over her
closely-fitting fur cap was dripping, and a little bag on her arms
was wet through with all that was contained in it.

She had expected to arrive before break of day, but nobody in the
village was yet stirring.  In the long street of whitewashed houses
all the window blinds were still down and looking like closed
eye-lids.

She tied up her hair, removed the scarf and put on a veil from her
handbag, drew it closely over her face, and then walked with head
down and a step as light as she could make it, through the sleeping
village.

She met nobody.  Not a door was opened; not a blind was drawn aside;
she had not been seen.  She drew a long breath of relief.  But
suddenly, with the first sight of the mill, came a stab of memory,

Dan Baldromma!

Since the witch-doctor had told her that though Dan might rage and
tear he could do no harm to her or to Alick she had ceased to think
of him.  But why had she not thought of the harm he might do to her
mother?  All the way up since she was a child she had seen the
tyrannies he had inflicted upon her mother through her.  What fresh
tyranny would he inflict on her now?--now that she was coming home
like this to be a burden to....

For a moment Bessie told herself she must go back even yet.  But she
was too weak and too ill to go one step farther.  All the same she
could not face her step-father in her present condition.  If she
could only get upstairs to her bedroom and sleep--sleep, sleep!

She listened for the mill-wheel--it was not working.  She looked at
the mill-door--it had not yet been opened.  It was impossible that
Dan could be in bed--he was such an early riser.  He must have gone
up the brews to look at the heifers in the top fields.

With a slow step she went over to the dwelling-house.  The door was
shut, but she could hear sounds from the kitchen.  There was the
shuffling of slow feet, accompanied by the tap of a walking-stick;
then the blowing and coughing of bellows and the crackling of burning
gorse; and then the measured beating of a foot on the hearthstone,
keeping time to a husky and tremulous voice that was singing--

  "_Safe in the arms of Jesus,
  Safe in His tender care._"


With a palpitating heart Bessie lifted the latch, pushed the door
open and took one step into the kitchen.  Her mother, who was still
wearing her night-cap, was sitting on the three-legged stool in the
choillagh, stirring porridge in the oven-pot that hung from the
slowrie.  She had heard the click of the latch and was looking round.

There was silence for a moment.  Bessie tried to speak and could not.
The old woman rose on rigid limbs and her hand on the handle of her
stick was trembling.  It was just as if the spirit of someone she had
been thinking about had suddenly appeared before her.

"Is it thyself, girl?" she said, in a breathless whisper.

"Mother!" cried Bessie, and she took another step forward.

Again there was a moment of silence.  With her heart at her lips
Bessie saw that her mother's eyes were wandering over her figure.
Then the stick dropped from the old woman's hand to the floor and she
stretched out her arms, and her thin hands shook like withered leaves.

"Bolla veen! bolla veen!" she cried, in a low voice that was a sob.
"It's my own case over again."

And then the girl fell into her mother's arms and buried her head in
her breast and cried, as only a suffering child can cry, helplessly,
piteously.

A moment later, there was a heavy footstep outside, and the ring of
an iron tool thrown down on the "street."  The old woman raised her
face with a look of fear.

"It's thy father," she whispered.



III

Dan Baldromma had risen earlier than usual that morning.  For more
than a week there had not been water enough to his mill-wheel for his
liking, and suspecting the cause of the shortage he had put a pick
over his shoulder and walked up the glen.

There was a little croft on the top of the brews half a mile nearer
to the mountain.  It was called Baldromma-beg (the little Baldromma)
and its occupants (sub-tenants of Dan Baldromma) were a quaint old
couple--Will Skillicorne, a long, slow-eyed, slow-legged person who
was a class-leader among the "Primitives," and his wife, Bridget, a
typical little Manxwoman of her class, keen-eyed, quick-tongued,
illiterate and superstitious.

Their croft was thirsty land, though water in abundance was so near,
and to every request that it should be laid on in pipes from the
glen, Dan had said, "Let your wife carry it---what else is the woman
there for?"

Bridget had carried it for ten years.  Then her anger getting the
better of her, she put on a pair of her husband's big boots and
rolled two great boulders into a neck of the river, with the result
that a deep stream of sweet water came flowing down to her house and
fields.

This was just what Dan had suspected, and coming upon the new-made
dam, he stretched his legs across it, swung his pick and sent the
boulders tumbling down the glen, with a torrent of water from
Baldromma-beg at the back of them.

But Bridget, also, had risen earlier than usual that morning, and,
hearing the sound of Dan's pick, she went out to him at his bad work
and fell on him with hot reproaches.

"Was there nothing doing down at the mill, Dan Collister," she cried,
"that thou must be coming up here to put thy evil eye on other
people's places?"

"Get thee indoors, woman," growled Dan, "and put thy house in order."

"My house in order?  Mine?  And what about thine?  Thine that is a
disgrace to the parish and the talk of the island."

"Keep a civil tongue in thy head, Mrs. Skillicorne, or maybe I'll be
showing thee the road at Hollantide."

"Turn me out of the croft, will thou?  Do it and welcome!  I give
thee lave.  It would be middling aisy to find a better farm, and
Satan himself couldn't find a worse landlord.  But set thou one foot
on this land until my year is over and if there's a bucket of dirty
water on the cowhouse floor I'll throw it over thee.  Put my house in
order indeed!  Where's thy daughter, eh?  Where's thy daughter, I
say?"

"I've got no daughter, woman, and well thou knows it," said Dan.

"'Deed I do.  No wonder the Lord wouldn't trust thee with a daughter
of thy own, the way thou's brought up this one.  The slut!  The
strumpet!  Away with thee and look for her--it will become thee
better."

But Dan having finished his work was now plunging down the glen and
old Will Skillicorne had come out of his house half dressed, with his
braces hanging behind him.

"Come in, woman--lave the man to God," said Will.

"God indeed!  The dirt!  The ugly black toad!  God wouldn't bemane
Himself talking to the like."

"Thou's done it this time, though, I'm thinking.  Thou heard what he
said about Hollantide?"

"Chut!  Get thee back to bed.  What's thou putting thy mouth in for?
Who knows where the man himself will be by that time?"

With a face like a black cloud after this encounter, Dan threw down
his pick on the cobbles of the street and went into the kitchen to
work off his anger on his wife.

"That's what thou's done for me, ma'am!  There's not a trollop in the
parish that isn't throwing thy daughter's bad doings in my face."

The kitchen was full of smoke, for the porridge in the oven-pot had
been allowed to burn, and it was not until he was standing back to
the fire, putting his pipe in the pocket of his open waistcoat, that
Dan saw Bessie where she had seated herself, after breaking out of
her mother's arms, by the table and in the darkest corner.

He took in the girl's situation at a glance, but after the manner of
the man he pretended not to do so.

"God bless my soul," he cried.  "Back, is she?  Well, well!  But what
did I say, mother?  'No need to send the Cross Vustha (the fiery
cross) after her, she'll come home.'  And my goodness the grand
woman's she's grown!  Fur caps and fur-lined cloaks and I don't know
the what!  Just come to put a sight on the mother and the ould man, I
suppose.  No pride at all at all!  I wouldn't trust but there's a
grand carriage waiting for her at the corner of the road."

"Aisy, man, aisy," said Mrs. Collister, picking up her stick, "don't
thou see the girl has walked?"

"Walked, has she?" said Dan, raising his thick eyebrows in pretended
astonishment.  "You don't say!  All the way from Castletown?  Well,
well!  So that's how it is, is it?  The young waistrel has thrown her
over, has he?"

Bessie had to put her hand to her throat to keep back the cry that
was bubbling up.

"Aisy, man, aisy with the like," said the old woman.  But Dan was for
showing no mercy.

"Goodness me, the airs she gave herself going away!  I might shut my
door on her, but there would be others to open theirs.  And now they
have opened them, and shut them too, I'm thinking."

Bessie, crushed and silent, was clutching the end of the table.  Dan
stepped over to her, laid hold of her left hand, lifted it up, as if
looking for her wedding ring, and then flung it away.

"Nothing!" he said.  "She's got nothing for it neither.  I might have
followed her to Castletown, but I didn't.  'I'll lave her to it,' I
thought.  'Maybe the girl's cleverer than we thought, and will come
home mistress of Baldromma and a thousand good acres besides.'  But
no, not a ha'porth!  And now she has come back to ate us up for the
rest of our lives!  The toot!  The boght!  The booby!"

"Dan Collister," said the old woman, "don't thou see the girl is ill?"

"Ill, is she?" said Dan.  "I wouldn't trust but she is, ma'am.  So
it's worse than I thought, and maybe before long there'll be another
mouth to feed."

Bessie dropped her head on the table.

"But not in this house, if you plaze, miss.  It happened here once
before, and the island would be having a fine laugh at me if it
happened again."

Once more Dan stepped over to Bessie and touched her arm.

"You're like a dead letter, you've come to the wrong address,
mistress.  It wasn't Dan Baldromma's thatched cottage you were
wanting, but the big slate house down the road where the paycocks are
scraming.  I'll trouble you to go there."

"Sakes alive, man," cried the old woman, "thou'rt not for turning the
girl out of doors?"

"I am that, ma'am," said Dan, going over to the door.  "No trollop
shall be telling me again that my house is the disgrace of the parish
and the talk of the island."

Then throwing the door wide and rattling the catch of it, he said,

"Out of my house, miss!  Out of it!  Out of it!"

Bessie, who had been sitting motionless, raised her head and rose to
go, although scarcely able to take a step forward, when she felt a
hand that was trembling like a leaf laid on her shoulder.

"Stay thou there, and leave this to me."

It was the old woman who had been crouching over the fire on the
three-legged stool and had now risen, thrown her stick away as if she
had no longer any need of it, and was facing her husband with blazing
eyes.

"Thou talks and talks of this house as thine and thine," she said.
"What made it thine?"

"The law, if thou wants to know, woman," said Dan.

"Then the law is a robber and a thief."

Dan looked at his wife in astonishment, and then burst into a fit of
forced laughter.

"Well, that's good!  That's rich!  That's wonderful!  What next, I
wonder?"

"Do you want me to tell thee the truth, Dan Collister?  Before the
girl, too?  Then there's not a stick or a stone in the place that in
the eyes of heaven does not belong to me."

"What?"

"Not a stick or a stone, except the landlord's, that wasn't bought
with my father's money--John Corteen, a man of God, if ever there was
one."

"Pity his daughter didn't take after him, then."

"Pity enough, Dan Collister.  But when I brought shame into his house
he forgave me.  And when the finger of death was on the man the only
trouble he had in life was what was to become of his girl when he was
gone."

"Truth enough, ma'am, he had to find thee a husband, hadn't he?"

"He hadn't far to look, though.  And if thou had nothing in thy
pocket and not much on thy back thou had plenty in thy mouth to make
up for it.  Thou were not afraid of scandal!  Thou didn't mind
marrying a girl who had been talked of with another man!"

"And I did, didn't I?"

"Thou did, God forgive thee!  But not till the man's trembling hand
had reached up to the hole in the thatch over his bed for his
stocking purse and counted the money out to thee.  Three hundred good
Manx pounds he had worked thirty years for and saved up for his
daughter.  And then thou swore on the Holy Book to be good to his
girl and her baby, and the man's dying eyes on thee.  And now--now
thou talks of turning my girl out of the house--this house that would
have been her house some day if thou had not come between us.  But
no!  Thou shan't do that."

"Shan't I?"

"'Deed thou shan't!  She may have done wrong, but if she has it's no
more than her mother did before her, and if _I_ daren't turn her out
for it thou shalt not."

"We'll see, ma'am, we'll see," said Dan.  He was buttoning up his
waistcoat and putting on his coat.

"It's no use talking to a woman.  There's not much sense to be got
out of the like anyway.  But when a man marries, the property of the
wife becomes the property of the husband--that's Dempster's law,
isn't it?  And standing up for your legal rights, and not being
forced by your wife, or anybody else, to find maintenance for another
man's offspring when it comes--that's Dempster's law too, I belave."

"Yes," said the old woman, "and standing up for your own flesh and
blood when she's sick and weak and the world is going cold on her and
she has nowhere else to lay her head in her trouble--that's Mother's
law, Dan Collister, and it's older than the Dempster's, I'm thinking."

"Do as you plaze, ma'am," said Dan.  "If you want more noising about
the bad doings of your daughter it's all as one to me."

He took his billycock hat down from the "lath" under the ceiling and
continued,

"I'll hear what the Speaker has to say about this, though.  His wife
wasn't for doing much for thee when the honour of this house was in
question, but maybe she'll alter her tune now that it's the honour of
her own."

He drew his whip from its nail over the fireplace and stepped to the
door.

"And if this matter ends as I expect I'll be hearing what the Coorts
have to say about it, too.  Young Mr. Sto'll is to be made Dempster
they're telling me.  They're putting him in for it, anyway, and he is
bosom friend to the Spaker's son.  But friend or no friend," he said,
with his hand on the hasp, and ready to go, "maybe his first job when
he comes back to the island will be to send his Coroner to this house
to turn the man's mistress and her by-child into the road."

"Tell him to send her coffin at the same time, then," cried the old
woman, almost screaming.  "Mine too, Dan Collister.  That's the only
way he'll turn my daughter out of this house, I promise thee."

But the old woman collapsed the moment her husband had gone, and
staggering to the rocking-chair she dropped into it and cried.  Then
Bessie, who had not yet spoken, rose and said, crying herself,

"Don't cry, I'll go away myself, mother."

But the old woman was up again in a moment.

"No, thou'll not," she said.  "Thou'll go up to thy bedroom in the
dairy loft--the one thou had in the innocent old times gone by.
Come, take my arm--my good arm, girl.  Lean on me, woman-bogh."




CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

THE SOUL OF HAGAR

Two hours had passed.  Bessie was in her bedroom--the little one-eyed
chamber (entered from the first landing on the stairs) in which she
had dressed for Douglas.  But the sheet of silvered glass on the
whitewashed wall which had shone then with the light of her beaming
eyes was now reflecting her broken, tear-stained, woebegone face.

She knew that her journey had been in vain, that her sufferings had
been wasted.  Her child was not to be stillborn.  Through the closed
door she heard Dan Baldromma going off in the stiff cart.  He was
going to the Speaker, to threaten him with the shame of her unborn
child, and to call upon him to compel his son to marry her.

Wild, blind error!  But what would be the result?  Alick would hear
of her whereabouts and learn of her condition and that would be the
end of everything between them.  All her secret scheme to wipe out
her fault, to keep her name clean for Alick, to preserve his
beautiful faith in her, would be destroyed, and he would be dead to
her for ever.

But no, come what would that should not be!  And if the only way to
prevent it was to make away with her child when it came she must do
so.  Only nobody must know--not even her mother.

Time and again the old woman came hobbling upstairs, bringing food
and trying to comfort her.

"Will I send for Doctor Clucas, Bessie?"

"No, no.  I shall be better in the morning."

The day passed heavily.  She could not lie down.  Sometimes she sat
on the edge of the bed; sometimes stood and held on to the end of it;
and sometimes walked to and fro in the narrow space of her bedroom
floor.  Having no window in her room her only sight of the world
without was through the skylight in the thatch, which showed nothing
but the sky.  The only sound that reached her was the squealing of a
pig that was being killed at a neighbouring farm.

At length darkness fell.  Hitherto she had been thinking of her
unborn child with a certain tenderness, even a certain pity.  But
now, in the wild disorder of her senses, she began to hate it.  It
seemed to be some evil spirit that was coming into the world to
destroy everybody.  Why shouldn't she kill it?  She would!  Only she
must be alone--quite alone.

Shivering, perspiring, weak, dizzy, she was sitting in the darkness
when her mother came to say good-night.

"Here are a few broth.  Take them.  They'll warm thee."

"No, no."

"Come, let me coax thee, bogh."

Bessie refused again, and the old woman's eyes began to fill.

"Will I stay up the night with thee, Bessie?"

"Oh, no, no!"

"I'll leave my door open then, and if thou art wanting anything
thou'll call."

"Yes, yes."

"Thy father isn't home yet, and if thou'rt no better when he goes by
thy door thou must tell him and he'll let me know."

Bessie raised her eyes in astonishment, and the old woman, with a
shamefaced look, began to apologize for her husband.  He was not so
bad after all, and when a woman had taken a man for better or
worse....

"Do you say that, mother?"

Something quivered in the old woman's wrinkled throat.

"Well, we women are all alike, thou knows."

"Good-night and go to sleep, mother."

Bessie hustled her mother out of the room, but hardly had she gone
than she wanted to call her back.

"Mother!  Mother!" she cried in the sudden access of her pain, but
though her door was ajar her mother, who was going deaf, did not hear
her.

At the next moment she was glad.  Her mother believed in God and
religion.  To burden her conscience with any knowledge of what she
meant to do would be too cruel.

But Bessie's terror increased at every moment.  The night outside was
quiet, yet the air seemed to be full of fearful cries.  At the
bidding of some instinctive impulse she blew out the candle, and
then, in the darkness and solitude, a great terror took hold of her.

"Alick!  Alick!" she cried, but only the deep night heard her.  At
last, in the paroxysm of her pain, she fell back on the bed--she was
unconscious.

When she came to herself again she had a sense of blessed ease, like
that of sailing into a quiet harbour out of a tempestuous sea.
Before she opened her eyes she heard a faint cry.  She thought at
first it was only a memory of the bleating of the lost lamb on the
mountains.  But the cry came again and then she knew what had
happened--her child had been born!

Time passed--how long or what she did in it, she never afterwards
knew.  Her weakness seemed to have gone and she had a feeling of
surprising strength.  The bitterness of her heart had gone too, and a
flood of happiness was sweeping over her.

It was motherhood!  To Bessie too, in her misery and shame, the
merciful angel of mother-love had come.  Her child!  Hers!  Hers!
Make away with it?  Kill it?  No, not for worlds of worlds!

It was a boy too!  Thank God it was a boy!  A woman was so weak; she
had so much to suffer, so many things to think about.  But a man was
strong and free.  He could fight his own way in life.  And her boy
would fight for her also, and make amends for all she had gone
through.

It was the middle of the night.  The glimmering and guttering candle
on the wash-table (she had been up and had lit it afresh) was casting
dark shadows in the room.  Only a little dairy loft with the turfy
thatch overhead, and the sheepskin rugs underfoot, but oh, how it
shone with glory!

Bessie was singing to her baby (words and tune springing to her mind
in a moment) when suddenly she heard sounds from outside.  They were
the rattle of cart wheels and the clatter of horse's hoofs on the
cobbles of the "street."

Dan Baldromma had come home!

Her heart seemed to stop its beating.  She blew out her candle and
listened, scarcely drawing breath.  She heard her step-father tipping
up his stiff-cart and then shouting at his horse as he dragged off
its harness in the stable.  After that she heard him coming into the
house and throwing his heavy boots on to the hearthstone.  Then she
heard the thud, thud, thud of the old man's stockinged feet on the
kitchen floor--he was about to come upstairs.

At that moment the child, who had been asleep on her arm, awoke and
cried.  Only a feeble cry, half-smothered by the closeness of the
little mouth to her breast, but in Bessie's ears it sounded like
thunder.  If her step-father heard it, what would he do?
Involuntarily, and before she knew what she was doing, she put her
hand over the child's mouth.

Then thud, thud, thud!  Dan Baldromma was coming upstairs.  Bessie
could hear his thick breathing.  He had reached the landing.  He
seemed to stop for a moment outside her door.  But he passed on, went
up the second short flight, pushed open the door of her mother's room
and clashed it noisily behind him.

Then Bessie drew breath and turned back to her child.  She was
shocked to find that in her terror she had been holding her trembling
hand tightly down on the child's mouth.  It had only been for a
moment (what had seemed like a moment), but when she took her hand
away and listened, in the throbbing darkness, for the child's soft
breathing, no sound seemed to come.

With shaking fingers she lit her candle again, and then held the
light to the baby's face.

The little, helpless, innocent face lay still.

"Can it be possible .... no, no, God forbid it!"

But at length the awful truth came surging down on her.  She had
killed her child.



II

When Bessie awoke the next day the sun was shining on her eye-lids
from the skylight in the thatch.  She had some difficulty in
realising where she was.  Before opening her eyes she heard the
muffled lowing of the cows in the closed-up cow-house, and had an
impulse to do as she had done in earlier days--get up and milk them.
At the next moment she heard her mother's shuffling step on the
kitchen floor, and then the tide of memory swept back on her.

But she was a different woman this morning.  She had no remorse now,
no qualm, no compunction.  What she had done, she had done, and after
all it was the best thing that could have happened--best for her,
best for Alick, best for everybody.

Her child being dead she no longer loved it.  All she had to do was
to bury it away somewhere, and then everything would go on as she had
intended.  Meantime (before going to sleep) she had taken her
precautions.  Nobody must know.  If there had been reasons why she
should not take her mother into her confidence last night they were
now increased tenfold.

After a while her mother came up with her breakfast.  A veil seemed
to dim the old woman's eyes--she looked as if she had been crying.

"How are thou now, bogh?"

"Better!  Much better!  I told you I should be better in the morning."

The old woman was silent for a moment and then said,

"Thou were not up and downstairs in the night, Bessie?"

"'Deed no!  Why should you think so?"

"Because I shut the wash-house door when I went to bed and it was
open when I came down in the morning."

Bessie's lips trembled, but she made no answer.

A little later she heard her step-father talking loudly in the
kitchen.  He had seen the Speaker, having waited all day for him.
There had been a stormy scene.  The big man had foamed at the mouth,
talked about blackmail, threatened to turn him out of the farm at
Hollantide, and finally shouted for Tom Kertnode, his steward, to
fling him into the road.

"I lave it with you, Sir," Dan had answered.  "If you prefer the new
Dempster, when he comes, to see justice done to the girl, it's all as
one to me."

Bessie could have laughed.  Wicked, selfish, scheming--how she was
going to defeat it!

All morning she lay quiet, thinking out her plans.  Half a mile up
the glen there was a large stone of irregular shape, surrounded by a
wild tangle of briar and gorse.  The Manx called it the
_Claghny-Dooiney-marroo_--the dead man's stone, the body of a
murdered man having been found on it.  By reason of this gruesome
association of the bloody hand upon it, few approached the stone by
day and the bravest man (unless he were in drink) would hesitate to
go near it by night.

Bessie decided to bury her child under the _Clagh-ny-Dooiney_.  It
would lie hidden for ever there; nobody would find it.

The day was long in passing, for Bessie was waiting for the night.
She heard the young lambs bleating in the fields and the cocks
crowing in the haggard.  A linnet perched on the ledge of her
skylight (her mother had opened it) and looked in on her and sang.

At length the sky darkened and night fell.  The moon (it was in its
first quarter) sailed across her patch of sky and disappeared.  Once
or twice the skylight was aglow with a palpitating red light--someone
was burning gorse on the mountains.  But the fires died down and then
there was nothing save the sky with its stars.

Her mother came again to say good-night.  She had the pitiful look of
a woman who was struggling to keep back her tears.

"Wilt thou not sit up, Bessie, while I make thy bed for thee?"

Bessie started and then stammered: "Oh, no!  I mean .... it will do
in the morning."

The old woman looked down at her with eyes which seemed to say, "Can
thou not trust thy mother, girl?"  But she only sighed and went off
to bed.

Somewhere in the early morning (Dan having gone to bed also) Bessie
got up to make ready.  She found herself very weak, and it took her a
long time to dress.  When she was about to put on her shoes she
remembered that they were new and told herself they would creak as
she went downstairs, so she decided to go barefoot again.

Having finished her dressing she took from under the bed-clothes what
she had hidden there, and began to wrap it in a large silk scarf.  It
was the scarf she had worn in the storm--a present from Alick; with
"Bessie" stamped on one corner.

Seeing her name at the last moment, she tore a strip of the scarf
away, and threw it aside (intending to destroy it in the morning),
opened her door, listened for an instant and then crept downstairs
and out of the house.

The night was chill and the ground struck cold into her body.  It was
very dark, for the moon and stars had gone out, and there was no
light anywhere except the dull red of the gorse fires on the
mountains, which had sunk so low as to look like a dying eye.  But
Bessie could have found her way blindfolded.

Carrying her burden she crossed the wooden bridge and reached the
path that went up the glen.  Just as she did so she heard the sound
of singing, of laughter and of carriage-wheels on the high road.  A
company of jolly girls and boys were driving home after one of their
Bachelor Balls in a neighbouring parish.  That cut deep, but Bessie
thought of Alick and the wound passed away.  She would return to him
in a few days; they would be married soon, and then she, too, would
be glad and happy.

How dark it was under the trees, though!  She had left it late.  The
dawn was near, for the first birds were beginning to call.

"It must be here," she thought, and she slipped down from the path to
the bed of the glen.

But the trees were thicker there, and, being already in early leaf,
they obscured the little light that was left in the sky.  Where could
the stone be?  The briars were tearing at her dress and the tall
nettles were stinging her hands.  She was feeling weak and lost and
had begun to cry.  How the dogs howled at her stepfather's farm!

Suddenly a breeze rose and fanned the gorse fires on the mountains to
a crackling glow.  And then a red flame rent the darkness and lighted
up the valley from end to end, making it for a few moments almost as
clear as day.

Bessie was terrified.  Here was the _Clagh-ny-Dooiney_ almost at her
feet, but this bright light was like an accusing eye from heaven
looking down on her and pointing her out.

For a moment she wanted to drop down among the briars and hide
herself.  But making a call on her resolution she crept up to the big
stone, stooped, pushed her burden under the overlapping lip of it,
and then rose, turned about and ran.

Trembling and weeping she stumbled her way home.  It was lighter now.
The day was coming rapidly and the small spring leaves were shivering
in the cold wind that runs over the earth before the dawn.  The lambs
were bleating in the unseen fields, and the newly-born ones were
making their first pitiful cry.  It sounded like the cry of her child
as she had heard it last night, and it tore her terribly.

The little face, the little hands, the little feet she had left
behind--why had she not been brave and strong and faced the world
with them?

Should she stop and go back!  She tried to do so but could not.  The
more she wanted to return the faster she ran away.

Her strength was failing her, and she was scarcely able to put one
foot before another.  Often she stumbled and fell and got up again.
Was she going the right way home?

"Alick!  Alick!" she cried, and the hot tears fell over her cold
cheeks.

At last she saw the dark roof of the mill-house against the leaden
grey of the sky.  She had reached the bridge over the millrace when
she felt a light on her face and saw a figure approaching her.
Somebody was coming up the glen and the lantern he carried was
swinging by his side as he walked.

Then the instinct of self-preservation took possession of her.
Dizzy, dazed, breathing rapidly and trembling in every limb, she
crossed the bridge quickly, crept up to the door of the dwelling
house, stumbled upstairs to her room, tore off her outer garments,
dropped back on to her bed, and then fell (almost in a moment) into
the sleep of utter exhaustion.



III

Bridget Skillicorne had had a cow sick that night.  It had been
suffering from a colic, probably due to grazing among the rank grass
which had been lying under the water that had been drained away.  But
Bridget was sure that "that dirt Baldromma" had "wutched" it
(bewitched it) just to spite her for what she had said.

She had tried a hot bran mash in vain.  The cow still writhed and
roared, so nothing remained, if they were not to lose their creature,
but that Will should go to the Ballawhaine (a witch-doctor who lived
nine or ten miles away on the seaward side of the Curragh) and get a
charm to take off the witching.

Old Will, being a class-leader, was well aware that such sorcery was
the arts of Satan.  But if the cow died it would make a big hole in
their stocking-purse to buy another, so his conscience compounded
with his pocket, and he agreed to go.

"Aw well, a few good words will do no harm at all," he said, and
carrying his stable lantern he set out towards nine o'clock on his
long journey.

Then Bridget, taking another lantern, a half-knitted stocking and a
three-legged stool, went into the cow-house to sit up with her cow
and watch the progress of its malady.

Towards midnight the creature became easier, and, gathering her legs
under her, lay down to sleep.  But Bridget remained three hours
longer in the close atmosphere of the cow-house, waiting for old Will
but thinking of Dan, and making her needles go with a furious click
at the thought of his threat to evict her.

The upper half of the cow-house door stood open, and somewhere in the
dark hours towards dawn she was startled by a bright light and the
hissing and crackling of a sudden fire outside.  She knew what it was
(such fires on the mountains were not uncommon), but nevertheless she
stepped out to see.

She saw more than she had expected.  In the glen below her brew,
where every bush and tree stood out for a moment in the flare of the
burning gorse, she saw the figure of a woman.  The woman was standing
by the _Clagh-ny-Dooiney_.  She had something white under her arm.
After a moment she knelt, put her parcel under the lip of the stone
and then hurried away.

Who was she?  In her present mood, with her mind running on one
subject, Bridget could have no uncertainty.  It was the Collister
girl!  It must be!  What had she been doing down there?  In her own
walk through life Bridget had never stepped aside, therefore she was
severe on those who had.  There was only one thing that could bring a
girl out of bed in the middle of the night to a place like that.  The
slut!  The strumpet!

When Will Skillicorne reached home half-an-hour afterwards he was
carrying a wisp of straw.  With this he was to make the sign of the
cross on the back of the sick cow, and say some good words about St.
Patrick and St. Bridget, giving it at the same time a hot drink of
meal and water.

"But the craythur is better these three hours," said Bridget.

"Praise the Lord!" said Will.  "That must have been the very minute
the good man came down from his bed to me in his flannel drawers!"

"But did thou meet anybody as thou was coming up the glen?"

"Maybe I did."

"Was it a woman?"

"It's like it was, now."

"Did she go into the mill-house?"

"I believe in my heart she did, though."

Bridget was triumphant.

It was the Collister girl!  There could not be a doubt about it.  And
at break of day she would go down to the glen and see what she had
left under the _Clagh-ny-Dooiney_.

"Show me the road at Hollantide, will he?  The dirt!  The dirty black
toad!  We'll see!  We'll see!"



IV

Bessie's sleep of exhaustion deepened to delirium and for a long day
she lay in the grip of it.  When she floated out of her
unconsciousness, she had a sense of confusion.  A babel of
meaningless voices, like the many sounds of a wild night, were
clashing in her brain.  A man and a woman were in her bedroom,
talking like somnambulists.

"Her feet have been bleeding.  Where has she been, think you?"

The man's voice must be that of Doctor Clucas, and then came some
vague answer in the woman's voice, with a thick snuffle and a
suppressed sob--her mother's.

Bessie heard no more.  A cloud passed over her brain that was like
the rolling mist that alternately reveals and conceals a bell-buoy at
sea.  When it cleared she heard a strange woman's voice outside the
house--her bedroom door had been left open that her mother might hear
her if she called.

"I didn't know thy daughter had come home, Liza Collister."

"And how dost thou know now, Bridget Skillicorne?"

"How?  There's someones coming will tell thee how, woman."

Bessie felt as if somebody had struck her in the face.  Had anything
become known?  Later she heard her step-father speaking in the
kitchen.

"Is she herself yet."

"Not yet."

"Better she never should be."

"Sakes alive, man, what art thou saying?"

"I'm saying that old trollop on the brews is after finding something
under the _Clagh-ny-Dooiney_ and sending her man to the police to
fetch it."

"Fetch what?"

"Just a parcel in a silk scarf with a lil arm sticking out--that's
all, ma'am."

The doctor at the hospital had been holding a post-mortem, and now
Cain, the constable, was to make a house to house visitation of the
parish to find the mother of the child.

Bessie covered her mouth to suppress a scream.  But something
whispered, "Hush!  Keep still!  They know nothing!"

Early next day she was awakened by the sound of many men's voices
downstairs, and her mother's voice in angry protestation.

"I tell thee, I know nothing about it.  The girl came home to me
three days ago, and I put her to bed, and she has never since been
out of it."

"They all say that, ma'am," said one of the men.  It was Cain, the
constable.

A little later, while Bessie lay with closed eyes and her face to the
wall, she became aware of several persons in her bedroom, and one of
them leaning over her.  She knew it was Cain--she could hear his
asthmatical breathing.

"Is she really unconscious, doctor?"

"Undoubtedly she is.  You can leave her for a few days anyway.
She'll not run away, you see."

After that, listening intently, Bessie heard the constable ranging
the room as if examining everything.

"What's this?" he asked.

Bessie drew a quick breath, but dared not look around.

"Only a remnant seemingly," said the doctor.

"We'll be taking it with us, though," said the constable, and then
the rolling mist of unconsciousness covered everything again.

When it passed Bessie knew that the police were suspecting her.  They
thought they had found her out, and they were going to bring the
whole machinery of the law to punish her.  What a wicked thing the
law was!  She had injured nobody--nobody that anybody had ever seen
in this world.  She had only tried to save somebody she loved from
shame and pain.  And yet the constables, the courts and the coroners
were all in a conspiracy to crush one poor girl!  No matter!  She
would deny everything.

Next day was Sunday.  Bessie heard the church bells ringing across
the Curragh, and, before they stopped, the singing of a hymn.  The
Primitives were holding a service at the corner of the high road
before going into their chapel.  After the hymn somebody prayed.  It
was Will Skillicorne.  Bessie (listening through her open skylight)
recognised the high pitch of his preaching voice.  He would be
standing on the chapel steps.

There was a great deal about "carnal transgression," about "brands
plucked from the burning," about "the judgments of the Lord," and
finally about the "conscious sinner," throwing herself upon her
Saviour and repenting of "the sin she had committed against God."  At
the close of his prayer Will gave out the first two lines of another
hymn--

  "_I was a wandering sheep,
  I did not love the fold._"


Bessie knew whom all this was meant for.  The Primitives were
torturing her.  But they were torturing somebody else as well.
Through the singing and praying she heard her mother's sighs
downstairs, and the beating of her foot on the hearthstone, as she
sat by the fire and listened to the service for her guilty child.

What a cowardly thing religion was!  Sin?  What sin had she
committed?  She had never intended to do wrong, and only those who
had gone through it could know what she had suffered.  Anyway, such
as she was God had made her.  She would admit nothing.  Nothing
whatever.

Two days passed.  Bessie's heart softened and became calm.  The
police were leaving her alone--they must have given up that nonsense
about punishing her.  Everything was going to turn out as she had
expected.

On the third day, her mother, coming into her bedroom, found her with
widely-opened eyes and all her face a smile.  Yes, she was herself
once more.  In fact there had not been much amiss with her.  Only,
never having been ill before, she had been frightened and had come
home to be nursed by her mother.  But now she was better and must
soon go back .... back to where she came from.

She told her mother about Alick and how fond he was of her--parting
from his father and sisters and even his mother for her sake.  It was
quite a mistake to suppose that Alick had refused to marry her.  He
would have married her long ago, and it was she who had been holding
back.  Why?  She wished to be strong and well first.  It wasn't fair
to a man to let him marry a sick wife--was it?

The old woman, with a broken face, looking sadly down at the girl,
said, "Yes, bogh!  It's like it isn't, bogh," and turned her eyes
away.

On the fourth day Bessie got out of bed and moved about the room just
to show how strong she was.

"See what a step I have now.  I could walk miles and miles, mother."

The moral of that was that she must go back to Derby Haven without
more delay.  Alick was waiting for her and he would be growing
anxious.  She must take the first train in the morning.

"It's rather early, but never mind about breakfast.  A cup of tea and
a piece of barley bonnag--that will do."

Late that night, when Mrs. Collister, going to bed with a heavy
heart, looked in to say good-night, Bessie asked to be called in good
time in the morning.

"Don't forget to waken me.  I used to be the first up, you know, but
now I'm a sleepy-head."

And then she kissed her mother (never having kissed her since she was
a child) and the old woman's eyes overflowed.

Left alone, in the dark, she began to think how good God had been to
her after all.  Only those who had sinned and suffered knew how good
He could be.  She remembered the text about the friend who, when all
earthly friends forsake you, sticketh closer than a brother.  Also,
with a certain shame, she recalled the hymn the Primitives had sung
on Sunday morning, and, covering her head in the bedclothes, she sang
two lines of it--

  "_But now I love my Father's voice,
  I love my Father's home._"


How happy she was!  At that time to-morrow she would be in bed at
Derby Haven, having seen Alick and arranged everything.

Next morning, when she awoke, she was startled to find the sun
pouring into the room.  She knew by the line it made on the wall that
the first train must have gone.  The chickens, too, were clucking at
the kitchen door, and they never came round before breakfast.

She had risen on her elbow intending to call, when she heard the roll
of a van-like vehicle drawing up in front of the house, and
immediately afterwards, a man's husky, asthmatical voice in the
kitchen, mingling with her mother's shrill treble.

"Go upstairs and tell her to make ready, ma'am."

"No, no; the girl's not fit for it, I tell thee."

"She's fit enough for the prison hospital, anyway."

"She has never been out of my door since she came into it."

"We'll lave that to the High Bailiff and the Dempster, if you plaze."

Bessie, supporting herself on her trembling arm, could scarcely
restrain herself from screaming.  One moment she sat and gasped, and
then, grasping her head with both hands, she turned about and fell
forward and buried her face in her pillow.

At the next moment she was conscious of somebody coming into her
room, and at the next, from somewhere at the foot of the bed, she
heard her mother say, in a strange voice she had never known
before--throbbing, choking, scarcely audible--

"They have come for thee, Bessie."




CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

STOWELL IN LONDON

Victor Stowell had been more than a week in London.  Fortune had
favoured him from the first.  The Home Secretary (a tall, spare,
elderly man, with a clean-shaven face of rather severe expression)
rose when Stowell entered his room as if a spirit had appeared before
him.  "My youth again," the young man thought, but it was a different
matter this time.

"Has anybody ever told you that you resemble your father, Mr.
Stowell?"

It turned out that the old Deemster and the Home Secretary (a
barrister before he became a statesman) had been in chambers together
in the Middle Temple while reading for the bar, and that the
politician had never lost respect for the man who, in spite of
brilliant promise of success in England (he might have become an
English High Court Judge with six times his Manx salary), had
returned to the obscurity of his little island and the service of his
own people.

"You have high traditions to live up to, young man.  Sit down."

Then came the subject of the interview.  The authorities had
satisfied themselves that on the score of legal capacity the
Governor's recommendation was not unjustified.  The only serious
difficulty was Stowell's youth.  The principles on which the Crown
selected elderly and even old (sometimes very old) men for the
positions of Judges were simple and sound.  First, seniority of
service, and next, maturity of character, so as to avoid the dangers
that come from the temptations, the trials, even the turbulent
emotions of early life, which might easily conflict with the calm of
the judicial office.  Still, these principles could be too rigidly
followed--particularly in remote colonies and small dependencies
where the range of suitable selection was limited.

After this came a personal catechism, the old man looking at the
young one over the rims of his tortoise-shell spectacles.  Married?
Not yet.  Expect to be?  Yes, Sir.  Soon?  Not, not for a long time.
How long?  Six weeks at least, Sir.

The ends of the severe mouth rose perceptibly, and in any other face
they might have broken into a smile.

Daughter of the Governor, isn't she?  Yes, but that isn't her chief
characteristic, Sir.  What is?  That she is the loveliest and noblest
woman in the world.

"Oh!"

Again the severe mouth relaxed, and the Home Secretary asked Stowell
where he was staying.  Stowell told him (the Inns of Court Hotel,
Holborn) and he made a note of it.

"Remain there until you hear from me again, Mr. Stowell, and meantime
say nothing about this interview to anybody."

"Not anybody whatever, Sir?"

The Home Secretary's stern old face became genial and charming as he
rose and held out his hand.

"Well, that supreme being, perhaps .... Good day!"


"So here I am, my dear Fenella," wrote Stowell, "back in the bedroom
of my hotel, telling you all about it.  How long I may have to remain
in London, goodness knows, therefore I propose to tell you something
about my ways of life while I wait.

"Such a change in me!  When I was in London last (with Alick Gell,
you remember) I spent my days and nights in the hotels, restaurants,
theatres and music-halls that are the lovely and beloved world of
woman.  It is the world of woman still, but quite another realm of it.

"Two nights ago I strolled westward along Oxford Street, and thought
(with a lump in my throat) about De Quincey and his Ann.  Then,
cutting through Clare Market to the Temple and finding the gate
closed, I tipped the porter to let me walk through the Brick Court,
and stood a long half hour before a house in the silent little
square, thinking of the day when the women of the town sat on the
stairs while poor Noll (Oliver Goldsmith) lay dead in his rooms
above.  And then, coming out into Fleet-street (midnight now) where
the big printing presses were throbbing behind dark buildings, I
tried to think I saw the great old Johnson, God bless him, picking up
the prostitute from the pavement, carrying her home on his back and
laying her on his bed.

"Last night I strolled eastward to look at the outside of the
Settlement in which you used to be Lady Warden (in the unbelievable
days before you came back to Man), and returning by a dark side
street, I came upon a queue of women crouching in the cold before the
doors of a Salvation Shelter.  They were waiting for four in the
morning when they would have a fighting chance of one of the beds
(_i.e._, boxes like open coffins lying cheek by jowl on the floor of
a big hall) after the washerwomen who were then asleep in them would
get up and go to work.

"But the climax came this morning (Sunday morning) when I went to
service at the Foundling Hospital.  Such a sweet scene--at first
sight at all events.  The little women, like little nuns, in their
linen caps and aprons, singing like little angels in their sweet
young voices.  But my God, what tragedy lurked behind that picture
also!

"I did not hear much of the sermon for thinking of the mothers of
these 'children of shame' and the conditions under which they must
have given birth to them--sometimes in a garret, in secret, alone,
driven to dementia by a sense of impending shame.  How often a poor
miserable girl in the degradation of childbirth (which should be the
crown of a woman's glory) must have been tempted to kill her child in
fear of the fate that awaited both it and her!  And to think of the
giant arm of the mighty law coming down on a creature like that to
punish her!  Lord, what crimes are committed in the name of Justice!

"There you are now!  That's what you've done for me.  'Deed you have
though.  It's truth enough, girl.  You've opened my ears to the cry
of the voice of suffering woman, and that is the saddest sound,
perhaps, that breaks on the shores of life.  And the moral of it all
is that if I do become a Judge (God knows I'm almost afraid to hope
for it) you must be my helper, my inspirer, the tower of my strength.

"Oh, my darling, how much I love you!  It seems to me that I lost all
my life until I came to love you.  How well I recall the blessed day
when I loved you first!  It was the first time I saw you--the first
time really.  Don't you remember?  In the glen, that glorious autumn
afternoon.  The vision has followed me ever since and I wish I could
blot out every day of my life when I have not thought of you.

"There you are again!  You see what you've done, ma'am.  But I'm not
always on the heights.  What do you think?  I've bought a motor car,
and every morning I go up to Hampstead with a teacher to learn to
drive.

"It is for our honeymoon.  You called me a Viking once, and I'm not
going to be a Viking for nothing.  As soon as you are mine, mine
wholly, I am going to pick you up and carry you off to all the
inaccessible places in the island--the bent-strewn plains of Ayre,
where a lighthouse-man lives alone with his wife and nothing else
save the sea for company; the shepherd's hut on Snaefell, where there
is nothing but the sky, and the sandy headlands of the Calf with the
mists of the Atlantic sweeping over them.

"Meantime, think of me in a box of a bedroom five storeys up, with
the roaring tide of London traffic running, like a Canadian river,
sixty feet below, and write--write, write!  Tell me what is happening
in the 'lil islan'' which is lying asleep to-night in the Irish Sea.
God bless it, and all the kind and cheery souls in it!  God bless it
for evermore!

"STOWELL."



II

"MY DEAR VICTOR,--You cannot imagine what a joy your letter was.  Do
you know it was my first love-letter?  Of course I behaved like a
dairymaid--took it up to bed, put it on my pillow and said, 'You are
Victor, you know,' and laid my cheek on it.

"Whatever have you done to make me so foolish?  Was it only half of
you (the physical half) that went away, leaving the spirit half with
me?  I want the other half, though, the substantial half, so tell
your Home Secretary (I like him) to hurry up and send you home.

"You do wrong not to see the beautiful women, dear.  The woman who is
afraid of her husband looking at other women is building her house on
the sand.  I should like to say to myself, 'He has seen the loveliest
women in the world, yet he comes back to me.'

"All the same I love you for looking at the darker side of woman's
life.  It is more apparent in the greater communities, but it is
here, too, and that is why I am looking eagerly forward to your
appointment as Deemster, which will make you a creator of the law as
well as an administrator of it.  You must have no misgivings, though.
Why should you?  A man who has a stainless scutcheon is just what
women want for their champion.  And if I may help you how happy I
shall be!

"You ask what is happening in the island.  Well, apart from politics
(of which I know nothing except that they seem to be always the same
story) the only thing of consequence is the case of a young woman
charged with the murder of her illegitimate child.

"She is a country girl who, having run away from home some months
ago, returned recently very ill and was put to bed, and remained
there until arrested.  But in the meantime the body of a new-born
infant was found under a large stone half a mile away, and it is said
to have been hers.

"She denies all knowledge of the child, but the medical testimony
seems to be sadly against her, and there is some direct evidence
also, though it is not above the suspicion of being tainted by malice.

"She has been up before the High Bailiff and committed to the next
sitting of the General Gaol Delivery, so you are likely to hear more
of the case.  Poor thing, whatever her sin, she has already had a
fearful punishment, for she is very ill, having apparently exposed
herself to dreadful sufferings in the hope of preventing her baby
from being born alive.

"She is now in the prison hospital, and this morning I drove over to
see her.  A good-looking girl, almost beautiful (with the sort of
beauty which attracts the less worthy side of a certain type of man),
but her cheeks are now terribly thin and pale, and her big black eyes
(her finest feature) have that wild look which one sees in a captured
animal that gazes and gazes.

"I liked the girl, but she did not seem to like me.  In fact she
shrank from me (the only girl who ever did so) and when I tried to be
nice to her, and asked her to trust me, and to tell me who was
responsible for her condition, so that I might find him and fetch him
to her, she broke into a flood of fierce denial.

"Either the girl is a great story-teller or she is a great heroine,
and I am half inclined to think she may be both.  My guess would be
that she is trying to shield the guilty man.  The clothes she had
worn were better than a farm girl could afford to buy, and that
suggests that her fellow-sinner belongs to a class above her.

"Isn't it shocking that the law provides no punishment for the man
who ruins a girl's life--ruining her soul at the same time, for that
is what it often comes to.  But, please God, you will be on the
bench, so she is sure to have justice.

"Our Society has decided to undertake her defence, but we are at a
loss whom to employ.  We cannot afford a high fee either--ten or
fifteen guineas at the outside.  Can you suggest anybody?

"I intend to be present at the trial, and to stand by the girl's
side, for she will have nobody else, poor creature.  But oh, how I
wish I might plead for her!  Although her fellow-sinner will not
stand for judgment, how I should like to tear the mask from his face
and cry in open court, 'Thou art the man!'

"Good-night, dear!  It's 10 p.m., and such delicious dreams are
waiting for me upstairs.  Bring your motor-car back, and when the
time comes (I shall not keep you long) you may carry me off to
wherever you please.

"Listen, I am going to say something.  There is not much in the heart
of a woman that you don't know already, but I am about to let you
into a secret.  The woman who does not want her husband (if only he
loves her) to control her, command her, and do anything and
everything he likes with her, isn't really a woman at all--she's only
a mistake for a man!

"Victor, after that burst of nonsense I cannot conclude without
telling you again how much I love you.  I love you for yourself, just
yourself alone, quite apart from anything you may do or have done,
whether good or bad, right or wrong, and I shall go on loving you
whatever may happen to you in the future, whether you become Deemster
or not, go up or go down.

"But when I think of the life that is so surely before you, and that
I shall walk through it by your side, perfectly united with you,
sharing the same hopes and aims and desires, enjoying the same
sunshine and weathering the same storms, I have a vision of happiness
that makes me cry for joy.

"Come back to me soon, dearest.  The spring is here in all her
youthful beauty; the daffodils are nodding; the gorse on the hedges
is a blaze of gold; the sky is blue; the sea is lying asleep under a
divine shimmer of sunshine, and your island--your island that is
going to be so proud of you--is waiting to clasp you to her heart.

"And so am I, my Victor!

"FENELLA."



III

"MY OWN DEAR FENELLA,--I am so troubled about the young woman who is
to be charged with the murder of her child that (time being short) I
must write at once on the subject.  It looks like a case of the
temporary mania which so often prompts women to take life (their own
or their children's) in the hope of avoiding shame.

"God, when I think of it, that in all ages of the world tens of
thousands of women have gone through that fiery furnace and that
never one man since the days of Adam has come within sight of it, I
want to go down on my knees to the meanest and lowest of them as the
martyrs of humanity.

"Infanticide is of course a serious crime in any country, and
especially serious in the Isle of Man now, when the Governor has made
up his mind to show no mercy to persons guilty of fatal violence.
But the killing of a new-born child is usually treated as felonious
homicide.  Therefore, if you carry out your intention of standing by
the girl's side, you may safely tell her (in order to save her from
possible shock) that even a verdict of guilty will not mean death.

"How I wish you could plead for the poor thing!  But instruct counsel
for the defence and you will really be pleading, and I, for one, if I
am present, will hear your quivering voice in every word he says.

"As for the choice of an Advocate--why not Alick Gell?  He has not
had too many chances, poor chap, and it will hearten him (he was
rather down when I saw him last) to be entrusted with a serious case
like this.

"Tell him to look up Galabin and Murrell on Forensic Medicine--he'll
find both in the Law Library.  The first step is to make sure that
the poor creature (I assume she is not too well educated) has not
mistaken infanticide for concealment; and the next, to insist on
proof of 'a live birth,' which it is practically impossible to
establish (except on the girl's confession) in a case of solitary
delivery.

"Yes, you are almost certainly right in thinking she is trying to
shield the guilty man, and, criminal though she is, she may be (as
you say) an absolute heroine.  In that event I trust it may not fall
to my lot to try her.  God save me from sitting in judgment on a
woman who stands silent in her shame to shield the honour of the man
she loves!

"But as for hunting down the guilty man, that (don't you think so?)
is perhaps another matter.  If it has to be done at all it is only a
woman--a pure and stainless woman--who has a right to do it.  No man
who knows himself, and how near every mother's son of us has been to
the verge of the pit, will be the first to throw a stone.  You
remember--'But for the grace of God there goes John Wesley.'  Oh, my
darling, how can I ever be grateful enough for what you have done for
me....

* * * * * * *

"Helloa!  The page boy has just been up with a letter from the Home
Secretary.  'I have the pleasure to inform you that the King has been
pleased to approve of your appointment to the position of the
Deemster of the Isle of Man....'

"How glorious!  Here I have been all day saying to myself, 'Who, in
God's name, are you that you should be Judge over anybody?' and now
I'm glad--damned glad, there is no other word for it.

"I shall telegraph the news to you in a few minutes, but I feel as if
I want to take the first boat home and become my own messenger.  That
is impossible, for I have to call on the Lord Chancellor to-morrow
about my Commission.  And then I have to see to the transport of my
car, and the purchase of my Judge's wig and gown.  But wait, only
wait!  Three days more I shall have you in my arms.

"My respectful greetings to the Governor.  Say I know how much I owe
to him for this unprecedented appointment.  Say, too, I shall hold
myself in readiness for the ceremony of the swearing-in, whenever he
desires it to take place; also for the next Court of General Gaol
Delivery if Deemster Taubman is still down with his rheumatism.

"And now bless you again, dearest, for all your beautiful faith in
me.  God helping me, I'll do my best to deserve it.  But you must be
my guardian watcher, my sentinel, my star.

"What a dear old world it is, darling!  It seems as if there ought to
be no suffering of any kind in it now--now that the sky is so bright
for you and me.

"VICTOR."

"P.S.  _Important_.  Don't forget to employ Gell in that case of the
girl who killed her baby.  Alick's her man.  _Mind you, though--he
must compel her to tell him everything._"




CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

ALICK GELL

For ten days Alick Gell had been searching for Bessie Collister.
When he first read her letter on reaching Derby Haven (he read it a
hundred times afterwards) he remembered something his father had said
in taunting him--"You'll not be the first by a long way!"  Then he
recalled the case of the Peel fisherman and a black thought came
hurtling down on him.  At the next moment he hated himself for it.

"What devil out of hell made me think of that?" he asked himself.

But why had Bessie run away from him?  The only explanation he could
find was the one Stowell had given on the steamboat--women had
illnesses which men knew nothing about, and in the throes of their
mania they sometimes hid themselves, like sick animals, from their
friends--most of all from those they loved.  Were not the newspapers
full of such cases?

"That's it!  That's it!  My poor girl!"

Having arrived at this explanation of Bessie's flight, he had no
compunction about going in search of her.  Her malady might be only
temporary, but, while it lasted, Heaven alone knew what dangers she
might expose herself to.

At first it occurred to him to call in the assistance of the police.
But no, that would lead to publicity, and publicity to
misunderstanding.  Bessie would get better; he must keep her name
clear of scandal.  His voice shook and his lip trembled as he told
the Misses Brown to say nothing to anybody.  His warning was
unnecessary.  The terrified old maids, who had at length begun to
scent the truth, had decided to keep their own counsel.

Within half an hour Alick was on the road.  He had no doubt of
overtaking Bessie--she was only half an hour gone.  But which way
would she go?  It was easier to say which way she would not go.  She
would not go to the north of the island where she would be known to
nearly everybody.  Above all, she would not go home--the home of Dan
Baldromma.

All that day he wandered through Castletown--every street and alley.
At nightfall he was back at Derby Haven.  Had Bessie returned?  No!
Had anything been heard of her?  Nothing!

Next day he set out on a wider journey--all the towns and villages of
the south, Port St. Mary, Port Erin, Fleswick, Ballasalla, Colby,
Ballabeg and Cregneash.  He walked from daylight to dark, and asked
no questions, but at every open door he paused and listened.  When he
saw a farm-house that stood back from the high road he made excuse to
go up to it--a drink of milk or water.

Day followed day without result.  His heart was sinking.  More than
once he met somebody whom he knew and had to make excuse for his
rambling.  Wonderful what a walking tour did to blow the cobwebs from
a fellow's brain after he had been shut up too long in an office!
His friends looked after him with a strange expression.  He had been
something of a dandy, but his hair was uncombed and his linen was
becoming soiled and even dirty.

At length he became a prey to illusions.  He always slept in the last
house he came to, and one night, in a fisherman's cottage near
Fleswick, he was awakened by the wind blowing over the thatch.  He
thought it sounded like the voice of Bessie, and that she was
wandering over the highway in the darkness, alone and distraught.

Next day he began to inquire if anything had been seen of such a
person.  He was told of a young woman who, found walking barefoot on
the lonely road to Dreamlang, had been taken to the asylum, and he
hurried there to inquire.  No, it was not Bessie.  Some poor young
wife who (only six months married and beginning to be happy in the
prospect of a child) had lost her husband in an accident at the mines
at Foxdale.

The dread of suicide took hold of him.  One day a fish-cadger on the
road told him that a young woman's body had been washed ashore at
Peel.  Again it was nothing--nothing to him.  The wife of the captain
of a Norwegian schooner which had been wrecked off Contrary--with her
eyes open and her baby locked in her rigid arms.

Alick's heart was failing him.  Do what he would to keep down evil
thoughts they were getting the better of him.  Sometimes he rested on
the seat that usually stands outside the whitewashed porch of a Manx
cottage, and although he thought he said so little he found that the
women (especially such of them as were mothers of grown-up girls)
seemed to divine the object of his journey.

"Aw, yes, that's the way with them, the boghs, especially when
there's a man bothering them.  Was there any man, now...."

But Alick was up and gone before they could finish their question.

Thus ten days passed.  Absorbed in his search, perplexed and
tortured, he had seen no newspaper and heard nothing of what was
happening in the island.  Suddenly it occurred to him that Bessie
could not have left him so long without news of her.  She could not
be so cruel; she must have written, and her letter must be lying at
his office.

People who knew him, and saw him return to Douglas, could scarcely
recognise him in the pale, unwashed, unshaven man who climbed the
steps from the station, looking like a drunkard who had been sleeping
out in the fields.

His chambers, when he turned the key (he had no clerk now), were
stuffy and cheerless.  The ashes of his last fire were on the hearth,
and his desk was covered with dust.  Behind the door (he had no
letter-box) a number of circulars and bills lay on the ground, but,
running his trembling fingers through them, he found no letter from
Bessie.

There was a large and bulky envelope, though, with the seal of
Government House, and marked "Immediate."  What could it be?  On the
top of a thick body of folio paper he found a letter.  It was from
Fenella Stanley.


    "DEAR MR. GELL,--At the suggestion of Mr. Stowell, who is still
    in London, I am writing on behalf of the Women's Protection
    League, to ask you if you can undertake the defence of the young
    woman in the north of the island who is to be charged with the
    murder of her new-born child."


Alick paused a moment to draw breath.


    "You will see by the report of the High Bailiff's inquiry and the
    copy of the Depositions which I enclose that the girl denies
    everything, and that her mother supports her, but the evidence is
    only too sadly against her--particularly that of the doctors and
    of two neighbours who live higher up the glen."


Alick felt his heart stop and his whole body grew cold.


    "Her step-father...."


The letter almost dropped from his fingers.


    "Her step-father has not been asked by the prosecution to depose,
    and it is doubtful if the defence ought to call him."


He was becoming dizzy.  The lines of the letter were running into
each other.


    "Innocent or guilty, the girl has suffered terribly.  She has
    been several days in hospital at Ramsey, but she was to be
    removed to Castle Rushen this morning.  Her case is to come on
    next week at the Court of General Gaol Delivery, so perhaps you
    will send me a telegram immediately saying if you can take up the
    defence.

    "As you see the poor creature is herself an illegitimate
    child--the name by which she is commonly known being Bessie
    Collister."


Alick shrieked.  He had seen the blow coming, but when it came it
fell on him like a thunderbolt.

It was all a lie--a damned lie!  Nobody would make him believe it.
Bessie arrested for the murder of her child!  She had never had a
child.

He leapt to his feet and tramped the room on stiffened limbs and with
a heart throbbing with anger.  Then, half afraid, but doing his best
to compose himself, he took the report and the Depositions out of the
big envelope, and, sitting before the dead hearth with his shaking
feet on the fender, and holding the folio pages in his dead-cold
hands, he read the evidence.

As he did so he shrieked again, but this time with laughter.  What a
tissue of manifest lies!  The Skillicornes and their quarrel with Dan
Baldromma--what a malicious conspiracy!  Lord, what blind fools the
police could be!  And the Attorney, had he come to his second
childhood?

Again and again Alick thumped the desk with his fist and filled the
air of the room with the dust that rose in the sunshine which was now
pouring through the windows.

There was a photograph of Bessie on the mantelpiece--a copy of the
same that she had sent to Stowell.  He snatched it up and kissed it.
Never had Bessie been so dear to him as now--now when she was in
prison under a false accusation.  And the best of it was that he was
to get her off.  He must see her at once, though.

"My poor girl!  In Castle Rushen!"

The first thing to do was to wash and change (he cut himself badly in
shaving), but in less than half-an-hour he was at the Post-office
telegraphing to Fenella.

"Gladly."

Brief as the message was, the clerk at the counter could hardly
decipher the agitated handwriting.

A few minutes later he was at the Police-office, asking the Chief
Constable for an order to allow him, as Bessie's advocate, to see her
alone in her cell.

At two o'clock he was back at the railway-station, taking the train
for Castletown.  As he stepped into his carriage the newsboys were
calling the contents of the evening paper:

_Victor Stowell appointed Deemster._

Glorious!  Bessie would have a human being on the bench.  Thank God
for that anyway!



II

"I don't know what you are talking about--I really don't.  You make
me laugh.  Whatever will you say next!  I was ill and I came home to
have my mother nurse me, and that was all I knew until Cain, the
constable, came to bring me here."

It was Bessie before the High Bailiff.  Her face was thin and pale,
and she was clutching the rail of the dock in an effort to keep
herself erect, while her shrill voice echoed to the roof.

The magistrate was about to commit her to prison when Dr. Clucas rose
in the body of the Court-house.

"Your worship," he said (his voice was husky and his eyes had a look
of tears), "the defendant is suffering from the temporary mania which
is not unusual in such cases.  I suggest that she should be sent to
the hospital."

Bessie fainted.  The next thing she knew was that she was in bed in a
hospital ward, and that another doctor (a younger man with thin hair
and a large pugnacious mouth) was leaning over her, and laying his
hand on her breast.  She pushed it off, and then he said, in an
authoritative tone,

"My good woman, if you are innocent, as you say, the best proof you
can give is that of a medical examination."

At this Bessie broke into fierce wrath.

"If you touch me again," she cried, "I'll tear your eyes out!"

Then she fainted once more, and for two days lay in a strong
delirium.  When she came to herself a nurse with a kind face was by
her side, saying "Hush!" and doing something at her breast with a
glass instrument.

She knew she had been delirious (having a vague memory of crying
"Alick!  Alick!" as she returned to consciousness) and was in fear of
what she might have said.

"Is it morning?" she asked.

"Yes, dear."

"Then it's the next day?"

"The next but one."

"Have I been wandering?"

"A little."

"Did I call for anybody?"

"Yes."

She dare not ask whom, but lay wondering if Alick knew where she was
and what had happened to her.  After a while she said,

"Is it in the papers?"

The nurse nodded, and after a moment, with her eyes down, Bessie said,

"Has anybody been here to ask for me?"

"Yes, your mother--she comes night and morning."

"Nobody else?"

"Nobody."

Bessie broke into sobs and turned her face to the wall.  Alick knew!
He had given her up!  She had lost him!

When she recovered from an agony of tears her eyes were glittering
and her heart was bitter.  What did she care what became of her now?
They might do what they liked with her.  Deny?  What was the good?
She would deny no longer.  She would tell the truth about everything.

Then Fenella Stanley came.  Bessie thought she liked Miss Stanley
better than any woman, except her mother, she had ever known.  But
that only made it the harder to hold to her resolution, for if she
told the truth she would surely hurt Fenella.  "Oh, why do you come
to torture me?" she cried, when Fenella asked who was her "friend."
And not another word would she say.

Two days later, before breakfast, Cain, the constable, came with a
sergeant of police to take her to Castle Rushen.  She did not care!
Why should she?  But as she was leaving the hospital the nurse with
the kind face whispered,

"Good-bye, dear.  You're all right now.  I'm going away and will say
nothing."

It was a cruelly beautiful morning, with a golden shimmer from the
rising sun upon a tranquil sea.  The railway station was full of
townspeople going up to Douglas (it was market day there), so Bessie
was hurried into the last compartment.

When the train ran into the country a flood of memories swept over
her and she found it hard to keep back her tears.  The young lambs
were skipping on the hill-sides; the sheep were bleating; girls in
sun bonnets were coming from the whitewashed outhouses to drive the
cattle into the fields.

When they drew up at the station for the glen the shingly platform
was crowded with passengers waiting for the train--rosy-faced women
with broad open baskets of butter and eggs, and elderly farmers
smoking their strong thick twist and surrounded by their panting
dogs.  Bessie knew them all.  At the last moment a young woman in a
low cut blouse ran up--it was Susie Stephen.

Bessie crept into a corner of the carriage and closed her eyes.  But
she could not shut out everything.  Over the rumble of the wheels,
when the train started again, she heard shrieks of laughter from the
compartment in front.  The elderly men were jesting in their free way
with the girls, and the girls, nothing loth, were answering them back.

At the junction of St. John's, the train had to stop for carriages
from Peel to be linked on to it, and while the coupling was going on
one of the passengers strolled along the platform.  It was Willie
Teare, who had wanted to marry Bessie, and he saw her behind the
constables.  At the next moment a throng of girls gathered outside
her window, but the constables pulled down the blinds.

"Take your seats!  Take your seats!"

The train went on.  There was no more laughter from the passengers in
the compartment in front.  Bessie understood--they were whispering
about her.

Her heart was becoming hard.  Sitting in the darkened carriage, with
spears of sunlight flashing from the flapping blinds, she heard the
constables talking about Mr. Stowell.  It was reported that he had
been made Deemster.  He would make a good Deemster, too.

"A taste young, maybe, but clever--clever uncommon."

On reaching Douglas, where they had to change into the train for
Castletown, Bessie was being hustled across the platform, between the
constables, when she became aware of a crowd of women and girls who
were crushing up to stare at her.  There was a whispering and
muttering.

"There she is!"  "Serve her right, _I_ say!"

Half-an-hour later she was in Castle Rushen.  The darkness within was
blinding after the sunshine without.  A woman with short and
difficult breathing was moving about her.  It was Mrs. Mylrea, the
female warder.  She took off Bessie's cloak and hat, and, leaving her
a brown blanket and a hard pillow, went away without speaking a word.

But then came Vondy, the head jailer, with words enough for both of
them.  Bessie did not know she was crying until the old man, in his
blundering way, began to comfort her.

"Tut, tut, gel!  They're not for hanging you yet at all.  While
there's life there's hope!"

Left alone at last, and her eyes accustomed to the darkness, she saw
where she was--in a stone vault that had a small grill in the door
(behind which a candle was burning) and a barred and deeply-recessed
window, near the ceiling, through which a dull ray of borrowed light
was coming, for the prison overlooked the harbour on the west of the
Castle.

By this time her tears were turned to gall.  A frightful revulsion
had come over her soul.  What had she done to deserve all this?  The
injustice of it, the cruelty, the barbarity, the hypocrisy!

Men were all alike.  Go on, she knew what men were!  A man only
wanted one thing of a girl, and when he got that he forgot all about
her.  Alick Gell was the best of them, yet even he had forsaken her
now that she was in trouble.

She had never intended to do harm to anybody, and yet there she was,
and would remain, until they came to take her to the Court-house on
the other side of the Castle-yard.  Then hundreds of eyes would be on
her (women's eyes too) and when she raised her own she would see Mr.
Stowell on the bench.

What a mockery!  Mr. Stowell her judge!  What would he do?  His
"duty" of course.  All right, let him do it!  Only she, too, would do
something.  After he had tried her and sentenced her and finished
with her, she would tell him something.  Why shouldn't she?  And what
did she care what happened to anybody else?  Fenella Stanley was
nothing to her.

Suddenly she thought again about Alick Gell.  If she did what she
intended to do (tell everything) Alick also would be disgraced.  The
shame of her misfortune would follow him to the last day of his life.
Even his own father would cast it up to him.  Hadn't she done enough
harm to Alick already?  If he had deserted her, she had deceived him.
And yet she had deceived him only because she loved him.

"Alick!  Alick!  Alick!"

Her heart was crying.  She was wishing she were dead.

She had flung herself down on her plank bed, with her face to the
blank wall, when she heard the dead beating of footsteps in the
corridor outside.  At the next moment the door of her cell was opened
and Tommy Vondy, the jailer, was saying,

"Mr. Alexander Gell, the advocate, to see you alone."



III

"Bessie!"

The jailer had gone.  Alick was breathing quickly in the darkness by
the door, and Bessie was huddled up on the bed, with the dull ray of
reflected light upon her from the wall above.

"Bessie!"

His voice was low and full of tears.  At first she did not answer.

"It's Alick.  Won't you speak to me?"

"Go away!"

He could hear that she was crying.

"You won't send me away, Bessie.  I have been looking for you all
over the island.  It was only to-day I heard where you were and what
had happened.  I have come to help you--to save you."

He saw the dark form rising on the bed.

"Do you know what they say I did?"

"Yes, I know everything."

"And you don't believe it?"

"Not one word of it."

"You think I am innocent?"

"I am sure you are."

"Alick!"

With a great sob that shook her whole body she rose to her feet and
flung herself upon him.  For a long time they stood clasped in each
other's arms, and crying like children.  Then they sat down side by
side on the plank bed.  His arm was about her, and her head was on
his shoulder.

He was trying to make his voice cheerful, though it cracked sorely,
while he reproved her for her tears.  She would soon be free to leave
that place.  There was really nothing against her.  Never had there
been such a trumped-up case.  The police must be crazy.

She clung to him with a frightened tenderness while he told her of
the letter from Fenella Stanley asking him to take up the defence on
behalf of the Society.

"Of course I should have taken it up in any case, you know.  And now
you must authorise me to defend you."

She was startled.  In the half darkness he saw her pale face (so pale
and so thin) raised to his with a frightened look.

"You?"

"Why not, dear?  I'm an advocate.  You don't suppose I'm going to
leave your defence to anybody else, do you?"

"No, no!  You must not!"

"But why?  Can't you trust me, Bess?"

"It isn't that."

"What then?"

Bessie did not answer him, and he went on talking, though his voice
was breaking again.  He knew he was not a born lawyer and a great
speaker like Stowell, but the facts were so clear that he had only to
state them and they would speak for themselves.

A fierce struggle was going on in Bessie's soul.  He whom she had
wronged (never having wronged anybody else), he for whom she had
committed her crime, wanted her to authorise him to stand up in Court
and say she had not committed it.  She had deceived him once--could
she deceive him again?

"No, no, no!  I cannot!"

Alick was puzzled.  "What do you mean, Bessie?  Why shouldn't I be
your advocate?"

"I don't want any advocate."

"But you must have one.  It isn't enough to be not guilty--we must
prove you're not.  Why shouldn't I do so?"

At length she was forced to make some explanation.  The police were
determined to have her condemned; therefore he would lose his case
and that would go against him.

"Good gracious, girl, what nonsense!  Anybody may lose a case.  The
greatest lawyers have lost cases.  But it's impossible that I should
lose this one.  And even if I lose it--do you know what I shall do?"

"What?"

"Wait outside the prison door until you come out and marry you the
same day to show that I believe in you still."

At that Bessie was in floods of tears again.  And again they cried in
each other's arms like children.

Then Alick, after drying his eyes in the darkness, put on a brave
air, and told her what she had to do.

"Listen to me now.  This is a low conspiracy, but if we are to defeat
it, you must stick to your story.  I shall have to put you in the
box, for you must leave the Court without a stain on your character.
First of all you must say...."

And then sitting by Bessie's side in the dark cell, with only the
candle looking in on them from the outside ledge of the grill, he
rehearsed the facts as they were to be given in Court--how by the
cruelty of her step-father she had been shut out of the house late at
night and had had to go elsewhere; how she had returned, being
unwell, and wishing her mother to nurse her, and how she had been put
to bed and had never left it until the constables came to take her
away.

Bessie listened in silence, gazing before her like a captured sheep,
and answering only by a nodding of her head.

"If the Attorney asks you anything else--no matter what--you must say
you know nothing about it---do you understand?"

"Yes."

"Say it after me then--'I know nothing about it.'"

Bessie repeated the words like a woman talking in her sleep---"'I
know nothing about it.'"

"That's all right.  Leave the rest to me."

"You think I shall get off?"

"I'm sure of it.  If the General Gaol is held next week, we'll be
married the week after."

"But, Alick?"

"Yes."

"Your father and sisters, will they not always cast it up at you that
your wife has been tried for...."

"Let them!  If they do the Isle of Man will be dead to me for ever.
We'll go abroad--to America perhaps--and leave everything and
everybody behind us."

Bessie was crying once more, and Alick, to conceal his own tears, was
going off with great bustle.

"Good-bye!  I'll be here again to-morrow.  And oh, what do you think,
Bess?  Great news!  Stowell has been made Deemster.  So if the good
Lord in Heaven will only keep that damned old Taubman in bed a little
longer with his rheumatism, Stowell will be on the bench and you'll
have a fair trial at all events.  Good-bye!"

For the next half-hour Bessie sobbed with joy.  Tell the truth and
destroy Alick's faith in her?  Never!  Never in this world!




CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

THE DEEMSTER'S OATH

It was the morning of the day of the swearing-in of the new Deemster
at Castle Rushen.  The Bishop had asked permission to solemnise the
ceremony with a religious service--a custom long unobserved.

The service was held in a groined chamber of moderate size within
walls thirty feet thick, once the banqueting-hall of the Kings of
Man, now the jail chapel, with an atmosphere that seemed to be
compounded equally of the intoxicated laughter of the old revellers
and the moans of the condemned prisoners.

For the event of the day the chill place had been suitably decorated.
Flags hung on the tarred walls, red cushions from the neighbouring
church had been laid on the bare benches; a carpet had been stretched
down the aisle of the flagged floor; a white embroidered altar-cloth
covered the plain communion table, from which the light of four
candles in silver candlesticks flickered on the faces of the small
congregation--chiefly officials, with their wives and daughters.

Shortly before eleven, the hour fixed for the service, Stowell
entered, wearing for the first time the wig and gown of a judge, and
he was led to one of three arm-chairs at the front.  A little later
there came through the thick walls the sound of soldiery clashing
arms outside the Castle, and at the next moment the Governor arrived
in General's uniform of red and gold, with Fenella behind him in a
large spring hat (her face glowing with animation), and they took the
two remaining chairs.  Then the Bishop in his scarlet robes came in,
preceded by his crozier, and the service began.

It was short but solemn.  First a psalm of David ("He shall judge thy
people with righteousness and thy poor with judgment"); then an
epistle to the Romans ("Owe no man anything"); and then an improvised
prayer by the Bishop, asking the Almighty to grant His strength and
wisdom to His servant who was shortly to take the solemn oath of his
great office, that he might deliver the poor and needy, deal
faithfully with all men, and show mercy to such as had erred and
sinned.  Then came the hymn "Thou Judge of quick and dead," and
finally the Benediction.

Stowell was strongly affected.  He knelt at the prayer, and when the
service was at an end and it was time to go, Fenella had to touch his
shoulder.

The sun was bright outside, and they blinked their eyes as they
crossed the courtyard to the Court-house.

The stately little chamber was full, save for the seats that had been
reserved for the officials.  There was a flash of faces, a waft of
perfume, a flutter of handkerchiefs and a hum of whispering as the
Governor stepped up to the scarlet dais, with Stowell following him
and taking for the first time the seat of the Judge.

People who had been talking of the youth of the new Deemster were
heard to say that in his judge's wig he seemed older than they had
expected and so like the portrait on the wall that one could almost
fancy that his father was looking through the windows of his eyes.

The proceedings began with the Governor calling upon Stowell for his
Commission, and then reading it aloud--"Our trusty and well-beloved
Victor Stowell to be Deemster of this isle."

After that everybody stood while the new Judge took the oath of
fealty to the King.  Then the Deemster's clerk, Joshua Scarff, in his
coloured spectacles, handed up a quarto copy of the Bible and a deep
hush fell on the assembly, for the time had come for the Deemster's
oath.

The Governor and Stowell rose again, but all others remained seated.
Each laid one hand on the open Book, and the Governor read the oath,
clause by clause in loud, strong tones that seemed to smite the walls
as with blows.  And, clause by clause, Stowell repeated it after him
in a lower voice that was sometimes barely audible:

"_By this Book and the holy contents thereof...._"

"_By this Book and the holy contents thereof...._"

"_And by all the wonderful works which God hath miraculously wrought
in heaven and on the earth beneath in six days and seven nights, I,
Victor Christian Stowell...._"

"_I, Victor Christian Stowell, do swear that I will, without respect
or fear or friendship, love or gain, consanguinity or affinity, envy
or malice, execute the laws of this isle justly betwixt our Sovereign
Lord the King and his subjects within the isle, and betwixt party and
party, man and man, man and woman...._"

"_.... man and woman ...._"

"_.... as indifferently as the herring bone doth lie down the middle
of the fish._"

There was a deep silence until the oath was ended and then a general
drawing of breath.

The Governor and the new Deemster sat and the Clerk of the Rolls
handed up the Liber Juramentorum, the Book of Oaths, a large volume
in faded leather with leaves of discoloured parchment.

It was observed, and afterwards remarked upon, that when Stowell took
up the pen to sign he hesitated for a moment, and then wrote his name
rapidly and nervously, and that, in the silence, a diamond ring which
he wore on his right hand (it was a present from Fenella) clashed
with a discordant sound against the glass tray as he threw the pen
back.

The business being over, the Bishop gave out the hymn that is sung at
the close of nearly all Manx festivals, "O God, our help," and all
rose and sang.

Stowell rose with the rest, but he did not sing.  He was no longer
conscious of the eyes that were on him.  The emotion which he had
been struggling to repress had at length conquered his self-control.
While the Court-house throbbed with the singing he was thinking of
the Judges who had stood in the same place and taken that oath before
him.  There had been a thousand years of them.

He turned to the eastern wall and his father's melancholy eyes seemed
to look at him.  "Yes, you too," they seemed to say, "must now do the
right, whatever it may cost you.  You are no longer yourself only.
The souls of all your predecessors have this day entered into your
soul.  You must consider yourself no more.  You must be just--or
perish."

The hymn came to an end and there was a shuffling of feet like the
pattering of water in the harbour at the top of the tide.  The next
thing Stowell knew was that he was unrobed and going down the
Deemster's private staircase to the Court-yard of the Castle.

A large company was there waiting to congratulate him.  Janet (he had
ordered that a front seat should be reserved for her) was holding a
little court of elderly ladies, to whom she was relating wonderful
stories of his childhood.  She broke away from them to kiss him.  And
then she kissed Fenella also and whispered,

"Don't forget to send him home in time, dear."

"I'll not forget," said Fenella.

And then she, on her part, with a face aflame, whispered something to
the Governor, who, shaking hands all round, was making ready to go.

"What?  You want to return in the automobile?  Very well, off you go!
The Attorney will take pity on your forsaken father."

Outside the gate there was a great crowd, behind a regiment of
red-coated soldiers, and when the Governor and the Attorney-General
drove off they broke into a cheer which drowned the clash of steel
and the first bars of the National Anthem.

But that was as nothing compared with the demonstration when Stowell
went off in his car, sitting at the wheel, with Fenella beside him.

"Long live the new Deemster--hip, hip--hip!"

The great shout, the mighty roar of voices, brought a surging to
Stowell's throat and a tightening to his breast.  It followed his
car, going off in the sunshine, until it shot over the bridge that
crossed the harbour, and there Fenella turned back her glistening wet
eyes and bowed.

* * * * * * *

Others heard it.  The prisoners in their dark cells, rising from
their plank beds and hunching their shoulders in the chill air,
listened to the joyous sounds from without, which broke the usual
silence of their gloomy walls, and said to themselves,

"What are they doing now, I wonder?"

There were seven prisoners in the Castle that day.  One of them was
Bessie Collister.



II

"Addio!  See you at supper!"

Fenella was waving to the Governor and the Attorney, and laughing at
their slow speed, as she and Stowell shot past them before they had
left the town.

The morning was beautiful, the sky blue, the sea glistening under a
fresh breeze.  They were running, bounding, leaping along the roads,
and talking loudly above the hum of the car.  Stowell had caught the
contagion of Fenella's high spirits and awakened from his long trance.

"Well, what did you think of it?"

"The ceremony?  Lovely!"

"But you were crying all the time!"

"It must have been through looking at you, then.  There was everybody
doing you honour, and you looked like a man going to execution."

He laughed; she laughed; they laughed together, but they had their
serious moments for all that.  One of them came when she spoke of the
Oath, saying how quaint and amusing it was.

"A little frightening, though," said Stowell.

"Frightening?"

"Well, yes, I thought so.  Made one feel as if old Job had had
something to say for himself.  Who was I to judge others, having done
wrong myself?"

"Really!  You wicked fellow!  I wasn't aware you had so many sins to
answer for.  But _I_ know!"

And then, in flash after flash, each sparkling like a diamond, came
pictures of his predecessors.  The solemn judge; the jesting judge;
the judge who suspected all men of lying; the judge who believed
everybody told the truth; the sour, dour, swearing and hanging judge,
who served Justice as if she had been a Juggernaut, and the gay Judge
who bought and sold her as he did his mistresses.

"What a procession!  And the question was, which kind were you going
to belong to--eh?"

Again he laughed; they both laughed; and the car flew on.  Another
serious moment came.  He mentioned the Book of Oaths, saying that
while turning over its leaves with their faded ink he had been seized
with a sudden fear of writing his name, whereupon Fenella, with a
mischievous look of gravity, cried again,

"_I_ know.  You thought you were signing your death-warrant."

Yet another serious moment came when she asked him if he had not been
proud of the send-off his countrymen had given him at the Castle
gate.  He replied that he would have been so but for the wretched
thought that if anything happened to him their love would as suddenly
turn to hate, and they would howl as loudly as they had cheered.

"But what nonsense!" cried Fenella.  "Love--what I call love--is not
like that.  It never dies and never changes."

"Never?"

"Never!  If I loved anybody and anything happened, I should fight the
world for him."

"Even if he were in the wrong?"

"Goodness yes!  Where would be the merit of fighting for him if he
were in the right?"

"Darling!" cried Stowell, and, the road being clear, and nobody in
sight, he had to slow down the car to kiss her.

After that he threw off the solemnity of the ceremony and gave
himself up to the intoxication of love.  With Fenella by his side,
looking up at him with her beaming eyes, and laughing with her gay
raillery, what else could he think about?  A few miles out of
Castletown he said,

"Let us take the old road back--it's longer."

"Yes, it's longer."

Every fresh mile was a fresh delight.  How the Spring was coming on!
Look at the gorse, already in its glory!  And the lambs just born and
still trembling on their doddering limbs!  And the tragic old hens
with their fluffy yellow broods!  And then the cottages, half buried
in their big fuchsias!  And the farmers whitewashing their farmhouses
to wipe out the stains of winter!

"What a jolly old world it is, isn't it?" he cried.

"Isn't it?" she answered, and without looking to see if the way was
clear, he had to slow down the car and kiss her again.

A few miles south of Douglas they turned into a road that ran like a
shelf along the edge of the cliffs, with the sea surging on the grey
rocks below, and nothing but its round rim against the sky.  The
breeze was stronger out there, but every gust was a joy.  Stowell
took off his hat and threw it to the bottom of the car.  Fenella
unpinned hers and held it on her knee.  His black hair tumbled over
his forehead, and her bronze-brown hair, loosened from its knot, flew
about her head like a flag.

More than ever now they had the sense of flying.  The sun danced on
the breakers; the foam floated in trembling flakes into the blue sky;
the sea-fowl screamed about them.  With the taste of the brine on
their lips, and the sting of it in their blood, they shouted at every
sight and sound.

"Look at that white horse down there!  See how he rears his head and
plunges forward.  Ah, he has had enough!  No, he's coming on again
with a roar!"

"But look at the sea-holly and the wild thyme!  And the rabbits
scuttling into their holes!  And the goats on the peaks of the
cliffs!"

"Lord!  What a jolly old world it is, though!"

"Didn't you say that before, Victor?"

"Did I?  Well, I'm going to say it every blessed day of my life to
come."

"No, no!  Take care!  We're on the edge of the cliff.  We'll be over!"

"No matter--another kiss!"

The wind was from the south, and the sea, breaking along the broken
line of the coast, was making a sound like that of the ringing of
bells.  It was the phenomenon of nature which gave rise to the
tradition that a town lies buried under the sea at that point, so
that Manx fishermen, coming back from their fishing-ground at
sunrise, will sometimes say, "The wedding bells are ringing!"

Stowell heard them now, over the roar of the waves in their mad
welter, and he cried,

"Listen to the bells!"

"What bells?"

"Our bells!" he cried.

And then at the full power of their lungs, over the hum of the engine
and the boom of the breakers, they sang a verse of the song of the
submerged city:

  "_Here where the ocean is whitened with foam,
  Here stood a city, an altar, a home.
    Hark to the bells that ring under the sea,
      Salve Regina!  Salve Regina!
    Love is the Queen for you and for me,
      Salve, Salve Regina!_"


After that they laughed again, and in sheer gaiety of heart, sang
every nonsensical thing they could think about, until, being
breathless and hoarse and compelled to stop, Fenella said,

"I wonder what those people in the Court-house would think if they
could see their great man now!  But I suppose there has never been a
great man since the beginning of the world but some woman has known
him for what he really is--just a big boy!"

At three o'clock in the afternoon luncheon was over at Government
House; the Governor and the Attorney-General had gone off to smoke;
Miss Green, like a wise woman, had betaken herself to her room, and
Fenella and Stowell were alone.

"Now you must get away to Ballamoar.  I promised Janet to send you
back in time.  Some kind of welcome home, you know."

But Stowell stood over her (she was at the piano) and whispered,

"When?"

She pretended not to understand him, and again, and in a more
emphatic voice, he demanded,

"When?"

She was compelled to comprehend at last, and said that if all went
well, and he behaved himself, and her father approved, a month that
day, perhaps .... no, two months....

"Done!"

A few minutes later they were in the porch for their last parting.
He was holding her in a long embrace.  He felt like Jacob who had
waited so long for Rachel.  He would never be entirely happy until
she was wholly his.

She laughed--a nervous and palpitating laugh.

"Rachel indeed?  Take care it isn't Leah in the morning, Sir."

But seeing the cloud that crossed his face at that word, she kissed
him of herself, saying they belonged to each other already and
nothing could ever separate them.

"Nothing?"

"Nothing!"

And then a long tremulous kiss and he was gone.



III

Home!

He had reached the top of the mountain road, and the setting sun was
striking him full in the face.  To right and left, before and behind,
across the broad waters, stood the dim ghosts of England, Scotland,
Ireland and Wales.  But what did he care for these greater scenes?
Down yonder was Ballamoar, and to him, as to his father, it was
enough to be Deemster of Man and Judge of his own people.

News of his home-coming had been telegraphed from Douglas, and when
his car shot out of the glen the church bells were ringing all over
the Curagh.  People working in the fields climbed the hedges to wave
as he went by, and feeble old men came to the doors of the cottages
to lift up the hooked handles of their sticks to him.

On reaching the entrance to Ballamoar he found a crowd waiting at the
gate, and a streamer from post to post, saying--

     WELCOME TO
  HIS FATHER'S SON.


The hum of the automobile awakened the colony of rooks in the tall
trees, and, swirling above the lawn, they raised a deafening clamour.
This brought from the porch Janet (back from Castletown) with a
flutter of black frocks and white aprons behind her.

A great company of the people of the parish were at tea in the hall,
chiefly women, but of all classes, from the nervous wife of the Vicar
to the widow of the cowman.

"Don't get up," cried Stowell.

He had entered with a shout, tossing his hat on to the settle and
saluting everybody by name, just as he used to do when he was a boy
and annexed them all for relations.

"Sit here, Auntie Kitty.  This is your seat, Alice.  Parson, won't
you take the bottom of the table?  And, Dad" (this to Robbie Creer in
his Sunday homespun), "take my place by Mrs. Creer while I help Jane
with the teacups."

"Did thou hear that, mistress?" said Robbie behind his hand to Janet,
who was turning the tap of the tea urn.  "They may make him Dempster,
but he doesn't forget his old friends for all."

In a moment everybody was talking and laughing.  It was just as if a
fresh breeze had come down from the mountains on a hot day in harvest.

During tea Joshua Scarff arrived with a green portfolio under his arm.

"I've brought some documents you'll wish to look at before the Court
sits, your Honour."

"Good!  Put them on the desk in the library and then come back and
have some tea."

The twilight deepened and the company prepared to go.  Stowell stood
at the door, with Janet beside him, while the young girls of the
choir of the Methodist chapel ranged themselves in front of the house
and sang in their sweet young voices, which floated through the
gathering gloom, "God be with you till we meet again."

"Good-night, all!"

"Good-night, your Honour!"

Night!  The great day had dropped asleep; the clock on the landing
was striking nine; dinner was over; Janet (she had "a head") had gone
to her room, and Stowell was stepping on to the piazza.

The wind had fallen and the night was silent, almost breathless.  The
revolving light on the Point of Ayre was answering to the gleam on
Galloway; and the moon, which was almost at the full, was glistening
on the waters that rolled between.

How beautiful, how limpid!  It was just such a night as that on which
Fenella and he had sat out there together.  He could still see her as
she was then--the slim young girl in a white dress and satin
slippers, with her intoxicating face in the frame of the silk
handkerchief which she had bound about her head.  And now she was to
become his wife!

A great new vista was opening out to him.  Life was about to begin in
earnest.  With that splendid woman by his side he was going to rise
(if God would be so good to him) out of the muddy imperfections of
his lower nature.  His breast swelled; his throat tightened; his
heart sang; he was entirely happy.

Suddenly he remembered Alick Gell.  He had not seen him at Castletown
that day, or at all since he returned from London.  Why was that?
Could it be possible that the matter they had spoken about on the
steamer ....

No, no!  Still he must fulfil his promise.  He would step into the
library and write a line saying he was ready to go down to Derby
Haven if necessary.

As he passed through the dining-room he framed the words of his
letter: "Where were you, you old scoundrel, that you were not at the
Swearing-in?  I suppose the matter you mentioned has righted itself
since I went away, but if not and you still want me...."



IV

The house was very quiet.  He felt an unaccountable chill coming over
him.  On the threshold of the library he paused.  He had the sense of
a mysterious presence in the room.  The log fire had burnt low; the
lamp on the desk, under his mother's portrait, had been turned down;
deep shadows lay around.

Making an effort he entered, stepping softly, yet hardly knowing why
he did so.  On reaching the desk he turned up the light and then his
eye fell on the green portfolio which he had last seen under Joshua
Scarff's arm.  It bore a label on which was written:


    "_Calendar of Cases to be tried at the Spring Session of the
    Court of General Gaol Delivery.  Presiding Deemster_--DEEMSTER
    VICTOR STOWELL."


Then came a moral thunderclap.  Opening the Calendar he read these
words on the first page of it:

    _REX _v._ CORTEEN
    FOR MURDER
    DEPOSITIONS._


    _That Elizabeth Corteen, commonly called Bessie Collister, on or
    about the fifth day of April--in the parish of Ballaugh, in the
    Isle of Man, feloniously, wilfully, and of her malice
    aforethought, did kill and murder a certain male child, contrary
    to the form of the Statute in such cases made and provided, and
    against the peace of our Sovereign Lord the King, his Crown and
    dignity._


A mist rose before Stowell's eyes.  He could not read any more, but
stood for a moment looking down at the writing.  Life seemed to run
out of him in a pounding rush.  The walls of the room, and
particularly the picture of his mother, began to reel about in a
rapidly increasing vertigo.  He put his hand on a chair but felt
nothing.  At the next moment darkness came and he knew no more.



END OF THIRD BOOK




FOURTH BOOK

THE RETRIBUTION


CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

THE WIND AND THE WHIRLWIND

Next day the insular newspapers announced that the new Deemster, on
his return home from Castletown, after the ceremony of his
swearing-in, had had a sudden seizure.  A heavy fall had been heard
by the servants, and they had found their master lying on the floor
of the library, unconscious.

Early in the morning Robbie Creer had driven into town for Dr.
Clucas, who had ordered rest--absolute rest.

"We must have three full days in bed, Mr. Stowell, Sir.  And if it is
necessary to postpone the Court of General Gaol Delivery, I think
.... I really think we must ask his Excellency to do so."

Stowell drew a deep breath and fell asleep.  When he awoke it was
mid-day.  He was in bed in his father's bedroom and Fenella was
sitting by his side, holding his hand.  After he had opened his eyes
she leaned over him and kissed him, saying in a soft voice that he
would soon be better.

"It was that oath-taking, dear.  I could see you were taking it too
seriously."

His heart was still warm with the embraces of yesterday, yet he tried
in vain to kiss her back.  But he laughed a little and made light of
his seizure.  It was nothing, but a little dizziness; he would be
about again in a day or two.

"Would you like me to stay and nurse you?"

"No, no! .... I mean you needn't...."

His stammering broke down and his face gloomed, but with a quick
smile she said,

"Oh, very well, Sir, if you won't have me, Janet will take care of
you, and send me a telegram night and morning to say how you are.
Won't you, Janet?"

From some unseen place behind the curtains of the four-poster, Janet,
snuffling and blowing her nose, answered that she would.

"And now I'll be wishing you good-morning, Sir," said Fenella, making
(after another kiss) a stately curtsey to him as he lay in bed.

The sounds of the wheels of the Governor's carriage having died off
on the drive, Stowell found himself alone and face to face with a
tragic problem--what was he to do about the trial of Bessie Collister?

This, then, was the case Fenella had written about while he was in
London.  Why had he not thought of it before?  He could not pretend
that he had never had misgivings.  Again and again the evil shadow of
a dread possibility had crossed his mind like a vanishing dream at
the moment of awakening.

He had put it aside, banished it, explained it away to himself.  In
the fullness of his happiness he had even forgotten it altogether.
But Nature did not forget.  And now his sin had fallen on him like an
avalanche--fallen as only an avalanche falls, when the sky is blue,
the air is warm and the sun is shining.

He had no doubt about Bessie's guilt.  But what about his own?  And
if he were guilty (in the second degree), being the first cause of
the girl's crime, how could he sit in judgment upon her?

To try his own victim, to question her, to go through the mockery of
weighing the evidence against her, to condemn her, to sentence
her--it would be impossible, utterly impossible, contrary to all
legal usage, a violation of the spirit if not the letter of his oath
in his first hour as a Judge.

And then the human side of it--the terror, the peril!  That poor girl
in the dock, in the depths of her shame and the throes of her
temptation, while he, her fellow sinner....

No, no, no!  It would not only be a crime against Justice; it would
be a sin against God.

Joshua Scarff came in the afternoon.  Standing by the bed, and
looking down through his dark spectacles, he said,

"This is a pity, your Honour!  A great pity!  Such interesting cases!
Your Honour must have wished to study them before sitting in Court."

"Joshua," said Stowell (he was breathing hard and speaking with
difficulty), "go to Deemster Taubman, tell him what has happened, and
say that if, as a great favour, he can take the Court next week, I
shall be eternally grateful."

The Deemster's clerk was almost speechless with dismay.  His Honour's
first Court!  Pity!  Great pity!

But Stowell felt an immense relief.  Thank God, there was another
Deemster to fall back upon.  He need not break the spirit of his
oath.  Bad as the event was at the best, at least there need be no
Conflict between his private interests and his public duty.



II

Stowell, in spite of Dr. Clucas, got up next morning.  He was sitting
before the fire in the library when Janet came in to say that Mrs.
Collister of Baldromma was asking to see the Deemster.  She had come
to plead for her daughter--that girl who was to be tried for killing
her baby.

"I told her she shouldn't have come here and that the old Deemster
would never have seen her.  But it's pitiful to see the poor thing.
She is lame, too, and has walked all the way.  What am I to say to
her?"

Stowell struggled with himself for a moment, and then, with an
embarrassed utterance said,

"Let her come in."

"This is very wrong of you, Mrs. Collister" (he was trying to keep a
firm lip and to speak severely); "you know it is against all rule."

The old woman, trembling and wiping her eyes, said she knew it was,
but she had known his father.  There had been none like him--no, not
the whole island over.  He had been every poor person's friend.  If
anybody had been injured she had only to draw to him for refuge and
he had protected her.  And if any poor girl had gone wrong, and
broken the law, perhaps, it was the big man himself who was always
there to show her mercy.

"That's why I thought maybe his son, if he had his father's heart
.... and people are saying he has too .... maybe his son wouldn't
send a poor mother away when she's in trouble and has nobody else to
go to."

"Sit down, Mrs. Collister."

The old woman sat in the chair which Janet turned for her, and began
on her story.

"It's about Bessie."

She had always been a good girl.  No mother ever had a better.  And
if people were saying she had been in trouble before, might the Lord
forgive them when their own time came, for it was lies they were
putting on the girl.

"And if she's in trouble now, your Honour, it's like it's not all her
own fault neither."

First there was her father.  He had been shocking hard on the girl,
shutting her out of the house in the dark of night and so throwing
her into the way of temptation.

"Until they lay me under the sod I'll never get it out of my ears,
Sir---the sound of her foot going off on the street."

And when the girl came home again, looking that weak that it seemed
as if the world wasn't willing to stand under her, the father had
taunted her with coming back to eat them up, and maybe bringing
another mouth to feed.

"So if she did the terrible shocking thing they're saying .... I
don't know if she did, your Honour .... I don't know if she ever left
the dairy loft from the minute I took her up to it until Cain the
constable (may the Lord forgive him!) came dragging her down .... but
if she did, it's like it was because the poor child was alone in the
dark midnight, and out of herself entirely, and not knowing what she
was doing, and perhaps freckened of what the old man would be saying
in the morning."

Stowell was silent.  The old woman cried softly to herself for a
moment and then said,

"Nobody knows what that is, your Honour, except them that has gone
through it."

Then she wiped her eyes, one after another, and said she could not
sleep "a wink on the night," lying in her white bed and thinking of
Bessie where she was now.  And having read "in class" last evening
how the Lord heard the cry of Hagar for her son in the wilderness she
had thought his Honour might hear her cry for her daughter.

Stowell knew that his feelings as a man were getting the better of
his duty as a Judge, so he tried to be severe with the old woman,
telling her she had no right to come to him, and that he had done
wrong to listen to her.

"In fact I could not have received you at all but for one thing--I am
not going to try your daughter's case."

The old woman was appalled.

"Do you mean, Sir, that you'll not be trying Bessie?"

"No, Deemster Taubman will probably do so."

At that the old woman broke into a flood of tears.

"Aw dear!  Aw dear!  And me praying on my knees on the kitchen floor
that the Lord would bring you back in time from London--someones
being so hard on poor girls in trouble!"

Again Stowell was silent, and for some moments nothing was heard but
the woman's broken sobs.  At length, unable to bear any longer the
sight of the old mother's disappointment, he said he would do what he
could for her.  If he could not sit on her daughter's case he would
write to Deemster Taubman, explaining her condition and describing
her temptations.

"God bless you for that," cried the old woman.  And then Janet said
it was time to go, his Honour being unwell.

"May the Lord give him health and strength and long life, ma'am!"

People were right when they were telling her he had his father's
heart.  He had too.  She was going out of the room with hope kindled,
when she said,

"You must excuse a poor woman if she did wrong in coming to you, Sir."

"We'll say no more about that now," said Stowell.  "Go home and rest,
mother."

At that word the old woman broke down utterly.  But after a moment
her weak eyes shone and she said,

"Bessie is not your quality, Sir, but if she gets off she'll write to
thank you."

"No, no!  She must never do that," said Stowell.

"Come now, Mrs. Collister," said Janet.

But having reached the door, the old woman turned her wet face, and
seeing the portrait of Stowell's mother on the wall, and mistaking it
for that of Fenella, she said,

"They're telling me you're to be married soon, your Honour.  May the
Lord give you peace and love in your own home, and that's better than
gold or lands, Sir."

Stowell tried to reply, but he could only wave his hand and turn to
the window as the old woman left the room.

Why not?  What sin against God would it be to unite this suffering
woman to her suffering daughter, if he could do so without wronging
Justice?

A moment afterwards Janet came back wiping her eyes.

"Oh, these mothers!  They're fit enough to break one's heart, Victor."



III

Stowell was in the dining-room next day when he heard the clatter of
a horse's hoofs on the drive, and, a moment later, a voice in the
hall, saying,

"The Deemster will see _me_, Jane."

It was Alick Gell.  His tall figure was more bent than usual; his
hair was disordered; his eyes glittered; he was deeply agitated.

"Excuse me, old fellow.  You know why I've not been here before.
It's Bessie.  I'm busy every hour, getting up her case.  Awful, isn't
it?  I can't make myself believe it even yet.  Sometimes in the
middle of the night I hear myself crying 'Good God, it can't be
true!'"

Stowell could scarcely find voice to reply.  He remembered what he
had advised Fenella to get Gell to do.  Had Bessie told him?"

"I received Fenella's letter and of course I am taking up the
defence.  I've seen Bessie, too, and arranged everything.  She's
innocent and I'll fight for her to the last breath in my body.  But
look here--read this," he said, dragging a crumbled newspaper from
his pocket, and handing it to Stowell with a trembling hand.

It was a copy of the day's insular paper containing a paragraph which
said that the continued illness of the new Deemster would probably
prevent him from presiding at the forthcoming sitting of the Court of
General Gaol Delivery.

"That's the first edition.  When it was published at twelve o'clock I
couldn't wait until the afternoon train, so I hired a horse from
Fargher, the jobmaster, and I've galloped all the way.  Don't tell me
it's true."

Stowell answered in a low tone that perhaps it might have to be,
whereupon Gell made a cry of dismay.

"Then God help my poor girl!  It will be Taubman, and she'll not have
a dog's chance with him."

Taubman was a brute--especially in cases of this kind.  What did
people say about him--that when he saw a woman in the dock he was
like a cat who had seen a rat?  It was true.  He was always bullying
the juries who showed humanity to girls in trouble.

"The infernal old blockhead!  He has rheumatism in the legs, they
say.  I wish to heaven he had it in his throat, and it would choke
him."

And then the barbarous old Statute!  Practically repealed in every
other country, but still capable of operation in the Isle of Man.
Think of it!  Five years, ten years, fifteen years--even death
itself, perhaps!

"Stowell, we are old chums .... it's not right of me, I know that
.... but for the sake of our old friendship, sit on Bessie's case
yourself."

Stowell felt as if he were on the edge of a precipice.  Abysmal
depths lay before him at the next step.  With an awful secret in his
heart he felt that it was almost impossible to speak one word more
without betraying himself.  He was silent, for a moment while Gell
stood over him with wild eyes which he had never seen before.  At
length he said,

"Bessie is to plead Not Guilty?"

"Certainly."

"Will she stick to that?"

"Undoubtedly.  Why shouldn't she?  Besides, she has given me her
promise."

Again Stowell was silent for a moment; then he said,

"I cannot promise to conduct the Court, but if Taubman will do so,
and I'm fit to sit with him, I'll .... I'll see she has a fair trial."

Gell made a shout of joy.

"That's good enough for me.  Just like you, old fellow."

He snatched up his cap--a different man in a moment.

"I must get back to town now.  I have the witnesses to arrange for.
Not too many of them unfortunately.  There's the mother, she's all
right, but not likely to be good in the box.  I'm not calling the
step-father.  It seems he's giving the case away in the glen.  The
damned old blackguard!  I should like to break his ugly neck.  I
jolly well will, too, one of these days.  But Bessie will clear
herself.  Since she's going to be my wife she must leave the Court
without a stain.  Good-bye and God bless you, old chap! .... No, no,
don't come to the door."  (Stowell was for seeing him out.)  "Take
care of yourself.  Good men are scarce.  And then you've got to be
fit for the Court, you know.  By-bye!"

Stowell watched him from the window as he rode down the drive on his
tired horse, patting its neck and encouraging it with cheery cries.

Now he understood why Bessie had held off while Gell had wished to
marry her.  It had been a case of the wife of the Peel fisherman over
again, with the difference that Bessie (to avoid the danger of
deceiving her husband) had made away with her child before marriage
instead of after it.  Wild, foolish, frantic scheme!  Yet what
courage!  What strength!  What affection!

But if, under Taubman's searching questions, the conspiracy of love
should fail, and Bessie's defence should collapse, and Gell should
see that she had deceived him, and that _he_ too....

No, no, that must not be!  After all, what outrage on Justice would
it be to keep a case like this out of the hands of a cold-blooded
inhuman legal machine who would commit more crime than he punished?

Still standing by the window, Stowell heard the clatter of a horse's
hoofs on the high road.  Gell, in high spirits, was galloping home.



IV

Later in the day Stowell was alone in the library reading the
Depositions.  In his secret heart he knew that a wicked temptation
had come to him--the temptation to get Bessie off, and to stop the
flood of evil which would surely follow if Deemster Taubman tried her
and she were condemned.  But all the same he was struggling to drown
his qualms in contempt of the case against her.

How little there was to it!  The direct evidence was almost childish.
The medical testimony was the only thing of consequence, but how
sloppy, how inconclusive!  Was there anything against Bessie which
he, if he had been the advocate for the defence, could not have
riddled with as many holes as there were in a cullender?  Then why
shouldn't he sit on her case?

Guilty?  Perhaps she was; but, even so, was it not the theory of the
law that she had to be proved guilty--that a prisoner should have a
fair legal trial and be convicted or acquitted according to the
evidence before the Court?  Why shouldn't he?

Suddenly he became aware of a tumult at the front door.  Somebody was
bawling in a loud voice,

"I'll see the Dempster if I have to shout the house down."

It was Dan Baldromma.  Stowell stepped into the hall and said to the
housemaid, who was barring the door against the intruder,

"Let him come in, Jane."

Dan, with his short, gross figure, rolled into the house without
remembering to take his hat off.

"Well, what do you want?" said Stowell--he was quivering with anger.

"I want to know what is to be done for me?" said Dan.

"For you?"

"For my daughter then--my step-daughter, I mane."

When he had seen Mr. Sto'll last--it was at his office in Ramsey--he
had warned him that the man who had got his daughter into disgrace
had got to marry her.  But had he?  No!  He had refused--he must have
done.  And that was the reason why she did what they say.  But,
behold you, who was being blamed for it?  Himself!  Yes, people were
looking black at him and saying he had thrown the girl into the way
of temptation.

That was not the worst of it either.  He had expected dacent
tratement about the farm when he became father-in-law to the man who
would come into it by heirship.  But now the girl was in Castle
Rushen, and if they sent her over the water the Spaker would be
turning him out of house and home.

"He's after threatening it already--to show me the road at Hollantide
.... What's that you say, Sir?  Thinking of myself, am I?  Maybe I
am, then, and what for shouldn't I?  Near is my shirt but nearer is
my skin, they're saying."

Stowell, swept by gusts of passion, was doing his best to control
himself.

"Well, what have you come to me for?" he asked.

Dan thrust forward his thick neck with his bull-like gesture, and
said,

"To tell you to get her off."

"Even if she is guilty?"

"Chut!  Who's to know that if the Coorts acquit her?  They are wayses
and wayses.  Lawyers are mortal clever at twisting the law when
they're wanting to.  You're Dempster now; and the bosom friend of the
man that got my girl into this trouble has got to get her out of it."

"So," said Stowell, breathing hard, "you have come to ask me to
degrade Justice" (Dan made a grunt of contempt), "not to save the
girl but to protect you--you and your rag of a character?"

Dan drew himself up with a short laugh, half bitter and half
triumphant.

"Rag, is it?  Take care what you're saying, Mr. Sto'll, Sir.  You may
be a big man in the island now, but there's them that's bigger and
that's the people."

Stowell pointed with a quivering hand to the clock on the landing,
and said,

"Look at that clock.  If you're not out of this house in one
minute...."

Dan's laugh rose to a cry of derision.

"So that's it, is it?  That's what the first Justice of the Peace in
the Isle of Man is, eh?  Son of the ould Dempster too!  The grand
ould holy saint as they're...."

But before he could finish, Stowell, with a shout that drowned Dan's
laugh as if it had been the whimper of a baby girl, laid hold of the
man by the collar of his coat and the slack of his trousers and flung
him out of the open door and clashed it after him.

Dan, who had rolled and tossed and bumped on the path like a fat
hogshead kecked from the tail of a cart, picked himself up and went
staggering down the drive, shaking his fist at the house and pouring
his maledictions upon it in a voice that was like the broken howl of
a limping dog.

Janet came running from her room, and seeing Stowell with his eyes
aflame and panting for breath, said,

"Oh dear!  Oh dear!  Now you'll be worse."

"On the contrary, I'll be better--better in every way," he said.

His resolution was taken.  Never would he sit on Bessie's case.
Nothing should tempt him to do so.

But Fate had not yet done with him.



V

On the afternoon of the following day Stowell walked for a long hour
on the shore, trying to deaden the tumult in his brain in the loud
surge of the sea.  Returning to Ballamoar he found the Governor's
carriage outside the house.  Had the Governor come to see him?  It
was Fenella.  She was at tea with Janet in the library.

Although she rose to greet him with all the sunshine of her smile he
could see that her face was feverish.

"I've come to the north on three errands," she said.

"So?"

"First to see yourself, of course, and I find that, in spite of
doctor's orders, you have already resumed your gypsy habits."

"He _would_ go out, dear," said Janet.

"Next, to deliver a message from the Governor."

"Yes?"

"He has postponed the Court for three days in the hope that you may
be able to sit then."

"Ah!"

"My last errand was to see the mother of that poor girl who is to be
charged with the murder of her child."

"The mother?"

"Yes, I've just left her.  She still says she knows nothing.  It's
pitiful!  A simple, sincere, religious old soul, who has seen trouble
of her own apparently.  I don't think for a moment she would tell an
untruth, yet it is easy to see that in her heart she believes her
daughter to be guilty."

"Guilty?"

"Yes, but there's somebody guiltier than the girl--the man."

Stowell was silent; but he felt his face twitching.

"That's why I am so anxious that you should sit on this case if you
can, Victor, not leave it to Deemster Taubman.  Old Judges often
refuse to investigate collateral facts, and so the woman is punished
and the man goes free."

"They can't do otherwise, dear.  They can't try the man."

"Not if he has been a party to the crime?"

"A party...."

"Yes!  I'm satisfied that in this case he is, too."

The girl might be guilty, but she could not have done all she was
charged with.  It was physically impossible.  Somebody must have
helped her.  And that somebody (the old mother having to be ruled
out) must be the man who had it to his interest to save his miserable
character by concealing the fact that the girl had given birth to a
child at all.

Stowell had as much as he could do to cover his embarrassment.  He
lowered his voice and said,

"That's a blind alley.  I've read the Depositions.  I'm sure it is,
dear."

"Perhaps it is, perhaps it isn't," said Fenella.  "I intend to follow
it up anyway."

"How?" said Stowell, but rather with his mouth than his voice.

"I'm already on the track of something."

"On the track...."

"Yes.  It seems that somebody has been telling the mother that on the
night when the girl left home (shut out by her abominable
step-father, you know) she went to the house of a Mrs. Quayle, living
on the south shore in Ramsey."

Stowell's heart thumped and his lips quivered.

"Mrs. Quayle?"

"Why, that must be the housekeeper at your chambers, dear," said
Janet, busy with her teacups.

"You know her? .... But then everybody knows everybody in the Isle of
Man," said Fenella.

With a sense of duplicity, Stowell found himself saying, "Well?"

"Well, I'm going to see this Mrs. Quayle on my way home to Government
House.  She'll be able to tell me how long the girl stayed with her,
who took her away, and where she went to."

Stowell dropped his head, feeling that he wanted to escape from the
room, and Fenella (indignantly, passionately, vehemently) went on to
denounce the guilty man.

"Of course the girl is shielding him.  A woman always does that.  I
should do it myself if I were in the same position.  But oh, how I
should like to find him out!  Even if he has taken no part in the
actual crime, how I should like to punish him--to expose him!  You
must sit on this case--you really must, dear."

When the time came for Fenella to go Janet took her upstairs to look
at some new decorations that had been made in the room that was to be
her boudoir.  Stowell remained in the library, and the sound of
Fenella's step on the floor above beat on his stunned brain with the
drumming noise of a train in a tunnel.

He had a sense of cowardice which he had never felt before.  At one
moment he wanted to tell Fenella everything, thinking that would be
the end of his tortures.  But at the next he reflected that it would
be the beginning of hers--inflicting an incurable wound upon her
affection.  And then if Bessie were going to be acquitted, as seemed
possible (the evidence being so unconvincing), why should he enlarge
the area of the shameful secret?

When Fenella returned (saying, as she came downstairs, how beautiful
her room was and how proud she would be of it) he took her out to the
carriage.

"Do you remember," she whispered (she had recovered her gay spirits,
the coachman was on the box), "do you remember the first time you saw
me off from here?"

He nodded and tried to smile.

"I was too bashful to shake hands and you were too shy to look at me."

And being seated in the carriage and the door closed on her, she said,

"By the way, wouldn't you like to drive over with me to Mrs. Quayle
if I brought you home again?"

"No, no .... I mean...."

She laughed merrily.  "Oh, very well!  You've refused me again!  I'll
remember it, Sir."

After the carriage had disappeared at the turn of the drive, Stowell
went up to his room, shut the door behind him and covered his face in
his hands.

Fenella hunting him down!  Blindly, unconsciously, innocently, while
urging him, entreating him, almost compelling him to sit on the case.
The woman he loved and who loved him was trying to destroy him.  Was
this to be his punishment?

Mrs. Quayle?  No, she would say nothing.  If she thought it would
injure his mother's son no power on earth would prevail upon her to
speak.  But sooner or later, by one means or other, Fenella would
find out, and then....

"God be merciful to me, a sinner!" he moaned, smothering the sound of
the words behind his hands.

Could he sit in judgment on Bessie Collister's case with all the
forces of the defence (inspired by Fenella) directed towards branding
the Judge as the real criminal?  Impossible!  Yet what could he do?

At length an idea occurred to him.  He would go up to Government
House, tell the whole truth to the Governor and ask to be relieved of
his duty.  It would be a terrible ordeal, but there was no escape
from it.

"Yes, I will go up to the Governor in the morning."




CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

THE JUDGE AND THE MAN

"Helloa!  Glad to see you about again.  Fenella has gone off to the
south of the island somewhere, but she'll be home for luncheon.  Take
a cigar?  No?  Not smoking yet?  I must anyway."

"I've come to see you on a serious matter, Sir," said Stowell--he
felt his lips trembling.

"So?"

The Governor glanced up quickly, charged his pipe and then settled
himself to listen.

"You will remember the story I told you--about the man who had
promised to marry a girl and then fallen in love with somebody else?"

"Perfectly."

Stowell paused a moment.  His lips became pale and his hands
contracted.

"Well?"

"That was my own story, Sir."

There was another moment of silence.  Stowell had expected an
exclamation of surprise, a clang of astonishment, but the Governor's
face was still to the fire and the only sound he made was the
swivelling of the pipe between his teeth.

"You advised me to break off the engagement and I did so."

"What was the result?"

"The girl was relieved."

"Relieved?"

"Yes, because she, too, had in the meantime fallen in love with
somebody else--my friend Gell."

"How fortunate!"

"It seemed so at first.  I thought Providence had stepped in to help
her out.  But Fate has kept a terrible reckoning, Sir."

"What has happened?"

"The girl has committed a crime.  She is in Castle Rushen awaiting
her trial for the murder of her new-born child."

"The woman Collister?"

"Yes.  And now I'm a Judge and in ordinary course it is my duty to
try her."

There was another period of silence, broken only by the rapid puffing
of the Governor's pipe.

"But that's not all, Sir.  Being in this frightful position
everything is tempting me to corrupt Justice.  First, my natural
desire to influence the trial in favour of the girl--perhaps to get
her off altogether.  Next, pity for her poor mother who has been
pleading for mercy.  Then, friendship for Gell who has been begging
me to try the case because the old Statute is severe and my colleague
cruel.  And last of all the step-father of the girl who has been
trying to intimidate me."

"Well?"

"I think you will see it is impossible for me to sit on a case in
which my private interest and my public duty conflict--utterly
impossible.  It would be against all usage, all justice."

The Governor removed his pipe.  His face had become cold and hard.
"You speak of your colleague--have you done anything with him?"

"Yes.  I've asked him to sit instead of me."

"What if he cannot?"

"Then I will ask you, Sir, to send for another Judge from across the
water."

Stowell had struggled through to the end, although perspiration had
been breaking out on his forehead.  When he had finished the Governor
sat for some time without speaking.

Obscure motives were operating within him.  In the depths of his mind
(scarcely known to himself) he was asking himself, "How will all
this, if I allow it to go farther, affect Fenella?  Will it stop her
marriage, disturb her happiness, destroy her life?"  But on the
surface of his mind he was only aware of considerations of public
welfare.  He was irritated by what had occurred.  It was an
impediment in his path which he wished to kick out of the way.

He rose, laid his pipe on the mantelpiece, and standing with his back
to the fire and his hands behind him, his chin firm and his mouth set
hard, he said, with sudden energy,

"Now listen to me.  I always knew that was your own story."

"Yes?"

"What I did not know was that any harm had been done.  Did you?"

"Indeed no."

"Did the girl?"

"It is incredible."

"Do you know that she has killed her child?"

"Not certainly.  She denies it, and the evidence is not too
convincing."

"Do you know that she ever had a child?"

"No .... I can't say .... She denies that also, and the medical
testimony is far from conclusive."

"Do you know--are you satisfied--that if she had a child, and killed
it, the child was yours?"

Stowell, with a gulp, stammered something about Bessie having been a
good girl before he met her.

"But do you know _anything_?"

"Well, no .... I can't say...."

"Then, good heavens, what are you thinking about?  Knowing nothing,
nothing really, you are acting, and asking me to act, on a cloud of
conjectures.  I'll not do it."

Stowell drew his breath with a gasp of relief.  It was just as if he
had been living for days in the stuffy atmosphere of a sealed room
and somebody had broken open a window.  His head was down; the
Governor touched his shoulder.

"My friend, you are doing that poor girl a cruel injustice."

Stowell was startled and looked up.

"In your own mind you are finding her guilty before she has been
tried."

"Ah!"

"You are doing yourself an injustice, too.  Even if the girl
committed this crime--I say _if_--_you_ are not responsible for it."

Stowell began to stammer again.  "I .... I did wrong in the first
instance, Sir, and nothing but wrong...."

But the Governor said sharply, "Of course you did wrong in the first
instance.  But that has nothing to do with the wrong which she (if
she is guilty) has done since.  It can't be supposed that you had any
sympathy with her act, can it?"

"God forbid!"

"Did you desert her?  Did you leave her to the mercy of the world?
Has she ever been in want?  Was she in any danger of being unable to
provide for her offspring when it came?"

"No .... I cannot say...."

"Then what folly to think you are responsible for what she did in
taking the life of her child--if she did take it.  No, other facts
and motives operated with the girl.  And whatever those facts and
motives were, you, so far as I can see, had nothing to do with
them--nothing whatever."

Stowell's pulse was beating high.  He tried to say something about
his moral responsibility, but again the Governor cut him short.

"Your moral responsibility!" he said, with a ring of sarcasm.  "I'm
sick of this sentimental talk about moral responsibility--man's
responsibility for the conduct of woman, and all the rest of it.  The
person who commits the crime is the criminal--that's the only
foundation of law and order."

"Then you think, Sir," said Stowell, "that since I...."

"I think," said the Governor, "that the whole thing is unfortunate,
damnably unfortunate, but since you are not responsible for the
girl's crime, if she committed a crime at all, and knew nothing about
it, and have no sympathy with it, you ought to go on doing your duty.
Why shouldn't you? .... Interested?  Of course you are interested.
In a little community like this a Judge is nearly always interested.
Isn't that what your Deemster's oath is intended to provide for?"

Stowell muttered something about being afraid, and again the Governor
caught him up.

"Afraid?  What are you afraid of?  The public?  Doesn't it occur to
you that the only risk you run in that direction is not the risk of
sitting on this case but of not sitting on it?  There must be people
who have seen you coming here this morning, and if you are not in
Court on the appointed day, aren't they likely to ask why?"

"There's Gell...."

"Certainly there's Gell .... When the marriage was broken off you
didn't tell him anything, did you?"

Stowell shook his head.  "How could I?"

"Yes, how could you?  And now he wishes you to sit, and, if you
don't, isn't he likely to suspect the reason?"

"There .... there's Baldromma."

"That wind-bag!  Likely to make a cry against the administration of
justice, is he?  Well, the surest way to squelch such people is to
walk over them."

"There's the girl herself."

"Of course, there's the girl herself.  But if she is guilty and has
held her tongue thus far, she'll probably continue to do so."

The Governor made a turn across the room and then drew up sharply.

"There's myself, too.  I suppose I deserve some consideration?"

"Indeed yes."

"Then go on with your duty--that's all I ask of you."

With a thrill of relief Stowell rose to go.  But oh, misery of the
heart, he had kept his most searching objection to the last.

"There is somebody else, your Excellency."

"Who else?" asked the Governor, laying down the pipe he had taken up.

"I hate to mention her in this connection--Fenella."

"Fenella?  Why, what on earth has Fenella...."

And then Stowell told him.

Having interested herself in this case, Fenella was hunting down the
guilty man that he might be exposed and punished--punished by public
obloquy if he could not be punished by law.

"If she finds him before the trial how can I possibly sit?  Whatever
happens it will be coloured by her knowledge of the truth.  If the
girl is acquitted she will think I have helped her to escape
punishment in order to salve my conscience or cover my share in her
crime.  And if she is condemned what happiness can there be for
either of us after that?"

He had spoken with emotion, but the Governor, who had recovered from
his surprise, replied impatiently,

"Aren't you crossing the bridge before you come to the river?"

Stowell made no answer, and at the next moment there was the sound of
carriage wheels coming up the drive.

"It's Fenella," said the Governor, looking out of the window.  "I'll
ask you to say nothing to her about the subject of our conversation.
And listen" (he was re-lighting his pipe and puffing at it with lips
that smacked angrily; Stowell's hand was on the door), "don't let my
girl make a damned fool of you."



II

"Victor, I have something to tell you," said Fenella.

"Yes?"

They were in the library.  She was looking feverish; he was feeling
ashamed, embarrassed and afraid.

"I have found out who was the friend of that poor girl."

He gazed at her without speaking.

"It will be a great shock to you--it was Alick Gell."

"No, no!"

"I'm sorry, dear.  I knew you would be unable to believe it.  But
it's true--terribly true."

Mrs. Quayle, the evening before, had said very little.  Nobody had
called to see the girl while she stayed at her house, and nobody had
come to take her away.  She, herself, had seen her off by the train,
and all the girl had told her was that she was going to a school at
Derby-Haven.

"But that was enough for me," said Fenella.  "This morning I went
down to Derby-Haven and found there was only one school there.  It is
kept by two maiden ladies named Brown.  Simple old things, very timid
and old-fashioned.  They were thrown into terrible commotion by my
call, and having read the reports in the newspapers they were at
first afraid to say anything.  But after I had promised that they
should not be mixed up in the matter in any way, I got them to speak.
Mr. Alick Gell had brought the girl to their house.  He had paid for
her, and they had always looked upon him as her intended husband.  So
it's a certainty, you see--a shocking certainty."

Stowell was breathless.

"But my dear Fenella," he said, "this is a mistake.  You are drawing
a false inference...."

But Fenella only shook her head.

"Yes.  I knew your loyalty to your friend would compel you to say so.
But what do you think?  I have since found that the fact is common
knowledge."

Returning in the train she had occupied a compartment with two
men--the strangest looking creatures she had ever seen in a
first-class carriage.  One of them turned out to be the girl's
stepfather and the other a member of the House of Keys.

"Cæsar Qualtrough?"

"Cæsar?  Yes, that was the name.  They talked about the forthcoming
trial and didn't seem to mind my hearing them--perhaps wished me to.
The step-father (he spoke as if the whole case had been got up to
disgrace him) was complaining that he had not been called by either
side.  But no matter, he would force himself upon the Court and
expose the real criminal--the Speaker's son.  It was all a trick.
But it should not succeed.  He would put the saddle on the right
horse, he would.  And then they talked about you."

"What .... what about me?"

"That the report of your being too ill to sit was a lie.  You were
not ill at all and never had been--the step-father knew better.  You
were merely shirking your duty to save your friend in some way.  But
that trick shouldn't succeed either, or the people should know what
Judges in the Isle of Man were.  So you see you must sit on this
case, dear--if you are fit for it.  You can't afford to have it said
that you have sacrificed your duty as a Judge to your personal
interests.  At your first Court, too."

Stowell was in torture.  In spite of the Governor's warning, an
almost overpowering impulse came to him to confess, to make a clean
breast of everything, there and then, and once for all.

"Fenella," he began (his breath was coming and going in gusts), "who
knows if the guilty man is Gell?  It may be somebody else."

"Who else can it be?"

He tried to say "It is I," but hesitated--he could not shatter in a
word the whole world he lived in.  At the next moment she was
praising his fidelity, which would not allow him to think ill of his
life-long friend.

"But he has no such delicacy," she said.  "Knowing what he knows he
is still going to defend the girl, and that's equal to defending
himself, isn't it?  How shocking!"

Stowell's shame at his moral cowardice reached the point of
abasement, and he dropped his head.  Then, carried away by her own
pleading, Fenella put her arms about his neck, tenderly and
caressingly, and told him she knew well what a hard thing she was
asking him to do--to sit in judgment on his friend also, for that was
what it would come to.  But she would love him for ever if he would
do it.  It would be like the crown of all her hopes, the fulfilment
of all she had worked for, if in some way (he would know best how) a
poor girl who had sinned and suffered should have mercy shown to her,
and not be left alone in her shame, but have the partner of her sin
(no matter who he was or how near he came) standing side by side with
her.

There was a moment of silence.  Stowell was like a man groping in the
dark of a black midnight.  At length a light seemed to dawn on him.
If he sat on this case he could save an innocent man at all events.

"You _will_ sit, will you not?"

"Yes."

And then she kissed him.



III

Back at Ballamoar, Stowell found the Deemster's clerk waiting for him.

It had taken Joshua three days to see Deemster Taubman, and when at
length he was admitted to the big man's presence he had found him in
bed, with his shaggy head and unshaven face on the pillow and his
lower extremities through the legs of a cane-bottomed chair which
supported his bed-clothes.

"What?  What's that?" he had roared.  "Sit at the General Gaol?  Go
back to your master and tell him I'm lying here in the tortures of
the damned, not able to put a foot to the ground."

Stowell drew a long breath.  Fate had spoken its last word!  It was
now certain that he must sit on the case of Bessie Collister.

His spirits rose and he began to see things more clearly.  Had he not
exaggerated his own importance in this affair?  He had been thinking
of his part in the forthcoming trial as if the issue of Bessie's fate
depended upon him.  But not so.  It depended upon the Jury.  Guilty
or not Guilty,--he had nothing to do with that.  Therefore, in the
deeper sense, Bessie would not be tried by him at all.  Why had he
been frightening himself?

Had a Judge, then, no power, no voice, no influence?  Thank God, yes!
It was for the Judge to direct the jury on questions of law, to see
that they had a right understanding of it and that their verdict
corresponded with the evidence.  What an important
function--especially in a case like this!  What a mercy old Taubman
was unable to sit on it!

He thought again of Bessie's position.  Pitiful, most pitiful!  But
the law was no Juggernaut, intended to crush the life out of a poor
unfortunate girl.  Mercifully administered it was rather her
Sanctuary to which she might fly for refuge.  And it should be
mercifully administered.

Why not?  Good heavens, why not?  What wrong would it be to temper
Justice with mercy--even to strain the law a little in the prisoner's
favour?  No one but himself would know.  And if it were suspected
that he was showing favour to the prisoner, people would consider him
deserving of praise rather than censure for trying to snatch a young
and helpless creature from the clutches of a cruel old Statute.

Besides, was it not one of the higher traditions of the bench that
the Judge was first Counsel for the accused?  Judges had not always
acted on that principle.  Some of them, in times past, had hunted
their wretched prisoners gallowswards with gibes.  Taubman was still
like that.  He thought sympathy with such women as Bessie Collister
was sentimental weakness, that to deal mercifully with them was to
encourage them, and thereby do a wrong to public morality.

"God bless me, yes!  _I_ know Taubman," he told himself.

Then he thought of Gell.  Whatever Bessie might be, Gell was
innocent, and after the girl herself the greatest sufferer.  Should
he suffer further from an unfounded suspicion?  God forbid!  It would
be his duty as Judge to see that no blustering person in Court
bellowed accusations which, once out, might stick to an innocent man
for the rest of his natural life.

After that he thought of himself.  The only risk he ran was from
Bessie's despair.  If Gell were falsely accused she might break
silence and tell the truth to save him.  What a vista!  Bessie, Gell,
himself, Fenella!  But no, that should not be!  The law was no
thumb-screw; a law-court was no torture-chamber.  It would be his
duty as Judge to protect the girl against any form of legal
provocation.

Last of all, with a thrill of the heart, he thought of Fenella.  She
had drawn him on, constrained and compelled him to promise to sit on
Bessie's case.  But she had only wished, out of the greatness of her
pity, to see that the poor girl should have a just trial.  She should
too!  It would be his duty as Judge to see to that.

"Good Lord, yes!  And what a mercy the case is not coming before
Taubman."

Thus in the scorching fire of his temptation he tried to stand erect
in the belief that he had sunk himself in his high office--that he
was about to become the champion and first servant of Justice.  But
well he knew in his secret heart that in the fierce struggle which
had been going on within him between the Judge and the Man, the Man
had conquered.

During the next two days he worked day and night in the library,
looking up authorities and verifying references.  On the third day he
set out in his car for Castletown.  Janet saw him off in the mist of
early morning.  He was very pale; he had eaten scarcely any
breakfast.  She looked anxiously after him until he disappeared
behind the trees.  There was the odour of fresh earth in the air and
the rooks were calling.  It was like an echo from the past.

When he arrived at Castle Rushen there was a crowd at the gate, and
all hats were off to him, as they had been to his father, when he
passed through the Judge's private entrance.

Inside the courtyard, where the steps go up to the public part of the
Court-house, there was another crowd and a certain commotion.  The
police were pushing back a tumultuous person who in a raucous voice
was demanding to be admitted although the place was full.

It was Dan Baldromma.




CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

THE TRIAL

For a good hour before the arrival of the Deemster, Castle Rushen had
been full of activity.  In the Court-house itself, warm with sunshine
from the lantern light, Robbie Stephen, the chief Coroner of the
island, who looked like a shaggy old sheep-dog, had been selecting
candidates for the Jury-box.

Seventy-two of them had been summoned, six from each of twelve
parishes, and now he was reducing the number to thirty-two, twelve
for the Jury and twenty more to meet the contingency of arbitrary
challenging.

Everybody claimed exemption, but the Coroner listened to none.
Standing back to the empty bench, swelling with importance and with
his seventy-two men huddled together like sheep at one side of the
chamber, he called them out at his discretion and with a wave of the
hand passed them over to the other side to wait for the trial.

"Now, then, Willie Kinnish, thou'rt a good man; over with thee."
"No, no, Mr. Stephen, you must excuse me to-day, Sir." "Tut, tut!
You Maughold men haven't served on a jury these seven years."  "But I
have fifty head of sheep going to Ramsey mart this morning, and
what's to pay my half year's rent if I'm not there to sell them?"
"Chut, man!  Lave that to herself.  She's thy better half, isn't she?"

Meantime, in the chill corridors underground the jailer and his
turnkey were rattling their keys, opening the doors of the cells and
shouting to the prisoners to make ready for the Court.

"Patrick Kelly!  Charles Quiggin!  Nancy Kegeen!  John Corlett!
Cæsar Crow!  Robert Quine!  Elizabeth Corteen!"

Hearing her name called, Bessie, having no fear, got up from her
plank bed, and when Mrs. Mylrea, the woman warder, with her short,
loud, difficult breathing, brought back her cloak and fur hat, she
put them on leisurely.

"Quick, girl!" said the warder.  "You don't want to keep the Dempster
waiting, do you?"

Bessie laughed, but made no answer.  At the next moment she was in
the darkness of the corridor, walking at the end of a short
procession of other prisoners, and at the next she was drawn up, with
her prison companions, into the blinding sunlight of a little paved
quadrangle which was surrounded by high walls and had the sound of
the sea coming down into it from the free world outside.

By this time the Court-house upstairs was in a state of yet greater
activity.  The thirty-two possible jurymen, having reconciled
themselves to being "trapped," were standing under the jury-box,
talking of the weather which was bringing the crops on rapidly and
would increase the price of early potatoes.  Inspectors of police
were bustling about; Joshua Scarff was laying a green portfolio with
paper, pens and ink, on the bench in front of the Deemster's scarlet
armchair, and a number of advocates were coming in laughing by a door
which communicated with their room off the ramparts.

The last of the advocates to enter was Alick Gell.  He took a seat
immediately in front of the empty dock, looking pale and worn and
scarcely able to hold the papers which he carried in his nervous
hands.  A little later the Attorney-General, who was to prosecute for
the Crown, came in with a grave face, followed by old Hudgeon, his
junior, with a sour one.  And shortly before eleven (the hour
appointed for the beginning of the trial) a lady was brought by an
Inspector from the door to the Judge's room and seated beside Gell in
front of the dock.  It was Fenella.

Then the outer doors to the court-yard were thrown open and the
public admitted.  They rushed and tore their way into the
Court-house, men and women together, talking and laughing loudly.
The big clock in the Castle tower was heard to strike, and the
Inspector, standing near the dais, cried in a loud voice,

"Silence in Court!"

The babel of voice subsided and everybody rose who had been seated.
Then the Court came in and took their seats on the bench of
judgment--the Governor in his soldier's uniform, and Stowell and the
Clerk of the Rolls in their Judges' wigs and gowns.

It was remarked that the new Deemster looked ill and almost old.  A
wave of sympathy went out to him from the first.  It was whispered
among the spectators that he had come straight from a sick-bed, and
that the Governor insisted on his presence, saying he must have him
"dead or alive."

"Coroner, fence the Court," said the Governor, and then old Stephen,
who had already taken his place in the Coroner's box, raising the
pitch of his voice, recited the ancient formula:


"_I do hereby fence this Court in the name of our Sovereign Lord the
King.  I charge that no person shall quarrel, bawl or molest the
audience, that all persons shall answer to their names when called.
I charge this audience to witness that this Court is fenced; I charge
this audience to witness that this Court is fenced; I charge this
whole audience to witness that this Court is fenced._"


Everybody knew that it was for the Deemster to speak next, but for a
sensible moment he did not do so.  Then he said, almost beneath his
breath,

"Let the prisoners be brought in."

In the continued silence there came the sound of bustle outside, with
the patter of feet on the pavement below, and then a shuffling of
steps on the stairs.  The prisoners were coming up, but the police
had difficulty in clearing a passage for them.  The voice of the
jailer, Tommy Vondy, was heard to cry, "Make way!"  There was a
period of waiting.  At one moment the people in court caught the
sound from the staircase of a scarcely believable thing--the laugh of
a woman?  Who could she be?

At length the prisoners were brought in, pushed through the throng
that stood thick at the back, and hurried into the dock, which was
like a long pew behind the circular seats of the advocates and
directly in front of the bench.

There were seven of them, a sorry company, two women and five men,
with nothing in common save the pallid, almost pasty complexions
which had come of the dank air they had been living in.

There was another moment of silence.  It was time for the Deemster to
take the pleas, but again he did not speak immediately.  He had the
look of a man who was struggling against physical weakness.  The
blood rushed to his pale face and as quickly disappeared.  "He's not
fit for it to-day," people whispered.

But at the next moment, in a low voice, and with the appearance of
one who was making an effort to command his strength, the Deemster
was reading the indictments.

He took the prisoners in the order in which they stood before him,
beginning with the one on the extreme left.  He was a very young man,
almost a boy, with a face that might have been that of his mother
when she was a girl.  His name was Quiggin; he had been a bank clerk
and was charged with embezzlement.  He pleaded Guilty and looked down
as if he expected the earth to open under his feet.

The next was a gross, fat, middle-aged woman with red cheeks and many
heavy gold rings on her stubby fingers.  Her name was Kegeen, and she
was charged with robbing drunken sailors in a house she had kept in
an alley off the south quay.  In a torrent of words she denied
everything and accused the police of black-mailing her.

The last was Bessie Collister and the Deemster paused perceptibly
when he came to her.

She had carried herself straight when she entered the Court and was
now sitting with her head thrown back.  But, seeing that of all the
prisoners she was the one on whom the eyes of the spectators were
fastened, she had reached up her hands to a veil which was wrapped
about her fur hat and drawn it down over her face.  Observing this at
the last moment, and thinking it the cause of the Deemster's silence,
the jailer said in an audible whisper,

"Put up your fall, Bessie."

She did so, disclosing her thin white face and large eyes.  And then
in a voice so low that it would have been scarcely audible but for
the strained silence in the court-house, the Deemster said,

"Elizabeth Corteen, stand up."

Bessie rose without embarrassment and fixed her eyes on the Deemster.
And then he charged her.

"It is charged against you that on or about the fifth day of
April--in the parish of Ballaugh, in the Isle of Man, feloniously,
wilfully and of your malice aforethought, you did kill and murder a
certain male child, contrary to the form of the Statute in such case
made and provided, and against the peace of our Sovereign Lord the
King, his Crown and dignity.  How say you, are you guilty or not
guilty?"

Without hesitation or halting, looking straight into the eyes of the
Judge and speaking in a voice so clear that it resounded through the
silent Court-house, Bessie answered,

"Not Guilty."

Her tone and bearing had gone against her.  "The huzzy!" whispered
one of the female spectators.  "She might have more shame for her
position, anyway.  And did you see the way the forward piece looked
up at the Deemster?"



II

It was not until Stowell had stepped on to the bench that he had
realized what he had done for himself.

When he had asked for the prisoners to be brought in, and Bessie had
come at the end of the short line and taken her place in the dock
with the constable behind her, he had been seized with a feeling of
choking shame.

That woman, looking so much older, with pallid cheeks sucked in by
suffering, could she be the same?  All the barrage he had built up
for the protection of his position as Judge seemed to have gone down
at the first sight of the girl's face.  What a scoundrel he had been!

From that moment a whirl of confused emotions had held possession of
him.  When the time came to charge the prisoner he had felt as if he
were reading out his own indictment.  And when she had looked up
fearlessly into his face and pleaded Not Guilty it was the same as if
she were accusing himself.

After that he had a sense of acting as a detached person.  In a
strange voice, which did not seem to be his own, he heard himself
asking the Attorney-General which case he wished to take first.  The
Attorney answered, "The murder case," and after the Clerk of the
Rolls had read out the names of the jurymen, and they had taken their
places in the jury-box, he heard himself, in the same strange voice,
swearing them on the holy evangelists to "a true verdict give,
according to the evidence and the laws of this isle."

When he turned his eyes back, Bessie was alone in the dock, save for
the woman warder (with blue lips and a look of suffering) who sat at
the farther end of it.  She was still looking fearlessly up at him,
and in front of her sat two others whose eyes were also fixed on his
face--Alick Gell and Fenella.  At that sight a terrible feeling took
hold of him--that these three were the real judges in this trial and
he was the prisoner at the bar.

He did not recover from the shock of this feeling until the
Attorney-General began on the prosecution.

The Attorney, usually so kindly, was bitterly severe.  The time had
gone by when it could be said with truth that crime was practically
unknown in the Isle of Man.  Here, as elsewhere, crimes of all kinds
were only too common, and not least common was the crime of
infanticide.

The present case was one of peculiar atrocity.  The prisoner was a
young woman who might be said, not uncharitably, to have inherited a
lawless disposition.  After a reckless girlhood she had disappeared
from her home, for no apparent reason, rather less than a year ago
and remained away (nobody knew where or in what company) until a few
weeks ago.  She had then been ill and was put to bed in a condition
which gave only too much reason for the belief that she was about to
become a mother.  That was on the fifth of April and two days later
the body of a new-born infant had been found in a remote place,
wrapped up and hidden away.

It would be established by witnesses that the infant had been born
alive, that it had died by suffocation, and that the prisoner
(incredible as it might appear) had been seen to bury it.

"Such," said the Attorney-General, "are the facts of this most
unhappy case, and though the prisoner pleads Not Guilty, the evidence
which I shall now call will leave no doubt that the child was her
child and that it died by her hands.  Therefore I ask (as well for
the sake of humanity as for the good name of this island) that the
Jury shall give such a verdict against the prisoner as will act as a
deterrent on the heartless women, unworthy of the name of mothers,
who, to save themselves from the just consequences of their evil
conduct, are taking the innocent lives which under God they gave."

There had been a tense atmosphere in the Court-house during the
Attorney-General's speech, and when it was over there were
half-suppressed murmurs, hostile to the prisoner.

Looking towards the dock Stowell saw that Bessie was quite unmoved,
but that Fenella, in front of her, was flushed and hot, and Gell's
lower lip was trembling.  Stowell was conscious of a complicated
struggle going on within him and then of a blind and headlong
resolution.  He was going to save that girl--he was going to save her
at all costs!

The first witness was the constable, a middle-aged man with a sour
expression.  After he had been sworn by the Deemster, the
Attorney-General examined him.

His name was Cain and he was constable for the parish in which the
crime had been committed.  On the morning of April the seventh he
received an information from Old Will Skillicorne of Baldromma-beg
that something had been seen under the _Clagh-ny-Dooiney_.  He had
gone there and found the body of a new-born child, and had taken it
to Dr. Clucas, who had made an examination.  Later the same day he
had taken statements from Old Will and his wife, relating to the
prisoner, and had sent them up to the Chief Constable of the island
at Douglas.  The Chief Constable had ordered him to make a
house-to-house visitation through the parish to see if any other
woman might have been the mother of the child.  He had done so with
the result that the prisoner was the only person who had come under
suspicion.  She was then ill in bed, but in due course he had
arrested her, and charged her before the High Bailiff, who had
committed her for trial at that court--sending her to the hospital in
the meantime.

With obvious nervousness Gell rose to cross-examine the witness.

"How far is it from the prisoner's home to the _Clagh-ny-Dooiney_?"

"Half a mile, maybe."

"What kind of road would you call it?"

"Rough and thorny, most of it."

Gell sat with a look of satisfaction, and the Deemster leaned forward.

"Constable," he said, "when you made your house-to-house visitation
did you go beyond the boundary of your parish?"

"No, your Honour."

"Where is the boundary?"

"The glen is the boundary--the western side of it, Sir."

"How near to the western boundary are the nearest houses in the next
parish?"

"Four hundred yards, perhaps."

"How many of them are there?"

"Fifteen or twenty, your Honour."

"Yet, though you visited the prisoner's home, which was half-a-mile
from the _Clagh-ny-Dooiney_, you did not visit--you were not told to
visit--the fifteen or twenty houses which were only four hundred
yards away?"

"They were not in my parish, your Honour."

There was audible drawing of breath in court.  Fenella, who had been
reaching forward, dropped back, and Gell's pale face was smiling.

The next to be called was Dr. Clucas.  His hands were twitching and
his rubicund face was moist with perspiration--he was obviously an
unwilling witness.

Yes, when the constable brought the body of the child he made a
post-mortem examination.  Applying the usual medical tests he came to
the conclusion that the child had been born alive and had died of
suffocation.  On the morning of the following day he had been called
in to see the prisoner.  She was suffering from extreme exhaustion--a
condition not inconsistent with the idea of recent confinement.

Gell, gathering strength but still agitated, rose again.

"How long had the child lived?"

"An hour or two, probably."

"And how long had it been dead?"

"Twenty-four to thirty hours at the outside."

"Is it your experience that within twenty-four to thirty hours after
confinement a woman can walk half-a-mile along a rough and thorny
road and carry a burden?"

"It certainly is not, Sir."

Gell sat with a piteous smile of triumph on his pale face, and the
Deemster leaned forward again.

"Doctor," he said, "you speak of applying the usual medical
tests--are they entirely reliable?"

"They are not infallible, your Honour.  They have been known to fail."

"Then this child may have breathed and yet not had a separate
existence?"

"It may--it is just possible, Sir."

"And the unhappy mother, whoever she may be, though obviously guilty
of concealing its birth, may not have been guilty of the much greater
crime of killing it?"

"That's so .... she may not, your Honour."

There was a still more audible drawing of breath in court when the
doctor stood down.  Fenella's eyes were shining and Gell's were
sparkling with excitement.

The next witness was Bridget Skillicorne.  She wore a big poke bonnet
and a Paisley shawl which smelt strongly of lavender.  She was very
voluble (provoking ripples of laughter by her broad Manx tongue) and
the Attorney-General had more than he could do to restrain her.

Aw, 'deed yes, she remembered the night of the sixth-seventh April,
for wasn't it the night she had a cow down with the gripes?  Colic
they were calling it, but wutching it was, and she believed in her
heart she knew who had wutched the craythur.  So she sent her ould
man over to the Ballawhaine for a taste of something to take off the
evil eye.  And while she was sitting in the cowhouse itself, waiting
for the man to come home (it was terr'ble slow the men were, both in
their heads and their legs), she saw the light of a fire that had
blown up on the mountains.  "Will it reach the hay in my haggard?"
she thought, and out she went to look.  And, behold ye, what did she
see but the glen as light as day and a woman on her knees putting
something under the _Clagh-ny-Dooiney_.  Who was she?  The Collister
girl of course.  Sure?  Sarten sure!  And as soon as it was day she
went down to the stone to see what the girl had left there.  What was
it?  A baby--what else?  Lying there in a scarf, poor bogh, like a
little white mollag.

"What's mollag?"  (Bridget's Manx had gone beyond the Attorney, but
the jurymen were smiling.)  "Ask them ones--_they_ know."

Gell, with a newspaper-cutting in his hand, rose to cross-examine the
old woman.

"You and your husband are sub-tenants of the prisoner's step-father,
isn't that so?"

"Certainly we are--you ought to know that much yourself, Sir."

"I see you told the High Bailiff you were on bad terms with your
landlord."

"Bad terms, is it?  I wouldn't bemane myself with being on any terms
at all with the like."

"He threatened to turn you out of your croft at Hollantide, didn't
he?"

"He did, the dirt!"

"And you said you'd see him thrown out before you?"

"It's like I did, and it's like I will, too, for if your father, the
Spaker...."

The Attorney-General rose in alarm.  "Is it suggested by these
questions that the witness has an animus against the prisoner's
family and is conspiring to convict her?"

"That," said Gell, in a ringing voice, "is precisely what is
suggested."

"What?" cried Bridget, bobbing her poke bonnet across at Gell.  "Is
it a liar you're making me out?  Me, that has known you since you
were a loblolly-boy in a jacket?"

The Deemster intervened to pacify the old woman, and then took her in
hand himself.

"Bridget," he said, "how far is it from your house on the brews down
to the _Clagh-ny-Dooiney_?  Is it three or four hundred yards, think
you?"

"Maybe it is.  But it's yourself knows as well as I do, your Honour."

"Is your sight still so good that you can see a woman to know her at
that distance?"

"Aw, well, not so bad anyway.  And then wasn't it as bright as day,
Sir?"

"Listen.  This court-house is not more than fifteen yards across, and
less than ten to any point from the box in which you stand.  Do you
think you could recognise anybody you know in this audience?"

"Anybody I know?  Recognise?  Why not, your Honour?"

"You know Cain the constable?"

"'Deed I do, and his mother before him.  A dacent man enough, but
stupid for all...."

"Well, he is one of the three constables who are now standing at this
end of the jury-box--which of them is he?"

"Which?  Do you say which, your Honour?" said Bridget, screwing up
her wrinkled face.  "Why, the off-one, surely."

There was a burst of irrepressible laughter in court--Bridget had
chosen wrongly.

The next witness was old Will Skillicorne.  He was wearing his chapel
clothes, with black kid gloves, large and baggy, and was carrying a
silk hat that was as straight and long and almost as brown as a
length of stove-pipe.  When called upon to swear he said he believed
the old Book said "Swear not at all," and when asked what he was he
answered that he believed he was "a man of God."

Aw, yes, he believed he remembered the night of the six-seventh of
April, and he was returning home from an errand into Andreas when the
prisoner passed him coming down the glen.

"At what time would that be?" asked Gell.

"Two or three in the morning, I belave."

"Then it would be still quite dark?"

"I was carrying my lantern, I belave."

"What was the prisoner doing when she passed you?"

"Covering her eyes with shame, I belave, as well she might be."

"Then you did not see her face?"

"I belave I did, though."

"Believe!  Believe!  Did you or did you not--yes or no?"

"I belave I did, Sir."

"Mr. Skillicorne," said the Deemster, "you attach importance to your
belief, I see."

The old man drew himself up, and answered in his preaching tone,

"It's the rock of my salvation, Sir."

"Your wife told us that your errand into Andreas was to see the
Ballawhaine about your sick cow.  Is that the well-known
witch-doctor?"

"I .... I .... I belave it is, Sir."

"And what did he give you?"

"A .... a wisp of straw and a few good words, Sir."

"Then you believe in that too--that a wisp of straw and a few good
words...."

But the Deemster could not finish--a ripple of laughter that had been
running through the Court having risen to a roar which he did not
attempt to repress.  "He has made up his mind about this case," said
someone.

The Attorney-General, who was looking hot and embarrassed, called the
last of his witnesses.  This was the house-doctor at the hospital,
the young man with the thin hair and pugnacious mouth.

Asked if he remembered the prisoner being brought into hospital he
said "Perfectly."  Had he formed any opinion of her condition?  He
had.  What was it?  That she had been confined less than five days
before.  What made him think so?  First her unwillingness to be
examined and then....

"She refused?"

"She did, your Honour, and threatened violence, but she became
unconscious soon afterwards and then...."

"Stop!" said the Deemster, and looking down at the Attorney he asked
if the High Bailiff, in committing the prisoner, had ordered that she
should be examined.

The Attorney-General shook his head helplessly, whereupon the
Deemster, with a severe face, turned back to the witness.

"You are a qualified medical practitioner?"

"I am," said the witness, straightening himself.

"Then of course you know that for a doctor to examine a woman against
her will and without a magistrate's order is to commit an offence for
which he may be severely punished?"

The pugnacious mouth opened like a dying oyster.

"Y-es, your Honour."

"Therefore you did not examine her?"

"N-o, your Honour."

"And you know nothing of her condition?"

"No----"

"Stand down, Sir."

There was a commotion in the court-house.  The prisoner's face was
still calm, but Fenella's was aglow and Gell's was ablaze.

"Mr. Attorney," said the Deemster quietly, "have you any further
evidence?"

The Attorney, who had been whispering hotly to Hudgeon, said,

"No, there was a nurse who might have given conclusive evidence, but,
thinking the doctor's would be sufficient, my colleague has allowed
her to leave the island.  No, that is my case, your Honour."

Stowell, secretly glad at the turn things had taken, was about to put
an end to the trial, when Gell, intoxicated by his success, leapt up
and said,

"I might ask the Court to dismiss this case immediately on the ground
that there is nothing to put before the jury.  But the wicked and
cruel charge may follow the accused all her life, therefore I
propose, with the Court's permission, to waive my right of reply and
call such positive evidence of her innocence as will enable her to
leave this court without a stain on her character."

"The fool!" thought Stowell.  But just at that moment the clock of
the Castle struck one, and the Governor said,

"The Court will adjourn for luncheon and resume at two."

As Stowell stepped off the bench his eye caught a glimpse of the
inscription on a brass plate which had lately been affixed to the
wall under his father's portrait--


    "_Justice is the most sacred thing on earth._"


His head dropped; he felt like a traitor.



III

When the trial was resumed the Attorney-General had not returned to
court, so Hudgeon represented the Crown.  He was offensive from the
first, but Gell, whose spirits had risen perceptibly, was not to be
put out.

The witness he called first was Mrs. Collister.  The old mother had
to be helped into the witness-box.  Her poor face was wet with recent
tears, and in administering the oath Stowell hardly dared to look at
her.  Remembering the admissions she had made to him at Ballamoar he
knew that she had come to give false evidence in her daughter's cause.

She made a timid, reluctant and sometimes inaudible witness.  More
than once Hudgeon complained that he could not hear, and Gell, with
great tenderness, asked her to speak louder.

"Speak up, Mrs. Collister.  There's nothing to fear.  The Court will
protect you," he said.  But Stowell, who saw what was hidden behind
the veil of the old woman's soul, knew it was another and higher
audience she was afraid of.

With many pauses she repeated, in answer to Gell's questions, the
story she had told before--that her daughter had returned home ill on
the fifth of April, that she had put her to bed in the dairy-loft and
that the girl had never left it until Cain the constable came to
arrest her.

"You saw her day and night while she was at your house?"

"Aw, yes, Sir, last thing at night and first thing in the morning."

"And you know nothing that conflicts with what she says--that she
never had a child and therefore could not have killed it?"

"'Deed no, Sir, nothing whatever."

She had answered in a tremulous voice which the Deemster found deeply
affecting.  Once or twice she had lifted her weak eyes to his with a
pitiful look of supplication, and he had had to turn his own eyes
away.  "I should do it myself," he thought.

"And now, Mrs. Collister," said Gell, "if you were here this morning
you heard what the Attorney-General said--that your daughter had been
of a lawless disposition and had run away from home without apparent
reason.  Is there any truth in that?"

"Bessie was always a good girl, Sir.  It was lies the gentleman was
putting on her."

"Is the prisoner your husband's daughter?"

"No, Sir," the old woman faltered, "his step-daughter."

"Is it true that her step-father has always been hard on her?"

The old woman hesitated, then faltered again, "Middling hard anyway."

"Don't be afraid.  Remember, your daughter's liberty, perhaps her
life, are in peril.  Tell the Jury what happened on the day she left
home."

Then nervously, fearfully, looking round the Court-house as if in
terror of being seen or heard, the old woman told the story of the
first Saturday in August.

"So your husband deliberately shut the girl out of the house in the
middle of the night, knowing well she had nowhere else to go to?"

"Yes, if you plaze, Sir."

"It's a lie--a scandalous lie!" cried somebody at the back of the
court.

"Who's that?" asked the Governor, and he was told by the Inspector of
Police (who was already laying hold of the interrupter) that it was
the husband of the witness.

"A respectable man's character is being sworn away," cried Dan.  "Put
me in the box and I'll swear it's a lie."

In the tumult that followed the Deemster raised his hand.

"This Court has been fenced," he said severely, "and if anybody
attempts to brawl here...."

"Then let me be sworn.  I'm only a plain Manxman, blood and bone, but
I can tell the truth as well as some that make a bigger mouth."

"Behave yourself!"

"Give me a chance to save my character and fix the disgrace of these
bad doings where it belongs."

"I give you fair warning...."

"Put the saddle on the right horse, Dempster.  He's near enough to
yourself, anyway."

"Silence!"

"Why doesn't he come out into the open, not hide behind the skirts of
a girl with a by-child?"

"Remove that man to the cells, and keep him there until the trial is
over."

"What?" cried Dan, in a loud voice.

"Remove him!" cried the Deemster, in a voice still louder, and at the
next moment, Dan, shaking his fist at the prisoner and cursing her,
was hustled out of Court.

When the tempestuous scene was over and silence had been restored,
the witness was trembling and covering her face in her hands and
Hudgeon was on his feet to cross-examine her.

"I think your father was the late John Corteen, the Methodist?"

"Yes, sir."

"He was a good man, wasn't he?"

"As good a man as ever walked the world, Sir."

"He had a reputation for strict truthfulness--isn't that so?"

"'Deed it is, Sir.  The old Dempster would take his word without
asking him to swear to it."

"You were much attached to him, were you not?"

The old woman wiped her eyes, which were wet but shining.

"That's truth enough, Sir."

"And now he's dead and I daresay you sometimes pray for the time when
you'll see him again?"

"Morning and night, every day of my life since I closed the man's
dying eyes for him."

The advocate turned his gleaming eyes to the Jury and the side of his
powerful face to the witness.

"You are a Methodist yourself, aren't you?"

"Such as I am, Sir."

"And as a Methodist you are taught to believe that truth is sacred
and that a lie (no matter under what temptation told) is a thing of
the devil and no good can come of it?"

The old woman faltered something that was barely heard, and then the
big advocate turned quickly round on her, and said in a stern voice,
looking full into her timid eyes,

"Mrs. Collister, as you are a Christian woman and expect to meet your
father some day, will you swear that when your daughter returned home
on the fifth of April you did not see at a glance that she was about
to become a mother of a child?"

The old woman shuddered as if she had been smitten by an invisible
hand, breathed audibly, tried to speak, stopped, then closed her
eyes, swayed a little and laid hold of the bar in front of her.

"Inspector, see to the witness quickly," cried the Deemster.

At the next moment the old woman was being helped out of the
witness-box and borne towards the door, where, realising what she had
done for her daughter, she broke into a fit of weeping, which rent
the silence of the Court until the door had closed behind her.

"In that cry," said the advocate, "the Jury has heard the answer to
my question.  It is proof enough that the prisoner had a child, and
that her mother knew it."

"If so, it is proof of something else," cried Gell (he had leapt to
his feet and was speaking in a thrilling voice), "that a strong man
can find it in his heart to use his great forensic skill to crush a
poor weak woman who is fighting for the life of her child.  All his
life through he has been doing the same thing--driving people into
prison and dragging them to the gallows.  He has made his name and
grown rich and fat on it.  God save me from a life like that!  I am
only a young lawyer and he is an old one, but may I live in poverty
and die in the streets rather than outrage my humanity and degrade my
profession by using the lures of the procurator and the arts of the
hangman."

There was a sensation in Court.  One of the younger advocates was
heard to say, "My God, who thought Alick Gell was a fool?"  And
another who remembered the "Fanny" case in the Douglas police-courts,
said, "He's got a bit of his own back, anyway."

When the commotion subsided, Hudgeon, with a face of scarlet,
appealed to the Court:

"Your Honour, I ask your protection against this outrageous slander."

"Since you appeal to me," said the Deemster (whose own face was
aflame), "I can only say that you deserved every word of it."

Hudgeon tried to speak, but could not, his voice being choked in his
throat.  And seeing that the Attorney-General had come back to Court
(he had just returned with Cain the constable, who was carrying a
parcel) he picked up his bag and fled.

Gell's time had come at last--the great moment he had been waiting
for so long.  Although he had been shaken for an instant by Mrs.
Collister's silence he was not afraid now.  He was going to play his
last and greatest card--put the prisoner in the box to demolish for
ever the monstrous accusation that had been intended to ruin the life
of an innocent woman.  The Deemster trembled as he saw Gell look
round the Court with a confident smile before he called his witness.

Bessie, whose big eyes had flamed with fury during her mother's
cross-examination, passed with a firm step from the dock to the
witness-box.  In answer to Gell's questions she repeated the evidence
she had given before the High Bailiff, only more emphatically and
with a certain note of defiance.

When the Attorney-General rose to cross-examine her, it was observed
that he, too, had an air of confidence, as if something had become
known to him since morning.

"Do you adhere to your plea?" he asked.

"Indeed I do.  Why shouldn't I?" said Bessie.

"Think again before it is too late.  Do you still say that you have
never had a child, and therefore never killed and never buried one?"

"Certainly I say so," said Bessie.  "I don't know what you are
talking of."

"Constable," said the Attorney, turning to Cain, "open your parcel."

There was a whispering among the spectators in Court, while the
constable was cutting the string and opening the brown-paper parcel.
The Deemster was shuddering, Gell's lower lip was trembling, and
Fenella (who was sitting, as before, in front of the dock) was
breathing deeply.  The prisoner alone was unmoved.  The sun (it was
now going round to the West) was shining down on her from the lantern
light.  It lit up with pitiful vividness her thin white face with its
look of confidence and contempt.

"Do you know what this is?" asked the Attorney, holding up a portion
of a white silk scarf.

Bessie started as if she had seen a ghost.  Then, recovering herself
and turning her eyes away, she said, remembering what Gell had told
her,

"I know nothing about it."

"You have never seen it before?"

"I know nothing about it."

The Attorney-General put the scarf outstretched on the table in front
of him, and held up a narrower strip of the same material.

"Do you know anything about this, then?"

Bessie gasped and was silent for a moment.  Then she said again, but
with a stammer,

"I know nothing about it."

"Will you swear that it never belonged to you?"

A stabbing memory came back to Bessie.  She remembered what she had
heard about "a remnant" when the constables were ranging her room,
and seeing no way of escape by further denial she said,

"Oh yes, I remember it now.  I found it on the road when I was on my
way home and bound it about my hat to keep it from blowing off in the
wind."

The silence which had fallen upon the Court was broken by an audible
drawing of breath.  Gell, who had risen and leaned forward, dropped
back.

"But if you found it on the road, how do you account for the fact
that it has your name stamped on the corner of it?  See--_Bessie_."

Bessie was speechless for another moment.  Then she said,

"Bessie is a common name, isn't it?"

"But how do you account for the further fact that these two pieces
fit each other exactly?" asked the Attorney--laying the narrow strip
by the broader portion.

Bessie became dizzy and confused.

"I can't account for it.  I know nothing about it," she said.

The Deemster, who was breathing with difficulty, asked the Attorney
what he suggested by the exhibits.  The Attorney answered,

"The larger piece, your Honour, is the scarf which the body of the
child was found in, while the narrower one was discovered in the
prisoner's room, and the suggestion is that, taken together, they
form a chain of convincing evidence that she is guilty of the crime
with which she is charged."

Gell leapt to his feet.  He had recognised the scarf as a present of
his own on Bessie's last birthday, and his great faith in the girl
was breaking down, yet in a husky voice he said,

"Give her time, your Honour.  She may have some explanation."

The Deemster signified assent, and then Gell, stepping closer to the
witness-box, said,

"Be calm and think again.  Don't answer hastily.  Everything depends
on your reply.  Are you sure the scarf was not yours and that you
lost the larger piece of it?  Think carefully, I beg, I pray."

The advocate was losing himself, yet nobody protested.  At length
Bessie, with the wild eyes of a captured animal, broke into violent
cries.

"Oh, why are you all torturing me?  Wasn't it enough to torture my
mother?  I know nothing about it."

Gell dropped back to his seat.  There was a profound silence.  The
great clock of the Castle was heard to strike four.  The Deemster
felt as if every stroke were beating on his brain.  At length he said,

"A new fact has been introduced by the prosecution and it is only
right that the defence should have time to consider it.  It is now
four o'clock.  The Court will adjourn until morning.  It is not for
me to anticipate the evidence which the accused may give when the
Court resumes, but if in the interval she can remember anything which
will put a new light on the serious fact the Attorney-General has
just disclosed, nothing she has said in her agitation to-day shall
prejudice what she may say to-morrow."

He paused for a moment and then (with difficulty maintaining an equal
voice) he added,

"It sometimes happens that a young woman in the position of the
accused mistakes concealment for the much more serious crime of
murder."

He paused again and then said,

"Whatever the facts in this unhappy case may prove to be, if I may
speak to that mystery of a woman's heart which is truly said to be
sacred even in its shame, I will say, 'Tell the truth, the whole
truth; it will be best for you, best for everybody.'"

"The Court stands adjourned until eleven in the morning," said the
Governor.  "Meantime, let the advocate for the defence see the
accused and give her the benefit of his legal advice and assistance.
Jailer, look to the Jury that they are properly lodged in the Castle,
and see that they hold no communication with persons outside."



IV

The Judges, the advocates and the spectators were gone, and Gell was
alone in the Court-house.  He was like a drowning man in an empty
sea, clinging to an upturned boat.

Time after time he gathered up his papers and put them in his bag,
then took them out again and spread them before him.  At length,
rising with a haggard face, he went downstairs with a heavy step.

At the door to the private entrance he came upon Fenella, who was
waiting for her father.  Her eyes were red as if she had been
weeping, but they were blazing with anger also.

"Are you going down to her as the Governor suggested?"

"I cannot!  I dare not!" he replied.  And then, as if struck by a
sudden thought he said, "But won't you go?"

"You wish me to speak to her instead of you?"

"Won't you?  If she has anything to say she'll say it more freely to
a woman."

Fenella looked at him for a moment.

"Very well, I'll go if you are willing to take the consequences."

"The consequences?  To me?  That's nothing--nothing whatever.  Go to
her, for God's sake.  I'll wait here for you."

In the Deemster's room the Governor was putting on his military
overcoat.  He was not too well satisfied with himself, and as the
only means of self-justification he was nursing a dull anger against
Stowell.

"Well, we can only go on with it.  There's nothing else to do now.
Unfortunate--damnably unfortunate!"

A few minutes later, Stowell, sitting at the table in wig and gown,
heard the clash of steel outside (a company of the regiment quartered
in the town were acting as a guard of honour) and saw through the
window the Governor's big blue landau passing over the bridge that
crossed the harbour.

Gell would be with Bessie in her cell by this time.  She was guilty.
He must see that she was guilty.  What a shock!  What a
disillusionment!  All his high-built faith in the girl wrecked and
broken!

At last he unrobed and went down the empty staircase.  On opening the
door to the court-yard he was startled to see Gell pacing to and fro
with downcast head among the remains of some tombs of old kings which
lay about in the rank grass.

"Ah, is it you?" said Gell, looking up at the sound of Stowell's
footsteps.  "You were good to her, old fellow.  I can't help thanking
you."

Stowell mumbled some reply and then said he thought Gell would have
been with Bessie.

"I daren't go," said Gell.  "But Fenella has gone instead of me."

"Fenella?"

Stowell felt as if something were creeping between his skin and his
flesh.  Fenella and Bessie--those two and the dread secret!

"My poor girl!" said Gell.  "If she has anything to say--to
confess--it won't hurt so much to say it to somebody else.  But of
course she hasn't--she can't have."

Stowell felt as if he had been suddenly deprived of the power of
speech.  Yes, Bessie would confess everything to Fenella.  Not merely
the birth of her child but also the name of her
fellow-sinner--Fenella's desire to punish the guilty man would drag
that out of her.  Perhaps the confession was going on at that very
moment.  What a shock for Fenella too!  All her high-built faith in
him wrecked and broken!

"Well, let us hope...."

"Yes, that is all we can do."

And then the two men parted, Gell returning to his pacing among the
tombs of the dead kings and Stowell going out by the Deemster's door.

A few of the spectators at the trial were waiting to see the Deemster
off, but he scarcely saw their salutations and did not respond to
them.




CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

THE TWO WOMEN--THE TWO MEN

On being taken back to her cell Bessie had burst into a fit of
hysteria.

"The brutes!  They're only trying to catch me out that they may kill
me.  Why don't they do it then?  Why don't they finish me?  This
waiting is the worst."

Her face was blue with rage, her voice was coarse and husky, her
mouth was full of ugly and vulgar words--all the traces of her common
upbringing coming uppermost.

At length, out of breath and exhausted, she broke into sobs.  This
quietened her and after a while she asked what had become of her
mother.

Fenella, who was alone with her (the woman warder having gone home
ill), answered that some good women had carried her mother away and
were going to take care of her.

"And where is...."

"Mr. Gell?  Upstairs.  He sent me down to speak to you."

"I won't speak to anyone.  They're all alike.  They're only torturing
me."

Fenella reproved the girl tenderly.  Could she not see that the
Deemster himself was trying to help her?  He had adjourned the Court
to give her another chance, and if she could only explain away the
evidence of the scarf....

"I won't explain anything.  Why can't you leave me be?"

"You heard what the Deemster said, Bessie?  Tell the truth; the whole
truth; it will be best for you; best for everybody."

After that Bessie became calmer, and then Fenella (little knowing
what she was doing for herself) pleaded with the girl to confess.

"I think I understand," she said.  "Sometimes a girl loves a man so
much that she cannot deny him anything.  Thousands and thousands of
women have been like that.  Not the worst women either.  But the dark
hour comes when the man does not marry her--perhaps cannot--and then
she tries to cover up everything.  And that's your case, isn't it?"

"Don't ask me.  I can't tell you," cried Bessie.

Fenella tried again, still more tenderly.

"And sometimes a girl who has done wrong tries to shield somebody
else--somebody who is as guilty as herself, perhaps guiltier.
Thousands of women have done that too, ever since the world began.
They shouldn't, though.  A bad man counts on a woman's silence.  She
should speak out, no matter who may be shamed.  And that's what you
are going to do, aren't you?"

But still Bessie cried, "I can't!  I can't!"

"Don't be afraid," said Fenella.  "The Deemster is not like some
other judges.  He has such pity for a girl in your position that he
will do what is right by her whoever the man may be."

"Oh, why do you torture me?" cried Bessie.

"I don't mean to do that," said Fenella.  "But a girl has to think of
her own position in the long run, and it's only right she should know
what it is.  If she is charged with a terrible crime, and there is
evidence against her which she cannot gainsay, the law has the power
to punish her--to inflict the most terrible punishment, perhaps.
Have you thought of that, Bessie?"

Bessie shuddered and laid hold of Fenella by both hands.

"On the other hand if she can explain .... if she can say that her
child was born dead and that she merely concealed the birth of it, or
that she killed it by accident, perhaps, when she was alone and
didn't know what she was doing...."

Bessie was breathing rapidly, and Fenella (still unconscious of the
fearful game the unseen powers were playing with her) followed up her
advantage.

"You can trust the Deemster, Bessie.  He will be merciful to a girl
who has stood silent in her shame to save the honour of the man she
loves--I'm sure he will.  And the Jury too, when they see that you
did not intend to kill your child, they may .... who knows? .... they
may even acquit you altogether."

Bessie was silent now, and Fenella could see, in the half darkness of
the cell, that the girl's big pathetic eyes were gazing up at her.

"And then the people who have been thinking hard of you, because you
have deceived them, will soften to you when they see that what you
did, however wrong it was and even criminal, was done perhaps for
somebody you loved better than yourself."

Suddenly Bessie dropped to her knees at Fenella's feet and cried,

"Very well, I will confess.  Yes, it's true.  I had a child, and I
.... I killed it.  But I didn't mean to--God knows I didn't."

"Tell me everything," said Fenella.  And then, burying her face in
Fenella's lap and clinging to her, Bessie told her story, mentioning
no names, but concealing and excusing nothing.

Before she had come to an end, Fenella, who had been saying "Yes" and
"Yes," and asking short and eager questions (the two women speaking
in whispers as if afraid that the dark walls would hear), felt
herself seized by a great terror.

"Then it was not Mr. Gell who took you into his rooms when your
father shut you out?"

"No, no!  Would to God it had been!"

"Then who was it?"

"Don't ask me that.  I cannot answer you."

"Who was it?  Tell me, tell me."

"I can't!  I can't!"

"Was it in Ramsey--his chambers?"

"Yes."

"Is he? .... is he anything to me?"

Bessie dropped her head still deeper into Fenella's lap and made no
answer.

"Is he?" said Fenella, and in her gathering terror, getting no reply,
she lifted Bessie's head and looked searchingly into her face, as if
to probe her soul.

At the next moment the dreadful truth had fallen on her.  The girl's
fellow-sinner, the man she had been hunting down to punish him, to
shame him, to expose him to public obloquy, was Victor Stowell
himself!

At the first shock of the revelation the woman in Fenella asserted
itself--the simple, natural, deceived and outraged woman.  This girl
had gone before her!  This common, uneducated creature of the fields
and the farmyard!  For one cruel moment she had a vision of Bessie in
Stowell's arms.  This was the face he had loved!  These were the lips
he had kissed!  And she had thought he had loved her only--never
having loved anybody else!

A feeling of disgust came over her.  The girl had not even had the
excuse of caring for Stowell.  She had been thinking merely of a way
of escape from the tyrannies of her step-father.  Or perhaps an
admixture of sheer animal instinct had impelled her.  How degrading
it all was!

Bessie, who had begun to realise what she had done, tried to take her
hand, but Fenella drew back and cried,

"Don't touch me!"

All the thoughts of years about woman as the victim seemed to be
burnt up in an instant in the furnace of her outraged feelings.  An
almost unconquerable impulse came to leave Bessie to her fate.  Let
her pay the penalty of her crime!  Why shouldn't she?

But after a while a great pity for the girl came over her.  If she
had sinned she had also suffered.  If she was there, in prison, it
was only because she had been trying in her ignorant way to wipe out
her fault.

But she herself .... her hopes gone, her love wasted....

Fenella bursted into a flood of tears.  And then Bessie (the two
women had changed places now) began to comfort her.

"I'm sorry.  I didn't think what I was doing.  Don't cry."

At the next moment they were in each other's arms, crying like
children--two poor ship-broken women on the everlasting ocean of
man's changeless lust.

Bessie was the first to recover.  She was full of hope and
expectation, and visions of the future.  Now that she had confessed
everything the Deemster would tell the Jury to let her off, and then
Alick would forgive her also.

"He _will_ forgive me, will he not?"

She was like a child again, and Fenella found a cruel relief in
humouring her.

"Yes, yes," she answered.

"When I leave this place I'm going to be so good," said Bessie.  "I
will make him such a happy life.  We'll be married immediately--by
Bishop's licence, you know--and then leave the Isle of Man and go to
America.  He often spoke of that, and it will be best .... After all
this trouble it will be best, don't you think so?"

"No doubt, no doubt," said Fenella.

At length she remembered that Gell would be waiting for her.  She
must go to him.  When she reached the corridor she paused, wondering
what she was to say and how she was to say it.  While she stood there
she heard sounds from the cell behind her.  Bessie was singing.

Meantime Gell had been fighting his own battle.  The black thought
which had come hurtling down on him at Derby Haven, when he first
read the letter which Bessie had left behind her, was torturing him
again.  It was about Stowell, and to crush it he had to call up the
memory of the long line of good and generous things that Stowell had
done for him all the way up since he was a boy.

When at last he saw Fenella approaching he searched her face for a
ray of hope, but his heart sank at the sight of it.

"Well?"

"She has confessed."

"She had a child?"

"Yes."

"It was born dead?"

"No, she killed it."

"God in heaven!" said Gell, and it seemed to Fenella that at that
moment the man's heart had broken.

She knew she ought to say more, but she could not do so--nothing
being of consequence except the one terrible fact of the man's
betrayal.

"God in heaven!" said Gell again, and he turned to leave her.

"What are you going to do in the morning?"

"I don't know .... yet."

"Where are you going to now?"

"To .... Ballamoar."

Again she knew that she ought to say more, but again she could not.

Gell was making for the gate, and Fenella, bankrupt in heart herself,
wanted to comfort him.

"Mr. Gell," she said, "I have been doing you a great injustice.  I
ask you to forgive me."

With his hand on the bolt he turned his broken face to her.

"That's nothing--nothing now," he said.

And again she heard "God in heaven!" as the gate closed behind him.



II

"Ah, here you are, dear!"

It was Janet who had heard the hum of Stowell's car on the drive and
had come hurrying out to meet him.

"You've had a tiring day--I can see that," she said, as she poured
out a cup of tea for him.  "Ah, these high positions!  'There's
nothing to be got without being paid for,' as your father used to
say."

To escape from Janet's solicitude and to tire himself out so that he
might have a chance of sleeping that night, he walked down to the
shore.

A storm was rising.  The gulls were flying inland and their white
wings were mingling with the black ones of the rooks.  The fierce sky
to the south, the cold grey of the sea to the north, the bleak church
tower on the stark headland, looking like a blinded lighthouse--they
suited better with his mood.

Fenella!  She must know everything by this time.  How was he to meet
her eyes in the morning?

Gell!  He, too, must know everything now.  How every innocent thing
he had done to help his friend would look like cunning bribery and
cruel treachery!

It was a lie to say that a sin could be concealed.  An evil act once
done could never be undone; it could never be hidden away.  A man
might carry his sin out to sea, and bury it in the deepest part of
the deep, but some day it would come scouring up before a storm as
the broken seaweed came, to lie open and naked on the beach.

The sky darkened and he turned back.  On the way home he met Robbie
Creer, and they had to shout to each other above the fury of the
wind.  The farmer had been over to the Nappin (the fields above the
Point) and found hidden fissures in the soil three feet deep.  They
would lose land before morning.

At dinner Janet did her best to make things cheerful.  There was the
sweet home atmosphere--the wood fire with its odour of resin and
gorse, the snow-white table-cloth, the silver candlesticks, all the
old-fashioned daintiness.  But Stowell was preoccupied and hardly
listened to Janet's chattering.  So she went early to her room,
saying she was sure he wished to be alone--his father always did,
during the adjournment of a serious case.  His father again!  How her
devotion to his father drove the iron into his soul!

It was late and the rain had begun to slash the window-panes when he
heard the front door bell ringing.  After a few moments he heard it
ringing again, more loudly and insistently.  Nobody answered it.  The
household must be asleep.

Then came a hurried knocking at the window of the dining-room and a
voice, which was like the wind itself become articulate, crying out
of the darkness,

"Let me in!"

It was Gell.  For the first time in his life Stowell felt a spasm of
physical fear.  But he remembered something which Gell had said at
the door of the railway carriage in Douglas on the day of the trial
of the Peel fisherman ("I should have killed the other man"), and
that strengthened him.  Anything was better than the torture of a
hidden sin--anything!

"Go back to the door--I'll open it," he called through the closed
window, and then he walked to the porch.

His heart was beating hard.  He thought he knew what was coming.  But
when Gell entered the house he was not the man Stowell had
expected--with flaming eyes and passionate voice--but a poor, broken,
irresolute creature.  His hair was disordered, his step was weak and
shuffling, and he was stretching out his nervous hands on coming into
the light as if still walking in the darkness.

"I had to come and tell you.  She's guilty.  She has confessed," he
said.

And then he collapsed into a chair and broke into pitiful moaning.
It was too cruel.  He could have taken the girl's word against the
world, yet she had deceived him.

"Did she say .... who...."

"No."

"No?"

"I didn't ask.  Some miserable farm-hand, I suppose--some brute, some
animal.  Damn him, whoever he is!  Damn him!  Damn him to the devil
and hell!"

Stowell felt a boundless relief, yet a sense of sickening duplicity.

"But what matter about the man?" said Gell.  "It's the girl who has
deceived me.  I daresay I'm not the first either.  Perhaps her
step-father didn't turn her out for nothing.  There may have been
something to say for the old scoundrel."

Choking with hypocrisy, Stowell found himself pleading for the girl.
Perhaps .... who could say? .... perhaps she had been more sinned
against than sinning.

"Then why didn't she tell me?" said Gell.  His voice was like a wail.

"Who can say...." (Stowell felt a throb in his throat and was
speaking with difficulty), "who can say she wasn't trying to save you
pain .... knowing how you believed in her and cared for her?"

"But if she had only told me," said Gell.  "If she had only been
straight with me!"

Stowell felt himself on the edge of terrible revelations.  But he
controlled himself.  If Bessie had concealed part of the truth what
right had he to reveal it?  After a moment of silent terror he asked
Gell what he meant to do in the morning.

"Advise her to amend her plea and cast herself on the mercy of the
Court."

"Yes, that is the only proper course now," said Stowell, and then
Gell rose to go.

It was a wild night.  The wind was higher than ever by this time and
the rain on the windows was rattling like hail.  Stowell asked Gell
to sleep the night at Ballamoar, secretly hoping he would refuse.  He
did.  He had bespoken a bed at the Railway Inn near to the
station--he must go up by the first train in the morning.

Stowell saw him to the door, and held it open with his shoulder
against the wind, which swirled through the hall, making the flame of
the lamp on the landing to flame up in its funnel.  Outside there was
the slashing of leaves and the crackling of boughs among the elms
around the lawn.

"Well, good-night," said Gell, and turning up the collar of his coat,
he went off in the darkness and the rain.

Stowell turned back into the house with a sense of degradation he had
never felt before.  Oh, what a miserable coward a hidden sin made of
a man!  Sooner or later it would be revealed and then .... what then?

Suddenly he was startled by a new thought.  Bessie's confession would
give the trial an entirely different turn.  If she pleaded guilty in
the morning there would be nothing for the Jury to do.  Either they
would have to be dismissed or instructed to bring in a formal
verdict.  The verdict against the prisoner would depend upon the
Judges.  That is to say, Bessie's fate would depend upon him--upon
him alone!

The first shock of this thought was terrible, but after a while he
told himself that it came to the same thing in the end.  The real
responsibility was with the law.  A judge was only the law's
spokesman.  For a given crime a given punishment.  A judge did not
make the sentence on a prisoner--he had only to pronounce it.

Strengthening himself so, he went to bed.  For a long time he lay
awake, listening to the many sounds of the storm.  In the middle of
the night he was startled out of his troubled sleep by a loud crash
in the distance.

The morning broke fair, with a clear sky and the sea lying under the
sunshine like a sleeping child.  But as he drove off, after a scanty
breakfast, he found the carriage-drive strewn with young leaves, the
torn bough of an old elm stretching across his path, and a number of
dead rooks lying about the lawn.

Outside the big gates he met Robbie Creer, who was riding barebacked
on a farm horse.  The farmer had been over to the Nappin and seen
what he had expected.  The headland was down; there was a Gob (a
mouth) where the Point had been, and the sea was flowing between two
cliffs that had been torn asunder.

Driving hard, Stowell arrived early at Castletown and found a crowd
at the Castle gate, waiting for the trial as for a show.  He was
passing through the Deemster's private entrance when he had a vision
of a scene which the spectators could not be counting upon.  What if
the prisoner, while making her confession, accused her Judge?

Joshua Scarff, in his coloured spectacles, was waiting at the door to
the Deemster's room.

"I'm afraid your Honour is not well this morning," said Joshua.

"A little headache, that's all," said Stowell.

But he had stumbled on the threshold (a bad omen) and was wondering
what would happen before he came out again.




CHAPTER THIRTY

THE VERDICT

When the Court resumed Gell rose, with a haggard face, to make an
announcement.

In accordance with the suggestion of his Excellency, the accused had
been seen during the adjournment (though not by him), with the result
that she had confessed to having given birth to a child and being the
cause of its death.

"In these circumstances," he said, speaking in a husky voice, "I have
taken the only course open to me--that of advising her to revise her
plea, and with the permission of the Court she will now do so."

There was a moment of agitation in which the Court was understood to
assent, and then Bessie was called upon to plead again.  But hardly
had she risen at the call of the Deemster when she broke down utterly
and sob followed sob at every question that was put to her.  At
length she bowed her head and that was accepted as her plea of guilty.

Then Gell rose again and said,

"Although the prisoner pleads guilty to causing the death of her
child, she says she did not so wilfully.  Therefore I propose to put
her back in the box to prove extenuating circumstances."

Once more the Court agreed, but when Bessie was removed from the dock
to the witness-box she broke down again and not a word could be got
out of her.

"It is only natural," said Gell, "that she should feel shame at
having to take back what she said yesterday."

The Deemster bowed, and speaking with an obvious effort he appealed
to the girl to answer the questions of her advocate.  But still
Bessie sobbed and made no answer.

"The Court has nothing left to it but to go on to judgment," said the
Attorney-General.

At that moment, when the trial seemed to be brought to a standstill,
Fenella (sitting near to the witness-box) was seen to lean over and
whisper to Gell, who rose and asked to be allowed to make a
suggestion--that inasmuch as the accused was unable to answer for
herself, somebody else, who knew what she wished to say, should be
empowered to answer for her.

The Deemster, seeing what was coming, seemed to catch his breath, but
after a moment he agreed.  The course proposed, although unusual, was
not contrary to the interests of justice or altogether without
precedent--a deaf and dumb witness always giving evidence by a
speaking proxy.  Therefore if the Attorney-General did not object....

"Not at all," said the Attorney.

"In that case," said Gell, "I will ask the lady who received the
prisoner's confession to speak on her behalf--Miss Stanley."

It was said afterwards, when the events of that day had a fierce
light cast back upon them, that when Fenella stepped up to the
witness-box, and stood side by side with the prisoner, ready to take
her oath, the Deemster seemed scarcely able to recite the familiar
words to her.

"Please tell the Court, as nearly as possible in her own words, what
the prisoner told you," said Gell.

There was a deep and concentrated silence.  Never before had anybody
witnessed so strange a scene.  Speaking calmly and firmly, Fenella
told Bessie's story as Bessie herself had told it--her journey from
the south of the island, the birth and death of her child, and the
burying of it under the _Clagh-ny-Dooiney_.

When she had finished, and Bessie, who was stifling her sobs, had
bowed her head in reply to a question from Gell that she assented to
what had been said on her behalf, the Attorney-General rose to
cross-examine.

"Does the prisoner deny," he said, "that when she returned home she
told her mother of her condition?"

"Yes, her mother knew nothing about it."

"Does she deny that by keeping her condition secret from the person
most proper to know of it, she deliberately intended to put her child
away by violence?"

"No, she does not deny that, but says that when her baby came the
instinct of motherhood came too, and from that moment onward the idea
of taking its life was far from her heart."

"Does the prisoner wish the Court to believe that--in spite of her
subsequent conduct in concealing the birth and death of her child and
in secretly burying it?"

"Yes, she does, and if a court of men cannot believe it, a court of
women would, because...."

But the Attorney-General, with a look of triumph, sat down quickly,
and Fenella, flushing up to her flaming eyes, stopped suddenly.

There was another moment of deep silence in Court, and then Gell, who
had to struggle with his emotion, rose to re-examine.

"Does the prisoner say that when she killed her child she did so
unconsciously and under the influence of fear?"

"Yes, under the influence of fear--fear of her step-father who had
behaved like a brute to her."

"Does she think that, however lamentable her act, she was moved to it
by pardonable motives?"

"Not pardonable motives merely," said Fenella, flaming up again, "but
nobly unselfish ones."

"Nobly unselfish motives!" said the Attorney-General, rising again.
"Will the witness please tell the Court what she means by nobly
unselfish motives in a case like this?"

"I mean," said Fenella, hesitating for a moment, looking up at the
Deemster and then (before she could be stopped) speaking with passion
and rapidly, "I mean that this girl was betrayed at the time of her
sorest need by one who should have protected her, not taken advantage
of her.  I mean that, falling in love afterwards with another man--a
good man who was willing to make her his wife--she committed the
crime solely and only in an effort to cover up her fault and to save
her honour in the eyes of the man who loved her.  I mean, too, that
the real guilt lies not so much with this poor creature who sits here
in her shame, as with the man who used her, caring nothing for her,
and then left her to bear the consequences of their sin alone.  Shame
on him!  Shame on him!  May no good man own him for a friend!  May no
good woman take him for a husband!  May he live to...."

The irregular outburst was interrupted by a cry from the advocates'
benches.  Gell had risen with wild eyes.  He seemed to be trying to
speak.  His mouth opened but he said nothing, and after looking first
at Fenella and then at the Deemster he sank back to his seat.  And
then Fenella, as if realising what she had done, sat also.

There were some moments of uneasy silence, and then the
Attorney-General rose for the last time.

"It is impossible," he said, "not to be moved by what we have just
heard, however improper on legal grounds it may have been.  But the
Court will not allow themselves to be carried away by their feelings.
It is the natural consequence of great crimes that they should bring
great suffering.  The prisoner has confessed to a great crime.  She
has failed to establish proof of extenuating circumstances.
Therefore, for the protection of human life, as well as the good name
of this island, I ask for the utmost penalty of the law."

After that there was a long pause, broken only by some whispering on
the bench.  It was observed that the Deemster took no part in it,
except to bend his head when the Governor and the Clerk of the Rolls
leaned across and spoke to him.  At length, with a manifest effort,
and in a low voice (so low that the people in Court had to lean
forward to hear him) he began to address the Jury.



II

"When a prisoner pleads Guilty," he said, "it is usual for the Court
to proceed at once to the sentence.  But in the present unhappy case
it has been thought right that the Judge, in directing the Jury to
find a formal verdict, should indicate the grounds on which the Court
has based its judgment.

"The prisoner has pleaded guilty to taking the life of her new-born
child.  She has confessed that down to the hour of its birth she had
the deliberate intention of making away with it, and the Court is
unhappily compelled to find in her conduct only too many evidences of
that design.

"But she has also said that after her child's birth, under the divine
love and compassion of awakened motherhood, she repented of her
intention of killing it, and that it came to its death by
accident--the accident of semi-consciousness and the consequences of
her fear.  The Court would gladly accept this explanation if it could
be corroborated by the evidence.  Unfortunately it cannot.  On the
contrary the prisoner's subsequent behaviour points to an entirely
different conclusion.  Therefore the Court has nothing before it but
the prisoner's confession that she intended to take the life of her
child, and the fact that she did indeed take it."

The Deemster paused (Gell had risen and was seen crushing his way out
of Court); then he continued,

"How her child came by its death is between God and her conscience.
It is not for me, or perhaps for any man, to read the secret of a
woman's heart in the dark hour of the birth of her misbegotten child.
Into the cloud of that mystery only the eye of Heaven can follow her.
But I should fail in my duty as a Judge if I did not try to show that
the Court is fully conscious of the physical weaknesses and spiritual
temptations which lie in the way of a woman who is in the position of
the accused."

Then followed, during some breathless moments, such speaking as
nobody present had ever heard before except from Stowell himself, and
only from him on the day when he snatched from the gallows the rag of
a woman who had killed her husband.

It was a contrast of the conditions attending the birth of a child
born in wedlock, and of a child born illegitimate.  They all knew the
first.  The beloved young wife watching with a thrilling heart for
the signs of that coming event which was to complete her joy; the
happy months in which she is shielded from all harm; the tender
solicitude of her husband; her own sweet and secret preparations for
the little stranger who is to come; the guesses as to its sex; the
discussions as to its name--until at length, in the fulness of its
appointed time, the child born in wedlock comes, like an angel
floating out of the sunrise, into a world that is waiting for it to
take it into its arms.

But the child born out of wedlock--what of that?  The poor mother,
betrayed perhaps, abandoned perhaps, bereft of the love she counted
upon, living for months in fear of every accusing eye, in dread of
the being under her heart who is coming to shame her, to drive her
from her home, to make her an outcast and a byword among women--until
at last she creeps away to hide herself in some secret place, where,
alone, in the darkness of night, distraught, amid the groans as of a
thunderstorm, she faces death to bring her fatherless babe into a
world that wants it not.

"What wonder if sometimes," said the Deemster, "in the pain of her
body and the disorder of her soul, a woman (all the more if she has
hitherto borne a good character) should be tempted to escape from her
threatening disgrace by killing the child who is the innocent cause
of it?"

But rightly or wrongly, the law could take no account of such
temptations.  In the great eye of Justice the issues of life and
death were in God's hands only.  Life was sacred, and not more sacred
was the life that came in the palace, with statesmen waiting in the
antechamber, the life of the heir to a throne, than the life that
came in the hovel and under the thatch, the life of the bastard who
was to run barefoot on the roads.

"It may be thought to be a hard law which takes no account of
temptations to which women are exposed when nature demands that
penalty from them which it never demands from men.  But we who sit
here have nothing to do with that.  Judges are sworn to administer
the law as they find it, whatever their own feelings may be.
Therefore the Court has now no choice but to direct the Jury to find
a verdict of guilty against the prisoner."

There was a deep drawing of breath in Court, and everybody thought
the Deemster had finished, but after another short pause, in a
tremulous voice which vibrated through all hearts, he continued,

"But the Jury has a right which the Judges cannot exercise--they can
go beyond the law.  And if, having heard the evidence in this case,
and having God and a good conscience before them, the Jury, in
finding their formal verdict, can come to a conclusion favourable to
the prisoner's story, they may recommend her to the mercy of the
Crown, and thereby lead, perhaps, to the lessening of her punishment,
and even to the wiping of it out altogether.  If not, the law must
take its course, at the discretion of the Governor as the
representative of the King."

When the Deemster's tremulous voice had ceased the jurymen put their
heads together for a moment.  Then one of them rose to ask if they
might retire to their own room to consider the point left to them by
His Honour.

"The Court agrees," said the Governor, and the jurymen trooped out.

The Judges and the advocates went out also, and the prisoner (who had
been clinging to Fenella's hand) was removed.  Only die spectators
remained in their places.  They were afraid to lose them for the
concluding scene.



III

In a small unventilated room overlooking the Keep the Jury considered
their share of the verdict.

"Gentlemen," said one (he was an auctioneer and a Town Commissioner),
"you heard what the Deemster said.  We can't let her off but we can
recommend her to mercy."

"Why should we?" said another, a tall landowner with a bad reputation
about women.  "She killed her child.  Let her swing, I say."

"But she said she didn't intend to and that she was out of herself
and frightened by her step-father," said a third--a fat butcher who
was sitting astride on a chair and making it creak under him.

"Chut!  That was only an after-thought," said a fourth--a little
bald-headed English grocer.

"Still and for all we know what Dan Baldromma is," said the butcher,
"an infidel who believes neither in God nor the devil."

"He's devil enough himself," said the grocer.  "His father was the
'angman."

"That was his uncle," said the butcher.

"No, but his father.  They called him Dan the Black, and after the
'anging of Patrick Kelly of Kentraugh...."

"Question!  Question!" cried the Town Commissioner.  "Let's keep to
the point, gentlemen."

"Let's get finished and away," said the grocer.  "I've 'ad an
addition to my family, I may tell you.  A son at last after four
daughters.  My wife's getting up to-day and we're to 'ave a turkey
for dinner.  Let the woman off, I say."

"But we can't, man.  Didn't you hear what the Deemster said?"

"Then let the 'uzzy 'ang."

"Are we to recommend the girl to mercy--that's the question," said
the Town Commissioner.

"Why shouldn't we?" said the butcher.  "Hundreds and tons of girls
have done as bad before now, and nobody a penny the wiser.  Why make
flesh of one and fowl of another?"

"If we show mercy to women of this sort we'll only encourage them in
their bad conduct," said the landowner.

This led to a random discussion on the question of Women or Men,
which were the worst?  The landlord was loud in denunciation of
women, the butcher was more indulgent.

"Look here," said the butcher, "this isn't a game a woman can go into
a corner and play all by herself, you know.  For every bad woman
there's a bad man knocking about somewhere."

"A man isn't always filling his house with by-children anyway," said
the landowner.

"No," said the butcher, "but he is sometimes filling other people's
though."

"That's personal, and I won't stand it," cried the landowner, and
then there were loud shouts with much smiting of the table.

In the midst of the tumult a quiet voice was heard to say,

"Hadn't we better lay this matter before the Lord, brothers?"

It was a northside farmer and local preacher, who (not always to his
financial advantage) had made it the rule of his life, whether in the
reaping of his corn or the sowing of his turnips, to wait for Divine
guidance.  In another moment he was on his knees, and one by one his
fellow-jurymen, including the long landowner, had slithered down
after him.

When they rose they were apparently of one opinion--that inasmuch as
nobody except God knew why Bessie had killed her child (being alone
and under the cloud of night) the only thing to do was to leave her
to the Lord.


Meantime Gell, with restless and irregular footsteps, was striding
about in the court-yard.  Fenella's outburst had fallen on him like a
flash of lightning in the darkness.  Everything had suddenly become
clear--all the vague fears that had haunted him so long, the
suspicions he had thrust behind his back, the facts he had been
unable to understand.  What a blind fool he had been!

Stowell!  His life-long friend, on whose word he would have staked
his soul!  There must have been a conspiracy to deceive him.  Both
Stowell and Bessie had been in it--Stowell to get rid of the girl he
no longer wanted, and Bessie to cover up her disgrace by marrying
him.  What a plot!  The woman he had loved and the man he had
worshipped!  He saw himself hoodwinked by both of them, lied to,
perhaps laughed at.  His life, his faith, his love had crashed down
in a moment.  It was too cruel, too damnable!

The air was chill, though the sun was shining, but Gell took off his
wig and carried it in his hand, for his head seemed to be afire.

After a time the hatred he had felt for Bessie became centred, with a
hundredfold intensity, upon Stowell.  Even if Bessie had begun with
an intention of betraying him, she must have repented of it
afterwards, and committed her crime, poor girl, because (as Fenella
had said) she had come to love him.  But Stowell had carried on his
deception to the last moment.  He was carrying it on now, when he was
sitting in judgment on his own victim.  He meant to sentence her to
death, too.  Yes, under all his fine phrases it was easy to see that
he meant to sentence her.  But if he did so Gell would murder him.

"Yes, by God, I'll murder him," he thought.

In the darkness of her cell, with no light on her tortured face
except that of the candle behind the grill, Bessie, breaking into
another fit of hysteria, was reproaching Fenella with deceiving her.

"You told me that if I confessed the Deemster would let me off.  But
he is going to condemn me.  Why couldn't you let me be?  What for did
you come here at all?  I didn't ask you, did I?"

"Be calm," said Fenella, "and I will explain everything."

After awhile Bessie regained her composure and then she asked for
forgiveness.

"I beg your pardon.  Sometimes I don't know what I am saying.  It has
been like that all through the time of my trouble.  It was very wrong
to forget how you spoke up for me in Court.  You'll forgive me, won't
you?"

And then Fenella, though sorely in need of comfort herself, comforted
the girl and reassured her.  The Court might be compelled to sentence
her, as it had sentenced other girls for similar crimes, but the
sentence would not be carried out.  It never was in these days.

"Besides," she said, "the jury will recommend you to mercy, and then
the Judges will exercise their discretionary power to reduce your
punishment."

Bessie's eyes began to shine.

"You must really forgive me .... And Alick--do you think Alick will
forgive me too?"

"Yes, when he sees that what you did was done out of your love for
him."

"How good you are! .... And shall we be able to leave the Isle of Man
and go away somewhere?"

"Perhaps .... some day."

"Oh, how good you are!  I don't know what I've done for you to be so
good to me.  I didn't think anybody except a girl's mother could be
so good to her."

She was like a child again.  Her face, though still wet, was beaming.
In the selfishness of her suffering it had not occurred to her before
that her comforter had been suffering also, but now, in some vague
way, she became aware of it.

"If they ask me who he was," she said, in a whisper (meaning who had
been her fellow-sinner), "I'll never tell them--never!"

Fenella's humiliation was abject.  "When we go back to Court," she
said, "you must be brave, whatever happens."

"Will you let me hold your hand?" said Bessie.

And Fenella, scarcely able to speak, answered,

"Yes."

In the Deemster's room there was a painful silence.  The Clerk of the
Rolls was under the deeply-recessed window, turning over the
crinkling folios of the Depositions in the case to be taken next.
The Governor, stretched out in the leathern bound armchair before the
empty fireplace, was smoking hard and trying to justify himself to
his own conscience.  Stowell was sitting at the end of the long
table, with his head in his hands, gazing down at the red
blotting-pad in front of him.

No one spoke.  Occasionally there came from without the mournful cry
of the gulls flying over the harbour, and, at one moment, the
ululation of a crew of Irish sailors who were weighing anchor on a
schooner in the bay.

The profound silence around only made louder the thunder in Stowell's
soul.  He knew he was at the crisis of his life.  On what he did now
the future of his life depended.

The address to the Jury had been a fearful ordeal, but the sentence
would be terrible.  To sentence Bessie Collister, having been the
first cause of her crime--could he do it?  It might only be a formal
sentence (the Crown being certain to commute the punishment), but the
awful words prescribed by the Statute--would they not choke in his
very throat?

And then Fenella!  Her voice was ringing in his ears still:

"Shame on him!  Let no good man own him for a friend!  Let no good
woman take him for a husband!"

"And what will be the end?" he asked himself.

He heard the door open behind him.  A low hum of voices came down the
staircase from the Court-house.  There was a footstep on the carpeted
floor.  Somebody by his side was speaking.  It was Joshua Scarff.

"The Jury are ready to return to Court, your Honour."



IV

When Stowell resumed his seat on the bench, and the buzz of
conversation had subsided, he was conscious of the presence of only
three persons besides himself--Bessie in the dock with Fenella by her
side, and Alick Gell, with distorted face and wig a little awry, in
the bench in front of them.

The Jurymen filed back.  The Clerk of the Rolls read out their names
and then asked for their formal verdict.

"You find the prisoner Guilty, according to the instructions of the
Court?"

"Aw, yes, guilty enough, poor soul," said the foreman (it was the
northside farmer), "but lave her to the Lord, we say."

There was a titter at this quaint finding, but it was quickly
suppressed.  Then the Clerk of the Rolls said,

"I assume that means that you recommend her to mercy?"

"Aw, yes, mercy enough too," said the foreman, "for when the sacrets
of all hearts are revealed it's mercy we'll all be wanting."

After that Stowell was conscious of a still deeper hush in Court.  He
saw Bessie, in the full glare of her shame, standing in the dock,
holding the rail with one hand and clinging to Fenella with the other.

He heard himself asking her if she had anything to say why judgment
should not be pronounced upon her.  She made no answer, but there was
a strange expression of frightened hope in her face.  He
understood--she was expecting that he would save her even at the last
moment.

At that sight there came to him one of those frightful impulses which
tempt people on dizzy heights, from sheer fear of danger, to fling
themselves into the abyss below.

"Prisoner at the bar," he said, "it has been said on your behalf that
you were first led to do what you did by the act of one who remains
unpunished while you have to bear the full weight of your fall.  If
you think it will lessen the burden of your crime to plead this as an
extenuating circumstance speak--it is not too late to do so."

Bessie made no reply, and Stowell, who felt Fenella's eyes fixed on
him, continued,

"Don't be afraid.  If you think it will lighten your guilt in the
eyes of the Court to mention that man's name, mention it."

Bessie swayed a little, as if dizzy, looked round at Fenella, and
then turned back to the bench and shook her head.

The hush in Court was broken by a rustle of astonishment.  Had the
Deemster lost himself?  Stowell was conscious of a movement by his
side and of the Governor saying, in an angry whisper,

"Go on, for God's sake!"

At length, in a voice so low as to be only just heard even in the
breathless silence, he said,

"Elizabeth Corteen, you have pleaded guilty to the charge of taking
the life of your innocent child, the little helpless babe who had no
other natural protector than the mother who bore it on her bosom.  By
this act you have brought yourself under the condemnation of the law,
and it is for the law to punish you.  But out of regard to your
sufferings and the uncertainty as to your motives, the Jury have
recommended you to mercy, and it will be my duty to see that their
prayer is sent, through His Excellency the Governor, to the high and
proper authority, in the hope that the measure of pardon which, in
all but exceptional cases, is granted to persons in your position,
may be extended to you also."

The tears were rolling down Bessie's cheeks, but Stowell saw that she
was still looking up at him with the same expression.

"Meantime," he continued, "and however that may be, the Court has no
choice but to condemn you to the punishment prescribed by law.  We
who sit here must act according to our oath and our duty.  Justice"
(he was pointing with a trembling hand to the motto under his
father's picture) "is the most sacred thing on earth, and even ....
even if your fellow-sinner himself sat on this bench, his first duty
would be to Justice, for Justice is above all."

Then lowering his head and speaking rapidly, in a muffled and
indistinguishable whisper, Stowell pronounced the sentence of death.
None of it seemed to be clearly heard until he reached the last words
("and may God have mercy on your soul"), and then there came a loud
scream from the dock.

Bessie, who had been leaning forward and listening intently (the look
of hope and expectation on her face darkening to dismay and terror),
had dropped back, and would have fallen but for Fenella, who had
leapt up and caught her.

"Remove the prisoner," said the Governor sharply, and at the next
moment the constables were carrying the girl out of Court screaming
and sobbing.

But before she had gone there was a movement in the benches of the
advocates.  Alick Gell had risen again, with wild eyes, and he was
shouting after her:

"Never mind, Bessie!  I would rather be you than your Judge."

There was consternation in Court.  Everybody was on his feet to look
after the prisoner, and at Gell, who was being hustled out after her.
But hardly had the door closed behind them, when there was another
cry in Court:

"The Deemster!"

Stowell had risen also.  He had stood looking after the prisoner
until her last cry had died away in the corridor.  Then he had turned
about, as if intending to leave the bench, taken a step forward,
stumbled, and dropped to one knee.

The Governor rose and reached forward to help him.  But he recovered
himself immediately.  His face was very pale, but he smiled, a
pitiful smile, as if saying, "A little dizziness, nothing more," and
waved off assistance.

Bracing himself up, he stood aside for the Governor to go before him,
and then walked out of Court with a firm step.  The ring of his tread
was plainly heard as he passed through the green baize door that led
to the Deemster's room.

The spectators looked into each other's faces as if bewildered by
what they had seen and heard.  Although the business of the day was
not yet over most of them trooped out, feeling that they had been
witnessing a drama whereof only a part had been revealed to them--as
by dark shadows on a white blind.



END OF FOURTH BOOK




_FIFTH BOOK_

THE REPARATION


CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

"VICTOR!  VICTOR!  MY VICTOR!"

"Good heavens, how was I to know that things would turn out so badly?"

It was the Governor, alone with Stowell in the Deemster's room, at
the end of the second day of the Court of General Gaol Delivery.

"As for you, what have you to reproach yourself with?  So far as this
case is concerned you have done nothing that is wrong or irregular.
The girl was guilty.  You gave her a fair trial.  The law required
that she should be condemned.  You had to condemn her.  Then why take
things so tragically?"

"But Fenella?"

"She will get over it.  Of course she will.  What sensible woman is
going to throw away the happiness of a life-time because of something
that happened before she came on to the scene?"

"You heard what she said, Sir?"

"I did, and thought it nonsense.  I heard what you said also, and
thought it madness.  What a providential escape!  Thank God it is all
over!  The miserable case is at an end.  Let us think no more about
it."

An Inspector of Police cams into the room to say that Miss Stanley
had left the Castle at the close of the murder trial and asked him to
tell her father that she was going home by train.  The Governor, with
knitted eyebrows and a frown, dismissed the Inspector, and then said
to Stowell, as he turned to go,

"All the same I am bound to say the whole thing has been
unfortunate--damnably unfortunate!"

Stowell continued to sit for some minutes in his robes after the
Governor had left him.  Joshua Scarff came with a glass of brandy.

"Take this, your Honour.  It will strengthen your nerves for your
drive home.  I could see you were not well when you arrived this
morning."

Stowell had drunk the brandy and was setting down the tumbler when
the Inspector came back to say that after the murder trial he had
liberated Dan Baldromma, but had just been compelled to arrest
somebody else.

"Who else?"

"Mr. Gell.  The gentleman seems to have gone clean off it, Sir.  It's
the loss of his case, I suppose."

Ever since the Court had risen he had been demanding to be allowed to
see the Deemster and threatening what he would do to him.  So to
prevent the Advocate from doing a mischief the police had put him in
the cells.

"Set him at liberty at once," said Stowell.

"Before your Honour leaves the Castle?"

"Instantly."

The Inspector being gone (with the intention of disobeying the
Deemster's command in order to ensure his safety), Joshua Scarff
proceeded to read Gell's conduct by quite a different light.  It was
easy to see now that Mr. Gell had been the girl's fellow-sinner and
therefore the cause of her crime.

"Pity!  Great pity!" said Joshua, as he helped Stowell to unrobe.
"But such connections always begin to end badly."

There were still a few of the spectators at the gate, waiting to see
the Deemster away, and when he came out, with his white face, another
wave of sympathy went out to him.

"They've been putting the young colt into the shafts too soon--that's
what it is, I tell thee."

Driving over the harbour bridge in his automobile Stowell began to
feel better.  The fresh air from the sea, after the close atmosphere
of the Court-house, brought the blood back to his brain, and he
thought he saw things more clearly.

The Governor had been right.  He could not have acted otherwise
without being false to his oath as a Judge.  And if the miserable
fact remained that he should never have been the Judge in this case
at all, it was Fenella herself, above everybody else, who had thrust
him into the furnace of that position.  Surely she would remember
this, and it would plead in her heart for him?

Half-a-mile beyond the town he passed the Governor's big blue landau,
and realised that by some half-conscious impulse he was taking the
road to Government House instead of the direct way home.  So much the
better!  He must see Fenella at the first possible moment, and find
out what his fate was to be.

His spirits rose as he bounded along.  Granted he had done wrong in
the first instance, terribly and cruelly wrong, hadn't he had many
excuses?  If Bessie Collister had told her everything, surely Fenella
would see this, too, and seeing it, would understand?

But the great fact of all was that (except for the first catastrophe)
his love of Fenella had been the root cause of all that had happened.
If he had not loved Fenella with that deep, unconquerable,
unquenchable love which had swept everything else away (all qualms
and perhaps all conscience), nothing worse could have occurred.  He
would have married that poor girl now lying in prison.  Yes, whatever
the consequences to himself, he would have married her before Gell
came back into her life, and further complications ensued.  But after
Fenella returned to the island no other woman had been possible to
him.  Surely she would see this also?  And, if she did, nothing else
would matter to either of them--nothing in this world.

Presently, driving at high speed, he realised that the half-conscious
impulse which had carried him on to the road to Government House was
sweeping him on to the rocky shelf on the coast along which he had
driven with Fenella on the day he took his oath.

How fortunate!  What was that she had said, then, as they sang
together in the fulness of their joy over the hum of the engine and
the boom of the sea?--that love, what she called love, never died and
never changed, and if she loved anybody, and anything happened to
him, she would fight the world for him, even though he were in the
wrong!

Even though he were in the wrong!

She would do it now!  He was sure she would!  Yes, the first shock of
the wretched revelation being over, she would see how he had
suffered, and how he had striven to do the right, and then--then
everything would be well.

Thus, as he flew over the roads, he built himself up in the hope of
Fenella's forgiveness.  But as he approached Government House his
heart failed him again.  Something whispered that the excuses he had
been making for himself were no better than a pretence--that Fenella
would see him now for the first time as the man he really was, not
the man she had imagined him to be.

And then--what would happen then?



II

As soon as the trial was over and Bessie, weeping bitterly, was taken
back to the cells, Fenella had left Castle Rushen.  She was ashamed.
Remembering her wild outburst under the Attorney-General's
examination, she was reproaching herself bitterly.

Whatever Victor Stowell had done, what right had she to denounce him?
She of all others!  In open Court too!

And then Gell!  Although nobody else had understood her, he had done
so.  He might have been living in a fool's paradise, but was it for
her her to reveal the awful truth to him?  In public, too, and at
that harrowing moment?

To escape from the pain of self-reproach she kept on telling herself,
as she went back in the train, that Stowell had deceived her.  Oh, if
he had only confessed, at any rate to her, she thought she could have
forgiven him in spite of all.  But no, he had hidden everything down
to the last moment, and left her to find him out.

On reaching home she excused herself to old Miss Green and hurried up
to her bedroom.  Her head ached and her heart was sore--the young
woman she had been working for had been found guilty and condemned.
She told her maid she was tired, and if anybody asked for her she was
not to be disturbed.

Two hours passed.  Her heart was going through a wild riot of mingled
anger and love.  It was like madness.  She loved Stowell; she hated
him; she worshipped him; she despised him.  At one moment she
recalled with a bitter laugh the mockery of his questioning of Bessie
Collister in the dock; at the next she remembered with scorching
tears the pathos of his sentencing her.

Obscure motives were operating in her soul to intensify her pain.
Jealous?  She, jealous of that illiterate country girl who had
murdered her illegitimate child--what nonsense!  No, her idol was
broken.  She had set it so high and now it was in the dust.

She expected Stowell to come to her as soon as his Court was over.
Again and again she raised her head from her wet pillow to listen for
the sound of his car on the drive.  Yet when a knock came at her door
and her maid announced the arrival of the Deemster (never dreaming
that the injunction against callers had been intended to apply to
him) her first impulse was to send him away.

"Say I'm unwell and can't see him," she cried from her bed.

But at the next moment she was up and whispering at the door,

"Show Mr. Stowell into the library and tell him I shall be down
presently."

Her voice was hoarse; her face was aflame; her eyes were red from
persistent weeping.  No water could sponge away those marks of her
emotion.  Never mind!  He should see how he had made her suffer.  She
would go downstairs and charge him, face to face, with his deceit and
hypocrisy, and then--then fling herself into his arms.

But when she opened the library door and saw him standing on the
hearthrug, with head down and a look of utter abasement, her courage
failed her.  She dare not look twice at his ravaged face, so she sank
on to the sofa and covered her eyes with her hands.

Several minutes passed in which neither of them spoke.  There was no
sound except that of his laboured breathing and of the ticking of the
clock on the mantelpiece.  "If he does not speak soon," she thought,
"I shall break into tears and fly out of the room."

But she did not move, and at last came his voice, humble and broken,
and thrilling through and through her:

"Fenella!"

She did not answer; she could not; and again, after another moment of
silence, he said,

"Fenella, I have come to ask you to forgive me."

She wanted to burst out crying, and to prevent herself from doing so
she broke into a flood of wrath.

"Forgive you?" she said.  "Ask that poor creature in Castle Rushen to
forgive you--that poor girl whom you have just condemned for a crime
that is the consequence of your own sin."

He did not reply for a moment, and then came the same humble,
unsteady voice, saying,

"No doubt you are quite right, quite justified, but if you knew
everything--that I could not help myself--that it was the law...."

"Oh, I know nothing about your laws," she cried, leaping up and
crossing the room, "but they are unjust and barbarous and against
reason and humanity if they allow a girl to be condemned to death for
a crime like that while the Judge who was the first cause of it sits
in judgment on his own victim."

"You are right there too," said Stowell, "but if you knew how I tried
to avoid sitting on the case, and only allowed myself to do so at
last in the hope of seeing justice done and thereby making some sort
of amends....

"Amends!" cried Fenella.  "What amends can there be for a wrong like
that?  Oh, I hate people who think they can make amends for one fault
by committing another."

There was silence again for a moment and then Stowell said,

"You are right there also.  There is a kind of wrongdoing that cannot
be atoned for.  I see that now.  But if you knew how I have suffered
for it and still suffer....

"Suffer?  Why shouldn't you suffer?  Isn't that poor girl suffering?
Hasn't she suffered all along?  And whatever you do for her now,
won't she go on suffering to the last day and hour of her life?"

He dropped his head still lower under the lash of Fenella's scorn.

"That is not all either," she said in a broken voice, sitting on the
sofa again and brushing her handkerchief over her eyes.  "Perhaps
that girl is not the only one who is suffering.  I wanted to think so
well of you, to be so proud of you.  You were to be the defender of
women, fighting their battle for them when they were wronged and
helpless.  And when you became a Judge .... Oh, I cannot bear to
think of it.  You have disappointed and deceived me.  You are not the
man I took you to be."

Outside the sun was setting.  A dull ray from it was falling on his
haggard face and brushing her bronze-brown hair.

"I thought you loved me too.  It was so sweet to think you loved
me--me only--never having loved anybody else.  Every woman has felt
like that, hasn't she?  I have anyway.  Other men might be faithless,
but not you, not Victor Stowell.  And yet, for the sake of your poor
fancy for this country girl...."

"Fenella!"

"Oh, what a fool I've been," she cried, leaping up again and dashing
the tears from her eyes.  "Forgive you?  Never while that girl lies
in prison as the consequence of your sin."

Stowell could bear no more.  Stepping forward, he laid hold of
Fenella by the shoulders, and approaching his face to her face he
said,

"Listen to me, Fenella.  I have done wrong--I know that.  I am not
here to excuse or defend myself, and if your heart does not plead for
me I have nothing to say.  But I swear before God that I have loved
you with all my soul and strength, and if it hadn't been for that...."

"Loved me!" cried Fenella, between a laugh and a sob.  And then in
the wild delirium of the sheer woman, she said,

"What proof of your love have you given to me compared to the proof
you have given to that girl?  Oh, when I think of it I could almost
find it in my heart to envy her.  I do envy her.  Yes, degraded and
shamed and condemned and in prison as she is, I envy her, and could
change places with her this very minute.  I would have given you
anything in the world rather than this should be--anything, my
honour, myself...."

"Fenella!"

"Let me go!  You are driving me mad.  Leave me.  I hate you.  I
despise you.  You have broken my heart.  I thought you were brave and
true, but what are you but a common...."

"Fenella!"

"Coward!  Hypocrite!  Let me go!"

But she had no need to wrench herself away from him.  His hands fell
from her shoulders like lead, and at the next moment she was gone
from the room.

He stood for a while where she had left him with the echo of her
stinging words ringing in his ears.  Bitter, unjust and cruel as they
had been, he was struggling to excuse her.  She did not understand.
Bessie had not told her all.  Presently she would come back and ask
his pardon.

But she did not come, and after a while (it seemed like an eternity),
feeling crushed, degraded, trampled upon, dragged in the dust and
wounded in his tenderest affections, he left the room and the house.

Outside, where his automobile was standing, he still lingered,
expecting to be called back.  It was impossible that Fenella would
let him part from her like this.  He knew where she was--in the
Governor's smoking-room which overlooked the drive.  At the last
moment she would knock at the window and cry, "Stay!"

Slowly he moved around his car, opening the bonnet, touching the
engine, starting it, pulling on his long driving gloves.  But still
she gave no sign, and at length he prepared to step into his seat.
Was this to be the end--the end of everything?

Meantime, Fenella, alone in her father's room and recovering from the
storm of her anger, was beginning to be afraid.  She wanted to go
back to Stowell and say, "I was mad.  I didn't know what I was
saying.  I love you so much."

But her pride would not permit her to do that, and she waited for
Stowell to do something.  Why didn't he burst through the door, throw
his arms about her, and compel her to forgive him?

She listened intently for a long time, but there came no sound from
the adjoining room.  What was he doing?  Presently she heard him
coming out of the library, walking with a firm step down the corridor
to the porch, opening the front door and closing it behind him.

Was he leaving her?  Like this?  Then he would never come back.  She
heard his footstep on the gravel and looking through the window she
saw him, with his white face, raising his soft hat to wipe his
perspiring forehead, and then climbing into the car.  Could it be
possible that he was going away without another word?

In spite of her jealousy and rage, she felt an immense admiration for
the man who, loving her as she was sure he did, was yet so strong
that he could leave her after she had insulted and humiliated him.
She wanted to throw up the window and cry, "Wait!  I am coming out to
you."

But no, her pride would not permit her to do that either, and at the
next instant the car was moving away.

She watched it until it had disappeared behind the trees.  Then she
turned to go back to her bedroom.  At the foot of the stairs she met
Miss Green who, shocked at the sight of her disordered face, said,

"My goodness, Fenella!  What has happened?"

In the plaintive voice of a crying child, Fenella answered,

"He has gone.  I have driven him away."

Then she stumbled upstairs, locked the door of her room on the
inside, threw herself face down on the bed, burst into a flood of
tempestuous tears, and cried aloud to Stowell, now that he could no
longer hear her--

"Victor!  Victor!  My Victor!"




CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

THE VOICE OF THE SEA

"Forgive you?  Never while that girl lies in prison as the
consequence of your sin."

The words beat on Stowell's brain with the paralysing effect of a
muffled drum.  He was driving up the mountain road.  Char-à-bancs,
full of English visitors (who were laughing and singing in chorus),
were coming down.  The drivers shouted at him from time to time.
This irritated him until he realised that his motor-car was
oscillating from side to side of the road.

When he reached the top, where the road turns towards the glen, all
the heart was gone out of him.  The great scene no longer brought the
old joyousness.  With love lost and hope quenched the soul of the
world was dead, and the heavens were dark above him.

At the bottom of the glen, where it dips into the Curragh, he came
upon a group of bare-headed women, with their arms under their
aprons, surrounding a little person with watery eyes, in a poke
bonnet and a satin mantle.  Mrs. Collister had returned from
Castletown, and her neighbours were taking her home.

"Never mind, woman!  It will be all set right at the judgment.  And
then the man will be found out and punished, too!"

At the corner of the cross roads Dan Baldromma threw himself in front
of the car, to draw it up, and in his raucous voice he fell on
Stowell with a torrent of abuse.

"You've been locking up a respectable man, Dempster, but you can't
lock up his tongue, and the island is going to know what justice in
the Isle of Man can be."

Stowell made no answer.  Any poor creature could insult him now.

Janet was waiting for him at Ballamoar, with a fire in the library,
and the tea-tray ready.  But the sweet home atmosphere only made him
think of the happiness that had been so nearly within his reach.

Seeing that something was amiss, Janet assumed her cheeriest tone,
brought out two patterns of damask, laid them over chairs, and asked
which Fenella would like best for her boudoir.

"I don't know.  I can't say.  But .... it doesn't matter now."

Janet gathered up her patterns and went out of the room without a
word.

"Forgive you?  Never while that girl lies in prison."  The stinging
words followed him to his bedroom.  They broke up his sleep.  They
rang like the screech of an owl through the darkness of the night.

Next day, not trusting himself to drive his car, he returned to
Castletown by train.  There were only two first-class compartments
and both were full.  He was about to step into a third-class carriage
when a voice cried,

"This way, Deemster.  Always room enough for you."

There was to be a sitting of the Keys that day and the compartment
was full of northside members.  The talk was about yesterday's trial,
and Stowell realised that his management of the case had created a
favourable impression.  Merciful to the prisoner?  Yes, until her
guilt was established, but then just, even at the expense of
friendship.

This led to talk about Gell as the girl's fellow-sinner.

"Shocking!  But it's not the first time he has been mixed up with a
woman."

Stowell felt an intolerable shame at Gell's undeserved obloquy and
his own unmerited glory, but he could say nothing.

"It will kill the old man," said one of the Keys.  The train had
drawn up at a side station and his voice was loud in the vacant air.

"Hush!"

The Speaker was in the next compartment.

When the train started again a little man with the face of a ferret
began to make facetious references to "Fanny."  Stowell's hands were
itching to take the ribald creature by the throat and fling him out
of the window, but something whispered, "Who are you to be the
champion of virtue?"

At Court that day, and the day following, he found it hard to
concentrate.  At one moment an advocate said,

"Perhaps your Honour is not well this morning?"

"Oh no!  I heard you.  You were saying...."

The rapidity of his mind enabled him to make up for his lapses in
attention, and when his time came to sum up he was always ready.

He was indulgent to the accused.  All the other prisoners were
acquitted--the fat woman for the reason that, bad as her character
might be, the characters of her drunken sailors were yet worse
(therefore no credit could be attached to their evidence), and the
boy who had embezzled on the ground that his superiors at the bank
had been guilty of almost criminal negligence, and the four months he
had been in prison already were sufficient to satisfy the claims of
justice.

The boy's mother, who was standing at the back, threw her arms about
him and kissed him when he stepped out of the dock, and then, turning
her streaming face up to the bench, she cried,

"God bless you, Deemster!  May you live long and every day of your
life be a happy one."

Back at home, Stowell plunged into the task of drawing up the report
for the English authorities which was to accompany the recommendation
to mercy.  In two days (having his father's library to fall back
upon) he knew more about the grounds upon which the prerogative of
the Crown could properly be exercised than anybody in the island had
ever before been required to learn, and when he had finished his task
he had no misgivings.

Bessie's sentence would be commuted to imprisonment.  And then (life
for the poor soul being at an end in the Puritanical old island) he
must find some secret means of sending her away.

"Never while that girl...."  But wait!  Only wait!

Being legislator as well as Judge, he attended the first meeting of
Tynwald Court after his appointment.  The Governor administered the
oath to him in a private room, and then, taking his arm, led the way
to the legislative chamber.

"Do you know it's six days since you were at Government House, my
boy?  What is Fenella to think of you?"

"Has she .... has she been asking for me, Sir?"

"Well, no, not to say asking, but still .... six days, you know."

Stowell sat on a raised daïs between the Attorney-General and
Deemster Taubman, who was sufficiently recovered to hobble in on two
sticks.  The proceedings were of the kind that is usual in such
assemblies, the Manx people being the children of their mothers,
loving to talk much and about many things.

He found it difficult to fix his attention, and was watching for an
opportunity to slip away, when the vain repetitions which are called
debate suddenly ceased and the Governor called on an Inspector by
Police to carry round a Bill which had to be signed by all.

In the interval of general conversation that followed, Deemster
Taubman, a gruff and grizzly person, leaned back in his seat, put his
thumbs in the armholes of his soiled white waistcoat and talked to
Stowell.

"You did quite right in that case of the girl Collister, Sir.  In
fact you were only too indulgent.  I have no pity for the huzzies who
run away from the consequences of their misconduct.  Murder is
murder, and there is no proper punishment for it but death."

"But the Jury recommended the girl to mercy, and her sentence will be
commuted," said Stowell.

"Eh?  Eh?  Then you haven't heard what has happened?"

"What?"

"The Governor has reported against the recommendation."

"Reported against it?"

"Certainly.  And as the authorities in London are not likely to read
the report and are sure to act on the Governor's advice, the girl
will go to the gallows."

Stowell felt as if he had been struck over the eyes by an unseen
hand.  As soon as he had signed the Bill (in a trembling scrawl) he
whispered to the Attorney-General that he was unwell and fled from
the chamber.

"Humph!" said Taubman, looking after him.  "That young man is going
to break down, and no wonder.  His appointment as Deemster was the
maddest thing I ever knew."



II

"No, Mr. Stowell, no!  You must stay in bed for the next two days at
least.  I must really insist this time.  No work, no excitement, no
heart-strain.  Remember your father, and take my advice, Sir."

It was Doctor Clucas, who, sent for by Janet, had arrived at
Ballamoar before Stowell got out of bed in the morning.

With closed eyes Stowell reviewed the situation.  It was shocking,
horrible, intolerable.  Not for fifty years had a woman suffered the
full penalty of such a crime.  He must find some way to prevent it.

But after a while a terrible temptation came to him.  "Why can't I
leave things alone?" he asked himself.

He had done all he could be expected to do.  If the Crown, acting on
the advice of the Governor, refused to exercise its prerogative of
mercy, what right had he to interfere?

It might be best for himself, too, that the law should take its
course--best in the long run.  If Bessie's sentence were commuted to
imprisonment what assurance had he that on coming out of prison she
would allow him to send her away from the island?  On the contrary
she might refuse to be banished, and if she found that the blame of
her misfortune had fallen on Gell she might tell the truth to free
him.

What then?  _He_ would be a dishonoured man.  His position as a Judge
would be imperilled; his marriage with Fenella would be impossible,
and his whole life would crash down to a welter of disgrace and ruin.
But if Bessie were gone there would be no further danger.  And after
all, it would not be he but the law that had taken her life.

"Then why can't I leave things alone?" he thought.

He decided to do so, but his decision brought him no comfort.
Towards evening he got up and went out to walk in the farmyard.
There he met Robbie Creer, who was just home from the mill with his
head full of a pitiful story.

It was about Mrs. Collister.  Since her daughter's trial the old
woman had fallen into the habit of walking barefoot in the glen,
chiefly at midnight, and generally in the neighbourhood of the
_Clagh-ny-Dooiney_.  At first she had seen a light.  Then she had
heard a pitiful cry.  She was certain it was the cry of a child, a
spirit-child, unbaptised and therefore unnamed, and for that reason
doomed to wander the world, because unable to enter Paradise.  At
length she had taken heart of God and going out in her nightdress she
had called through the darkness of the trees, "If thou art a boy I
call thee John.  If thou art a girl I call thee Joney."  After that
she had heard the cry no more, and now she knew it had been Bessie's
child, and the bogh-millish was at rest.

This story of the old mother's developing insanity rested heavily on
Stowell's heart and went far to shake his resolution.

After a day or two he began to find his own house and grounds
haunted.  He could not go into the library without the kind eyes in
his mother's picture following him about the room with a pleading
look.  He could not sit in the dining-room after dinner without
remembering his week-ends as a student-at-law, when his father and he
would draw up at opposite cheeks of the hearth, and the great
Deemster would talk of the great crimes, the great trials and the
great Judges.

But his worst ordeal was with Janet.  Not a word of explanation had
passed between them, yet he was sure she knew everything.  One
evening, going into her sitting-room, he found her with her knitting
on her lap, and a copy of the insular newspaper on the floor, looking
out on the lawn with a far-off expression.  That brought memories of
another evening when he had told her that no girl on the island had
ever fallen into trouble through him, or ever should do.

"Ah!  Is that you, Victor?" she cried, recovering herself and making
her needles click, but he had gone, and her voice followed him from
the room.

Still wrestling with his temptation to stand aside and let the law
take its course, Ballamoar became intolerable to him.  On the lame
excuse of his fortnightly court in the northside town he decided to
go to Ramsey, and wrote to Mrs. Quayle to get his old rooms ready.

But going from Ballamoar to his chambers was like leaping out of the
fire into the furnace.  When he opened a disordered drawer up came
the Castletown portrait of Bessie Collister like a ghost out of the
gloom.  When he went for a walk to tire himself for the night his
steps involuntarily turned towards the pier where the lighthouse had
been shattered by lightning.  When he returned and was putting the
key in the lock of his outer door he had the tingling sense of a
woman's warm presence behind him.  When he pulled down his bedroom
blind the broken cord brought a stabbing memory.  And when he awoke
in the morning he felt that he had only to open his eyes to see a
girl's raven black hair on the pillow beside him.

But Mrs. Quayle's presence was the keenest torment of all.  The good
old Methodist moved about him at breakfast without speaking, but one
morning, fumbling with her bonnet strings before going, she said,

"Deemster, have you remembered this case of Bessie Collister in your
prayers?"

He removed to Douglas--the Fort Anne Hotel, a breezy place, which
sits on the ledge of the headland and just over the harbour.  At
first the babble and movement of the hotel distracted him, but after
a day or two he was drawn back into the maelstrom of his own thoughts.

Having a private sitting-room he borrowed law books from the Law
Library and sat far into the night to read them.  He selected the
treatises on Infanticide--those bitter records of the age-long strife
between the laws of man and of God.  Particularly he read the charges
of the British Judges (Scottish too frequently), the bewigged
ruffians who, in the abomination of their Puritanical tyranny, and
the brutal lust of their judicial vengeance, had hounded poor women
to the gallows in the very nakedness of shame.

"Damn them!  Damn them!" he would cry, leaping up with a desire to
trample on the dead Judges' graves.  But then the same persistent
voice within would say, "Wait awhile!  Who are you to stand up for
justice and mercy?"

Crushed and ashamed he would creep up to bed through the silent
house, and thinking of the girl whose dark eyes had intoxicated him
in the glen (the girl he had afterwards held in his arms) he would
say,

"Is it possible that I can stand by and see her given over to the
hangman?"

That terrified him.  In the darkness he pictured to himself the scene
of Bessie's death and burial, and thought of his after-life as a
Judge, when he would have to go to Court to try other such cases--and
Bessie lying out there in the prison-yard.

After Ballamoar, with its pastoral tranquillity, the twittering of
birds and the sleepy singing of the streams, Fort Anne was sometimes
a tempestuous place, with the wash of the waves in the harbour, the
monotonous moan of the sea outside and the melancholy wail of the
gulls.  He thought he heard Bessie's cry in the voice of the sea--her
piercing cry when she was being carried out of Court after he had
sentenced her.

One night he thought Bessie was dead.  He was dead too.  They were
standing side by side in an awful tribunal and she was accusing him
before God.

"He let me die!  He killed me!  He is my assassin!"

The sound of his own voice awakened him.  A dream!  It was the grey
of dawn; a storm had risen in the night; the white sea was rolling
over the breakwater and the sea-fowl were screaming through the mist
and roar.

No, by God!  If it was a question of Bessie witnessing against him in
this world or in the next, he had no longer any doubt which it should
be.  No more temptations!  No more hypocrisy and self-doubt!  No more
wandering about like a lost soul!

He would go up to the Governor.  He would call upon him to withdraw
his objection to the Jury's recommendation.  And if he refused ....
he should see what he should see.

At eight o'clock in the morning he was walking down the quay in the
calm sunshine, looking at the activities of the harbour, and nodding
cheerfully to the fishermen as he passed.  He was on his way to
Government House, and his conscience, with which he had wrestled so
long, was triumphant and erect.

Then came a shock.

He was crossing the stone bridge that leads up to the town when he
saw the Governor's blue landau coming down in the direction of the
railway station.  It was open.  Fenella was sitting in it.

Stowell was certain she saw him.  But she only coloured up to the
eyes and dropped her head.  At the next instant her carriage had
crossed in front of him and swept into the station-yard.

Something surged in his throat; something blinded his eyes.  But
after a moment he threw up his head and walked firmly forward.

"Wait!  Only wait!  We'll see!"




CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

THE HEART OF A WOMAN

Meanwhile Fenella had been going through her own temptation.  On the
night after the trial, having bathed her swollen eyes, she went down
to dinner.  Her father looked searchingly at her for a moment, and,
as soon as they were alone, he said,

"Was it Stowell I saw driving towards the mountain road as I came up?"

"Perhaps it was," said Fenella.

"Then why didn't he stay to dinner?"

"Because .... I told him to go."

"Why?"

Fenella gulped down the lump that was rising in her throat and said,

"I have been deceived in him.  He is not the man I supposed him to
be."

"Don't be a fool, my dear.  I understand what you mean.  It is his
conduct as a man, not as a Judge you are thinking of.  But if every
woman in the world thought she had a right to make a scrutiny into
her husband's life before she married him there would be a fine lot
of marriages, wouldn't there?"

Crude and even coarse as Fenella thought her father's moral
philosophy, she found her self-righteousness shaken by it.  Perhaps
she had been unfair to Stowell.  But why didn't he come and plead his
own cause?  She couldn't talk to her father, but if Victor came and
told his own story....

Victor did not come.  For two days her pride fought with her love and
she thought herself the unhappiest woman in the world.  Then to
escape from the pains of self-reproach she conceived the idea of a
fierce revenge upon Stowell.  She would devote herself to his victim!
Yes, she would make it her duty to lighten the lot of the poor
creature he had ruined and deserted.

After a struggle, and many shameful tears, she went back to Castle
Rushen, little knowing what a scorching flame she was to pass through.

By this time Bessie was feeling no bitterness against Stowell.  The
jailer had told her that the Deemster could not have acted otherwise.
The law compelled him to condemn her.  But he had told the Jury to
recommend her to mercy, and now he would be writing to the King to
ask him to let her off.

"Aw, he's good, miss--he's real good for all."

"Do you say that, Bessie?  After he has betrayed you?" said Fenella,

"Betrayed?  I wouldn't say that, miss."

"But he .... he took you to his rooms?"

"What else could he do, miss?  All the inns were shut and it was
raining, and I had nothing in my pocket."

"But .... having taken advantage of your homelessness and poverty, he
afterwards cast you off?"

A mysterious wave of injured vanity struggled with Bessie's shame and
she said,

"'Deed he didn't, then.  He wanted to marry me."

"Marry you .... did you say marry...."

"Yes, he did, and that was why he sent me to school."

"But afterwards .... afterwards he changed his mind and turned you
off .... I mean turned you over to somebody else?"

"'Deed no," said Bessie, with her chin raised.  "It was me that gave
him up after I found I was fonder of Alick."

Breathing hard, scarcely able to speak, with the hot blood rushing to
her cheeks, Fenella compelled herself to go on.

"Did he know then that you...."

"No, miss, and neither did I, nor Alick, nor anybody."

"And when .... when was it that you went...."

"To his rooms in Ramsey?  The first Saturday in August, miss."

Fenella went home, happy, miserable, tingling with shame and yet
thrilling with love also.  Stowell's victim had brought her heart
back to him.

It was just because he had loved her more than he had loved that girl
in prison that the worst had happened.  It was just because she
herself had persuaded, constrained and almost compelled him that he
had sat on the case, not fully knowing what was to be revealed by it.

This lasted her half-way home in the train, and then her wounded
pride rose again.  After all Victor had been faithless to the love
with which she had inspired him.  If a man loved a woman it was his
duty to keep himself pure for her.  Victor had not done so, therefore
she would never forgive him--never!

The Governor's carriage met her at the Douglas station, and when
(wiping the scorching tears from her eyes) she reached Government
House, she found another carriage standing by the porch.

"Miss Janet Curphey is here to see you, miss," said the maid.



II

From the day of the trial, when Victor had returned home with a white
face and said, "It doesn't matter now," Janet had known what had
occurred.

That Collister girl had corrupted Victor.  She had always feared it
would be so since "Auntie Kitty" had whispered over her counter that
that "forward thing" of Liza Corteen's was boasting that Mr. Stowell
had been "sooreying" with her in the glen.  And now she had brought
him under the very shadow of shame itself, just when life looked so
bright and joyful.

Then came the insular newspaper with an account of Fenella's outburst
at the trial.  That was the cruellest blow of all.  She had loved
Fenella, and had always thought there would be nothing so sweet as to
spread her wedding-bed for her, but now that she had taken sides
against Victor and publicly denounced him, Janet's blood boiled.  She
would go up to Government House and give Fenella a piece of her mind.
Why shouldn't she?

It was a dull afternoon when she set off for Douglas, and as she
drove along the coast road she rehearsed to herself the sharp things
she was going to say.

But when Fenella came into the drawing-room, looking so pale as to be
scarcely recognisable as the radiant girl she used to be, and kissed
her and sat by her side, Janet could scarcely say anything.

At length (Miss Green, who had been sitting at tea with her, having
gone) Janet braced herself, and said, not without a tremor,

"I've come about Victor."

"Then he has told you?" said Fenella.

"'Deed he hasn't, and you needn't either, because I know."

Fenella drew her hand away and dropped her head.

"I don't say he hasn't done wrong," said Janet, "but you seem to
think he's the only one who is to blame."

"Oh no!  I see now that the girl in Castle Rushen...."

"The girl?  I'm not thinking about the girl.  Of course she is to
blame.  But is there nobody else to blame also?"

"Who else?"

"Yourself."

"Janet!"

"Oh, I'm telling you the truth, dear.  That's what I've come for."

"But it all happened before I returned to the Island."

"That's why.  If you hadn't stayed away so long it wouldn't have
happened at all."

Then up from the sweet and sorrowful places of Janet's memory came
the story of Stowell's love for Fenella--how he had worked for her
and waited for her through all his long years as a student-at-law.

"It's me to know, my dear.  He used to come home every week-end, and
his poor father thought it was to see him, but I knew better.  'Any
fresh news?' he would say, and I knew what news he wanted.  When your
photo came he held it under the lamp and said, 'Don't you think she's
like my mother, Janet--just a little like?'  And I told him yes, and
that was to say you were like the loveliest woman that ever walked
the world--in this island anyway."

Fenella was struggling to control herself.

"Poor boy, how he worked and worked for you!  Jacob never worked
harder or waited longer for Rachel.  And what was his reward?  You
signed on at your ridiculous Settlement for seven years and sent word
you would never marry.  I had it from Catharine Green and it was a
sorrowful woman I was to break the news to him.  He looked at me with
his mother's eyes, and it was fit enough to break my heart to see how
he cried with his face on the pillow.  But it was with his father's
eyes he rose and said, 'It shall never happen again, mother.'  He
called me mother too, God bless him!"

Fenella was smothering her mouth in her handkerchief.

"If he went wrong after that, was it any wonder?  Young men are young
men, and the Lord won't be too hard on them for being what He has
made them.  Some people seem to think when trouble comes between a
young man and a young woman that the young woman is the only one to
be pitied.  Well, I'm a woman and I don't.  And when a young man has
been cut off from the love that would have kept him right and the
heavens have gone dark on him...."

"But I loved him all the time, Janet."

"Then why didn't you come back, instead of leaving him to the mercy
of these good-looking young vixens who will run any risks with a
young man if they can only get him to marry them?"

Fenella's eyes were down again.

"But that's not all.  Not content with deserting him for so many
years, you must try to disgrace him also."

"Janet!"

"Oh, I saw what you said at the trial."

"But nobody knows whom I...."

"Don't they indeed!  The men may not--most of them are so stupid.
They may even think you meant somebody else.  But you can't deceive
the women like that.  And then he knew that you intended it for him.
Just when you were about to become his wife, too, and you were the
only woman in the world to him!"

"I was so shocked.  I thought he wasn't the man I had taken him for."

"Perhaps he wasn't, perhaps he was, but thousands of women have lost
faith in their men and clung to them for all that, and they're the
salt of the earth, I say.  I'm only an old maid myself, but to stand
up for your husband, right or wrong, that's what _I_ call being a
wife, if you ask me."

Fenella could bear up no longer.  She flung her arms about Janet's
neck and buried her face in her breast.

The darkness was gathering before they broke from their embrace and
then it was time for Janet to smooth out her silvery hair and go.
Fenella saw her to the carriage and whispered as she kissed her,

"Tell him to come back to me."

And then Janet went home with shining eyes.



III

Day after day Fenella waited at home for Victor, denying herself to
everybody else.  Every afternoon she dressed herself in some gown he
had said he liked her in.  She dressed her hair, too, in the way he
liked best.  But still he did not come.

At length she determined to write to him.  Writing was a terrible
ordeal.  Her pride fought with her love and she could never satisfy
herself with her letters.  First it was--


    "DEAR VICTOR,--Don't you really think you've stayed away long
    enough?  Remember your 'Manx ones'--especially your lovely and
    beloved Manx women--won't they be talking?"


But no, that was too much like threatening him, so she began again--


    "DARLING,--Did you really think I meant all I said that day?
    Don't you know a woman better than that?  I suppose you think I
    am very hard-hearted and can never forgive, but...."


No, that was wrong, too.


    "VICTOR,--Don't you think I have been punished enough?  It has
    been very hard for me, yet I love you still...."


But the trembling of her handwriting betrayed the emotion she wished
to conceal.  At last, after a long day of solitude and abandonment,
two little lines--


    "Vic,--I am so lonely.  Come to me.  Your
    broken-hearted--FENELLA."


But all her letters, with their cries and supplications, were torn up
and thrown into the fire.

Why did he stay away?  Did he expect her to bridge all the gulf
between them?  At length she thought he must be ill.  The idea that
he could be suffering (for her sake perhaps) swept down all her
pride, and she determined to go to him.

But just as she was setting out for Ballamoar somebody brought word
that Stowell was staying at Fort Anne.  That quenched her humility.
So near, yet never coming to see her!  Oh, very well!  Very well!

For two days she felt crushed and abased.  Then she heard that
Stowell was constantly to be seen at the Law Library, and that
brought a memory and an explanation.  She remembered that she had
said (in that wild moment when she didn't know what she was saying)
that she would never forgive him while the girl Bessie lay in prison.

That was it!  He was finding a solid legal ground on which the
prisoner could be liberated, and when he had convinced the law
officers of the Crown that this was a proper case for the exercise of
mercy, he would come up to her and say, "Bessie Collister is
free!--the barrier between us is broken down."

For a full day after that her heart was at ease.  Nay more, she was
almost happy, for hidden away in some secret place of
semi-consciousness was the thought that the measure of Stowell's
efforts for Bessie Collister was the meter of his love for herself.

At length her impatience got the better of her tranquillity and she
became eager to know what was going on.  There was only one person
who could tell her that--her father.

Coming down to breakfast on the sunny morning after the storm, she
saw, among the letters by the Governor's plate, a large envelope
superscribed, "_HOME SECRETARY_."  When her father had opened it she
said, as if casually,

"Any news yet about that poor thing in Castle Rushen?"

"Yes, there's something here."

"Of course she's pardoned?"

"On the contrary, her death-sentence has been confirmed."

"Confirmed?"

"Yes, she's to die, and it only remains for me to fix the date of the
execution."

The sun went out as before a thunderstorm, and, rising from her
unfinished breakfast, Fenella fled from the room.  A great wave of
pity seemed to sweep down every other feeling.  She determined to go
to Castle Rushen again and break the news tenderly to the unhappy
woman.

On her way to the railway station her mind swung back to Stowell.
After all he could have done nothing to save the girl's life.  It was
inconceivable that the authorities in London could have been
indifferent to the opinion of the Judge who had tried the case.

"No, he can have done nothing--nothing whatever."

Then came a shock to her also.

As her carriage dipped into the hill going down to the station she
saw Stowell coming up from the bridge with rapid strides.  Something
told her that, having heard the news, he was going to Government
House to protest.  But what was the good of going now?  Useless!
Worse than useless!

One glance she got of his face before she dropped her own.  It was
whiter and thinner than before, as if from sleepless nights and
suffering.  She wanted to stop; she wanted to go on; she did not know
what she wanted.

At the next moment her coachman, who had seen nothing of Stowell,
being occupied with the difficulties of the hill, had swept into the
station-yard.

When she got out of the carriage her heart was burning with the pangs
of mingled love and rage.

"If that girl dies in prison there shall never be anything between
us--never," she thought.

But deep in her heart, almost unknown to herself, there was a still
more poignant cry,

"He does not care for me--he cannot."




CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

THE MAN AND THE LAW

When Stowell reached Government House he found the Governor in the
garden, bareheaded and smoking a cigar of which he was obviously
trying to preserve the ash, while he watched his gardener at his work
of repairing the ravages of last night's storm among the flower-beds.

"Ah, you've come at last!  But you have just missed Fenella.  She has
gone to Castletown--that girl again, I suppose."

"I know.  I saw her.  That's the matter I've come to speak about."

"So?  Oblige me then by walking here so that I may keep an eye on the
gardener."

Stowell winced, but stepped to and fro on the path by the Governor's
side while in a low tone he broached his business.

"Deemster Taubman told me at Tynwald that you had reported against
the Jury's recommendation."

"Well?"

"I thought perhaps you would permit me to explain the exact legal
position."

"Yes?"

"It is fifty years at least since the prisoner has been executed on
this island for that crime."

"Fifty, is it?"

The Governor blew his light blue smoke into the lighter blue air and
watched it rising.

"Deemster Taubman seems to think that a prisoner who has wilfully
taken life is necessarily a murderer.  That is wrong, Sir."

"Wrong?"

"Quite wrong.  It is established by the laws of this and every
civilised country that it is the reason of man which makes him
accountable for his action and the absence of reason acquits him of
the crime."

"And is there any ground for thinking that this girl was not
responsible?" said the Governor.

"Every ground, Sir.  No woman in her position ever was or can be
responsible."

"No? .... Gardener, don't you think those tulips...."

"That's why the law of England," continued Stowell, "has ceased to
look upon infanticide as a crime punishable by death.  In some
foreign countries it is not looked upon as a crime at all.  The woman
who kills her child within five days after its birth is thought to be
suffering from temporary mania and therefore not guilty of murder.
Besides...."

"Besides--what?"

Stowell breathed heavily and then said,

"There are exceptional circumstances in this case which call for
merciful treatment."

"You mean...."

"I mean," said Stowell, speaking rapidly and in a vibrating voice,
"that the girl had no bad motives such as usually inspire murder--no
greed, no lust, no desire for revenge.  In fact, she meant no harm to
anybody.  On the contrary it is conceivable that she meant good--good
even to her child--to save it from a life of suffering in a world in
which it would have no father, no family, and nobody to care for it
but its shamed and outcast mother."

The Governor looked at Stowell for a moment and thought.

"He's ill, and he's trying to unload his conscience."

Then he said aloud,

"So you've come to ask me to...."

"I've come to ask you, Sir, to withdraw your objection to the
recommendation to mercy, so that the death sentence may be commuted
to imprisonment."

Again the Governor looked at Stowell's heated face and thought, "Yes,
he'll ill, and doesn't see that I am fighting his own battle.

"Do it, Sir," said Stowell.  "Do it, for God's sake, before it is too
late, and there is such an outcry throughout the kingdom as will
shake the very foundations of justice in the island."

The Governor was still smoking leisurely and keeping his eye on his
flower-beds.

"Gardener, don't you think that bed of geraniums...." he began, but
Stowell could bear no more.

"Good God, Sir, isn't this matter of sufficient importance to merit
your attention?"

The Governor turned sharply upon him, threw away his half-smoked
cigar and said,

"Come this way."

Not another word was spoken until, returning to the house with a
certain pomp of stride, with Stowell behind him, the Governor reached
his room and closed the door behind him.  Then, unlocking his desk,
he took out a large envelope (the same that Fenella had seen at
breakfast) and handed the contents of it to Stowell, saying,

"Look at that."

Stowell saw at a glance what it was and uttered a cry of astonishment.

"Then it's done."

"Yes, it's done.  And now sit down and listen to me."

But Stowell continued to stand with the paper crinkling in his
trembling fingers.

"You say Taubman told you I reported against the Jury's
recommendation.  Quite true!  As President of the Court and head of
the Manx judiciary, I told the Home Secretary I saw no justification
for it--no justification whatever."

Stowell was silent.

"You say it is fifty years since such a crime has been punished by
death.  Perhaps it is, but the fact that the Statute remains is proof
enough that the law contemplates cases in which it may properly be
exercised.  This in my view was such a case and I had every right to
say so."

Still Stowell remained silent.

"You say the prisoner may have acted from a good motive.  I see no
good motive in a mother who takes the life of her child.  You speak
of her shame, but shame is no excuse for crime.  Why shouldn't such
women suffer shame?  Shame is the just consequence of their evil
conduct, and to try to escape from it by making away with their
misbegotten children is crime."

Stowell was trembling but still silent.

"Pity for women of that sort is sentimental weakness.  Worse, it is a
danger to public safety.  The sooner such people are put out of the
world the better for the public good."

There was a palpable silence on both sides for some moments.  The
Governor glanced at Stowell's twitching face and began to be sorry
for him.  "Good Lord!" he thought, "why can't the man see that it's
best for himself that the girl should die?  As long as she lives the
wretched scandal may break out again and his own share in it may come
to light.  And then Fenella!  How could I allow her to marry him with
that danger hanging over his head?"

Stowell's fingers were contracting over the paper that crinkled in
his hand.  At length he threw it on the desk and said,

"Your Excellency, if you carry out that sentence you will be
committing a crime--a monstrous judicial crime."

The Governor returned the paper to his desk, and then rose and said,
with a ring of sarcasm in his voice,

"So I am the criminal, am I?  Well, I am responsible for public
security in this island, and as long as I am here I am going to see
that it is preserved.  Offences of this kind have been too frequent
of late and they can only be put down by law.  The prisoner in the
present case has been justly tried and rightly condemned, and it
shall be my business to see that she pays the penalty of her crime."

Stowell's pale face had become scarlet, his lower lip was trembling.
Outside the sea was sparkling in the sunlight; a band was playing far
off on the promenade.

"Your Excellency," said Stowell, quivering all over, "it will be a
life-long grief to me to resist your authority, but I must tell you
at once that if you order that girl's execution it shall never be
carried out."

"What do you say?"

"I say it shall never be carried out."

"Why not?"

"Because _I_ shall prevent it."

The Governor rose.  His face was red, his throat had swelled; his
lips were compressed.

"Do you mean that you will go over my head...."

"I do...."

The Governor brushed Stowell aside in making for the bell.

"There's no heed for that.  I'm going, Sir," said Stowell, and at the
next moment the Governor was alone in his room, speechless with
astonishment and wrath.

Going down the corridor Stowell passed the open door of the
library--the room in which he had parted from Fenella.  In
quarrelling with her father had he burnt the last bridge by which
Fenella and he could come together?

"But, God forgive me, I could do nothing else--nothing whatever."



II

Fenella found that the tragic news had reached Castle Rushen before
her.

Bessie had received it at first with incredulity.  Her expectation of
pardon had reached the point of conviction, and every morning as she
rose from her plank bed, she had said to herself, "It will came
to-day."

When Tommy Vondy went into the condemned cell, blowing his nose
repeatedly and talking about death, how it came to everybody sooner
or later, Bessie looked at him with terror and screamed, "Oh, God
help me!  God help me!"

For a while she raved like a madwoman.  Everybody had lied to her and
deceived her, and the Deemster had done nothing to save her, because
he wanted her out of the way.

But after a while an idea occurred to her and she became calm.  Alick
Gell!  If Alick would go up to London and see the King and tell him
that she had never intended to kill her baby he would forgive her.
And then Alick would come galloping back, at the last moment perhaps,
waving a paper over his head and crying, "Stop!"

She had seen such things in her illustrated Weekly Budget--the story
paper she used to read on Sunday mornings at home, while the dinner
was cooking in the oven-pot and her mother was singing hymns in the
Primitive chapel and her father was poring over the "Mistakes of
Moses."

But would he do it?  She had deceived him twice.  And then his
sisters had always been trying to drag him away from her.

All at once, like the echo of a bell through a thick mist over the
sea, came the memory of his cry as she was being carried out of
Court: "Never mind, Bessie, I would rather be you than your Judge!"

Yes, he loved her still, and (out of the cunning which the air of a
prison breeds) a scheme flashed upon her.  She would write a letter
to Alick Gell, not telling him what she wanted him to do, but plainly
pointing to it.

Fenella was amazed to find Bessie apparently reconciled to her end.
She had expected torrents of tears and even the coarse language of
the farmyard.

"The suspense was the worst.  I shall be glad when it's all over,"
said Bessie.

The only thing that troubled her was to die while Alick was thinking
so hard of her, and if her hand did not shake so much she would write
to ask for his forgiveness.

"I'll write for you," said Fenella.

"And will you give the letter into his own hands, miss, so that his
sisters may not see it?"

"I'll try, dear."

Sitting by the door of the cell, under the light from the grill,
Fenella wrote with the prison paper on her lap, while Bessie, without
a vestige of colour in her forlorn face, dictated from the bed:


    "DEAR ALICK,--You will have heard what they are going to do to
    me.  It is dreadful, isn't it?  I thought perhaps you would have
    written me a few lines, though I know it is too much to expect
    after all the sorrow and shame I have brought on you.

    "Oh, if I could only have lived to make it up to you!  We could
    have gone away, as you always said, to America or somewhere.  I
    should have been so good, and we should have been so happy and
    nobody to cast all this up to us.

    "What I did was very wrong, but I don't see what good it will do
    to the King to take my life, and me a poor girl he never saw in
    the world.  I still think if there were anybody to speak for me
    he would forgive me even yet and everything would be all right.
    But that's more than anybody would do for me now, I suppose--even
    you, though I have always loved you so dear."


Bessie paused.

"Is that all?" asked Fenella, in a husky whisper.

"Not quite," said Bessie, and she began again.


    "Mother was here last week and brought me your photo.  It got wet
    in my bag on the way from Derby Haven, and it is cracked and
    smudged.  But I kiss it constant and it is such company.

    "Good-bye, Alick!  My last thoughts will be of you and my last
    prayer that God will bless you.  If I could only see you for a
    minute I think I should be satisfied.  But if you can't come,
    write and say you forgive me.  It has been all through my love
    for you that I am here, so think the best of me."


Bessie signed the letter, filling up the remaining space with
crosses, and then wrote with her own hand--


    "P.S.--It's a weak to-day, so if anything is to be done there's
    no time to lose."


Fenella saw through the girl's pitiful subterfuge, but knew well that
Gell could do nothing.  There was only one man in the island who
could have saved Bessie, and that was the Judge who had tried her.

Why hadn't he?

All the way home in the train Fenella asked herself this question.
The only answer she could find was that Stowell was afraid of
offending the Governor, owing so much to him.  But oh, if he had only
resisted her father in this case--standing up against him and fearing
no one--how she would have loved him!

She found Government House shuddering with awe, as if a tornado had
swept through it and gone.  At length Miss Green explained what had
happened.  Mr. Stowell had called to see the Governor and been turned
out of the house!

Hardly had she reached her room when her father followed her into it.

"I suppose you know that Stowell has been here?" he said.

"Yes.  What did he come for?"

"To threaten me--that's what he came for.  To threaten me that if I
attempted to carry out the sentence of the law on that girl in Castle
Rushen he would prevent it."

Fenella tried to conceal the joy that was rising within her.

"What do you think he intends to do?" she asked.

"Appeal to the Home Secretary against me, I suppose.  I shouldn't
wonder if he leaves the island in the morning.  And if he does, and
brings back a pardon, it will be a vote of censure upon me--nothing
short of it."

The Governor strode across the room in his wrath, and then suddenly
drew up on seeing that Fenella was smiling.

"But I see who is the cause of the man's insane conduct," he said.

"Who?"

"You!  You've broken with him, haven't you?  Because he had the
misfortune to encounter that woman long ago you hold him responsible
for everything she has done since.  So to satisfy your ridiculous
qualms he falls back upon me.  The fool!  The damned fool!  And you
are no better!  I don't know what's taking possession of women in
these days.  I'm sick to death of their feminist imbecilities and the
braying of their male asses!"

"But father...."

"Don't talk to me," said the Governor, and with blazing eyes he swept
out of the room.

Then Victor _had_ done something!  He _did_ care for her!  And now he
was going to take some great risk to save the life of the girl in
prison.

A momentary qualm about her duty to her father was swept down by the
tide of her love for Stowell.  After all, he was the man she had
thought him to be!  God bless and speed him!




CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

"AND GOD MADE MAN OF THE DUST OF THE GROUND"

Stowell had travelled far by this time.

When he left Government House in the heat and flame of his anger he
was at war with God and man.  There was a kind of self-defence in
thinking that, however deep his own wrong-doing, the whole world was
full of infamy.

He found that news of the forthcoming execution had reached Fort Anne
before he returned to it.  To avoid the whispering groups in the
public rooms he packed his bag and took the afternoon train to
Ballamoar.

Alone in the railway carriage he had time to review the situation.
His visit to the Governor had been a wretched failure.  But even if
it had been a success what would have been the result to Bessie
Collister?  Substitution of the jail for the gallows.  Instead of
death, three years, five years, perhaps ten years' imprisonment.
Thank God he had not succeeded!

"But what am I to do now?" he asked himself.

Appeal to London?  Useless!  The Home officials would support the
resident authority, and, having made a hideous error, they would be
reluctant to correct it.

"Then what can I do?" he thought.

Suddenly he saw that every argument he had used with the Governor
against putting Bessie to death applied equally to keeping her in
prison.  This was not a question of degrees of guilt--of murder or
manslaughter.  Either Bessie was guilty of murder and ought to be
executed or she was not guilty (not being responsible) and ought to
be set at liberty.

"Then the law under which she has been condemned is a crime," he
thought.

This terrified him.  All his inherited instinct of reverence for the
justice and majesty of the law revolted.

"The law a crime!  Good heavens, what am I thinking about?"

And yet why not?  Why had there been so much misery in the world?
Was it because of the crimes committed against the law?  No, but
chiefly because of the crimes committed by the law.  Yes, that was
the real key to the long martyrdom of man throughout the ages.

"If a law is a crime it ought to be broken," he told himself.

But how!  There was only one proper way in a free country--through
Parliament and by the slow uprising of the human conscience.  But
that was a long process, and meantime what would happen in this case?
Bessie would be dead and buried!  That must not be!  No, the law that
had condemned Bessie Collister must be broken at once--now!

"But who is to break it?"

He trembled at that question, but found only one answer.  It shivered
at the back of his mind like the white water over a reef at the neck
of a narrow sea, and it was not at first that he dared to think of
it.  But at length he saw that since he had been the instrument of
the law in dooming Bessie to death it was he who must set her free.

When he reached this point on his dark way he was horrified.

"What?  A Judge break the law!"

He thought of his oath as Deemster and of the execration that would
fall on him if found out.  He remembered his father's motto: "Justice
is the most sacred thing on earth."  No, no, it was impossible!  His
honour as a Judge forbade it.

But, as the train ran on, the call of nature conquered and he asked
himself what, after all, was his honour as a Judge compared with that
poor girl's life?

"Nothing!  Nothing!"

Bessie Collister must not die!  She must not remain in prison!  She
must escape!  He must help her to do so.  Secretly, though, nobody
knowing, not even the girl herself or Fenella.

At St. John's, a junction between the north of the island and the
south, the Bishop of the island stepped into Stowell's compartment.
He had been holding a confirmation service at a neighbouring church,
and a company of young girls, in white muslin frocks, were seeing him
off from the platform.  While the carriages were being coupled he
stood at the open door and said good-bye to them.

"And now go home, dear children, and have your suppers and get to
bed.  Home, sweet home, you know!"

But the children would not go until they had sung again in their
sweet young voices the hymn they had just been singing in
church--"Now the day is over."  By the time the engine whistled and
the train was moving out of the station, they had reached the verse--

  "_Comfort every sufferer,
    Watching late in pain,
  Those who plan some evil
    From their sin restrain._"


Stowell dare not look at them.  He was thinking of the girl in Castle
Rushen and picturing to himself a similar scene of joy and innocence
which might have taken place only a few years before in the station
by the glen.

"Ah!" said the Bishop, settling himself in his seat.

He was a short, dapper, almost dainty little man, who talked
continually like the brook that often runs behind a Manx cottage and
fills it with cheerful chatter.

"I suppose you've heard the news, Deemster?"

He produced a small evening newspaper.

"That poor young person in Castle Rushen is to be executed after all!
Terrible, isn't it?"

Stowell bent his head.

"I really thought that after your address to the Jury she would have
been pardoned.  But who am I to set up my opinion against that of the
King's advisers?  And then think of the effect of bad example!  Those
dear children, for instance, they are not too young to remember.  And
if that unhappy girl had got off who knows what effect...."

Stowell, nursing the fires of his rebellion, hardly heard the running
stream of commonplace.

"And then Holy Wedlock!  I always say that every act of carnal
transgression is a sin against the marriage altar."

The train was running along the western coast; the sun was setting;
the Irish mountains were purple against the red glow of the sky
behind them.

"And then think of the poor soul herself!  It may be best for her
too!  God knows to what depths she might have descended!"

Stowell wanted to burst out on the Bishop, but a secret voice within
him whispered, "Hold your tongue!  Say nothing!"

"All the same, I'm sorry for the poor creature, and only yesterday I
was using my influence to get her into a Refuge Home for Fallen Women
across the water."

The train drew up at the station for Bishop's Court, and the Bishop,
after a cheerful adieu, hopped like a bird along the platform to
where his carriage stood waiting for him, with its two high-stepping
horses and its coachman in livery.

Stowell's heart was afire.

"Refuge Home!  Send some of your fashionable women to your Refuge
Homes!  Holy Wedlock!  There are more fallen women inside your Holy
Wedlock than outside of it!"

At the station for the glen Stowell got out himself, and there he saw
a different spectacle--an elderly woman in a satin mantle, surrounded
by a group of other elderly women in faded sun-bonnets.

It was Mrs. Collister again.  In one hand she held her blackthorn
stick, and in the other she carried a small bundle in a print
handkerchief--probably containing her underclothing.

Stowell understood.  The news about Bessie had reached her home, and
the heart-broken (almost brain-broken) old mother was waiting for the
south-going train to Castletown.

A hush fell on the women when Stowell stepped out of the railway
carriage, but as he made his way to his dog-cart at the gate, he
heard one of them say,

"It's a wicked shame!  But you'll be with the poor bogh at the end
and that will comfort her."

A kind of savage pride had taken possession of Stowell.

"Not yet!  Not yet!" he thought.

The law was wrong, therefore it was right to resist the law.  It was
more than right--it was a kind of sacred duty.



II

From that time forward the Judge went about like a criminal.

He stayed at home the following day to think out his plans.  All his
schemes revolved about Castle Rushen.  The great, grey, bastioned
fortress--how was he to get the prisoner out of it?

His first idea was to use the jailer, who was a simple soul and had
obligations to his family.  But he abandoned this thought rather from
fear of the old man's garrulous tongue than from qualms of conscience.

It was Tuesday, and Bessie's execution had been fixed for the Monday
following, but the day passed without bringing any better thought to
him.

Somewhere in the dark reaches of Wednesday morning an idea flashed
upon him.  It was usual for one of the Deemsters to make an annual
examination of the prisons of the island, the time being subject to
his own convenience.  Stowell determined to make his examination of
Castle Rushen now.

At eleven o'clock he was going round the Castle with the jailer.
There were two sides to the prison, a debtor side and a criminal
side, and they went over both--the jailer complaining of decaying
doors and rusty padlocks, and the Deemster, with a sense of shame,
pretending to make notes of them, while his eyes and his mind were on
other matters.

"Not much chance of a prisoner escaping from a place like this, Mr.
Vondy."

"Not a ha'porth!  Those old Normans knew how to keep people out--and
in too, Sir.  But there's one cell you haven't looked at yet, your
Honour--the girl Collister's."

"We'll leave her alone, Mr. Vondy.  How is she now, poor creature?"

"Wonderful!  That cheerful and smart you wouldn't believe, Sir."

"Then she doesn't know...."

"'Deed she does, Sir.  But she thinks Mr. Gell, the advocate, is up
in London getting her pardon, and she's listening and listening for
his foot coming back with it."

Stowell went to bed on Wednesday night also without any scheme for
Bessie Collister's escape.  But in the grey dawn of Thursday morning,
when the world was awakening from a heavy sleep, another idea came to
him.  The Antiquarian Society of the island had made him a
Vice-President when he became a Deemster, and having opened up
certain portions of the Castle that were outside the precincts of the
prison, they had asked him to inspect their discoveries.

With another spasm of hope, Stowell returned to Castletown.

"Give me your lantern, and let me wander about by myself, Mr. Vondy."

"'Deed I will, Sir.  Your Honour knows the Castle as well as I do."

There was said to be a subterranean passage under the harbour for
escape in case of siege.  Stowell found it (a noisome, slimy,
rat-infested place, dripping with water) but the further end of it
had been walled up.

There was a foul dungeon in which a Bishop had been confined when he
came into collision with the civil authorities, and tradition had it
that he had preached through a window to his people on the quay.
Stowell found that also, but the window was narrow and barred.

There were ramparts round the four-square walls, but on one side they
looked down into the back yards of the little houses that lay against
the great fortress and on the other three sides they were exposed to
the market-place, the Parliament-square and the harbour.

For the second time Stowell went home in the lowering nightfall with
a heavy heart.  As the time approached for the execution his
agitation increased, and on Thursday night also he tossed about,
thinking, thinking.  At length he remembered something.  He had a key
to the Deemster's private entrance to the Castle, and though the door
was always bolted on the inside, a plan of escape occurred to him.

On Friday morning he was in the jailer's room.  It had been the
guard-room of the Castle and was hung about with souvenirs of earlier
times--maps, plans, a cutlass that had been captured in a fight with
Spanish pirates, a blunderbuss that had been used by Manx Fencibles,
a keyboard, a line of handcuffs, and a rope, in a glass case, that
had been used in the hanging of a Manx criminal.

"You haven't many prisoners in the Castle now, Mr. Vondy?"

"Aw, no!  Didn't your Honour discharge all but one at the last
General Gaol?"

"And not much company?"

"Only Willie Shimmin, the turnkey, and he's a drunken gommeral,
always wanting out, and never sure of coming back at all."

"What about your female warder?"

"Mrs. Mylrea?  A dying woman, Sir.  Not been here since the trial,
and if it wasn't for Miss Stanley...."

"Does she come often?"

"Nearly every day now, Sir."

At that moment there was the clang of a bell.

"There she is, I'll go bail," said the jailer, and snatching a big
key from the keyboard he turned to go.

In the collapse of his better nature Stowell was afraid to meet
Fenella, knowing well she would see through him.

"Don't trouble about me, or mention that I'm here," he said, and
picking up his lantern he made a show of going on with his researches.

But as soon as the jailer had disappeared he turned rapidly to the
Deemster's door and had opened it and stepped out and closed it
behind him, before the jailer and Fenella (whose voices he could
hear) had emerged from the Portcullis into the court-yard.

It was done!  Light had fallen on him at last.  Now he knew how
Bessie Collister was to escape from Castle Rushen.

But it was not enough that Bessie should escape from her prison; she
must escape from the island also; and to do so by means of the
regular steam packet from Douglas to England was impossible.  Was
this to be another and still greater difficulty?

The tide was up in the harbour and the fishing-boats were making
ready to go out for the night.  As Stowell walked down the quay he
saw a blue-coated and brass-buttoned elderly man coming up with
unsteady steps--the harbour-master.  A sudden thought came to him.
Why not by a fishing-boat?

He remembered his night with the herrings on the Governor's yacht,
when, lying off the Carlingford sands, he had seen the lights of
Dublin.  Why could not a fishing-boat steal away in the darkness and
put Bessie ashore in Ireland?

It was the very thing!  Only it must not be a Castletown boat, lest
she should be missed when the fleet came back to port in the morning.
Why not a Ramsey boat, or, better still, a boat from Peel?

After dinner that night he walked on the gravelled terrace in front
of the house.  The moon was shining in a pale sky and the bald crown
of old Snaefell was visible through the motionless trees.  He drew up
on the spot on which he had first parted from Fenella, and a warm
vision of the scene of so many years ago returned to him.  Then came
the memory of their last parting and of the scorching words with
which she had driven him away from her.

"But wait!  Only wait!" he thought.

He was satisfied with himself.  He was sure he was doing right.  He
even believed God was using him as an instrument of His divine
justice, to correct the infamy of the world by a signal action.  It
was one of those lulls between the wings of a circling storm which
come to the soul of man as well as to nature.

He was almost happy.



III

Next morning, under pretext of the Deemster's fortnightly Court at
Douglas and of important business to do before it, Stowell
breakfasted by the light of a lamp and the crackling of a fire, and
set out in his car for Peel.

Soon after six he was descending into the little white fishing-port
that lies in the lap of its blue circle of sea, with the red ruins of
its Cathedral at its feet and the green arms of its hills behind it.

The little town was still half asleep.  Middle-aged women were
gutting herrings from barrel to barrel, while blood dripped from
their broad thumbs; old men were baiting lines with shellfish;
cadgers' cart were standing empty at the foot of the pier, with their
horses' heads in bags of oats and chopped hay; a hundred
fishing-boats by the quay, with their sails hanging slack from their
masts, were swaying to the ebbing tide, and an Irish tramp steamer,
the Dan O'Connor, was lazily letting down the fires under her black
and red funnel.

But at the pier-head, close under the blind eyes of the Cathedral,
there was a scene of real activity.  It was the fish auction for the
night's catch.  The auctioneer, an Irishman, was standing on a
barrel, with a circle of fish-cadgers around him, and an empty space,
like a cock-pit, in front, to which the long-booted fishermen, one by
one, with ponderous agility, were carrying specimen baskets of
herrings and dropping them down on the red flags with a thud.

"Now, gintlemen, here's your last chance of a herring this week.
We're a religious people in the Isle of Man and sorra a wan more will
ye get till Tuesday."

Stowell, who had drawn up his car, and was standing at the back of
the crowd, was startled.  How had he come to forget that Manx fishing
boats did not go out on Saturday or Sunday?  Was this going to defeat
his plan?

The fish auction went on.

"Now, min, what do you say to forty mease from the _Mona_?
Thirty-five shillin'!  Thank you, Mr. Flynn!  Any incrase on
thirty-five?"

"Thirty-six and a quid for yourself if you'll lave me to put a sight
up on the wife," said a voice from the back of the crowd.

During the laughter which the rude jest provoked, Stowell looked at
the speaker.  He was the skipper of the Irish tramp steamer--a
grizzly old salt, spitting tobacco juice from behind a discoloured
hand, and having rascal written on every line of his face.

Turning away, Stowell walked slowly to the further end of the bay,
and as slowly back again.  A new scheme had occurred to
him--something better than a fishing-boat, far better.  He was now
more sure than ever that the Almighty was using him for His righteous
ends since even his failures of memory were helping him.

By the time he returned the auction was over.  The pier was empty and
nobody was in sight except the Irish Captain who was standing on the
deck of his ship by the side of the cabin companion.  After looking
to right and left, Stowell saluted him.

"Where are you going to when you leave Peel, Captain?"

"To Castletown, Sir."

"And from there?"

"To wherever the dust" (the money) "looks brightest."

"May I come aboard, Captain?  I have something to say to you."

"Shure!"

After another look to right and left, Stowell stepped on to the
steamer and followed the Captain to his cabin.

When he came on deck, half-an-hour later, his face was flushed.

"Then it's settled, Captain?"

"Take the world aisy--it's done, Sir."

"At what time will it be high water on Sunday night?"

"Elivin o'clock, Sir."

"You'll sail immediately your passengers come aboard?"

"The minit they put foot on deck, Sir."

"What about the harbour-master?"

"Him and me are same as brothers."

"And the turnkey?"

"Willie Shimmin?  He's got a petticoat at the 'Manx Arms.'"

"You have no doubt you can do it?"

"Divil a doubt in the world, Sir."

Stowell, back in his car, was driving to Douglas.  The Judge had
bribed a blackguard, but he was still sure that he was doing God's
service.

Only one thing remained to do now, and through the long hours of an
uneasy night he had thought of it.  It was not even enough that
Bessie Collister should escape from the island.  If she were not to
be tracked and brought back it was essential that somebody should go
with her.  Who should it be?  There was only one answer to this
question--Alick Gell.

Would Alick go?  He must!  Betrayed and deceived as he had been, if
he did not see that he must forgive the woman who had faced death for
him, and save her from an unjust punishment, Stowell would feel like
taking him by the throat and choking him.

But would Gell forgive him also?  That was a different matter.
Memory flowed back, and he saw again the fierce yet broken creature
who had come stumbling into Ballamoar on the night after the
adjournment, crying in the torment of his betrayal, "Damn him,
whoever he is!  Damn him to the devil and hell!"

"No matter!  I must face it out," thought Stowell.

He must unite those two injured ones.  And perhaps some day, when
they were gone from the island, and safe in some foreign country, the
Almighty would accept his act as a kind of reparation and cover up
all his wretched wrongdoing in the merciful veil which is God's
memory.  But meantime he must go about for a few days longer, a few
days after to-day, warily, secretly, unseen and unsuspected by
anybody.

Driving into Douglas, he came upon the Chief Constable, Colonel
Farrell (a cringer to all above him and a bully to all beneath), who
hailed him and said,

"Just the gentleman I wished to see, Sir.  It's about Mr. Gell.  Ever
since you sentenced that woman of his he has been threatening you,
and we've had to keep a close watch on him.  But he seems to be going
out of his mind, and I've been warning the Speaker that we may have
to put him away.  The other night he gave us the slip and we believe
he went to Ballamoar."

"Well?"

"We wish you to allow a plain-clothes man to go about with you for
the next few days."

Stowell was startled.

"No, certainly not.  It is quite unnecessary," he said.

"Well, if you say so it's all right, Sir.  Still, with a madman
about, who may make a murderous attack on you...."

"Where is he now?"

"In his chambers."

"Good-morning, Colonel!" said Stowell, and before the Chief Constable
had replied he was gone.

A few minutes later the policeman who, for the protection of the
Deemster, was on point duty outside Gell's rooms was astonished to
see the Deemster himself go up the carpetless staircase.

At a door on the second landing, with Gell's name on it in white
letters, he stopped and knocked.  The door was not opened, but he
heard shuffling steps inside and knocked again.




CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

OUT OF THE DEPTHS

Alick Gell, also, had travelled far.

After his temporary detention at Castletown, he had returned to
Douglas in a frenzy.

For four days everything had fed his fury.  Having no housekeeper he
took his meals in a neighbouring hotel which was frequented by his
younger fellow-advocates.  Sitting alone in a corner he spoke to none
of them, but they seemed to be always speaking at him.  In loud
voices they praised Stowell--his eloquence, his knowledge, above all
his impartiality, his superiority to the calls of friendship.

This was gall and wormwood to Gell.  He wanted to come face to face
with Stowell that he might charge him with his treachery.  He knew
the police were watching him, but one day he eluded them and took the
train to Ballamoar.

It was evening when he got there.  The cowman, who lived in the
lodge, told him the master was out in his car and might not return
until late.  To beguile the time of waiting Gell walked in the lanes
and woods about the house.  These evoked both kind and cruel
memories, the worst of them being the memory of the day when he
stammered his excuses for loving Bessie Collister, and Stowell had
said, "Good-bye and God bless you, old fellow!"  What a scoundrel!

The darkness gathered.  There was the last bleating of the sheep, the
last calling of the curlew (like the cry of a bird without a mate),
and then night fell, dark night, without a star, and still Stowell
did not come.

Where was he?  Gell thought he knew.  He was at Government House with
Fenella Stanley.  They were reconciled, of course; they were kissing
and caressing, while Bessie .... but no, he dare not think of that.

What stung him most was the thought of the money he had taken from
Stowell.  It had been neither more nor less than the price of
Bessie's honour.  He remembered the Peel fisherman who had burnt his
boat.  How he wished he had the money now that he might ram it down
Stowell's throat!

There had been rain and the frogs were croaking, but otherwise the
air was still.  All at once the silence of the Curraghs was broken by
a low hum.  Stowell's car was coming!  Looking down the long straight
road Gell saw its two white headlights opening the darkness like a
reversed wedge.  Then in a moment, unpremeditated, unprepared for,
his wild thirst for personal vengeance returned to him.

"Now, now," he thought, and he closed the gates to give himself time.

But when Stowell came up and got out of his car to open them, and his
lamps lit up his face, a mysterious wave of emotion heaved up out of
the depths of Gell's soul.  Something took him by the throat and
cried "Stop!  What are you doing?" and he dropped back into the
deeper darkness of some bushes behind one of the gate-posts.  He must
have made a noise, for Stowell cried,

"Who's there?"

But Gell made no answer, and at the next moment Stowell was back in
his seat and gliding up the drive.

After that, horrified by the homicidal impulse which had so suddenly
taken possession of him, Gell kept to his rooms for several days,
going out only at night, with the collar of his coat up to his ears,
to eat and drink in the tap-room of a low tavern on the quay.

He had been denying himself to everybody who called at his chambers,
but one morning there came an unsteady knock, followed by a
peremptory voice, saying,

"Alick, let me in!"

It was his father, and an inherited instinct of obedience compelled
him to open the door.  He was shocked to see the change in the
Speaker.  His burly figure had become slack, his clothes (especially
his trousers) baggy, his long beard thinner and more white, the crown
of his head bald.  Only his red eyes, with their unquenchable fire,
remained the same.

The old man sat down heavily with his stick between his knees, and
his trembling hands on its ebony handle.

"I didn't expect that I should have to come here, but Farrell says
that since that trial at Castletown you have not been responsible,
and if things go farther he'll have to put you away."

"Put me away?"

"Don't you understand?--the asylum."

"He doesn't know, father, and neither do you...."

"I don't want to know.  If you had listened to me long ago this
wouldn't have happened.  But I'm not here to reproach you.  I'm here
to advise you to do something for your own good--mine, too,
everybody's."

"What is that, father?"

Gell had expected the usual storm and his father's emotion was moving
him deeply.

"Leave the island before anything worse happens.  Look" (the Speaker
drew a stout envelope from his breast pocket), "I've just been to the
bank for you.  A thousand pounds in Bank of England notes, and if
it's not enough there's more where that came from.  Take it and go
away at once--to America--anywhere."

Alick drew back and his lips tightened.  "This is a trick to get me
to desert Bessie," he thought.

"I can't do it," he said, and he pushed back the old man's trembling
hand.

The Speaker fixed his red eyes on his son, and said,

"Alick, I must tell you something.  I've heard on good authority that
they are going to hang that girl."

"They can't.  Some of them would like to, but they can't."

"They can and they will, I tell you."

"Then I'll .... I'll murder...."

"There you are!  That's what Farrell says.  A little more and you'll
be capable of anything.  Go away, my boy.  Think of me.  It has taken
me forty years to get to where I am.  I was born neither an
aristocrat nor a pauper, but I've got my hand on all of them.  That's
just the kind of man both sorts would like to pull down.  If my son
disgraced me I should have to give up everything.  Go, my son, go."

"I can't, father, I can't."

The old man passed his hand over his bald head and in a low voice he
said,

"Perhaps I've not been a good father exactly, but there's your
mother.  Bad as it would be for me it would be worse for her.  She
has only one son--one child you might say--and since that affair at
Castletown she has never been out of doors--just creeping over the
fire with her feet in the fender.  If you don't want to bring your
mother to her grave...."

Gell felt as if his heart were breaking.

"But I can't, I can't!"

"You mean you won't?"

"Very well, I won't."

The old man's voice thickened--the storm was coming.

"And for the sake of this woman who killed her brat...."

"Call her what you like.  I'll stay here until she comes out of
prison, and then .... then I'll marry her."

"You fool!  You damned heartless fool!  God forgive me for bringing
such a fool into the world."

Struggling to his feet the old man made for the door.  But having
reached it, and while tugging at the handle, he stopped and said,

"Look here, I'll give you one more chance."

He took the stout envelope out of his breast pocket again and flung
it on to Alick's desk.

"There's the money and this is Monday.  If you are not off the island
by this day week I'll not leave matters to Farrell--I'll have you put
into a madhouse myself to prevent you from plunging us all into
disgrace and ruin.  Idiot!  Fool!  Madman!"


He screamed like a sea-gull until his breath was gone, and then,
gesticulating wildly, went downstairs with heavy thudding steps like
a man walking on stilts.

A few minutes later Gell, going to the window with wet eyes, saw his
father on the opposite side of the street, looking up at the house as
if half minded to return.  His stick fell from his nervous hand, and
with difficulty he picked it up.  It dropped again, and a passer-by
handed it back.  Then he went off in the direction of the railway
station, dragging his feet after him.



II

Frightened by what his father had said about the intention of the
Chief Constable to have him arrested as insane, Gell stayed indoors
altogether.

This meant days without food.  At first he drank a great deal of
water, being very thirsty.  Then his thirst abated and his head began
to feel light.  After a while he became dizzy, and even in the
darkness everything seemed to float about him.

On the morning after his father's visit he heard a woman's step on
the stairs, followed by her knock at his door.  He thought it was his
sister Isabella and that she had come, with her sharp tongue, to
remonstrate, so he made no answer.

On the day following he heard the same light step.  Isabella again!
But no, she had always railed against Bessie, and he was not going to
give her another opportunity of doing so.

Meantime, without food or drink, he was travelling fast towards the
borderland of the desert realm of Insanity, with its
cruelly-beautiful mirages.

Lying on his sofa with eyes closed he was picturing to himself the
day of Bessie's release, when he would go to Castletown to bring her
away, and then the day after, when he would marry her, and then the
day after that when they would leave the island for America--Bessie
walking along the pier with head down, but himself with head up, as
if saying, "There you are--I told you so!"

The knock came again, and again he did not answer it.  "No, no,
Mistress Isabella!  You shan't speak ill to me of the woman who cared
so much for me that she went to prison for my sake."

He had still travelled farther by this time.  He was out in the
middle-west, on one of the high plains of that free continent.  He
was working at his profession.  He was not a great lawyer, but he
could speak out of his heart, and when he defended injured women
juries heard him and judges listened.

He saw them coming to him from far and near--that long trail of the
broken followers after the merciless army of civilisation.  They were
nearly always poor and could pay him nothing.  But what matter about
that?  At home, at night, wet or cold, there was a bowl of soup, a
cheerful fire and .... Bessie!

On the Saturday morning he awoke from a dizzy sleep, with the sun
shining into his room and the sea outside the breakwater singing
softly.  He was in his shirt sleeves, for he had thrown himself on
the bed in his clothes; his boots were unbuttoned; his fair hair was
tangled; he had not shaved for many days.

Again he heard the light step on the stairs.  But something in the
rustle of the dress seemed to say that after all it was not his
sister.  He listened.  There were two knocks, louder and more
insistent than before; then the rattle of the brass lid of his
letter-box, and then something falling on the floor.

A letter!  After the light footsteps had gone downstairs he crept
over the carpet on tiptoe, picked up the letter and looked at it.
There were two lines at the top, partly printed, and partly written--

"_Castle Rushen Prison--Number 7._"


Gell stared at the blue envelope, and then with trembling fingers
tore it open.  It was the letter which Bessie had dictated to Fenella
Stanley.  She was to die, and was calling on him to save her.
Through her heart-breaking words he could hear her cries and
supplications.  The letter had been written five days ago, and in two
days more she was to be executed!

Whatever he had been before, Gell was no longer a sane man now.  He
was thinking of Stowell and cursing him.  Oh, that God would only put
it in his power to punish him!

Then he remembered that this was the Deemster's fortnightly
Court-day.  The Court began to sit at eleven, and it was now
half-past ten.

He would go across to the Court-house.  Why not?  He was an
advocate--nobody dare refuse him admission to a Court of Law.  And as
soon as Stowell stepped on to the bench he would rise in his place
and cry, "You scoundrel!  Come down from the Judgment seat!  Because
you were rich you thought you could buy a man's soul and a woman's
body.  But take that, and that!" and then he would fling his father's
money into Stowell's face.

At that moment, having parted from the Chief Constable, Stowell was
driving down the street.

Gell dragged his black bag from the corner into which he had thrown
it on returning from Castletown, and put on his gown without
remembering that he was in his shirt-sleeves, and then his wig,
without knowing that his hair was dishevelled.

He was staggering from weakness and the pictures on the walls were
going round him with an increasing vertigo, but he was struggling to
regain his strength.

He heard a step on the stair (a man's step this time) and then a firm
knock at his door.

"Farrell!" he thought.  The Chief Constable was coming to arrest him.
But nobody should do that yet--not until he had come face to face
with Stowell.

The knock was repeated.

"Go away!" he cried.

Then he pulled open the door, and found Stowell himself standing on
the threshold.  He fell back breathless.  Stowell entered the room
and closed the door behind him.



III

"Alick!"

"Go away!"

"I have something to say to you."

"Go away, I tell you."

"But I have something to tell you."

"There's only one thing you can tell me.  Is it true--is she to die?"

"It .... it is so appointed."

"Then take that," cried Gell, and flinging himself upon Stowell with
the fury of madness he struck him in the face and laid open his
cheek-bone.

There was an awful silence.  Gell had staggered to a bookcase behind
him, expecting Stowell to strike back.  But Stowell remained
standing, and then said, with a break in his voice,

"I have well deserved it."

That was too much for Gell.  He began to stammer incoherently and
when he saw a streak of blood begin to flow down Stowell's cheek he
broke down altogether.  Out of the depths of a thousand memories of
their friendship, all the way up since they were boys, a great tide
of tenderness came surging over him, and he dropped into a chair and
cried,

"Then it's true--I'm mad."

But after another moment he was up and hurrying into the next room
for a sponge and a basin of water.

"It's nothing!  Nothing at all," said Stowell.  "See, it has stopped
already.  And now sit down and listen."

A few minutes later they were sitting side by side on the sofa--Gell
sniffling, Stowell talking quietly.

"Alick!"

"Yes?"

"Bessie is waiting for you.  She thinks you are trying to obtain her
pardon."

"I know.  She has written.  But what can _I_ do?  Nothing!"

"If _I_ can help her to escape from Castle Rushen will you take her
away from the island?"

Gell's eyes glistened.  "Only give me the chance," he said.

"She could never come back.  Therefore you could never come back
either."

"What do I care?"

"You would have to give up everything--your inheritance, your family,
your....!"

"I .... I can't help that."

"You are sure you would never regret the sacrifice?"

"Never!  Only show me the way...."

"I will," said Stowell.

And then he explained his scheme and the motives which had inspired
it.  He had been compelled to condemn the girl, according to law, but
he had come to see that the old Statute was a crime, and that it was
his duty to break it.

"Do you say that, Victor--you?"

"Listen."

An Irish tramp steamer would be lying in Castletown Harbour on Sunday
night.  She would berth in front of the Castle, not more than fifteen
yards from the gates.  At eleven o'clock Stowell would open the
Deemster's private door and bring Bessie out.  Gell must be there to
take her aboard.  The tide being up, the vessel would sail
immediately.  She would sail north, past the Point of Ayre, to give
the appearance of going to Scotland; but in the morning, when out of
sight from the land, she would steer south and land her passengers at
Queenstown.  Atlantic liners called there twice a week and Gell and
Bessie must take passages to New York.  On reaching New York they
must travel west--far west....

"But can it be done?  Can you get Bessie out of the Castle?"

"I've counted every chance," said Stowell.  "Whatever happens, I must
not fail."

"What a good fellow...." began Gell, but Stowell dropped his head and
hurried on with his story.

"I've given the Irish Captain a hundred pounds, and you are to give
him another hundred when he puts you ashore at Queenstown.  I'll find
you the money."

"No, no!  I've enough of my own--see," said Gell, and he showed the
bundle of banknotes given to him by his father.

"Your father gave you that?"

"Yes, to pay my way to America."

Stowell's face glowed with a kind of superstitious rapture.  More
than ever now he was certain he was doing right, that the Divine
powers were directing him.  But all the same he kept up the cunning
of the criminal.

"I must see you again to-morrow night in some secret place.  Where
shall it be?"

"Why not the Miss Browns' at Derby Haven?  They'll hold their
tongues.  They owe me something."

"Very well, eight o'clock, Sunday night," said Stowell, and he rose
to go.

"What a good fellow...." began Gell again, but Stowell looked at him
and he stopped.

The Deemster's Court had to wait for the Deemster.  When he arrived
with a patch of plaster on his cheek-bone, he told Joshua Scarff that
he had accidentally knocked his face against a gas-bracket and had
had to go to a chemist to get the wound dressed.

It was an intricate case he tried that day, but the advocates engaged
in it said he had never before been so cool, so clear, so collected.

"After all, the Governor knew what he was doing," they told
themselves.

That night, Saturday night, after a furtive visit to the tavern on
the quay, Gell slipped through the back streets to the railway
station and leapt into the last train for the north as the carriages
were leaving the platform.

He was going home to say good-bye to his mother--not with his tongue,
for he had no hope of speaking to her, but with his eyes and his
heart.  If he could only see her for a moment before leaving the
island!

It was late when he reached the lane to his father's house, and the
night was dark, for it was the time between the going and the coming
of two moons.

At length the blacker darkness of the house stood out against the
gloomy sky.  There was no light in any of the windows--the family had
gone to bed.  But Alick had been born there, and he thought he could
find his way blindfold.

For some time he walked stealthily about, trying to discover the
dining-room window, for he remembered what his father had said about
his mother sitting with her feet in the fender.  He found it at last,
but, peering behind the edge of the blind, he saw nothing except the
dull slack of the fire dropping to ashes in the grate.

Groping about in the darkness on the gravel his footsteps had made a
noise and presently a dog inside began to bark.  It was his own dog,
Mona, and he remembered that when he was a boy he had bought her as a
pup for five shillings from a farmer and brought her home in his
arms, licking his hand.

The dog's clamour awakened the household, and presently, through the
long staircase window, he saw his sisters on the landing, in their
nightdresses and curl-papers, carrying candles and looking frightened.

Then the sash of a window went up with a bang and his father's voice
came in a husky roar through the night,

"Who's that?"

With a chill down his back, Alick turned about and hurried away,
feeling that he was being driven from the home of his boyhood as if
he were a thief.




CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

THE ESCAPE

Next day was Sunday.  It was a blind day at Ballamoar, with a chill
air and white mists sweeping up from the sea.

In the morning Stowell went to church.  In the afternoon he sat in
the Library, reading in many volumes the stories of prison-breakings
and escapes.  He saw that in nearly every case of failure chance had
played a part at the last moment, and he thought hard to foresee
every possible contingency.

Towards evening he brought his car round from the garage and told
Janet not to wait up for him.  She had delivered Fenella's message
("Tell him to come back to me") and thought she knew where he was
going to.  He was going to Government House.  The sweet old soul was
very happy.

"I'll leave the piazza door on the catch, dear," she said, as he was
going off into the moving shadows of the trees.

By the time he reached Castletown the mist had deepened to a fog.
The broad tower of the Castle looked monstrously large and forbidding
against the gloom of the sky, and the fog-horn of the light-house on
Langness was blowing with a measured and melancholy sound across the
unseen sea.

Coming upon a tholthan (a ruined cottage) by the roadside he ran his
car into it, and then walked into the town.

The little place was once the capital of the island, and still
retained many of its primitive characteristics.  There were no lamps
in the streets, which were therefore quite dark.  Only a few of the
houses gave out light, for the younger children were already in bed,
and their parents were trooping to church or chapel.

The church bells were ringing.  Save for that, and the footsteps of
his fellow pedestrians who walked in the darkness beside him, Stowell
heard nothing but the blowing of the far-off fog-horn.  Everything
favoured his design.  "It was meant to be," he told himself.

Nevertheless he was conscious of making his steps light and of trying
to escape observation.  He took the least frequented thoroughfares,
so that he might walk fast and not be recognised, but in a narrow
lane that ran along under the Castle he came upon a pitiful spectacle
and was compelled to stop.

An elderly woman, wearing little except her nightdress, with her feet
bare and her long grey hair hanging loose, was kneeling on the paved
way and praying.

"Oh Lord, as Thou didst send Thine angel to take Peter out of prison,
send him now to take my poor girl out of the Castle."

By a dull light from a curtained window, Stowell saw who the poor
demented creature was.  It was Mrs. Collister.  Little as he desired
it, he had to pick her up and take her home.

"Come, mother," he said, raising her to her feet.

She looked into his face with awe, and permitted herself to be led
away by the hand like a child.  A group of boys and girls who had
gathered round told him where she lived and that she was the mother
of the woman who was to be "hangt" in the morning.

Just then the people, a man and his wife, with whom she lodged, came
hurrying up, saying they had left her in bed while they went into
their yard on some errand and on returning to the kitchen they had
missed her.

In a few moments they were all at the open door of the house, a tiny
place two steps down from the street, with a lamp burning on the
table.

Finding the light on his face Stowell said Good-evening and hurried
away, but not before the man and his wife had seen him.

"That must be the young Dempster," said the man.

"It was his father," said Mrs. Collister.

"But his father is dead, woman," said the wife.

"It was his father, I tell thee," said Mrs. Collister, and they let
her have her way.

Still the church-bells rang, the fog-horn blew and Stowell stepped
lightly through the dark streets of the little town.  He passed the
new Methodist chapel with the dark figure of the pew-opener against
the coloured glass screen of the vestibule; the barracks, with the
sentinel pacing outside and a number of red-coated soldiers in a bare
room within, smoking and playing cards.  The market-square was ablaze
with light from the windows of the church (the same at which Bessie
had kept Oie'l Verree) and the shadowy forms of the congregation were
passing in at the porch.

At length he reached the quay with its smell of rock-salt and tar.
The _Dan O'Connell_ was lying under the Castle gates, lazily getting
up steam, and the Captain was smoking by the gangway.

"Everything right, Captain?"

"Everything, Sir."

"Will the fog interfere?"

"Not a ha'porth, yer Honour."

"What about the Harbour-master?"

"In church with the wife, but I'm to have supper with him after the
sarvice and take a bottle of something."

"And the Turnkey?"

"Blind polatic at the 'Manx Arms,' Sir."

There came a dull hammering from the inside the Castle.  Stowell
shivered.

"Will they be gone in time?"

"Going back by the last train they're telling me."

"You'll whistle when you're clear away?"

"Shure!"

As Stowell crossed the foot-bridge at the back of the Church, he
heard the congregation singing the opening hymn ("Nearer, my God, to
Thee") and thought he knew the subject of the forthcoming sermon.
The melancholy blowing of the fog-horn was coming through the
blindness of the sea; the revolving light was blinking in and out on
Langness.

A quarter of an hour later he was at Derby Haven.  Most of the houses
of the little port were dark, but the window of one of them gave out
a faint light.  Stowell tapped at it and Gell opened the door.

For two hours they sat together in the old maids' stuffy
sitting-room, talking in whispers.  Stowell gave Gell his last
instructions.

"You remember that there are two gates to the Castle?"

"Yes."

"At eleven o'clock exactly, the moment the clock has ceased striking,
you'll ring at the big gate, and then step round to the Deemster's."

"Yes!"

"Somebody will open the gate.  It will be the jailer.  If he calls
you'll make no answer."

"Yes?"

"Yes?"

"As soon as he has closed the big gate the little one will be opened
and Bessie will be brought out to you."

"Yes?"

"That's all.  You know the rest."

After that there was a cold silence, quite unlike the warmth of
yesterday.  Each was thinking of the cruel thing which had come
between them, and neither dared to talk about.  At length Gell,
taking something from his pocket, said,

"I owe you some money."

"No, you don't.  Remember the terms I lent it on."

"Then take this anyway," said Gell, handing Stowell a sealed envelope.

After that there was another long silence, and then Gell said, in a
thick voice,

"When we're far enough away I'll write."

"No, no!"

"Do you mean that I'm never to write to you?"

"Never."

"But I will .... I must...."

"Don't be a damned fool, man.  Can't you see you never can?"

There was a pause.

"Victor," said Gell, "that's the first unkind word you have ever said
to me."

"Alick," said Stowell, "it shall be the last."

The wash of the tide (it was near to the flood) on the stones of the
shore, the monotonous blowing of the fog-horn and the deliberate
ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece were the only sounds they
heard except the irregular heave of their own breathing.

The two men were alternately watching the fingers of the clock and
gazing down at the pattern of the carpet.  At a few minutes to ten
Stowell got up and said,

"I must go now."

"I'll walk down the road with you," said Gell.

They walked side by side in the mist until they came to the ruins of
Hango Hill (where long before Alick had had his fight with the
townsmen) and were breast to breast with King William's College.

"You had better go back now.  We must not be seen together," said
Stowell.

They stood for some moments without speaking.  The clock in the
school tower was striking ten.  The school itself was in darkness.
Another generation of boys were lying asleep in it now.

"I suppose we've got to say good-bye," said Gell.

Stowell made no reply, but he took Gell's hand and there was a long
handclasp.  Then they separated, Stowell going on towards the town,
and Gell turning back to Derby Haven.  Each had walked a few paces
when Gell stopped and called,

"Vic!"

"What is it?"

There was a pause, and then, in a thick voice,

"Nothing!  S'long!"

And so they parted.

There was loud laughter and a voice with a brogue from a house on the
quay with the blind down but the top sash of the window partly open.
The church was dark and the market-place silent, save for the
measured tread of the sentry.

But as Stowell crossed the square he heard a light step and saw
through the thick air the shadowy form of a woman coming from the
direction of the Castle and going towards the hotel opposite.

He hung back until she had passed, and when the door of the hotel
opened to her knocking, and the light from within rushed out on her,
he saw who it was.

It was Fenella.  Stowell understood.  She had come from the cell of
the condemned woman, and was sleeping in Castletown that night in
order to be with her in the morning.

"But wait!  Only wait!"

In spite of his certainty that Providence was on his side he stepped
more lightly than ever as he went down to the quay.

The funnel of the Irish steamer was now throbbing hard, and a few
sailors on the forward deck were swearing.  Save for this and the
wash of the tide against the sides of the harbour, all was still.

Stowell looked around and listened for a moment.  Then he stepped up
to the Deemster's door and pulled the bell, and heard its clang
inside the walls.



II

"Ah, is it you, Dempster?  You've come for Miss Stanley?  She's just
gone, Sir."

"I know.  I saw her.  Are you alone, Mr. Vondy?"

"Alone enough, Sir.  It's shocking!  The night before an execution
too!  That Willie Shimmin, the drunken gommeral, went off at four and
isn't back yet.  I wouldn't trust but I'll be here by myself until
the High Bailiff and the Inspector and long Duggie Taggart come at
six in the morning."

"How is your prisoner to-night, Mr. Vondy?"

"Wonderful quiet, Sir."

"Still expecting her pardon?"

"'Deed she is, poor bogh, and listening for Mr. Gell's feet to fetch
it.  Now she thinks he'll come in the morning.  'Something tells me
he'll come at daybreak,' she said, and that's the for she's gone to
sleep."

They had reached the guard-room, where a fire was burning, and an old
oak armchair (once the seat of the Kings of Man) was drawn up in
front of the hearth.

"Gone to sleep, has she?  I must see her though.  I have something to
tell her."

"Is it the pardon itself, Sir?  Has it come then?"

"Not yet, but a telegram may come from London at any moment."

"You don't say?"

"Give me your key, and sit here and make your supper" (a kettle was
singing on the hob), "and if you hear the bell you will go off to the
gate immediately."

"I will that, Sir."

At the end of a long corridor Stowell stopped at a cell that had a
label on the door-post ("Elizabeth Corteen, Murder.  Death") and
looked in through the grill.  In the dim light he saw the prisoner
lying on her plank bed under her brown prison blanket.  With a tremor
of the heart he opened the door quietly and closed it behind him.

"Bessie!"

It had been hardly more than a whisper, but through the mists of
sleep Bessie heard it.  There was a cry, a bound, and then a
rapturous voice saying in the half darkness,

"Ah, you are here already!  I knew you would come."

But at the next moment, seeing who her visitor was, she stared at him
with wide-open eyes, and then fell on him with reproaches.

"So it's you, is it?  What have you come for?  Is it only to tell me
that I'm to die in the morning?"

Stowell stood with head down, feeling like a prisoner before his
Judge.  Then he said,

"You are not to die, Bessie."

She caught her breath and put up her hands to her breast.

"Do you mean that I am...."

"You are pardoned and have to leave this place immediately."

For a perceptible time Bessie stood silent, save for her breathing,
which was loud and rapid.

"Is it true?  Really true?"

"Quite true."

There is something childlike in sudden joy; Paradise itself must be a
place of children.  Bessie dropped back on her bed, clasped her hands
together like a child, and said,

"I see it all now, and it has been just as I thought at first.  You
wrote a letter to the King and he has pardoned me.  The law is hard
but the King is so tender-hearted.  'Poor girl,' he thought, 'she
didn't mean to kill her baby--not after it came, anyway.'"

Her eyes, which had been glistening, suddenly became grave, and
lifting them to the ceiling, with her hands clasped before her face,
she began to pray.

"Oh God, I've not been a good girl and I don't know how to pray
right, but...." and then came a flood of words too sacred to be set
down.

When she had finished her prayer she said,

"But you have been good too, and I have been insulting you!  That's
the way with a girl when she has been in trouble.  You'll forgive me,
won't you?"

Her face lit up and she went on talking, more to herself than to
Stowell.

"Did you say I was to leave this place immediately?  That means first
thing to-morrow, doesn't it?  I'll go to mother.  She's staying with
some Methodist people in Quay Lane.  Poor mother, she won't be able
to believe it.  We'll go home by the first train."

Thinking of home she found a kind of proud revenge in triumphing over
her enemies.

"Dan Baldromma will have to hold his tongue now.  And those
Skillicornes will never be allowed to show their ugly old faces
again.  And Cain the constable will have to find another beat, too,
and those impudent girls who stared at me at Douglas station--they'll
never have the face to sit in the singing-seat again."

But the smiling background of her thoughts was love.

"Alick will hear of it, won't he?  I wrote to him but he didn't
answer.  Perhaps his sisters prevented him--they've always been
casting me up to him.  Poor Alick!  He'll forgive me--I know he will.
It was for Alick I did it.  And just think!  Next Sunday, perhaps,
when people are walking about, we'll go downs Parliament Street
together!  And me on Alick's arm, and nobody to say a word against
it, now that the King has forgiven me!"

Stowell hardly dared to look at the girl.  For a long time he could
not speak.  But at length he compelled himself to tell her that she
was not to go home.  It was a condition of her pardon that she should
leave the island.

"Leave the island?"

"Yes, there's a steamer in the harbour, and you are to sail by it
to-night."

"To-night?"

"Yes, to Ireland, land from there, by another steamer, to New York."

"To New York?"

"Yes, but Alick is to go with you.  I've just left him.  We have
arranged everything."

She looked searchingly into his agitated face and the radiance died
off her own.

"But are you telling me the truth?" she said.  "Am I really pardoned?
You are not helping me to escape, are you?"

He pretended to laugh--It was hollow laughter.

"What an idea!  A Deemster helping a prisoner to escape!  Who would
believe such a thing?"

"No!  People wouldn't believe such a thing, would they?" she said,
and her eyes again began to shine.

"At eleven o'clock the big bell will ring," said Stowell.  "That will
be Alick coming for you.  You must give me your hand and I'll take
you down to him."

"Oh, how happy we shall be!" she said.  "We shall go far away, I
suppose--where nobody will know what has happened here?"

"Yes, but you must make no noise on going out, and not call to
anybody."

"But Mr. Vondy--he has been so good--I may stop and thank him?"

"He won't be there.  I'll give him your message."

"But mother--if I'm going so far away I must say good-bye to her."

"No, I'm sorry, the steamer will sail immediately."

She looked again into his agitated face and then, raising her voice,
she said,

"Mr. Stowell, you are deceiving me.  I have not been pardoned.  You
_are_ helping me to escape."

"Hush!"

But (again in a loud voice) she cried,

"Don't lie to me any longer.  Tell me the truth."

He hesitated for a moment, and then he told her.  Yes, he was helping
her to escape.  He had tried to procure her pardon and failed, so he
had determined to set her free.

While she listened to his tremulous voice she became a prey to a
strange confusion.  For days she had felt as if she hated this man,
and now a mysterious feeling of warmth from the past came over her.

"But what about you?" she asked.

"I can take care of myself," he answered.

"But if anything becomes known after Alick and I have gone...."

"Nothing _will_ become known."

"But if anything does, and you get into trouble...."

"Bessie," said Stowell (he was breathing hard), "I did you a great
wrong a year ago...."

"No, that was as much my fault as yours.  I have been praying and
praying for pardon, but rather than run away now and leave you to
.... No, I won't go!"

There was a moment of uneasy silence and then Stowell said,

"Alick is waiting outside for you, Bessie.  He is ready to give up
everything in the world for your sake.  Are you going to break his
heart at the last moment?"

"But I can't!  I can't!  I .... I won't!  And you shan't either.  Mr.
Vondy!  Mr. Von--...."

"Be quiet!  Be quiet!"

She had tried to reach the door, but he had thrown his arms about her
and was covering her mouth to smother her cries.  Ceasing to shout
she began to moan, and then he tried to coax her.

"Come, girl!  Trust me!  I know what I'm doing.  Pull yourself
together.  Stand up!  It's nearly eleven o'clock.  You'll have to
walk to the gate presently.  Come now, be brave."

But her eyes had closed, and by the dim light from the grill he saw
that she was insensible.

"Bessie!  Bessie!" he whispered, but she was lying helpless in his
arms.

For a moment he was bewildered.  Of all the chances that might
prevent success this was the only one he had not counted with.  But
at the next instant his mind, which was working with lightning-like
rapidity, saw a new opportunity.

"Better so," he thought, and laying the unconscious woman on her bed
he hurried back to the jailer.



III

"Mr. Vondy!  Mr. Vondy!  Your prisoner is ill."

The jailer, who had fallen asleep after his supper, staggered to his
feet.

"God bless my soul!  And the doctor living at the other end of the
town too."

"Never mind the doctor!  Brandy!  Quick!"

"There isn't a drop in the Castle, Sir."

"Yes, there's a flask in my room.  Take these" (giving him a bunch of
keys) "and go for it."

"Where will I find it, Sir?"

"I don't know.  I can't remember.  Look everywhere--in every drawer,
every cupboard."

"I will, your Honour."

"Don't come back without it."

"I won't, Sir."  And still in the mists of sleep the jailer picked up
his lantern from the table and staggered off.

Stowell listened to the sounds of the old man's retreating footsteps
until they had died away.

"This will give more time," he thought--he had sent the jailer on a
fruitless errand.

It was then five minutes to eleven.  Returning to the cell he lifted
Bessie in his arms and carried her out of the prison.  At first he
was no more conscious of her weight than he had been of the weight of
the sheep on the mountains.

But outside it was very dark, and at every uncertain step his burden
became heavier.  In the open space between the main building and the
outer walls the fog lay thick as in a well, and it was as much as he
could do to see one foot before him.

Over the wooden drawbridge his feet fell with a thudding sound, but
he groped for the grass at the bottom of the stone steps, so that he
should not be heard on the gravel path.

There was no sound in the court-yard except that of the fierce
belching from the funnel of the steamer, the wash of the tide in the
harbour, the boom of the sea in the bay and the monotonous blowing of
the fog-horn.

He was making for the Deemster's private entrance and had no light to
guide him except the borrowed gleam from the door to the Deemster's
rooms, which the jailer in his haste had left open.  As he passed
this door he heard the sound of the rapid opening and closing of
drawers.  The weight of the woman in his arms was becoming unbearable.

At one moment he saw the shadowy outlines of a white thing which the
carpenters had erected against the walls.  He shuddered and went on.

The damp air was chill and Bessie began to revive under it.  At first
she breathed heavily, and then she made those low, inarticulate moans
of returning consciousness which are the most unearthly sounds that
come from human lips.

"Mr. Von--.... Mr. Von--...."

Both arms being engaged, Stowell had to crush the girl's mouth
against his breast to stop her cries.  They ceased and she swooned
again.

His burden was becoming monstrous.  With a savage strength of will
and muscle he struggled along.  At length he reached the Deemster's
door.  It was fastened as he knew, not only by the lock of which the
key was in his waistcoat pocket, but also by three long bolts.  With
the unconscious girl in his arms it was as much as he could do to
open it.  At last he did so.  A pale face was outside.  It was Gell's.

"Take her--she has fainted."  Not another word was spoken.

Gell, breathing rapidly, took Bessie into his arms, and carried her
across the quay.  Stowell watched him until he reached the gangway,
and then the sea mist hid him.  He heard Gell walking on the deck and
then going, with heavy footsteps, down the cabin companion.

He closed the Deemster's door, locked and bolted it, and then turned
back to the prison.  Again he kept to the grass and was conscious of
an effort to make his footsteps light.

On reaching the drawbridge he looked back and listened.  The opening
and closing of drawers was still audible.  The funnel of the steamer
was still belching invisible smoke, and red sparks from the fires
below were shooting through it.  The tide was still washing in the
harbour, the sea was still booming in the bay, and the fog-horn was
still blowing on Langness.  Save for these sights and sounds,
everything was dark and silent within the great blind walls.

Then the clock in the tower struck eleven.  Every stroke fell on the
clammy air like a blow from a padded hammer.



IV

Five minutes passed.

Stowell had returned to the cell, stretched out the brown prison
blankets so as to give the appearance, in the dim light, of a body on
the bed, and was now sitting in the armchair before the fire in the
guard-room.  His work was not yet done, and he was listening to the
sounds outside.  Until the steamer sailed he must remain in the
Castle to keep watch on the jailer.  He was more sure than ever that
he was doing God's work, but he was still behaving like a criminal.

Footsteps approached.  The jailer entered, mopping his forehead.

"I can't find it, your Honour, and I've searched everywhere."

"Never mind, Mr. Vondy.  Your prisoner recovered from her attack and
is now sleeping peacefully."

"Sleeping, is she?  I'll take a look at her."

"Don't!  I mean don't go into the cell and disturb her."

"I won't, Sir," said the jailer, from half-way down the corridor.

Stowell listened intently.  Presently the jailer returned.

"Aw, yes, she's fast enough!  Wonderful the way they sleep on the
last night.  Something you told her, perhaps.  Has the telegram come,
your Honour?"

"No, and it won't come now.  Eleven o'clock, they said.  If it didn't
come then I was not to expect it."

"Poor bogh!  It will be a shocking thing when Duggie Taggart comes in
the morning.  I wouldn't trust but it will be a dead woman itself
we'll be taking out of the cell, Sir."

"I wouldn't trust," said Stowell.

Insensibly he had dropped into the Anglo-Manx.  He was trying to find
some excuse for remaining.

"It'll be a middlin' cold drive home, old friend--couldn't you make
me a cup of coffee?"

"With pleasure, Sir," said the jailer.  And while the old man stirred
the peats and hung the kettle on the slowrie, Stowell, listening at
the same time to the voices without (the husky brogue of the Irish
Captain and the guttural croaking of the half-tipsy harbour-master)
got him to tell the story of his appointment.

"It was thirty years ago, when I was coachman at Ballamoar in the
'Stranger's' days--a wonderful kind woman your mother was, Sir."

"Hurry up, boys.  Bear a hand with that crank"--the swing-bridge was
being opened; the steamer was to go out in spite of the fog.

"I used to be taking her for drives in the morning, and it was always
'Thank you, Mr. Vondy!  A beautiful drive, Mr. Vondy!' Aw, gentry,
Sir, gentry born!"

"Damn your eyes, let go that forrard rope"--the Captain was on the
bridge.

"We had a young Irish mare in them days, Sir, and coming home one
morning in harvest, not more than a month before your Honour was
born, Illiam Christian (he was always a toot was Illiam) started his
new reaper in the road field just as we were passing the Nappin, and
the mare bolted."

"Why the divil don't you take in the slack of that starn rope?  Do
you want me to come down and dump you overboard?"--the funnels had
ceased to roar and the paddles were plashing.

"I was a middling strong young fellow then, Mr. Stowell, Sir, and if
the mare pulled I pulled too, until one of the reins broke at me and
I was flung off the box."

"Aisy does it!  Take in that breast rope, bys"--the steamer was
passing through the gate.

"I wasn't for letting go for all.  Not me!  Just holding on like mad,
though it was tossing and tumbling on the road I was like a mollag in
a dirty sea."

"Half-steam below there"--the steamer was opening the bay.

"I bet her at last, Sir, and up she came at the Ballamoar gates
blowing like a smithy bellows and sweating tremenjous, but quiet as a
lamb."

"Heave oh and away!"

"I was ragged and torn like a scarecrow, and herself was as white as
a sea-gull, but never a scratch, thank God!"

"Bravo!"

"The Dempster had heard the yelling on the road and down the drive he
came in his dressing-gown and slippers, trembling like a ghost.  And
when he saw it was all right with herself, 'Mr. Vondy,' says he, with
the water in his eyes, 'I'll never forget it, Mr. Vondy,' he says."

"And he didn't?"

"'Deed no!  Aw, a grand man, the ould Dempster, Sir.  Middlin' stiff
in the upper lip, but a man of his word for all.  And when Capt'n
Crow pegged out and this place was vacant he put me in for it."

Straining his powers of listening Stowell was still waiting for the
whistle that was to tell him the steamer was clear away.

"Crow?  That was Nelson's Crow, wasn't it?"

"Nelson's Crow it was, Sir.  One-eyed Crow we were calling him.  He
was boatswain on the _Victory_, and when the big man went down he was
in the cockpit holding him in his arms.  'Will I die, Mr. Crow?' said
Nelson.  'We had better wait for the opinion of the ship's doctor,
Sir,' said Crow."

There was a long shrill whistle from a distance.  Stowell leapt to
his feet and laughed--the steamer had gone.

"Ah, a rael Manxman, wasn't he?  Wouldn't commit himself, you see."

Then he slapped the jailer on the shoulder and said,

"So you've been here thirty years, old friend?"

"About that, Sir," said the jailer.

"But do you know you wouldn't be here thirty hours longer if I were
to tell the Governor what you've done to-night?"

"Why, what's that, your Honour?"

"Left a condemned prisoner without guard, or even without remembering
to lock her up and carry away the keys"--and he threw the keys of the
cell on the table.

"God bless me, yes!  I never thought of that.  But it was yourself
that sent me out, and your Honour will not tell."

"Not I, old friend.  But listen!  Nobody in the island knows that
I've been trying to get your prisoner's pardon, and now that it
hasn't come, it's better that nobody should know.  So you'll say
nothing to anybody about my being here to-night?"

"Not a word, Sir.  But you've done your best for the poor bogh, and
it's Himself will reward you."

It was not until Stowell was outside the Castle that he reflected
that whatever else happened in the morning the jailer must certainly
fall into disgrace.

"I must find a way to make it up to him," he thought.



V

The quay was deserted and the berth of the tramp steamer in the
harbour was an empty space, but in the fever of his impatience
Stowell walked to the end of the pier to make sure that the ship had
gone.

The fog had lifted a little by this time, the fog-horn was no longer
blowing, and against the dark sea he could just make out the darker
hull of the steamer leaving the bay.  Farther away he saw the
revolving light from Langness, which was shooting red vapour into the
sky like breath from fiery nostrils.  The night air was still cold,
but his forehead was perspiring.

Bessie would be recovering consciousness by this time.  "Where am I?"
she would be saying.  And then she would hear the throb of the
engines and the wash of the water, and see Alick by her side.

For a moment he lost sight of the ship's stern light (a mist was
sweeping over the surface of the sea) and his anxiety became agony,
but it reappeared at the other side of the light-house and his
spirits rose again.  Yes, she was steering north.

"Sail on!  Sail on!  Sail on!"

He returned to the town.  In the thinning fog everything looked
immensely large and frightening.  He walked slowly in order not to
attract attention.  Passing through the narrow streets he found
nearly all the houses dark.  Only two or three of the upper windows
showed light, and from one of them, partly open, he heard the cry of
a sick child.

But in a winding lane, close under the Castle, he came upon a cottage
that was lit up in the lower storey, and loud with many voices.  He
recognised it as the house at which he had left Mrs. Collister, and
understood what was happening.  The old woman's Primitive friends
were holding a prayer-meeting by her bedside in the kitchen to
comfort her.  A man was praying and many women were shouting
responses.

"Save the sinner, O Lord!" (_Hallelujah!_) "She may be inside prison
walls to-night, but show her the Golden Gates are always open."
(_Hallelujah!_) "Remember Thy servant, her mother!" (_Aw yes,
remember her!_) "Her soul is passing through deep waters." (_'Deed it
is, Lord!_) "Stretch out Thy hand as Thou didst to Peter of old and
suffer her not to sink."

Outside the town Stowell had an impulse to run.  He found his
motor-car where he had left it and pushed it into the road.  While
lighting his lamp he thought he heard sounds from the direction of
the Castle.  Had the escape become known?  He listened for anything
that might denote alarm.  There was nothing.

The Castle clock struck twelve.  The fog had nearly gone now, and
looking back he saw the gloomy and forbidding fortress towering over
the sleeping town.  A few stars had appeared above it.

All was quiet.  The condemned woman had escaped from Castle Rushen.
There was nothing to show that he himself had been there.

With a last look back he started his engine and released his levers,
and his car shot away.




CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

THE GRAVE OF A SIN

Nearly three hours later Stowell was at the Point of Ayre, where the
head of the island looks into the sea.  Leaving his car at the end of
the last paved road he walked over the bent-strewn plain to where the
tall, white, brown-belted light-house stands up against sea and sky.
The light-houseman, who had just put out the light, seeing the
Deemster approach, went down to meet him.

"May I go up to your lantern, Light-houseman?  I've always wanted to
see the sun rise from there."

"With pleasure, your Honour," said the Light-houseman, and he led the
way up the circular stone stairway, through the eye of the
light-house, with its glistening columns of bevelled glass, to the
iron-railed gallery that ran like a scalf round its neck.

For a long half-hour Stowell walked to and fro there.  He felt as if
he were on the prow of some mighty ship, with the sea racing in white
foam along the rocks on either side.  Far below were the booming
waves; the sea-fowl were calling in the midway air; the sky to the
east was reddening; the day was striding over the waters and driving
the trailing garments of the night before it, and the sea was singing
the great song of the dawn.

At last, straining his sight to the south, he saw what he had come to
see--a steamer with a red and black funnel.  Kept back during the
dark hours by the fog on the coast, she was now coming on at
full-speed.

There was a pang in thinking that this was the last he was to see of
the two who were aboard of her, but there was a boundless joy in it
also.  They were united; they were happy; they were safe; he had
wiped out his offence against them.

He watched the vessel as she passed.  She lurched a little as she
went through the cross-current of the Point.  But now she was out in
the Channel; now she was heading towards the Mull of Galloway; now
she was fading into the northern mist and seemed to be dropping off
into another planet.

At half-past three Stowell was back in his car.  He could go home now
with a cleaner heart, a surer conscience.  It was a beautiful
morning.  The sun had risen.  It was slanting over his shoulder as he
drove along the grass-grown road on the north-west coast, with the
sea singing and dancing by his side over a stretch of yellow sand.
The lambs were bleating in the fields and the larks were loud in the
sky.

What relief!  What joy!  His car was bounding on--past the Lhen, the
Nappin, the old Jurby church with its four-square tower on the edge
of the cliff--going faster than he knew, faster and still faster,
like a winged creature, parting the way as it went, making the road
itself to fly open, and the hedges, the trees, and the sleeping
farm-houses to slant off on either side, and coming round at last, as
with the heart of a bride, to the big gates of Ballamoar.

Home once more!

As he slackened speed and slid up the drive the rooks were calling in
the tall elms and the song-birds in the bushes were singing.  As
silently as possible he ran his car into the garage and crept into
the house.

The blinds were down and the rooms were dull with a yellow light,
like sunshine behind closed eyelids.  The grandfather's clock on the
landing was striking four.  Only four hours since he had left
Castletown!

The servants were not yet stirring, and he stepped upstairs on
tiptoe, hoping to reach his room unheard, but as he passed Janet's
door she called to him.

"Is that you, Victor?"

He answered, "Yes."

"How late you are, dear!"

"Don't waken me in the morning."

In his bedroom he was partly conscious that familiar things looked
strange--or was it that another man had come back to them?  He
undressed rapidly and got into bed, drawing a deep breath.  It was
all over.  Bessie Collister was gone.  It was nearly impossible that
she could ever be traced and brought back.  A monstrous judicial
crime had been prevented.  _He_ had been permitted to prevent it.
And now for the long, long rest of a dreamless sleep.

But in the vague, intermediate half-world of consciousness before
sleep comes, he was aware of another, a warmer and more secret
motive.  Fenella!  "Tell him to come back to me!"  Ah, no, not until
he had wiped out his fault.  But now he could go to her!  He had
broken down the barrier between them.  He had buried his sin in the
sea.

Thank God!  Thank God!

And then sleep, deep sleep, and the breathless day coming on.



END OF FIFTH BOOK




_SIXTH BOOK_

THE REDEMPTION


CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

THE BIRTH OF A LIE

Awakening in the "George" in the early hours of morning, Fenella
heard a noise outside her window that was like the running of a
shallow river over a bed of small stones.  She knew what it was.  It
was the sound of the feet of the people who were coming in crowds to
stand outside the Castle walls and watch the slow-moving fingers of
the clock, until the hoisting of the black flag over the tower should
tell them that the invisible presence of Death had come and gone.

When, as the clock was striking six, she crossed the market-place on
her way to the Castle, she found this crowd in great commotion,
hurrying to and fro and calling to each other in agitated voices.

"Is it true?"

"So they're saying."

"God bless my soul!"

The Castle gate was open and people had penetrated as far as the
Portcullis.  An Inspector of Police, coming out hurriedly, commanded
them to go back.

"Away with you!  Is it play-acting you've come to look at?  Smoking
your pipes, too!"

But without waiting to see his orders obeyed he hastened away
himself, shouting to somebody that he was going to knock up the
telegraph office.

The court-yard, when Fenella reached it, though less crowded was as
full of agitation.  A blear-eyed man, who looked as if he had just
awakened from a fit of intoxication, was walking aimlessly to and
fro.  It was Shimmin, the turnkey, but when Fenella asked him what
had happened, he stared vacantly and made no answer.  A very tall
man, wearing a cloth cap over his head and ears and carrying a
carpet-bag, was standing by the scaffold.  This must be "long Duggie
Taggart" and when Fenella, shuddering at sight of the man, asked him
the same question, he shrugged his shoulders and turned away.  At the
foot of the draw-bridge the High Bailiff and the jailer were in
fierce altercation.

"I know nothing about it, I tell thee, Sir."

"Then you are a blockhead and a fool!"

At length two elderly men, the Chaplain and the Doctor, came down the
Deemster's stairs, and then the truth, which Fenella had partly
surmised, became fully known to her.  The condemned woman had escaped
during the night.  There would be no execution that day.

Through a tumult of mixed feelings, Fenella was conscious of a sense
of immense relief.  Her first thought was of Bessie's mother, and she
turned back to take the news to her.

The little house in Quay Lane had its door still closed, but through
the kitchen window, whereof the upper sash was partly down, came the
singing of a hymn in tired and husky voices,

  "_Jesus, lover of my soul,
  Let me to Thy bosom fly._"


It was not immediately that Fenella could get an answer to her
knocking, but at length the man of the house, in his ganzie and long
sea boots, opened the door, still singing.

The little low-ceiled kitchen was full of people, and the close air
of the place seemed to say that they had kept up their prayer-meeting
the night through.

On a chair bedstead against the opposite wall, Mrs. Collister in her
cotton nightcap, from which long thin locks of her grey hair were
escaping, was rocking her body to the tune, while fumbling with bony
fingers a Methodist hymn-book which lay open before her on the
patchwork counterpane.

Fenella, with a warm heart for the old mother in her trouble, pushed
through to the foot of the bed, but Mrs. Collister was terrified at
the sight of her, thinking she was bringing bad tidings,

"Have they deceived me?" she cried.  "Seven o'clock they said.  Is it
all over?"

"Be calm," said Fenella, and then she delivered her message.  Bessie
had gone from Castle Rushen.  She was not to die that day.

A moment of vacant silence fell upon the room, such as seems to fall
on the world when the tide is at the bottom of the ebb.  With
difficulty the old woman grasped what Fenella had said.  Her watery
eyes looked round at her people as if asking them to help her to
understand.  At length one of these cried,

"Glory to God!  It's the answer to our prayers."

And then the truth seemed to descend on the poor broken brain like a
healing breath from heaven.  Stretching out her match-like arms, she
seized Fenella's hands and said,

"I know who thou art.  Thou art the Governor's daughter.  Is it the
truth thou'rt telling me?"

"Indeed it is."

"My Bessie is out of prison?"

"Yes, and nobody knows what has become of her."

A wild cry of joy burst from the old woman's throat.

"Liza!  Liza Killey, wilt thou believe me now?  Didn't I tell thee it
was the old Dempster himself that the Lord had sent to take my child
out of prison?"

A wave of new life seemed to come to her, and throwing back the
clothes she struggled out of bed (her blue-veined legs and feet
showing bare under her cotton nightdress) and went down on her knees
to pray.  But her prayer was drowned by the husky voices of her
companions, who had by this time raised a hymn of thanksgiving.

Fenella turned to go, and the man and woman of the house followed her
to the door.

"What was that she said about the Deemster?"

They told her what had happened the night before--how the old woman
had escaped into the streets and the Deemster had brought her back to
the house.

"Are you sure it was the Deemster?"

"We thought so then, but she thrept us out it was his father who is
dead and buried, and now we don't know in the world if it was or
wasn't."

The singers were singing in triumphant tones--

  "_God moves in a mysterious way,
    His wonders to perform._"


Fenella, who had begun to tremble, turned back to the hotel.  The
market-place was full of people, who were pouring into it from every
thoroughfare.  On reaching her room she locked the door, pulled down
the window-blind, sat on the bed, covered her eyes, and tried to
think out what had happened.

The noise outside was like the surge of the sea, and like the surge
of the sea was the tumult in her heart and brain.

Could it be possible that Victor Stowell had helped Bessie Collister
to escape?  She remembered what he had said to her father--that if
any attempt were made to carry out the sentence he would prevent it.
She remembered what she had said to him--that never could there be
anything between them while that girl lay in prison.  He had been in
Castletown the night before, and he was the only man in the island
who could have access to the Castle without an order from the
Governor or the Chief Constable.

But a Judge to break prison!  What would be the end of it?  Why had
he done this incredible thing, risking everything?  Was it solely
because he could not allow that unhappy girl, who had suffered so
much for him already, to go to the gallows?  Or was it, perhaps,
because she herself had said....

Suddenly a great quickening of her love for Stowell came over her.
If she had stumbled upon his secret she would protect it.

"But what can I do?" she asked herself.

At one moment it occurred to her to run back to Quay Lane and warn
the good people there to say nothing more about the Deemster.  But
no, that might awaken suspicion.  They thought Bessie's escape was
due to supernatural agencies, that it had come as an answer to their
prayers--let them continue to think so.

At seven o'clock she was in the train for Douglas and the telegraph
poles were flying by.  She must know what the Governor was doing.
But whatever her father might do her own course was clear.

She must stand by Victor now, whatever happened.



II

In the cool sunshine of the early May morning Government House lay
asleep.  The gardener was mowing a distant part of the lawn when he
saw a carriage drive rapidly up to the porch.  Two gentlemen got out
of it, and in less time than it took him to empty his grass-pan into
his wheelbarrow they rang three times at the door.

Inside the house nobody was yet stirring except old John, the
watchman, who was drawing the curtains and opening the windows.  He
heard the bell and thought the postman had brought a registered
letter.  In his cloth shoes he was shuffling to the vestibule when
the bell rang again and yet again.

"_Traa de looiar_" ("Time enough"), he growled, but his voice fell to
a more deferential tone when he opened the door, and saw who was
there.

"Our apologies to His Excellency, and say the Attorney-General and
the Chief Constable wish to see him immediately on urgent business."

The two men stepped into the smoking-room, which was still dark with
the blinds down and rank with last night's tobacco smoke.

A few minutes later, the Governor entered in his dressing-gown over
his pyjamas and with his bare feet in his heelless slippers.  And
then the Attorney told him--the young woman who was to have been
executed that morning had escaped.

"Good God, no!"

"Only too true, Sir.  Colonel Farrell has had an urgent telegram from
his Inspector at Castletown."

"When did it happen?"

"During the night.  The jailer says he locked her up at eleven and
when he opened the cell at five the prisoner was gone."

"Where is the jailer?"

"At the Castle still," said the Chief Constable, "but I've told the
police to send him up immediately."

The Governor rose from the seat into which he had dropped and walked
to and fro.

"Such a blow to the authority of the law--the escape of a prisoner on
the eve of her execution!" said the Attorney.

"Such a handle to the disorderly elements, too!" said the Chief
Constable.

"Good Lord, don't I know?  Let me think!  Let me think!"

The Governor drew up one of the window blinds and his eyes fell on a
steamer lying by the pier with smoke rising lazily from her black and
red funnels.

"If the woman escaped only a few hours ago," he said, "she cannot
have left the island yet.  Have you given orders that the passengers
by the morning steamer shall be watched?"

"Not yet, sir."

"Do so at once.  If that fails, telegraph to your police in every
town and parish.  Good gracious, in this pocket-handkerchief of an
island it ought to be possible to re-capture an escaped prisoner in a
day, even if she lies like a toad under a stone."

"We'll leave no stone unturned, sir."

"A woman!  A mere girl!  Unless the jailer or his people deliberately
opened the doors for her she must have had assistance."

"That's what _I_ say, your Excellency."

"Have you any idea who helped her?"

"No .... that is to say...."

"Where's young Gell, the Advocate?"

"In his rooms in Athol-street .... I presume."

"Find out for certain.  Come back at four this afternoon and bring
that blockhead of a jailer with you.  And listen" (the men were
leaving the room), "try to keep this ridiculous thing quiet.  If it
gets into the papers across the water all England will be laughing at
us."

The Governor was again at the window, watching the Attorney-General's
carriage going rapidly down the drive, when he saw a hackney car,
containing Fenella, coming up to the house.

That sight started a new order of ideas.  He remembered Stowell's
threat--"If you order that girl's execution, it shall never be
carried out, because I shall prevent it."  For three days he had
understood this to mean that the Deemster would appeal over his head
to the Imperial authorities.  But Stowell had not done so--he wasn't
such a fool, he had remembered the bedevilments of his own position.
So the Governor had dismissed the thought, and his anger at the son
of his old friend had subsided.  But now the threat came back on him
with a new interpretation.  Could it be possible?  Such an unheard-of
thing?

As soon as Fenella entered the house he called her into his room and
shut the door behind her.

"You have just come from Castletown?"

"Yes, father."

"Then you know what has happened?"

"Yes."

"Can you throw any light on it?"

"Light on it?"

"I mean .... have you seen anything of Stowell since we spoke of him
last?"

"Nothing."

"Nor heard from him?"

"No."

"Do you think it likely that .... But it is impossible.  No
responsible person in his sense could do such a thing.  It must be
the other one."

"What other, father?"

"Young Gell, of course.  He is the only man in the island who could
wish that girl to escape--the only one who would be fool enough to
help her to do so."

Fenella went to her room with a heart at ease.  She was sorry for
Gell, very sorry, but in the consuming selfishness of her love for
Stowell she found a secret joy in the thought that suspicion was
being diverted from the real culprit.

Victor was safe thus far.  But what would he do himself?  What was he
now doing?



III

It was near to noon when Stowell awoke at Ballamoar.  His bedroom
(formerly his father's) faced to the south and flashes of sunshine
from the chinks of the window curtains were crossing the bed on which
he lay with his head on his arm.

It was a startling moment.

His long sleep had washed his brain as in a spiritual bath, and with
the awakening of his body his conscience had awakened also.  The
events of the previous night rolled back on him like a flood, and
now, for the first time, he saw what he had done.

To prevent the law from committing a crime he had committed a crime
against the law!  He, the Judge, sworn to uphold Justice, had
deliberately betrayed it!  Had anything so monstrous ever been heard
of before?

After a while, through the deafening buzzing of his brain, he became
aware of the droning sound of voices in the room below, and then of
their sharp clack as the speakers (they were Janet and Joshua Scarff)
stepped out of the house to the gravel path in front of it.

"No, don't waken his Honour, Miss Curphey.  He hasn't been well
lately, and sleep does no harm to anyone.  Besides he'll hear the bad
news soon enough."

"'Deed he will, Mr. Scarff."

"It will be a terrible shock to him--especially if my suspicions
about a certain person prove to be justified.  But that's the way,
you see--one act of wrong-doing leads to another.  Pity!  Great pity!"

It was out!  Stowell felt as if the bed under him were rocking from
the first tremor of an earthquake.

Half-an-hour later he was at breakfast downstairs.  For a long time,
Janet was trying to break the news to him.  At last it came.  The
young woman who was to have been executed that morning had escaped.
Joshua Scarff had had it from the Inspector at Ramsey--it was being
telegraphed all over the island.

For the sake of appearances Stowell made an exclamation of surprise,
despising himself for doing so and feeling as if the toast in his
mouth were choking him.

"It's impossible not to be glad," said Janet, "that the poor guilty
creature has escaped the gallows, but Joshua thinks things are not
likely to end there."

"And what does he say?...."

"He says she must have had an accomplice, and when the man is found
out it will be the worse for both of them."

"And who .... who does Joshua think...."

"Alick Gell.  It seems he put appearances against himself at the
trial, poor boy!"

Instead of going to town that day, as he had intended to do, Stowell
rambled through the trackless Curraghs.  He was trying to be alone
with the melancholy swish of the sally bushes and the mournful cry of
the curlews.  But his anxiety to know what was being done brought him
back to the house.  Hearing nothing there, he walked to the village
for a copy of the insular newspaper.  He found some excuse for
speaking to everybody he met on the road--on other subjects, though,
always on other subjects.

At the door of the little general store, with its mixed odour of many
condiments coming out to him, he stopped and called,

"How's the rheumatism this morning, Auntie Kitty?"

"Aw, better, your Honour, a taste better to-day.  But it's moral
sorry I am to hear the bad newses you've had yourself, Sir.  It's
feeling it terrible you'll be, your Honour--you and the young man
being the same as brothers.  It will kill his mother--and her such a
proud stomach.  The woman couldn't see the sun for the boy, and she's
been fighting the father all his life for him."

On his way back he met Cain, the constable, looking large and
important.

"I'm sarching for them two runaways," he said, with his short
asthmatical breathing, "and the Chief Constable is telling me I'll
have to be finding them if they're lying like a toad under a stone."

Gell again!  The report of the escape had passed over the island with
the swift flight of a bird of prey--everywhere he could hear the
flapping of its wings.  And to the question of who could have
assisted the young woman to escape from a place like Castle Rushen
there was only one answer--Gell.

Towards nightfall Joshua Scarff called at Ballamoar on his way home
from town.  Things had turned out as he had expected--suspicion had
fastened on Mr. Gell, and the Governor had ordered the police to
scour the island for him.

"But everybody is sorry for your Honour.  His friend!  His bosom
friend!  Pity!  Great pity!"

Gell!  Always Gell!  Again Stowell felt as if the earth were rocking
beneath him.  Where had his head been that he had not thought of this
before--that in helping Alick Gell to go away with Bessie Collister
he had put him into the position of the guilty man--guilty not only
of the prison-breaking, but also of the earlier and uglier offence of
being the girl's fellow-sinner?

He had thought he had buried his sin in the sea--had he only cast the
burden of it upon Gell?

He recalled Alick's gratitude on going away, the undeserved praises
which had cut to the heart, and then thought of Gell (far away in a
foreign country) coming to hear of the evil name he had left behind.

What was Alick to think of him then?  That what he had done had not
been at the call of friendship, but of mere self-protection--to
divert suspicion from himself, to remove the only witnesses against
him, and thus to build his future life on the unprotected name of an
innocent man?

"Must I let that lie run on without saying a word against it?"

And then Fenella!  He had seen himself going to her and saying, "Now
that the girl is no longer in prison the barrier between us is broken
down."  He had seen himself marrying her, and then rising higher and
higher in the esteem of his people, with that brave woman by his side.

But now--what now?

Fenella would find him out!  It was impossible that she could live
long with a man who carried such a corroding secret without
discovering it sooner or later.  And when she had done so what would
she think of him?  A traitor to his friend and to the law!  A Judge
who had broken his oath!  A wrong-doer, not a righter of the wronged,
sitting in judgment upon others, yet himself a criminal!  A man of
honour to the outer world, a hypocrite in his own house; a pillar of
the island in the eyes of his people, a liar in the eyes of his wife!

"No, God forbid it!  I cannot let that lie run on.  I cannot allow
myself to be pilloried in life-long hypocrisy."

All the same he would wait to see what the Governor might do next.
It was no good acting hastily.




CHAPTER FORTY

THE CALL OF A WOMAN'S SOUL

At four o'clock that day the Attorney-General and the Chief Constable
had returned to Government House and were sitting, on either side of
the Governor, with the jailer standing before them.  Fenella stood by
the window, apparently gazing into the garden but listening intently.

"Come now," said the Governor, "tell us what you know of this matter."

The jailer knew nothing.  Changing repeatedly the leg on which he was
standing and mopping his forehead with a coloured handkerchief, he
protested absolute ignorance.

"After Miss Stanley left the Castle a piece after ten o'clock I
locked the poor bogh in her cell...."

"Do you mean the prisoner?"

"Who else, your Excellency?"

"Then say the prisoner."

"Well, I locked the prisoner in her cell a piece after ten o'clock
last night and when I went back at five this morning to take her a
bite of breakfast...."

"Breakfast?  Where was your female warder?"

"Mistress Mylrea?  Sick of the heart since General Gaol.  They're
telling me she died last night, Sir."

"Where was your turnkey then?"

"Willie Shimmin?  He went out on lave for a couple of hours on Sunday
afternoon and didn't return on the night, Sir."

"Do you mean to tell me you were alone in the Castle on the night
before an execution?"

"Aw, yes, alone enough, Sir."

"Colonel Farrell!" said the Governor, turning sharply upon the Chief
Constable.

That gentleman, although embarrassed, had many excuses.  He had not
been made aware of the situation, and if this blockhead had only
communicated with the police-station....

"Well, well, enough of that now.  Let us have the facts," said the
Governor, and turning back to the jailer he said,

"Did anybody come to the Castle last night after Miss Stanley left
it?"

"No, Sir, no!"

"And your keys?  Did they ever leave your possession?"

"Never, Sir."

"After you locked the prisoner in her cell, what did you do?"

"I went back to the guard-room and sat by the fire, Sir."

"And fell asleep, I suppose?"

"I'll give in I slept a wink or two, Sir."

"Where were your keys while you were asleep?"

"On the table beside me, Sir."

"And when you awoke where were they?"

"In the same place, your Excellency."

"Were the gates of the Castle locked last night?"

"Aw, 'deed they were, Sir."

"And were they locked this morning?"

"They were that, Sir."

The Attorney-General, who had been leaning forward, dropped back.

"Extraordinary!" he said.  "The whole thing has the appearance of the
supernatural."

"Nonsense!" said the Governor.  "Vondy, do you know Mr. Gell, the
Advocate?"

"I'm sorry to say, Sir...."

"Never mind about sorry--do you?"

"I do, Sir."

"When did you see him last?"

"At General Gaol, when he was out of himself, poor man, and we had to
lock him up for threatening the Dempster."

"Did he never come to the Castle afterwards to see the prisoner?"

"Never, Sir."

"Will you swear that he was not there last night?"

"I will--before God Almighty, Sir."

"Then, if the cell was locked all night and the Castle gates were
locked, how do you account for the escape of your prisoner?"

The jailer smoothed the hair over his forehead and then said,

"Bolts and bars are nothing to the Lord, Sir."

The Governor gasped.

"Do you mean to say that while you were asleep before the fire in the
guard-room an angel from heaven carried your prisoner through the
Castle walls?"

"Aw, well .... I wouldn't say no to that, Sir.  We're reading of the
like in the Good Book anyway."

"Fenella," cried the Governor, "take this fool away and turn him out
of the house."

When Fenella, who had been quivering all over, had left the room,
followed by the jailer, the Governor turned to the Chief Constable.

"The woman was not on the morning steamer?"

"No, Sir."

"And What about Gell?"

"We broke open the door of his room in Athol Street and found he had
gone."

"Ah!  Have you come upon any trace of him elsewhere?"

"Yes; he slept at the Railway Inn at Ballaugh on Saturday night and
took a ticket for St. John's by the first train on Sunday morning."

"Anything else?"

"The blacksmith at Ballasalla believes he saw him on Sunday evening
going in the fog in the direction of Derby Haven."

"Aha!  Did any fishing boat leave Castletown last night?"

"The Manx boats do not go out on Sunday, Sir."

"Any trading steamers then?"

"I don't know, Sir."

"Inquire at once.  If your constables do not find the fugitives in
the island we must send a 'Wanted' across the water."

"I'll draw one up, Sir."

"Got the necessary photographs?"

"One of the girl, which was found in the young man's rooms, Sir.
Also one of the young man which we found in the girl's cell, but it
is not of much use, being scratched and blurred as if it had been
lying in water."

"No matter!  The Deemster is sure to have another.  I'll write and
ask him to meet us here at eleven on Wednesday morning.  He'll be
able to help you to your personal description and issue the warrant
at the same time."



II

Meantime, Fenella had taken the jailer into the drawing-room and
closed the door behind them.

"Mr. Vondy," she said in a low voice, "you can trust me.  Nothing you
may say in this room will ever be repeated.  Did not somebody come to
Castle Rushen last night after I left it?"

The old man tried in vain to look into the big moist eyes that were
on him, but at length he dropped his own and said,

"It is no use, miss.  There will be no rest on me in the night unless
I tell the truth to somebody.  There can be no harm telling it to you
neither--going to be the man's wife soon they're saying.  It's truth
enough, miss--somebody did come."

"Was it the Deemster?"

"It was that," said the jailer, and then he told her everything that
had happened.

Fenella's head became giddy and her cheeks blushed crimson.  In a
flash she saw what had happened.  Victor had deceived the jailer.
Did the old man know it?  Lowering her eyes she said,

"You didn't say this when the Governor questioned you--had you a
reason for not doing so?"

"I had.  The Deemster made me promise to say nothing."

And then came the other and still more degrading story--the story of
the intimidation Stowell had put upon the jailer to keep his visit
secret.

Fenella felt as if she would sink through the floor in shame, but all
the same she found herself saying,

"You've known the Deemster all his life, haven't you?"

"I have.  I was reared on the land," said the jailer, and then,
raising himself to his full height, "I'm a Ballamoar myself, miss."

"Then you will keep the promise you gave him?"

"Trust me for that, miss."

"But if anything should happen to yourself as the consequence of last
night's escape...."

"The father put me in the Castle and the son won't see them fling me
out of it."

"But if he should be overruled by the Governor and unable to help
you...."

"I'll take my chance with him.  What's it they're saying?--_the
Ballamoar will out_, miss."

Tears sprang to Fenella's eyes, but her heart beat high.

"Mr. Vondy," she said, "he has not been well lately, and perhaps he
doesn't always know what he is saying.  If you should ever come to
think that what he told you was not the truth .... the whole truth, I
mean...."

"Maybe so.  I've been thinking as much myself since five this
morning.  But that's all as one to me, miss.  Tell him _Tommy Vondy
will keep his word_."

The jailer was gone, and Fenella was sitting with her hands over her
eyes when she heard voices in the corridor and footsteps going
towards the porch.

"You're right there, your Excellency" (it was the Attorney-General
who was speaking).  "The authority of law in this island has received
a blow, and already the disorderly elements are stirring up strife."

"Who, for instance?"

"Qualtrough of the Keys and the man Baldromma."

"Farrell" (it was the Governor in a stern voice), "quash that
instantly.  If there's any rioting send for the soldiers from
Castletown to assist your police."

"I will, your Excellency."

"And listen!  Get rid of that blockhead of a jailer.  Appoint
somebody in his place and give him authority to employ his own
warders.  He'll have his prison full enough presently."

The closing of the outer door rang through the corridor, and at the
next moment the Governor was in the drawing-room.

"Fenella," he said, "do you happen to know if Stowell has a
photograph of young Gell, the Advocate?"

Before she had time to reflect, Fenella answered that he had.  It was
taken in America, and stood on the mantelpiece in the library at
Ballamoar.

"But why?"

"Because I want him to bring it with him when he comes on Wednesday
to issue the warrant."

"What warrant?"

"The warrant for the arrest of Gell, for breaking prison and aiding
in the escape of the girl Collister."

"But, father, they are friends--life-long friends."

"What of that?  Stowell is Deemster, and you heard the oath he took,
didn't you?  'Without fear or friendship, love or gain.'  His duty as
a Judge is to administer Justice, and as long as I am here I'll see
he does it."



III

During the remainder of that day and the whole of the following one
Fenella was a prey to the cruellest perplexity.  Would Victor Stowell
issue that warrant for the arrest of the innocent man, being himself
the guilty one?

How could he refuse?  It would be his duty to issue the warrant--what
excuse could he make for not doing so?  And then what a temptation to
let things go on as usual!  Although he had broken prison, and
therefore his oath as a Judge, how easily he might persuade himself
that it had only been to snatch that poor girl from a wicked Statute!

Yet if Victor issued that warrant for the arrest of Gell he would be
a lost man for ever after.  No matter how high he might rise he would
go down, down, down until his very soul would perish.

"It cannot be!  It must not be!  It shall not!"

She wanted to run to Ballamoar and say, "Don't do it.  If you have
done wrong confess and take the consequences."

Oh, what did she care about their quarrel now?  It was no longer
Bessie Collister's life, but Victor Stowell's soul that was in peril.

But no, she could not ask him to act under compulsion.  He must act
of his own free will.  In the valley of the shadow of sin the guilty
soul must walk alone.

"But is there nothing I can do for him?" she asked herself.

Yes, there was one thing--one thing only.  She could pray.  For long
hours on the night before Stowell was to come to Government House
Fenella knelt in her bed and prayed for him.

"O God help him!  God help him!  Help him to resist this great
temptation."

At length peace came to her.  Somewhere in the dead waste of the
night she seemed to receive an answer to her prayers.

"He'll do the right, whatever it may cost him," she thought, and as
the day was dawning she fell asleep.

But when she awoke in the morning she felt as if her heart would
break.  If Stowell confessed and took the consequences (as she had
prayed he might do) he would be lost to her for ever.  He would have
to give up his Judgeship, be banished from the island, and become an
outcast and a wanderer.

"Is that to be the end of everything between us?  After all this
waiting?"

Her eyes were full of tears when she looked at herself in the glass,
but they were shining like stars for all that.  An immense pity for
Stowell had taken possession of her.  An immense faith in him also.
He must be the most unhappy man alive, but he was her man now; and
nothing on earth should part them.

Going down to breakfast she met Miss Green on the stairs.  The old
lady was full of some breathless story of rioting in Douglas the
evening before.  How remote it all sounded!  She hardly heard what
was being said to her.

Coming upon the maid in the corridor she said,

"The Deemster is to call to-day, Catherine.  Tell him I wish to see
him before he sees the Governor."

In the breakfast-room her father was looking over a printer's proof
on a sheet of foolscap paper.  It was headed with the Manx
coat-of-arms and the words "ISLE OF MAN CONSTABULARY," and had an
empty space near the top for a block to be made from a photograph.

"But that is of no consequence now," thought Fenella, "no consequence
whatever."




CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

IN THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW

"Good heavens, what does it matter?  A lie is only dangerous when it
does some harm!"

Stowell awoke on the second day after the escape putting his
situation to himself so.  Where was the harm if Gell was suspected?
He had gone with the woman he loved.  He was happy.  What would Alick
care about the evil name he had left behind him?

"Then where's the harm?" he asked himself.

He would let things go on as usual--of course he would.  Only he must
make sure that the fugitives had got clear away.

Remembering that he had seen placards of the Atlantic sailings in the
railway-station, he walked over to the station from the glen.  It was
all right--a big Atlantic liner was timed to leave Queenstown at
twelve that day.  It was now half-past twelve.  Gell and Bessie would
be out on the open sea by this time--steaming past Kinsale where the
Manx boats fished for mackerel.

"Where's the harm?"

But just as he was leaving the station with a sense of security and
even triumph, a train from Douglas drew up at the platform.  The
guard shouted something to the station-master; and, looking back,
Stowell saw a crowd gathering about a first-class carriage.

Somebody was being assisted to alight.  It was the Speaker.  He was
utterly helpless.  Between two members of the House of Keys the
stricken man was half led, half carried to a dog-cart that was
waiting for him at the gate.

His mouth was agape, his legs were dragging behind him, and his large
hands were shaken by senile trembling.  He did not speak, but as he
went by he looked up, and Stowell felt that from his red eyes a mute
malediction was being thrown at him.

When the dog-cart had gone, with the Speaker stretched out in it,
stiff as a dead horse, and one of the Keys to see him home, the other
joined Stowell and walked down the road by his side.

"Then your Honour hasn't heard what has happened?"

"No.  What?"

There had been a sitting of the Keys that morning.  The debate had
been on some new scheme of land tenure--a thinly disguised form of
confiscation.  The Speaker had opposed it passionately, saying a man
had a right to keep what he had earned and hand it on to his
children.  Then Qualtrough (a firebrand who possessed nothing) had
taunted him with the unfortunate affair of yesterday.  Why did _he_
want to hand on his land, his son having run away with the woman he
had corrupted?

A terrible scene had followed.  The Speaker had had one of his
brain-storms.  His neck had swelled until it was nearly as broad as
his face.  "Sit down, Sir," he had shouted, but Qualtrough had
refused to do so.  At length, overcome by the clamour of his enemies
and the silence of his friends, the Speaker had risen to resign.
Since he could not maintain the authority of the chair he had no
choice but to get out of it.

It had been a pitiful spectacle.  None of them who were fathers had
been able to look at it with dry eyes.  The old man was trembling
like a leaf and his legs seemed to be giving way under him.

"They say the sins of the fathers are visited-upon the children, but
maybe it's as true the other way about.  I'm going blind and deaf.
The sands of my life are running out...."

He swayed forward and they thought he would have fallen on his face,
but the Secretary of the House caught him in his arms, and then two
of them were nominated to bring him home.

"Sorry to say it to your Honour, being his friend," said the member
of the Keys, as they parted at the turn of the road, "but that young
fellow has something to answer for."

That lie had done harm then!  Was this the mystery of sin--that it
must go on and on, from consequence to consequence, deep as the sea
and unsearchable as the night?

On returning to Ballamoar, Stowell found Janet in great agitation.
Mrs. Gell had sent across to ask if Robbie could run into Ramsey to
fetch Doctor Clucas.  The doctor had come and gone.  The Speaker had
had a stroke.  It was his second.  The third would almost certainly
prove fatal.

All that day Stowell was shaken by a chill terror.  If the Speaker
died would Alick Gell come back to claim his inheritance?  If so he
would hear it said on all sides that he had killed his father by the
disgrace he had brought on him.

What then?  Would he tell the whole truth under that terrible
temptation, and thus bring down Stowell himself to ruin and
extinction?

"But what nonsense I'm talking," thought Stowell.

Gell could never come back, because Bessie could never do so.  Then
who was to know that it was a lie that Gell had killed his father?

Suddenly came the thought, "_I_ am to know."

This fell on him like a thunderbolt.  How was he to marry Fenella
with a thought like that in his heart?  It would be with him night
and day.  He might even blurt it out in his sleep.  "Assassin!  It
was I who killed the old man by letting that lie go on."

Feeling feverish and unable to remain indoors, he went out to walk on
the gravel path in front of the house.  The fresh air revived him and
he took possession of himself again.

"If the Speaker dies it will be the act of God," he thought.

He would be in no way responsible.  Neither would Gell.  If rumour
charged the son with killing the father it would be a lie--a damned
lie, manufactured by Fate, the great liar.

It was not as if Gell were in any danger--the danger of arrest for
instance.  _That_ would be different.  But Gell was in no
danger--none whatever.

"Therefore bury the thing!  Bury it and go on as usual," he told
himself.

The evening was closing in.  It was beautiful and limpid.  With a
high step Stowell was walking to and fro on the path.  Visions were
rising before him of Gell and Bessie Collister on the big liner,
ploughing their way through the darkening ocean to that free
continent "where the clouds sailed higher"--Archibald Alexander and
his sister Elizabeth going out to the new world to begin a new life.

He had visions of Fenella too--how he would go up to Government House
to-morrow morning.  "Tell him to come back to me," she said to Janet,
and now he would go.  How happy he was going to be!

"Surely I've a right to some happiness after all I've gone through."

He gave himself up to the intoxication of living by anticipation
through those most blissful moments to a man and woman who love each
other--the first moments of reconciliation after a quarrel.

Night had fallen.  It was very dark.  The late birds were silent, and
only the soft young leaves of May were rustling in the darkness
overhead with that gentleness that is like the whispering of angels.
All at once a red light jogged up from the gate, making shadows among
the trees that bordered the drive.

"Good evenin', Dempster!  A letter for you, Sir."

It was Killip the postman.

"Thank you, Mr. Killip," said Stowell, taking the letter.  He could
not see it in the darkness, but at the touch of the large envelope a
heavy foreboding came over him.

"I suppose you've heard about that affair, your Honour?"

"What affair?"

"Tommy Vondy.  He's got himself kicked out of the Castle for letting
that girl escape.  The gorm!  He's my first cousin, and he's in his
seventy-seven, but he was always a toot, was Tommy!"

"Good-night, Mr. Killip."

"Good-night, your Honour!"

When Stowell returned to the porch he looked at his letter by the
light of the lamp on the landing.  It was from the Governor.  He went
into the Library and tore it open.



II


    "DEAR STOWELL,--Of course you have heard what has happened.  The
    escaped prisoner must be recaptured and dealt with according to
    law.  And not she only, but her accomplice also.  You know who
    that is--young Gell.  The evidence against him is overwhelming.
    We have traced him almost to the door of the Castle on Sunday
    evening, and find, too, that a trading steamer left Castletown
    late the same night.  There can hardly be a doubt that the
    fugitives sailed in her.  We must find where she has gone to and
    bring her passengers back.

    "Come here to-morrow morning to issue the necessary warrant and
    assist Farrell to the 'distinguishing marks' which may be needful
    for Gell's identification.  I know there is a certain risk in
    re-opening this wretched inquiry.  I had hoped to bury it once
    for all when I decided on what you thought the extreme step of
    sending the guilty woman to the gallows.  But law and order must
    be upheld, and the sooner we can silence the people, who are
    saying we are winking at the corruption of justice to spare the
    son of the Speaker and the friend of the Deemster, the better for
    everybody.

    "Be here at eleven.  We (the Attorney and the Chief Constable are
    coming) will be waiting for you.  Good Lord, haven't you been
    long enough away from this house anyway?  If there are strained
    relations between you and Fenella let them be faced squarely and
    straightened out at once--Yours, etc.,

    "JOHN S. STANLEY, "_Brig.-Gen., K.C.B._

    "P.S.--Fenella says you have a photograph of Gell which was taken
    in America some years ago.  It is probably the only one on the
    island, and therefore invaluable to Farrel at this moment.  Bring
    it with you--don't forget."


Stowell was struck with stupor.  Alick Gell _was_ in danger, then,
and the whole situation was different.

Raising his eyes after reading the Governor's letter he saw Gell's
photograph on the mantelpiece in front of him.  At that sight a flame
of passion took possession of him, and snatching up the picture he
flung it in the fire.

"No, by God!" he said aloud.  And if Farrell ever asked him for
"distinguishing marks" towards Gell's identification he would take
him by the throat and choke him.

But what about the warrant?  Any Justice of the peace might issue it,
but if the Governor asked him to do so the request would be equal to
a command.  Suppose he did, what would be the result?  Bessie would
be brought back and executed.  Worse than that, even worse in its
different way, Gell would be arrested and tried--perhaps by him, and
under his warrant!

"No, no, no!  It would be a crime--a base, cowardly, infamous,
abominable crime!"

The veins of his forehead swelled as he thought of the trial.  It
would be more terrible than the other one.  To sit in judgment on an
innocent man, being himself the guilty one--not Jeffries, or
Braxfield, or Brandon or Harebottle or any of the bewigged barbarians
whose names befouled the annals of jurisprudence had done anything so
awful.

"Never," he thought.  "Never in this world."

Yet what alternative had he?  After dinner (he had tried to eat to
keep up appearances before Janet) he drew to the fire and tried to
think things out.  He had sat long hours in pain, and the fire had
died down, when a kind of melancholy peace came to him and he thought
he saw what he had to do.

He had to get up early in the morning, reach Government House before
the others had arrived, see the Governor alone and say to him in
secret,

"I cannot issue this warrant for the arrest of Alick Gell for
breaking prison to procure that girl's release because _I_ did it."

What would happen then?  The Governor (he was a just man if a hard
one) would say,

"In that case, you cannot be a Judge in this island any longer."

But that would be all.  Out of consideration for his daughter, and
perhaps for the man who was to become his daughter's husband, the
Governor would go no farther.  Some show he might make of publishing
the police notice, but he would never send to a foreign country.

There would be no scandal.  The public would know nothing.  They had
heard that the new Deemster had been unwell, and would be told that
his health had broken down altogether, and he had had to resign his
office.  It would be a month's talk, and then--Time would cover up
the whole miserable story in the merciful vein in which it hides so
many of our misdoings.

And Fenella?  He would tell Fenella also.  It would be a shock to
her, but she would be on his side now.  She would see that he had
only tried to prevent a judicial murder, to secure the happiness of
two unhappy creatures who, but for him, would have been plunged in
misery.  They would marry and go away from the island, to Switzerland
perhaps, and live there for the rest of their lives.

"Yes, that's it, that's it," he told himself.

It was a cruel comforting--like the surgeon's knife, which, while
taking away a man's disease, takes some of his life-blood also.

He thought of his father, how proud the old Deemster had been of his
judicial position and how anxious that his son should succeed to
it--it was pitiful.  He thought of Fenella, what great things they
had planned to do when he became a Judge, and now all their hopes had
fallen to dust and ashes--it was agonising.

Was it necessary?  Inevitable?  To be cast aside on life's highway in
suffering and shame everlasting; to be like a wretched ship that lies
at the bottom of the sea, swaying to the ground-swell below, and
moaning like a lost soul to the moans of the other wrecks in the womb
of the ocean?

It was not as if he had injured anybody.  He had done harm to nobody,
and nothing.  Yet he must do what he had thought of.  There was no
help for it.

It was late.  The household was asleep.  The log fire he had been
crouching over had fallen to ashes on the hearth.  He was shivering
and he got up to go to bed.  Before leaving the library he sat at the
desk under his mother's picture and wrote--


"_Please call me at six.  I must take the first train to Douglas._"


He was laying this on the table on the landing, lighting his candle
and putting out the lamp, when he heard wheels on the carriage drive,
and then a loud ringing at the front door bell.

Who could have come at this time of night?  Candle in hand he went
down and opened the door.

It was Joshua Scarff.




CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

"HE DROVE OUT THE MAN"

"Sorry to trouble you at this hour, your Honour, but I had to come
and tell you what has happened."

"What is it, Joshua?"

"There has been a fearful outbreak of lawlessness in Douglas this
evening--breaking of shop-windows, looting of the houses of
well-to-do people, assaults and outrages of all kinds."

"What is the reason of it?"

"Mob reason, and you know what that is, your Honour.  They say
justice in the island is corrupt.  If you are rich you get whatever
you want.  If you are poor you get nothing.  A guilty man and a
guilty woman have been allowed to escape.  Why?  Because the man
belongs to a family of 'the big ones' and is a friend of the
Deemster."

"Who say that?"

"Old Qualtrough and Dan Baldromma."

"Baldromma?  If his step-daughter has escaped what has he to complain
of?"

"Nothing, but that's not the worst, Sir."

"What is?"

"The Governor has telegraphed for soldiers from across the water.
They are to come over by the first boat in the morning.  It's a
frightful blunder, Sir."

Beads of perspiration were rolling down from Joshua's bald crown.

"There'll be bloodshed, and Manxmen won't stand for that.  They've
been their own masters for a thousand years.  The Governor can't
treat them as if they were Indian coolies."

"What do you think ought to be done?"

"That's what I've come to say, Sir.  I had gone to bed but I couldn't
take rest, so I got Willie Dawson to drive me over.  The people may
be wrong about justice, but the only way to pacify them is to prove
it."

"How?"

"The guilty man in this case must give himself up."

"Give himself up?"

Joshua took off his coloured spectacles and wiped the damp off them.

"I thought your Honour might know where he was.  He can't be far
away, Sir."

"Well?"

"He ought to be told to deliver himself up to the Courts to save the
island from ruin.  And if he won't he ought to be denounced."

"Denounced?"

"It will be a terrible ordeal--I know that, Sir.  Your friend!  Your
life-long friend!  Pity!  Great pity!"

For a perceptible time Stowell did not speak.  Then, in a voice which
Joshua had never heard before, he said,

"Go home and go to bed, Joshua.  I'll see what can be done."

Joshua had gone, the door had closed behind him and his wheels were
dying away down the drive, but Stowell continued to stand in the
hall, candle in hand and stiff as a statue.  At length he returned to
the dining-room, put the candle on the table and sat before the empty
hearth.

It was all over!  The plan he had made for himself was impossible.
There could be no resigning in secret and stealing away from the
island.

He had done harm to something.  He had done harm to Justice.  If
Justice fell down what stood up?  The man who took the law into his
own hands was a criminal, and as a criminal he ought to be punished.

Punished?  The shock was terrible.  Was he then to give himself up?
To confess publicly?

He saw himself pleading guilty to having broken prison.  He heard the
whole wretched tale of his relation to the unhappy prisoner, and of
his trying and condemning her, coming out in open Court.  He heard
the howls of execration from the people who had hitherto loved and
cheered him.

"Is there no other way?" he asked himself.

He saw himself in prison, in prison clothes, in the prison cell, on
the prison bed.  Above all he saw another Deemster going upstairs to
sit on the bench while he lay in the vaults below.

He thought of his father and his family--four hundred years of the
Ballamoars and not a stain on the name of one of them until now.  He
thought of Fenella--the cruel shame he would bring on her.  Granted
he was guilty, and deserved punishment, had he any right to punish
Fenella also?

The clock on the landing struck one.  An owl shrieked in the
plantation.  He got up and strode about the room.  The impulses of
the natural man began to fight for safety.

"Good God, what am I thinking about?" he asked himself.

What had he done to deserve all this?  He had broken a wicked law
which had no right to exist, but did that require that he should
denounce himself, go to prison, degrade his father's name, break
Fenella's heart and put himself up on a gibbet for every passer-by to
jeer at and spit upon?

"What madness!  What rank madness!"

He thought of the thousands of "great" men in all ages of the world
who had broken bad laws, and yet lived in honour and died in glory.
Why should he suffer for doing the same thing?  Why he and not the
others?  He laughed in scorn of his own weakness, but at the next
moment a mocking voice within him seemed to say,

"Go on!  Go on!  Issue that warrant!  Let the unhappy girl who
trusted you be brought back and executed.  Let the friend who loved
you be arrested and tried and sent to jail for the crime you have
committed.  Go through all that duplicity again.  Let the whole
community be submerged in anarchy as the consequence of your sin.
But remember, when you come out of it all, you will be a devil, and
your soul will be damned."

That terrified him and he sat down by the empty hearth once more.
After a while he found his hands wet under his face.  He heard a
soft, caressing voice pleading with him,

"Victor, my darling heart!  Resist this great temptation and peace
will come to you.  Do the right, and no matter how low you may fall
in the eyes of men, you will look upon the face of God."

It was Fenella's voice--he was sure of that.  Across the mountain and
through the darkness of the night her pure soul was speaking to him.

The candle had burnt to the socket by this time, but a new light came
to him.  For more than a year he had been a slave, dragging a chain
of sin behind him.  At every step in his wrong-doing his chain had
lengthened.  He must break it and be free.

"Yes, I will go up to Government House in the morning," he thought,
"confess everything and take my punishment."

It was only right, only just.  And when the cruel thought came that
the next time he entered the court-house it would be to stand in the
dock, with the dread certainty of his doom, he told himself that that
would be right too--the Judge also must be judged.



II

Groping his way upstairs in the darkness he entered his bedroom and
locked the door behind him.  He found a fire burning, the sofa drawn
up in front of it, a lamp burning on the bureau that stood at one
side, and at the other the high-backed arm-chair in which his father
used to undress for bed.  He was surprised to see that the fire had
been newly made up, but hearing footsteps in the adjoining bedroom he
understood.

"Poor Janet!" he thought.

His thoughts were thundering through his brain like waves in a deep
cavern.  He was convinced that he would never survive the ordeal that
was before him.  When men lived through long imprisonments it was
because they had hope that the beautiful days would come again.  He
had no such hope, so, sitting at his bureau, he began to sort and
arrange his papers like one who was going away on a long journey.

After that he wrote a letter to the Attorney-General:


    "DEAR MASTER,--When this letter comes to your hand you will know
    the occasion for it.  I am aware that it cannot have the
    authority of a will, but (in the absence of a more regular
    document) I trust the Clerk of the Rolls may find a way to act
    upon it as an expression of my last wishes.

    "I desire that Janet Curphey should be suitably provided for as
    long as she lives.  She has been a mother to me all my life, the
    only mother I have ever known.

    "I desire that Mrs. Collister of Baldromma may have such a
    provision made for her as will liberate her from the tyrannies of
    her husband.

    "I desire that Thomas Vondy, formerly the jailer at Castle
    Rushen, should be taken care of in any way you may consider best.

    "Finally, if I do not live to return home, I desire that
    everything else of which I die possessed should be offered to
    Fenella Stanley as a mark of my deep love and devotion.

    "I think that is all."


Having signed, sealed and inscribed his letter he put it in his
breast pocket.  Then taking a drawer out of the bureau he carried it
to the sofa, intending to destroy the contents of it.

The first thing that came to his hand was the letter which Alick Gell
had given him at Derby Haven.  It was marked "To be opened after we
have gone," and turned out to be a memorandum to his father's
executors, telling them he was leaving the island with no intention
of returning to it, and asking (as his only request) that in the
event of an inheritance becoming due to him, seven hundred pounds,
which had been advanced to him at various times, should be repaid to
Deemster Victor Stowell--"the best friend man ever had."

Feeling a certain twinge, Stowell hesitated for a moment, with the
memorandum shaking in his hand, and then threw it into the fire.

There were other papers of the same kind (I O U's and the like) which
shared the same fate, and then up from the bottom of the drawer, came
a leather-bound book.  It was "Isobel's Diary."  He had decided to
destroy that also.  As the sanctuary of his father's soul he could
not allow it to be looked into by other eyes.

But, never having looked at it himself since the night of his
father's death, he could not resist the temptation to glance through
it once more before committing it to the flames.  It fell open at the
page which said,


    "So it's all well at last, Isobel.  Your son can do without me
    now.  He needs his father no longer.  With that brave woman by
    his side he will go up and up.  They will marry and carry on the
    traditions of the Ballamoars.  It is the dearest wish of my heart
    that they should do so."


His throat throbbed.  Ah, those hopes, all wrecked and dead!  Going
down on one knee before the fire, and holding the book on the other,
he tore out page by page and burnt it, feeling as if he were burning
his right hand also.  He was afraid of tears and had rarely given way
to them, but he was weeping like a heart-broken woman before the last
page had been consumed.

Then, taking Fenella's letters from his pocket-book, he prepared to
burn them too.  They brought a faint perfume, a feeling of warmth, a
sense of her physical presence.  Most of them were notes of no
consequence--appointments to ride, drive, fish, skate, all touched by
her gay raillery ("eight o'clock in the morning--is that too early
for you, Victor, dear?")--he had preserved every scrap in her
hand-writing.  But one was the letter she wrote to him when he was in
London, and with palpitating tenderness he held it under the lamp to
read it again:


    "Victor, when I think of the life that is so surely before you,
    and that I shall walk through it by your side, perfectly united
    with you, sharing the same hopes and aims and desires, enjoying
    the same sunshine and weathering the same storms, I have a vision
    of happiness that makes me cry with joy."


His heart swelled like a troubled sea, and to conquer his emotion he
thrust the letter hurriedly into the flames.  But before it was more
than scorched he snatched it back and was preparing to return it to
his pocket when he bethought himself how soon it must pass into other
hands with everything he carried about him.  And then, turning his
head away, and feeling as if he were burning his heart also, he put
it into the fire.

After that he dropped back on to the sofa with feelings about Fenella
that found no relief in tears.  One by one the joyous hours of their
love returned to his memory.  They seemed to ring in his ears with
the melancholy sound of far-off bells.  It was a cruel pleasure.

All at once came a moment of fierce rebellion.  When he had told
himself downstairs that in making the great renunciation of his
public office he must renounce Fenella also he had not realised what
it meant.  It meant that never again, for as long as he lived
(Fenella being impossible to him), would Woman take any part in his
existence.

A cold fear took possession of him at that thought.  He was a
man--was he for the rest of his life, if he survived his
imprisonment, to be cut off from his kind, separated, alone?

Better be dead than live such a life!

Then another and still more startling thought came to him--why not?
A letter to the Governor, exonerating Gell, and then it would all be
over.  No warrant!  No trial!  Why not?

Outside the night was dark.  Not a breath of wind was stirring.  In
the silence of earth and sky he could hear the "swish, swish" of the
sea on the shingle at the top of the shore.  It must be high water.

"Why not?  Why not?"

His head was dizzy.  He was thinking of a boat that lay among the
lush grass on the sandy bank above the beach.  Alick and he had often
gone fishing in her.  She was heavy, but he was strong--he could push
her into the water.

He saw himself pulling out to sea, far out, beyond the Point, to
where the Gulf Stream in its long race round half the world swept by
the island to the coast of Iceland.  And then, as the dawn broke in
the eastern heavens, he saw himself scuttling the boat and going down
with her.

No one would know.  The boat would lie at the bottom of the sea until
she fell to pieces, and he--he would go north on the way of the great
waters until he came to the feet of the frozen Jokulls, where nobody
would be able to say who he was or where he came from.

No scandal!  No outcry!  No vulgar sensation!  Just a pang to
Fenella, and then the darkness of death over all.

Thinking the lamp was burning low he was reaching out his hand to
turn up the wick when a sense came of somebody being in the room with
him.  He looked round.  All was silent.

"Is anybody there?" he asked aloud.

There was no answer.  The dread of miscarrying for ever if he died by
his own act began to struggle on the battle field of his soul with
the fear of being cut off from the living who live in God's peace.
He shivered and was trying to rise when again he had the sense of
somebody else in the bedroom.

"Who is it?"

At the next moment, raising his eyes, he thought he saw his father in
the arm-chair where he had seen him so often.  The august face was
the same as when he saw it last in that room, except that the
melancholy eyes were now open.

"I'm ill," he thought, and he closed his eyes and put his hand over
them.

But when he opened his eyes again his father was still there, looking
at him with tenderness and compassion.  His brain reeled and he fell
face down on the cushions of the sofa.

Then he heard his father speaking to him, gently, affectionately, but
firmly, just as he used to do when he was alive.

"My son!  My dear son!  I know what you are thinking of doing, and I
warn you not to do it.  No man can run away from the consequences of
his sins.  If he flies from them in this life he must meet them in
the life hereafter, and then it will be a hundred-fold more terrible
to be swept from the face of the living God."

"Father!"

Stowell tried to cry aloud but could not.  His father's voice ceased
and at the next moment a vision flashed before him.  A line of
miserable-looking men were standing before an awful tribunal.  He
knew who they were--the unjust judges of the world who had corrupted
justice.  All the grandeur in which they had clothed themselves on
earth was gone, and they were there in the nakedness of their shame
crying,

"Mercy!  Mercy!  Mercy!"

Stowell felt as if he were falling off the world into a void of
unfathomable night.  Then blindness fell upon the eyes of his mind
and he knew no more.




CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

THE DAWN OF MORNING

"Victor!  Victor!"

It was Janet's voice outside the door.

"Eh?"

"Six o'clock.  Didn't you want to catch the first train in town,
dear?"

"Oh yes!  All right.  I'll be down presently."

Stowell found it difficult to recover consciousness.  He was lying on
the sofa, and he looked around.  There was the armchair--it was
empty.  But the lamp on the bureau was still burning.  He must have
slept, for he was feeling refreshed and even strong.

Leaping to his feet he blew out the lamp and pulled back the window
curtains.  It was a beautiful morning, tranquil as the sky and
noiseless as the dew.  Over the tops of the tall trees the bald crown
of old Snaefell was bathed in sunshine.

He was like another man.  Life had no terrors for him now.  It was
just as if a curse had fallen from him in the night.  No more
visions!  No more spectres!  He knew what he had to do and he would
do it.  He had a sense of immense emancipation.  He felt like a slave
who had broken the chain which he had dragged after him for years.
He was a free man once more.

Throwing off coat and waistcoat he washed--lashing the cold water
over face and head and neck as if he were diving into one of the dubs
in the glen--and then went downstairs with a strong step.

Breakfast was not quite ready, so he stepped out over the piazza, to
the farm-yard.  The cheerful place was full of its morning
activities.  Cows were mooing their way to the grass of the fields
before barking dogs, and milkmaids were carrying their frothing pails
across to the dairy.

He saluted everybody he came upon.  "Good-morning, Betty!"

"Good-morning, Mary!"  The girls smiled and looked proud, but they
said afterwards that the young master's voice sounded as if he were
saying good-bye to them.

Unconsciously he was going about like one who was taking a last look
round before setting out on a long journey.  He went into the stable,
and Molly, his young chestnut mare, turned her head and neighed at
him.  He went into the empty cow-house, and four young calves in
boxes licked, with their long moist tongues, the hand he held down to
them.

On the way back to the house he met Robbie Creer, who was full of
another story of Mrs. Collister of Baldromma.  She had taken the
ground with the ebb tide, poor woman.  They had put her into the
asylum.  The doctors said her case was incurable.  She was always
saying the old Dempster had come from the dead to take her Bessie out
of prison.

"But what a blessed end," said Stowell.  "She'll think her daughter
is in heaven, so she'll always be happy."

"It's like she will, Sir," said Robbie, looking puzzled, and going
indoors for his morning bowl of porridge he said to his wife,

"A mortal quare thing to say, though, and the woman in the madhouse."

Stowell ate with an appetite (Janet plying him with coffee and eggs
and toasted muffins), and then young Robbie brought round the
dog-cart.  Janet helped him on with his light loose overcoat and went
to the door with him.

He paused there, pulling on his driving-gloves and thinking what
cruel pain the dear soul would suffer when she heard that night what
he had done during the day.  At last he threw his arms about her and
kissed her, saying with a gulp,

"Good-bye, mother!  God bless you!"

And then he sprang up into the cart, snatched at the reins, pulled
them taut, and (after the young mare had leapt on her forelegs)
darted away.

As he approached the turn of the drive where the house was hidden by
the trees he turned and looked back at it--what a home to lose!

Janet, who was still at the porch, smoothing her silvery hair,
thought he had looked back at her, and she waved her hand to him.
Nobody had said a word to her, yet she knew he had been suffering as
a result of some terrible wrong-doing.  She thought she knew what it
was, too, and she had wept bitter tears over it.  But he had not a
fault in her eyes now.

Her boy!  Hers all the way up since he was a child and used to run
about the lawn in pinafores.  Heaven bless him!  He was the best
thing God had ever made.



II

The train to town was full to overflowing.  The northside people,
having heard of yesterday's doings, were going up to see for
themselves "what them toots in Douglas" were doing.

In spite of the guard's deferential protests Stowell stepped into an
open third-class carriage.  It had been humming like a beehive until
then, but except for a general salutation it became silent when he
entered.

A draper's assistant who sat opposite handed him an English
newspaper, two days old, with an article on the escape from Castle
Rushen.  The incident was a disgrace to the insular administration,
and if the Governor could not offer a satisfactory explanation the
sooner the island's Home Rule came to an end the better for Justice.

One or two of the passengers tried to draw Stowell into conversation
about the article, but he said little or nothing.  Then some
black-coated persons (well-to-do farmers and the like) gave the talk
another turn.

"Still and for all," said one, "that doesn't justify such doings as
there are in Douglas!"  "Chut!" said another.  "It isn't justice the
agitators are wanting, it's robbery."  "Truth enough," said a third,
"it's the land they're after, and if the Governor isn't doing
something soon, there'll be not an acre left at the one of us."
"Give them a pig of their own sow," said a fat farmer.  "Men like
Qualtrough and Baldromma ought to be taken to say and dropped
overboard."

Again the passengers tried to draw Stowell into conversation, and
when they found they could not get him to speak to them they spoke at
him.

"Where's the big men of the island that they're not telling the
people they're bringing it to wreck and ruin?"

"When a man is claver--claver uncommon--and mighty with the tongue,
he ought to be showing the ignorant gommerals the way they're going."

"Yes," said a little man (he was a local preacher), "when a man has
the gift it's his duty to the Lord to use it."

"He must be a right man though," said the fat farmer, "straight as a
mast himself, same as some we've had at Ballamoar in the good ould
days gone by."

There was silence for a moment after this, and then an old man by the
opposite window was heard to whisper,

"Lave him alone, men; he knows what hour the clock is striking."

When the train reached Douglas, Stowell went off with a heavy face.
It was remarked that he had not shaken hands--his father used to
shake hands with everybody.

"He's his father's son for all," said the old man by the window.

Stowell took the cable-car at the bottom of the Prospect Hill which
is at the foot of the town.  Douglas was still in a state of
agitation and the driver had as much as he could do to forge his way,
without accidents, through the tumultuous throngs in the thoroughfare.

A cordon of red-coated soldiers from Castletown surrounded Government
office, and a noisy crowd (including women with children) were
jeering at them from the middle of the street, and shouting up at the
windows, under the impression that the Governor was within.

The shops bore signs of yesterday's rioting---many having their
shutters up, while the windows of others were barricaded with new
boarding.

Stowell got out of the car at the terminus and made the rest of his
journey afoot.  At the top of the hill, where the road turns towards
the Governor's house, he came upon a mass meeting.  From a horseless
lorry, decorated with banners, a burly old ruffian with shaggy grey
hair (Qualtrough, M.H.K.) was speaking in a voice of thunder, while,
on the cross-seat by his side, Dan Baldromma was sitting with the air
of a martyr.

"There's a man on this platform who has gone to prison for his
principles.  That's what Justice in the Isle of Man is.  And that's
what they would like to be doing with the lot of ye, the big ones of
the island.  But, gentlemen and ladies, their rotten ould ship is
floating on the pumps and she'll soon be sinking."

When Stowell reached the Governor's gate he paused, being out of
breath and not so strong as he had imagined.  From that point he
could see a broad stretch of the coast, as well as the shadowy
outlines of the English hills on the other side of the channel.  A
steamer was sailing into the bay.  Perhaps she was bringing the
English cavalry the Governor had sent for.

Life is sweet when death is at the door.  At that last moment,
although he had thought his mind was made up, Stowell found that his
heart was failing him.  Must he go on?  Deliberately destroy himself?
No outside power compelling him?  The world was wide--why not leave
all this wreck and ruin behind him and in some other country begin
life anew?

The moment of weakness passed and he went on.  Half way up the drive,
where the trees broke clear and the long white façade of Government
House became visible, he dropped his head.  He was thinking of the
last time he had been there and remembering again the stinging words
with which Fenella had driven him away.  But there was strength in
the thought that he was about to break the chain which he had dragged
after him so long, and save his people at the same time.

When the maid opened the door, he asked for the Governor.

"Yes, your Honour," said the maid, "but Miss Fenella wishes to see
you first, Sir."

His heart was beating hard when he stepped into the house.




CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

"GOD GAVE HIM DOMINION"

Three times during breakfast that morning Fenella had seen somebody
coming up the drive.  The first to come was the Major from
Castletown, riding at a fast trot.  On being shown into the
breakfast-room, with spurs clanking, he told the Governor that a mob
had gathered about Government Office and were very threatening.

"Tell the Mayor to read the Riot Act, and then do what is necessary
for the protection of life and property," said the Governor.

The second to come was the Chief Constable, driving rapidly in a
hackney carriage.  On entering the room with his heavy step, he said
the steamer from England was in sight and the soldiers would be
landed at the pier within half an hour.

"If the thoroughfares are still thronged with riotous mobs at that
time," said the Governor, "tell the cavalry to ride through them."

The last to come up the drive was a solitary man afoot, walking
slowly and pausing at intervals as if his strength had failed him.

Fenella knew who it was, and rising hastily from the table she went
into the drawing-room.

When Stowell was brought in to her she was shocked at the change in
his appearance.  He looked ten years older.  His dark hair had become
white about the temples and his eyes were full of a strange light.

"How he must have suffered," she thought, and an almost overpowering
desire took possession of her to put her arms about him and comfort
him.

He looked at her and the same thought and the same impulse came to
him.  But they were afraid of each other, and with the surging ocean
of their love between them they stood apart, but trembling.  At
length, trying not to look into each other's faces, they began to
speak.

"Fenella!"

"Victor!"

"You know why I have been sent for?"

"Yes, and that is why I want to speak to you before you see my
father.  There are things you ought to know."

"Yes?"

"Mr. Vondy, the jailer from Castle Rushen, was here two days ago, to
be examined by the Governor, the Attorney-General and the Chief
Constable."

"Did he say anything?"

"Not to them."

"To you, perhaps?"

"Yes.  I brought him in here.  He told me what occurred after I left
the Castle."

"Then you know?"

She dropped her head and answered "Yes."

"I had to do it, Fenella--I thought I had to."

A moment passed.

"He asked me to tell you that he would keep his word to you, whatever
happened."

"Did he say that?"

"Yes."

A spasm in Stowell's throat seemed to be stifling him.

"I did wrong, Fenella, terribly wrong, but there is one thing I will
ask of you."

"What is it, Victor?"

"Not to judge me until you know what I've come to do to-day."

Fenella, deeply affected, thought she caught a glimpse of his meaning.

"Do you intend to resign, Victor?"

"Yes, but that is not all."

"What is, Victor?" She was thinking of his exile, his possible
banishment.

"Perhaps I am speaking to you for the last time, Fenella.  That's why
I am glad you have given me this opportunity of seeing you."

She trembled, thinking he meant suicide, and said in a choking voice,

"You don't mean that you intend to take your .... No, no, that is
impossible.  Think of your father."

Stowell did not speak for a moment.  Then he said,

"I saw him last night, Fenella."

"Who?"

"My father.  I was thinking of that as a way out of all this
miserable wrong-doing, when he came to warn me."

"How he must have suffered," thought Fenella.

"But perhaps you think it was only a delusion?"

"Indeed no!  If the spirits of our dear ones may not come back to
speak to us in our times of temptation...."

"But my father was not the only one who spoke to me last night,
Fenella."

"Who else did, Victor?"

"You.  I heard you as plainly as I hear you now."

Fenella's bosom was heaving.  "When was that?" she asked.

"In the middle of the night.  But perhaps you were in bed and asleep
at that time."

"No .... no, I did not sleep until after daybreak.  In the middle of
the night I was" .... (she was breathing audibly) "I was praying."

He looked up at her with his heavy eyes.

"Were you praying for me, Fenella?"

She cast down her eyes and answered "Yes."

Another moment passed, and then in a husky voice he said,

"Fenella, what did you pray for for me?"

"That you might have strength to do what was right, whatever it might
cost you."

He reached forward and grasped her hands.

"Did you know what that meant, Fenella--whatever it might cost me?"

"Yes," she said, raising her eyes, "and at length an answer came to
me."

"What answer?"

"That if you did, and made atonement, however low you might fall in
the eyes of men you would look upon the face of God."

Stowell gasped, dropped her hands and for a while was speechless.
Then he said,

"And do you think I will?"

"I am sure you will, Victor.  I had a sign from God."

"Do you, after all, believe in God, Fenella?"

"Indeed yes.  And you--don't you??"

"My father did.  He used to kneel by his bed like a little child
every night and every morning."

She saw that he did not speak for himself, and a great wave of love
and compassion for the sin-laden man stormed her heart.

"Victor," she said, tears springing to her eyes, "you must try to
forgive me.  I've not been what I ought to have been to you--I see
that now.  Whatever you have done I should have clung to you, not
driven you away from me, and let you go on from sin to sin, doubting
God's mercy and forgiveness.  Let me do so now.  We belong to each
other, Victor.  There can never be anybody else for either of us as
long as we live.  Let us go together."

She had seized his hands.  The hands of both were trembling.

"Would to God you could, Fenella.  But it is too late for that now.
I have gone too far for you to follow me.  Where I go now I must go
alone."

"Don't say that."

"Wait until I have seen your father."

At that moment the maid came into the room to tell the Deemster that
the Governor, having heard that he was in the house, wished to see
him immediately.

Stowell was turning to go, when Fenella put a trembling hand on his
shoulder and said in a whisper,

"Victor, whatever happens with my father, promise me that you will
never do that."

"But if the Governor...."

"Never mind about the Governor now, promise me."

There was a moment of silence and then he said, "I promise," and with
head down passed out of the room.

Being alone, Fenella tried in vain to compose herself.  The fear that
Stowell might kill himself (as a result of the public exposure and
humiliation which the Governor would impose upon him) threw her into
violent agitation.

Unable to support the strain of her anxiety she could not resist the
temptation to listen at the door of her father's room.  She heard the
two voices within--Stowell's in tones of pitiful supplication, her
father's in accents of fierce expostulation.  At length she heard her
own name mentioned and then she could contain herself no longer.

Opening the door noiselessly she entered the room.  The two men were
face to face, looking at each other with flaming eyes.



II

"Come in, Stowell.  I'm glad you're early.  I wanted a word with you
before the others arrived.  Sit down."

The Governor too was violently agitated.  He was striding about the
room.  His grey hair, usually brushed down with military precision,
was loose and disordered, as if he had been running his hands through
it, and his pipe, still alight and as if forgotten, was smoking on
the arm of his chair.

"You came by train?"

"Yes."

"Then you saw the soldiers.  I had to do it.  I couldn't allow this
raggabash to take possession of the island.  There may be casualties,
but the shortest way is the most merciful--that's my experience.  Sit
down.  Why don't you sit down?"

But the Governor went on walking and Stowell continued to stand.

"They say this rioting is the sequel to the escape from Castle
Rushen.  Only an excuse, of course, but that makes no difference.  If
we are to justify our administration of Justice in the eyes of the
authorities across the water we must re-capture those runaways.  The
man--the guilty man in particular--must be locked up in prison.  The
Attorney and the Colonel will be here presently.  You'll be able to
help them to the personal description they want--nobody better--and
then issue the warrant."

Stowell, who had been clutching the back of a chair behind which he
was standing with a fixed stare, said in a quivering voice,

"I'm sorry, your Excellency.  I cannot do that."

"Eh?  Cannot do what?"

"I cannot issue the warrant for the arrest of Alick Gell for breaking
prison because...."

"Well?"

Stowell swallowed something in his throat and continued .... "because
_I_ did it."

The Governor drew up sharply and said,

"What's the matter with you?  Are you ill?"

Stowell, who had recovered himself, answered,

"No, I am not ill, your Excellency."

"Then you must be mad--stark mad.  It's impossible.  You can never
have done such a thing."

"I am not mad either, Sir.  What I tell you is the truth--it is God's
truth, Sir."

And then, excusing nothing, extenuating nothing, Stowell told the
Governor what he had done, and how he had done it.

"I used my official position to effect the escape of the prisoner,
and I arranged for her flight, with her companion, to a foreign
country."

The Governor listened without drawing breath.

"But why .... why did you .... was it because I refused to remit...."

"No, I did it because I came to see that the law which permitted you
to order the execution of that girl was a crime, and that a higher
law called upon me to undo it."

"A crime?  Good Lord, what if it was?  What had you to do with that?"

"I had tried and condemned her.  And besides, I had my personal
reasons for wishing the prisoner to escape punishment."

"But damn it all, man, when you were doing all this for the girl,
didn't you see what you were doing for yourself?"

"Not then.  But now I see that in preventing the law from committing
a crime I committed a crime against the law, and am no longer fit to
be a Judge.  That's why I'm here now, Sir--not to issue that warrant,
but to resign my judgeship."

"Resign your judgeship?"

"Yes, but that's not all--to ask you to order my arrest and commit me
to prison."

The Governor, who had been half stupefied, took possession of himself
at last.

"Commit you to prison?  Good heavens, what are you saying?  A
Deemster in prison!  Whoever heard of such a thing!"

"I am guilty of a crime against Justice...." began Stowell, but the
Governor bore him down.

"Tush!  I don't care for the moment whether you are or are not.
Neither do I care whether the law which condemned the prisoner to
death, was or was not a crime.  What I have to deal with is the
present situation.  You say you want me to order your arrest--is that
it?"

"Yes, you said yourself the guilty man ought to be in prison."

"But heavens alive, man, can't you see the disgrace?  Gell is a
private person, while you are a Judge, the Judge who tried and
condemned the prisoner.  What is to happen to Justice in the island
if a Judge is condemned and imprisoned?"

Stowell tried to speak, but again the Governor bore him down.

"Oh, I know what you'll say--you'll talk about your conscience.  But
what is your conscience to me against the honour of the public
service and the welfare of the whole community?"

"The honour of the public service cannot rest on a lie, Sir," said
Stowell.  "It would be a living lie if I continued to be a Judge, and
the only way to save the island is to tell it the truth, no matter
what...."

"Don't talk damned nonsense."

Stowell drew himself up.

"Do you wish me, then, to issue that warrant against Alick Gell now
that you know that I am myself the guilty man?"

The Governor flinched for a moment, then smote the top of his desk
and said,

"I know nothing of the kind, Sir, and don't want to know.  I believe
you're mad--made mad by the ordeal you have lately gone through.
Nothing will make me believe the contrary."

There was silence after that for several minutes.  Then the Governor,
who had thrown himself in his chair, said in a softer tone,

"Stowell, listen to me.  I partly understand you.  But even if you
did this unbelievable thing, and are satisfied you did it from a good
motive, why can't you hold your tongue about it?"

"I have thought of that, Sir," said Stowell, with a tremor in his
voice.  "I have fought it all out with myself.  Believe me I would
have given all I have in the world not to have had to come here on
this errand.  But the life of a Judge would be impossible to me with
a lie like that for its foundation.  My work cannot be a mockery,
Sir.  I cannot allow another to suffer for what I have done."

The Governor leapt up from his seat.

"You talk about others suffering for what you have done--have you
forgotten how many others must suffer if I allow you to do what you
want to do now?  Think of your island--your native island--do you
want to cover it with dishonour?  Think of your profession--do you
want to load it with disgrace?  Think of your father, who loved you
as no father ever loved a son.  We put up his portrait in the
court-house the other day--do you want to pull it down?  And then
think of me--I suppose I ran some risk when I recommended you for
your position...."

Stowell was trying to speak, but again the Governor put up his hand..

"Oh, you needn't thank me.  Perhaps I wasn't acting altogether
unselfishly.  I may have been wanting somebody to stand by me now
that I'm growing old, somebody like your father--able to fight these
rascals who are trying to ruin everything.  And when you came along,
you whom I had known since you were a boy, the son of my old friend,
who was to be my son some day...."

The Governor, startled by the emotion that was coming over him, broke
away and crossed the room, saying,

"But damn it all, why need I talk of myself?  There's Fenella--have
you forgotten Fenella?"

It was at this moment that Fenella entered the room.  Neither of the
men saw her.  She stood noiselessly at the door.

"If I do what you want, order your arrest, what's the first question
the Court will ask you--why did you help the prisoner to escape?
Then the whole wretched story of your relations with the girl
Collister will come out.  And what will be the result?  Fenella's
name will become a byword.  It will be the common talk of every slut
in the island that she came second after your woman .... your offal."

Stowell flamed up with anger for a moment, and then choked with
tears.  After a short silence he said,

"I can never be sufficiently grateful to you, Sir, for what you've
done for me.  As for Fenella, I can hardly trust myself to speak.
The thought of her suffering is the bitterest part of my own.  I
would live out the rest of my life on my knees if I could undo the
wrong I have done her.  But I cannot bring her down with me.  I
cannot take up again my life as a Judge after it has been so
hideously disfigured and ask her to share it.  Let me go to
prison...."

Sobbing in his throat Stowell could go no further.  Fenella, sobbing
in her heart, crept noiselessly out of the room.

The Governor, in spite of himself, was visibly affected.

"Look here, my boy," he said.  "I'll tell you what I'll do.  It's
going far, perhaps too far for the safety of the public service, but
to prevent worse things happening I'll take the risk.  I'll stop that
warrant and hush up this miserable scandal on one condition--that you
say nothing, take leave of absence on grounds of ill-health, go
abroad and never come back again."

Stowell shook his head.

"Why not?  Good gracious, why not?  The guilty ones have gone.  Your
secret is safe.  Except ourselves, nobody knows it.  Why shouldn't
you?"

"I dare not," said Stowell.

"Dare not?"

"I have committed a crime.  If I do not pay for it in this life I
must do so hereafter.  Therefore I ask for my punishment now."

The Governor got the better of his emotion.

"So you wish to resign your office and ask me to order your arrest?
Well, I won't do it.  I am the only authority to whom you can resign
and I decline to accept your resignation--I refuse to transmit it to
the Home Authorities.  What you wish to do would undermine the
stability of law and the authority of Government.  It would humiliate
me and destroy my daughter's happiness.  Therefore I not only refuse
to receive your resignation.  I forbid it."

Stowell hesitated for a moment and then said,

"In that case, your Excellency, you will force me to denounce myself."

"Denounce....?  You mean in open Court?"

"Yes, it will be my duty, and I shall be compelled to do it."

The Governor's wrath became rage.  With a ring of sarcasm in his
voice he said,

"Very well!  Very well!  I cannot prevent you.  Denounce yourself in
open Court if you are so unwise, so insane.  But understand--if you
are compelled to do your duty, _I_ shall be compelled to do mine
also.  After you have made your public confession and the Courts have
dealt with you, I shall issue the warrant just the same.  You say the
fugitives have gone to a foreign country, but no foreign country will
refuse to give up a condemned murderess.  The woman shall be brought
back and executed according to the sentence you pronounced upon her.
More than that, your friend, your confederate, shall be brought back
also, and dealt with according to his crime.  Therefore your public
confession will be of no avail.  It will be an empty farce, ruining
three lives that might otherwise have been saved."

Stowell trembled, his lips became white.

"I beg you not to do that, Sir."

"I will!  I take God to witness that I will.  Now choose for yourself
which it is to be--your course or mine?"

Stowell breathed hard for a moment and then smiled--but such a smile!

"Your Excellency," he said, "for your own sake I beg of you not to do
it."

"My sake?" said the Governor, drawing up sharply--he had been
striding about the room again.

"Yes, yours," said Stowell.  "One of those two was my victim, the
other was merely the subject of my will.  I alone am guilty, and if I
cannot meet my punishment without bringing such consequences on the
innocent I must meet something else."

"What else?"

"Death.  Then, in the eyes of heaven, the crime against the law will
be _your_ crime and I shall not live to witness it."

There was a breathless silence.  The Governor was dumb-founded.
Stowell stepped towards the door and said in a low voice,

"God forgive you, Sir.  You will never see me again."

At that moment the maid entered the room to announce the
Attorney-General and the Chief Constable, who came in immediately
behind her.

"Ah, Victor, how are you?" said the Attorney.  "Your Excellency, we
have brought the Warrant."

"And here," said the Chief Constable, with an obsequious bow to
Stowell, "is the Deemster ready to issue it."

Nobody spoke, and the Chief Constable, taking a paper out of a long
envelope, proceeded to read it:

"_This is to command you to whom this Warrant is addressed forthwith
to apprehend Alexander Gell...._"

"That will do.  Give it to me," said the Governor.

When the Warrant had been given to him he tore it up and threw it
into the fire.  The two men were aghast.

"Your Excellency, what .... what...."

"This damnable thing must go no further.  Let me hear no more about
it."

After saying this the Governor's strength seemed to leave him.  He
dropped into a chair before the fire and gazed at the blazing paper.

Stowell's trembling hand was on the handle of the door.

"I thank you for what you've done, Sir," he said, "and wish to God
the matter could end there.  But it cannot .... it cannot."

He went out.  The two men looked into each other's faces.  A flash of
understanding passed between them, and, without a word more, they
stepped out of the room.

Meantime, Stowell, going down the corridor, felt a hand that had been
stretched out from the drawing-room, taking hold of his arm and
drawing him in.  It was Fenella's.  Her face was utterly broken up.
Flinging her arms about him she kissed him passionately.

"Victor," she said, "do as your heart bids you.  Don't think of me
any longer.  I am with you in life or death.  If you have to go to
prison I will go with you, and if...."

Unable to say more she broke away from him and hurried into an inner
room.

The front door rang as Stowell pulled it after him, and when he
walked down the drive with a high step his head was up and his
ravished face aglow.



END OF SIXTH BOOK




SEVENTH BOOK

THE RESURRECTION


CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

THE WAY OF THE CROSS

There had been wild doings in Douglas since the Chief Constable's
visit to Government House.  Stones had been thrown and windows
broken.  At length the Mayor, not without personal risk, had read the
Riot Act from the steps of the Town Hall.

The result had been the reverse of what the Governor expected.  The
police, a small force, had charged the mob with their batons, but
they had soon been overpowered.  Then the soldiers from Castletown, a
little company of eighty, had attempted to intimidate the crowd with
their rifles, but twice as many stalwart fishermen, coming up behind,
had disarmed them.  After that the people had surged through the
streets in delirious triumph.

At ten o'clock the throng was densest outside Government Office,
which stands midway on the steep declivity of the Prospect Hill.  The
police and the soldiers had as much as they could do to guard the
doors of the building.  The space in front of it was packed with
people of both sexes and all ages.  They were squirming about like
worms on an upturned sod.  There were loud shouts and derisive cries.

"Down with the Governor!"

"Tell him the steamer leaves for England at nine in the morning."

Suddenly, with the rapidity of a desert wind, word went through the
crowd that mounted soldiers from England had just been landed at the
pier, and were riding up the principal thoroughfares, driving
everything before them.

A cold fear came, culminating in terror.  Presently the cavalry were
seen to turn the bottom of the hill.  They were swinging the flats of
their swords to scatter the crowd.  The people screamed and ran in
frantic haste to the parapets on either side of the street.  In a
moment the broad space in front of Government Office was clear.

Clear, save for one tiny object.  It was a child, a little girl of
four, who had been clinging to her mother's skirts and in the
scramble had lost her hold of them.

The cavalry were now coming up the hill at a gallop and the little
one's danger was seen by all.

"Save the child," people shouted, and more than one ran out a few
paces and then ran back, for the horses seemed to be almost upon
them.  The mother was screaming and trying to break into the open,
but women were holding her back.

At that moment a man, whom nobody recognised at first, pushed his way
through the crowd with powerful arms, and darted out in the direction
of the child.

"Come back; you'll be killed," cried someone, but the others held
their breath.

At the next instant the man was lost to sight in the midst of the
cavalry.  In the confused movement that followed one of the horses
was seen to rear and swing aside, as if it had been struck in the
mouth by a strong hand.

When the crowd were conscious of what happened next the cavalry had
galloped past, with its clang of hoofs and rattle of steel, and the
broad space was once more empty.

Empty save for the man.  His head was bare, his hand was bleeding,
and the skirt of the loose overcoat he wore was torn as if a sword
had accidentally slashed it.  But in his arms was the child--unhurt
and untouched.

Then the people saw who he was.  He was the Deemster, and they
crowded about him.  He gave the little one back to its mother, who
had a still younger child at her breast, and was too breathless from
fright to thank him.

He tried to conceal himself in the crowd, but they followed him--down
the hill to Athol Street, where the Court-house is--a long train,
chiefly of women and children, with wet eyes and open mouths, crying
to him and to each other,

"The Deemster!  God bless him!"

They thought he was going to the Court-house to sit on the bench as
Judge, but when he came to the big portico he passed it, and, turning
down a side street, he stopped at a little black door and knocked.

The door was opened by a police sergeant who was not wearing his
helmet.  The Deemster stepped into the vault-like place within and
the door was closed behind him.

It was the Douglas prison.



II

The High Bailiff of Douglas held a Court that day.  The court-house
was almost empty.  Not more than six or seven persons sat in the
places assigned to the public.  Three young reporters yawned over
their note-books in their box beside the wall.  In the well allotted
to Counsel there were only two advocates in wig and gown.

A few bare-headed policemen stood near the bench and the Clerk of the
Court sat under it.  There was nobody else in the court-house except
the High Bailiff himself, an elderly man with a red face and a
benevolent expression.

He was trying a number of petty cases, chiefly of larceny and
drunkenness.  The light was low and the voices echoed in the vacant
chamber.  But from time to time a deadened rumble came from the
streets outside--the clang of horses' hoofs, the derisive cries of a
crowd, the loud shout of a commanding officer, and then a scamper of
feet that was like heavy rain pelting down on the pavement.

Behind the Jury-box, which was empty, there was a door that led to
the prison below.  The last case was being heard when this door was
opened and the Chief Constable came up into Court, followed by
Stowell and a policeman.  The Chief Constable took a seat in the
advocates' well; Stowell and the policeman sat on the public benches.

When the High Bailiff, who was a great respecter of authority, saw
the Deemster enter, he sent a policeman to ask him to come up to a
seat by his side on the bench, but Stowell shook his head.

The case being tried was that of a farmer who was charged with
driving his country cart on the high road without a stern light.  The
defence was that the lamp was alight when he left town, and had been
put out by a high wind that was blowing.  On this issue there was a
long questioning and cross-questioning by the advocates, but at
length the case came to a close.

"Half-a-crown and costs," said the High Bailiff; and then reaching
over to his clerk he asked if that was the last case for the day.

"Yes, your Worship," said the Clerk, and the High Bailiff was pushing
back his chair, when the Chief Constable rose with an air of
importance.

"Your Worship, I have a serious charge to make."

He beckoned to the policeman at the back, who opened the door of the
dock and Stowell stepped into it.

"I charge his Honour Deemster Victor Stowell, on his own confession,
with breaking prison on Sunday night last between the hours of ten
and twelve, to effect the escape from custody of a prisoner lying
there under sentence of death."

The High Bailiff seemed to be stupefied and the charge had to be
repeated to him.

"Eh?  What?  God bless my soul!  On his own confession, you say?  Is
the Deemster well?  What conceivable motive...."

"I will give formal evidence, your Worship, and ask for a committal
to General Gaol, when the question of motive will be fully gone into."

"Well, well!  Good gracious me!  If it must be it must.  It is my
painful duty to put the Deemster back for trial.  But I suggest that
a doctor be asked to see him immediately.  And meantime" (the High
Bailiff turned to the reporters, who were now busy enough over their
note-books), "may I request the representatives of the press to
publish nothing about this painful matter at present?"

It was all over in a few minutes.  The door behind the Jury-box was
opened again and Stowell and the policeman returned to the cells.

In less than half-an-hour the news was all over the town.  Special
editions of the newspapers (single sheets) had been run off in
furious haste, and the newsboys were shouting through the streets,

  _Arrest of Deemster Victor Stowell._


The news fell on the public like a thunderbolt.  It eclipsed their
interest in the soldiers.



III

Like lightning out of a thunder-cloud the news fell on Government
House also.  On hearing it the Governor, who had been thinking less
about the riot than about Stowell's last words if him, broke into
uncontrollable rage.

"The fool!  The infernal fool!  After I had given him such a chance,
too!"

With a determined step he went into the library, where Fenella was
writing letters, and broke the news to her with a kind of fierce joy.
At first her eyes filled with tears and then a proud smile shone
through them.

"You were right after all, Fenella.  I see now that you must throw
the man up," said the Governor.

"On the contrary," said Fenella.  "Now I must stand by him."

"What on earth do you mean?"

"I mean that Victor has justified himself."

"Justified himself?"

"Yes.  The only thing I was afraid of was that he might take his life
to escape from his dishonour.  But now that he has made his choice I
have made mine also."

"Your choice?"

"I cannot cut him out of my heart because he has been brave enough to
face the consequences of his crime."

"But good heavens, girl, don't you see that he will be brought up for
trial, and then all the wretched story of the Collister girl will
come out?"

"I'm prepared for that, father."

"Fenella," said the Governor, white with the passion that was
mastering him, "if you were my son instead of my daughter do you know
what I should do with you?"

"You mean you would turn me out of the house?  There will be no need
for that--I will go of myself, father."

"Fenella!  Fenella!" cried the Governor, recovering himself, but
Fenella had gone from the room.

The Governor returned to his smoking-room.  For a long half-hour he
ranged about, kicking things out of his way, ringing bells and
snapping at the servants.  What was Fenella doing?  Could it be
possible that she was taking him at his word?  Unable to contain
himself any longer he sent for Miss Green.  He got nothing out of the
old lady except lamentations.

"Oh, dear, oh dear, what is the world coming to?"

At length, with an air of authority, he went up to Fenella's bedroom,
and found her on her knees before an open trunk into which she was
packing her clothes.

"Fenella," he said, "this is nonsense.  It cannot be."

"I'm afraid it must be, father."

"Look here, girl, when a man's angry he doesn't always mean what he
says.  I never meant you were to go."

"It's better that I should, father."

The Governor struggled hard with his pride and said,

"Listen.  Don't make me ridiculous in the eyes of the whole island,
Fenella.  I may not have acted wisely in relation to Stowell and the
advice I gave him--I see that now.  But if so perhaps it was because
I was thinking less of the public service than of you.  If you were a
father you would understand that.  But you cannot wish to leave me.
You are my only child.  I am your father, remember.  What, after all,
is this man to you?"

Fenella leaned back on her heels and her eyelids quivered for a
moment.  Then she said,

"We are told that a man must leave father and mother and cling to his
wife, and surely it's the same with a woman and her husband.  Victor
is my husband, or soon will be."

"Good Lord, what are you saying, girl?"

"I promised myself to him, and I intend to keep my promise."

"But he's a prisoner, and if the governing authority objects...."

"In that case I'll wait until he is a prisoner no longer, and then
.... then I'll marry him."

"That you never shall.  Not in this island anyway.  No clergyman here
will marry you to that man against my wish."

"Then I'll go to him just the same."

"What?"

"Yes, I'm prepared even for that sacrifice."

"You're mad.  You're both mad--stark mad."

Again the Governor returned to his smoking-room.  After a while he
heard a hackney carriage coming up the drive to the porch, and then
old John, the watchman, lugging a trunk along the corridor.  A moment
later, looking through the window, he saw Fenella, in the blue and
white costume of her Settlement (the same in which, with so much
pride, he had brought her up to the house from the pier in his big
landau), stepping into the coach.

Then his anger and emotion together burst all bounds.  He tore open
his door with the intention of countermanding Fenella's orders and
driving the hackney carriage off his grounds.  But before he could
bring himself to do so he heard the door of the carriage close and
saw its wheels moving away.

Miss Green came back to the house with her handkerchief to her eyes,
saying,

"She was crying as if her heart would break, poor darling!"

The Governor went slowly back to his room once more.  The masterful
man, who had never known before what it was to have tears in his
eyes, was utterly broken.  He had lost his daughter; he was to be a
childless man henceforward; he was to spend the rest of his life
alone.  But after a while he thought of Stowell as the man who had
taken Fenella from him, and his anger rose again.

"He wants punishment, does he?  Very well, he shall have it, and
damned quick too."

Two hours later Fenella was at Castle Rushen, in the living-room of
the new jailer and his wife.

"I hear you want a female warder, and I've come to offer myself," she
said.

The new jailer, who was embarrassed, stammered something about menial
labour, but Fenella was not to be gainsaid.

"I'm a trained nurse, and have experience in managing people--will
you take me?"

"Well .... if the Governor doesn't .... for the present, perhaps."

"For good," said Fenella.

Within a few minutes she was settled in her new quarters--a large,
dark, cell-like chamber, of irregular shape, with a deeply-recessed
window, a piece of cocoa-nut matting, a deal table, a chair, a
wash-stand and a truckle bed.

Two hundred years before it had been the 'tiring room of the greatest
of her ancestors, Charlotte de la Tremouille (Countess of Derby),
when, in the absence of her husband, she held the fortress for weeks
against the siege of Cromwell's forces.

The blood of the Stanleys was in it still.




CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

VICTORY THROUGH DEFEAT

A little later Stowell was brought up for trial at a special sitting
of the Court of General Gaol Delivery held in Douglas.

"This wretched case has injured the credit of the island in England,"
said the Governor to the Attorney-General.  The sooner it was over
and done with the better.

For a long half-hour before the proceedings began the courthouse was
dark with men.  Indignation against Stowell had succeeded to
astonishment.  Piecing things together (from Fenella's outburst in
Court to Gell's threat of personal violence against the Deemster)
people had arrived at something like the truth.  The lips which a few
days before had saluted Stowell with cries of worshipful lover were
ready to break into shouts of execration.

The scoundrel!  The traitor!  Poor young Gell!  And then that girl
Collister was not so bad as they had thought her.

Stowell's enemies had been crowing with satisfaction.  "Well, what
did I tell you?" said Hudgeon, the advocate.  And Qualtrough, M.H.K.,
repeated what he had said in the smoking-room of the Keys--you had
only to give the rascal rope and he would hang himself.

His friends were yet more deadly.  Nearly all had deserted him.  The
good things they had said had been forgotten.  Every bad thing they
could remember was revived, as far back as his reckless days at Mount
Murray as a young man and his expulsion from King William's as a boy.
He was a man of straw.  It was surprising what people had seen in
him, and astonishing that the Governor had recommended him for the
position of Deemster.

The press had been silent, from fear of the penalties of contempt,
but the pulpit (Sunday having intervened) had been loud with
platitudes, inspired by the text, "Be sure your sin will find you
out."

When the time came for the Judges to enter the court-house the
atmosphere was rank with evil passions and the acid odour of
perspiring people.

Taubman was the Deemster.  Although tortured by rheumatism he had
dragged himself out of bed, having scented an opportunity of gaining
favour with the Governor.

The Governor presided, as it was his duty to do, but it was remarked
that except for one moment on taking his seat, when he looked round
at the open-mouthed spectators with an expression which seemed to
say, "What a race!" he never raised his eyes.

It was a short trial, and rarely had there been a more irregular one.
Taubman was notorious for his legal deficiencies.  In earlier days
Stowell, in one of his "Limericks," had christened him "Old
Necessity," because "necessity knew no law."  He had long been
jealous of Stowell's popularity and particularly of his rapid rise to
a position which he had had to wait forty years for.  Now he had the
"upstart" in his hand at last.

When the case was called Stowell was brought up by two policemen and
placed in the dock.  His cheeks were very pale and his eyes heavy as
with unshed tears.  It was almost as if his youth had stepped with
one stride into age.  But suffering gives a certain sublimity, and it
was said afterwards that never before had he looked so strong and
noble.

The spectators saw nothing of that now.  His calm seemed to them to
be callousness.  He did not appear to see the scorching glances they
cast at him.  The last time they had seen him in Court he was on the
bench, now he was in the dock, and they would have been better
pleased if, in the dread certainty of his fate, he had betrayed the
fellness of terror.  But except for one moment, when he turned slowly
round to look at them, and their murmurs ceased suddenly at full
sight of his face, he seemed to them to have forgotten the shame of
the place he stood in.

Taubman, in a rasping voice, read out the charge to the prisoner and
called on him to plead.

"How say you, are you Guilty or Not Guilty?"

"Guilty," said Stowell in a clear voice, and then, after a moment of
merciless silence, there was a deep drawing of breath.

"Had you any accomplices?"

"None."

"Humph!  And what was your motive in committing this crime?"

Again there was a moment of merciless silence, and then Stowell,
speaking very slowly, said,

"I had seduced the prisoner and was therefore the first cause of her
crime."

Ah!  There was another long indrawing of breath among the spectators.
It was a wonder the man didn't fall dead with shame!

"And what, if you please, was your reason for making this confession?"

"I could not allow an innocent person to suffer for my crime."

"Was that your only reason?"

The silence became breathless.  After a pause Stowell said, in a low
voice,

"That is a question I will answer to a higher tribunal."

"Indeed!" said Taubman, with a sneer, and then the silence was broken
by a cowardly titter which passed through the court-house.

The Attorney-General rose to summarise the facts.  His face was white
and decomposed; his thin hair was disordered, and the linen slip
under his chin was awry.

Only once before since leaving Government House had he been out of
doors--to visit Stowell at the Police-station and receive the letter
which had been found on him.  He, too, had dragged himself from bed
to come to Court, being afraid to leave the prosecution of the son of
his old friend, the boy brought up in his own office, to the Deputy
whom the Governor was sure to appoint in his place--Hudgeon, who sat
by his side.

His speech did not please either the Court or the spectators.  It
gave the impression of being a plea for the prisoner.  And indeed
there were moments when the Attorney seemed to forget that he was
there to prosecute.

Speaking in a tremulous voice, and never once looking towards the
dock, he said it would seem incredible that anyone in the position of
the accused could be guilty of the crime with which he was charged.
But the lucidity of his confession, and its correspondence to the
facts as they knew them, made it inconceivable that he had told a
lie.  There could be no doubt he was guilty, and being so he came
under the condemnation of the law.

"Ha!"

"But," said the old man, flashing his moist eyes on the glistening
eyes behind him, "the Crown stands for Justice, not revenge."

The Court would remember that the prisoner had made a voluntary
confession, that nothing would have been known of his crime if he had
not of himself disclosed it, and before the sublime spectacle of a
man who was making the only reparation in his power to the Justice he
had sullied, it would be touched by the fire of a great renunciation.

A murmur of dissent passed through the court-house.

Again, the Court would remember that the prisoner had confessed to
the secret sin which had tempted him to his crime.  If he had been a
scoundrel he could have concealed it, but he had put conscience
before liberty, before reputation, perhaps before life.

"Oh!"

Once more the Court would remember that the prisoner had surrendered
to Justice because another was in danger of arrest, and it would not
be human if it were not moved by the sight of a man giving himself up
to the law so that an innocent man might not suffer in his stead.

Finally, the Court would remember the youth of the prisoner, his
undoubted talents, his brilliant promise, his high position, and the
revered memory of his father, and if, moved by these considerations,
it decided to impose a nominal penalty, the Crown would be satisfied.

"Ah!"

"But whatever the punishment the Court thinks fit to impose on the
prisoner," said the Attorney, "it can be as nothing to that which he
has inflicted upon himself.  Never in this island has there been so
great a downfall, and rarely can suffering for sin have been more
terrible since the Veil of the Temple was rent in twain and darkness
covered the land."

It was impossible for the spectators not to be hushed to awe by the
daring words and quivering tones with which the old Attorney closed
his speech, but Taubman, in the ferocity of his malice, was unmoved.

"Humph!" he said.  "All that means, I suppose, that a man may be
innocent and guilty at the same time."

And then another cowardly titter ran through the court-house.

The time had come for judgment.  Taubman leaned over the bench,
clasped his bony fingers in front of him, and said,

"Victor Stowell, stand up."

Stowell rose, and stood with his hands interlaced, and his heavy eyes
fixed steadfastly on his Judge.

"Have you anything to say why judgment should not be pronounced upon
you?"

"Nothing."

It needs no skill to wound the defenceless, and for the next few
minutes Taubman seemed to glory in the exercise of his power.

"Prisoner at the bar," he said, "you have confessed to the crime of
breaking prison to effect the escape from custody of a young woman
you had first debauched and then abandoned."

"Ha!"

"It has been said on your behalf (strangely enough by the public
servant whose duty it was to arraign you) that your confession was
voluntary.  Nothing of the kind.  It was made when the hand of the
law was upon you, when the warrant for the arrest of an innocent man
was about to be issued, and you were face to face with the certainty
of exposure and punishment."

"Ha!"

"It has been also been said that the confession of your private sin
shows the operation of your conscience.  But your conscience would
have been better employed when you sat in judgment on your own
victim--a deliberate offence that is probably without precedent in
the history of criminal jurisprudence.

"Finally it has been argued that your high position and family
connections ought to mitigate your punishment.  On the contrary, they
ought to increase it, as showing your disregard of your
responsibilities, and especially your ingratitude to the head of the
judiciary, his Excellency" (here Taubman bowed to the Governor),
"whose favours you have so ill requited."

"Ah!"

"Your crime is clear.  It is without a particle of justification.
You have disgraced your name, your profession, and your island.
Therefore the Court can only mark its sense of the enormity of your
offence by inflicting the maximum penalty prescribed by the law--two
years' imprisonment in Castle Rushen."

Hardly had the last words been spoken when the spectators broke into
frenzied shouts of approval.  Neither the police nor the Judge made
any attempt to repress them.  The Governor rose hastily and hurried
off the bench, and Taubman, gathering up his papers, his spectacles
and his two walking-sticks, hobbled after him.

The shouting went on.  It surged about Stowell as he stepped out of
the dock and passed with slow stride through the door that led down
to the prison.  The deadened sound of it followed him while he
descended the stairs, and when he reached the cell it mingled with
yet wilder shouting from the streets, where a tumultuous crowd had
been waiting for the verdict.  The delight of the mob seemed
delirious.  Some women from the meaner streets by the quay were
dancing on the pavement.

Meantime, in his robing-room with the Governor, Taubman was
congratulating himself on his travesty of Justice.  Taking his wig
off his stubbly grey hair he said,

"I think I gave my gentleman his deserts for his bad treatment of
your Excellency.  Eh?  What?"

And then the Governor spoke for the first time that day.

"Maybe so," he said, "but all the same you are not fit to wipe his
boots, Sir."



II

Early next morning Stowell was removed to Castle Rushen.

There was a rumour (probably inspired by the police) that he would
travel by the seven o'clock train, therefore at half-past six the
railway station and its approaches were full of a noisy crowd.  But
at ten minutes to seven the prison van, drawn by two horses, drew up
at the back door under the court-house and Stowell was hustled into
it.

"Come, get in, quick," said the Chief Constable (all his former
deference gone), and then the van rolled away, Stowell being shut up
in the windowless compartment within, while the Chief Constable and
his Inspector of Police occupied the outer one with the grill.

Crossing a swing-bridge which spanned the top of the harbour, they
climbed the lane to the Head until they reached the cliff road, and
had the town behind them under a veil of morning mist, and the open
sea in front.  There had been wind overnight, and a fiery sun was
blazing out of a fierce sky like the red light from the open door of
a furnace.

Stowell, in his dark compartment, had not yet asked himself which way
he was going.  The feeling of exaltation, of doing a divinely
appointed duty, which had buoyed him up during the trial, was now
gone.  The nullity of his past life, the hopelessness of the future
had left him with the sense of being already a dead man.  Two years
inside the blind walls of the Castle Rushen, while the sun shone and
the flowers grew and the birds sang outside, and the world went on
without him--how could he live through it?

At length, having a sense of physical as well as spiritual
suffocation, he tapped timidly at his door, and asked, when it was
opened, if it might remain so for a few moments that he might have a
breath of air.

"Certainly not," said the Chief Constable, and he clashed the door
back.

"Better so," thought Stowell.

He had caught a glimpse of the scene outside, and knew where they
were--on the rocky shelf along which he had driven with Fenella after
the oath-taking at Castletown.

The memory of that day came back to him like a stab.  He could feel
Fenella's warm presence by his side; he could see her gleaming eyes;
he could hear her rich contralto voice as they sang together above
the boom of the sea below and the cry of the sea-fowl overhead:

  "_Love is the Queen for you and for me,
      Salve, Salve Regina!_"


What memories!  What regrets!  Only now did he know how necessary
Fenella had been to him--only now when he had lost her.  He felt like
a dead man--dead, yet doomed to remember his former existence.

An hour and a half passed.  Stowell sat huddled up in the close
atmosphere of the van, with the thunderous rumble of the roof above
him and the crack of the driver's whip outside.  He knew every mile
of the way.  When the van swung round at a turn of the road, or the
horses slowed down at the foot of a hill, the memory of some moment
in his drive with Fenella came back to him, and he told himself how
far they had still to go.

At length they were entering Castletown.  He knew that by the hollow
sound under the horses' hoofs as they crossed the bridge over the
harbour--the bridge from which Fenella had looked back and waved her
hand to the crowd about the Castle gate who had raised the deafening
shout--"Long live the new Deemster, hip, hip, hip!"

Groaning audibly, digging with his fingernails deep trenches in his
palms, praying for strength of spirit, he waited for the ordeal which
he felt was before him.


Another crowd had gathered about the Castle gate that morning.

Telegrams had been received from Douglas saying that Stowell was
travelling by road, so half the people of Castletown had come down to
the quay as to a funeral to see the last of the condemned man before
he was buried in his living tomb.

They were of two classes.  The larger and noisier class consisted of
raw youths and young men to whom the trial of the Deemster had been
mainly a subject for lewd jests about Bessie Collister.

One of them, with the small eyes of a sow and the thick lips of a
cod, wore a butcher's apron and a steel attached to a belt about his
waist.  This was John Qualtrough (son of Cæsar), the lusty ruffian
whose skull had been cracked in his boyhood by the blow from the
stick which had been intended for Alick Gell.

The Castle walls were low by the gate, and off the shoulders of a
comrade Qualtrough clambered to a seat on the battlements.  From that
elevation he beguiled the time of waiting by conducting a chorus of
his companions on the ground, using his steel for baton.  He selected
the crudest of the old Manx ditties, and amid shrieks of laughter, he
emphasised the doubtful lines by frequent repetition.

  "_I'm not engaged to any young man I solemnly do swear,
  For I mane to be a vargin and still the laurels wear.
  For I mane to be a vargin and still the laurels wear._"


The other class, consisting chiefly of women, demure and severe,
occupied themselves with serious talk about Fenella.  That splendid
young woman!  It was shocking the way Sto'll had treated her--worse
than the other in a manner of speaking.

"They're telling me she wasn't at the trial in Douglas yesterday."

"What wonder if she wasn't, poor thing!  I wouldn't trust but she'll
never show her face in public again."

"It's no use talking, the man has brought shame on the lot of us and
is a disgrace to the name of a Manxman."

Suddenly, over the loud clamour there came a wild shout from the
battlements.

"Here he is!"

The prison van was seen to cross the bridge, and as it came up to the
gate, it was received with a howl of execration.

Stowell heard it.  In his dark compartment the surging of the crowd
around the outside of the van was like the breaking of a tidal wave
on a sleeping town in the middle of the night.  The van stopped with
a sickening jolt, and he heard the Inspector of Police crying,

"Stand back!  Make way!"

Then there was a flash of daylight and the voice of the Chief
Constable saying peremptorily,

"Come, get out!  Be quick about it."

At the next moment he was on the ground with a roar of hoarse voices
and a rush of contorted faces around him.  There were screams of lewd
laughter and yells of merciless derision.  Arms were raised as if to
strike him.  He felt himself being pushed and pulled by the police
through the open gate and up the passage way to the Portcullis.

The crowd, not yet appeased, tried to force their way past the jailer
and his turnkeys as if to lynch him.  But they were checked by an
unexpected sight.  A young woman, in the costume of a nurse, with
heaving breast, quivering nostrils, and flaming eyes, rushed through
the gate with outstretched arms to stop them.

They recognised her instantly, but it was not that alone that cowed
them.  There is something in a brave act which pierces the noisiest
crowd to the core of its cruel soul.  Certainly this crowd fell back
and its uproar died down.

Then in a voice which vibrated with contempt and scorn, Fenella tried
to speak to them.

"You .... you .... you...." she began, but further words would not
come, and returning to the Castle she clashed its iron-studded gate
in the people's faces.

The crowd broke up rapidly and slank away, subdued and ashamed.

"Morning, men!"

"Morning!"

Within two minutes nearly all were gone.  The open space in front of
the Castle gate was empty, save for two old women with little black
shawls over their heads, who were wiping their eyes on their cotton
aprons.

"Did thou see that, Bella?"

"'Deed I did, though."

"I belave in my heart it was the girl herself--the one they say he
has done so bad to."

"Aw well, if a woman isn't willing to stand up for her man, whatever
he has done, what _is_ she anyway?"




CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

THE RESURRECTION

Three days later, Fenella set out for Bishop's Court in a two-horse
landau.

The island had begun to recover from its fit of moral intoxication.
Sympathy was swinging round to Stowell.  The pathos of his stupendous
downfall had taken hold of the people.  Taubman had been wrong.
Nobody would have known anything of Stowell's guilt if he had not
revealed it himself.  There must be something great in a man who
could take up his cross like that.  And as for that wonderful woman
who might be living in Government House but was living in Castle
Rushen instead....

As Fenella, in her nurse's costume, drove through the town some of
the women curtsied to her, and most of the men raised their hats.
She returned the salutations of none.

"So that's how they expect to wipe out what they did to Victor!  Not
if I know it though!"

Two hours afterwards she was at the Bishop's palace--a somewhat
palatial place, partly old, partly new, sleeping in the shelter of
big trees and surrounded by a blaze of rhododendrons.

The Bishop, in his dapper black clothes, received her in a room in
the old part of the house.  It had been the study of the most famous
of his predecessors, the fanatic and saint who had ordered that Kate
Kinrade, for the saving of her soul, should be dragged at the tail of
a boat.  Souvenirs of the dead Bishop were on the walls and
tables--his portrait, his Bible, his short crozier, his tasselled
staff, and his horn-rimmed spectacles.

The living Bishop was suave and voluble.  He congratulated Fenella on
looking so well after so much trouble.

"Such a calamity!  I might almost say such a tragedy!  How the island
will miss him!"

He agreed with the Attorney-General.  Stowell's act had been one of
renunciation.  When a man had sinned against God, and violated the
world's law, he set a great example by submitting to authority.

"God forbid that I should excuse his crime, but already his
renunciation is having a good effect throughout the island.  The
rioting is over.  The soldiers are being sent back, and as for the
agitators nobody listens to them any longer.  Only this morning the
man Baldromma...."

Fenella, who had been beating her foot impatiently on the carpet, at
length broke into her own business.

"Bishop, you have heard that I have gone to the Castle as female
warder?"

"Yes, indeed.  It's so nice of you to stay by the poor man's side
while he is in prison, to see that his bodily comforts are being
cared for."

"But more than that will have to be done for him if his soul is to be
kept alive," said Fenella.

"Really?  If you think there is anything _I_ can do...."

"There is, Sir .... You know that I was to have married Mr. Stowell?"

"Indeed I do.  Wasn't the marriage to have taken place before very
long in our chapel at Bishop's Court?"

"Well, I want it to take place now.  Only it must be in the Chapel at
Castle Rushen instead."

"You mean .... the prison Chapel?"

"Yes."

For a moment the Bishop was speechless.  Then recovering from his
astonishment, he rose and stepped to the hearthrug, and standing with
his back to the fire, he said, as if addressing an assembly,

"Beautiful and noble, dear lady!  To be ready to become the wife of
the fallen man just when the whole world is hissing at him in chorus,
to inspire him day by day with the hope of a great resurrection, of
taking up manful work anew, of regaining all he has lost and
more--yes, it is beautiful and noble."

"Then you will be willing to marry us, Sir?" said Fenella.

The Bishop hesitated, and then asked Fenella what view the Governor
took of her intention.

"He disapproves of it altogether, and says no clergyman in the island
can marry us without incurring his displeasure."

"Ah!"

"But I have always understood that the Bishop is a baron in his own
right and therefore independent of the Governor."

"True!  That's true!  Still...."

The river of rhetoric had suddenly stopped.

"Well?"

"Mr. Stowell is a prisoner.  Why marry when you can't live together?
Why not wait until he is at liberty?"

"Because he may be dead of despair before the time for that comes,"
said Fenella, "and the resurrection you speak of may never take
place.  His heart is breaking.  He wants something to live for now.
He wants me."

Her eyes had filled and the Bishop had to turn his own away.  At
length he said, stammering painfully, that he was sorry, very sorry,
but having to live at peace with the Governor....

Fenella leapt to her feet.

"Bishop," she said, "the chaplain at Castletown is a poor man with
five young children and his living is in the gift of the Governor.
But if I can find any other clergyman who is willing to perform the
ceremony, will you permit him to do so?"

"Ye--s .... that is to say, if you tell him what you have told me,
and he is prepared to take the risk."

Within two minutes more Fenella was back in her landau, driving
towards Ballamoar across the Curragh roads, with their warm and rooty
odour of the bog.

Janet came running out of the house to meet her, and in a flash they
were crying in each other's arms.  But, to Fenella's surprise, there
was a look of joy in Janet's face, and on stepping into the house she
found an explanation.  An army of maidservants were in every room,
with an arsenal of brushes and mops and pails.

"Why, Janet, what are you doing?"

"Getting ready for my boy coming back, that's what I'm doing."

"But, dear heart, don't you know...."

"Certainly I know.  But do you think they can keep a Ballamoar in
yonder place long?  'Deed they can't.  He'll be coming out soon, and
then those dirts of Manx ones who have been making such a mouth will
be the first to run to meet him."

It would have been cruel to gainsay her, therefore Fenella described
the object of her journey, told of her father's threat and the
Bishop's excuses.

"So now I'm looking for a clergyman who will be brave enough to marry
us," she said.

They were in the dining-room, and through the glass door to the
piazza they could see, on the edge of the cliffs, a field's space
from the church, a lonely house without a tree or a bush about it,
looking as if it had been slashed by the rain and winds of a hundred
winters.  It was the Jurby parsonage--the home of Parson Cowley.
Janet pointed to it and said,

"Have you been _there_?"

At that question Fenella remembered a story her father had told her
about something splendid that Victor had done, before she returned to
the island, to save the drunken parson of Jurby in the eyes of the
parishioners.  In another minute she was back in her carriage.

"Good-bye, child, and God bless you!" said Janet by the carriage
door.  "And don't forget to tell my boy that Mother will be lighting
the fire in the Deemster's room every night of life for him."

The parsonage looked yet more desolate at a nearer view than at a
distance.  Sea-fowl were screaming in the sky above it and the earth
was quaking from the measured beat of the waves against the cliffs
below.  A patch of garden in front was rank with long grass, and the
salt breath of the sea had encrusted the glass of the windows with a
grey scale that was like the mould on a dead face.

The door was opened by a timid, elderly woman, the parson's wife, who
was her own servant and looked as if all the pride of life had been
crushed out of her.

"Please come in, miss," she said.  And when the door had been closed
from the inside and she was taking Fenella into the study, she called
at the foot of the stairs,

"John, a young lady to see you."

The dingy little room looked like an epitome of the life of the man
who lived in it.  Everything was faded and worn out--books in torn
bindings on bulging shelves against the walls; a threadbare carpet
trodden thin by the fender; a handful of earthen fire; an arm-chair
upholstered in horsehair and sunk in the seat as if the springs had
broken; a table laden with loose papers and sprinkled with shreds of
tobacco, which seemed to have fallen from a shaking hand; and behind
a mirror, from which half the silvering was worn away, two objects on
the mantelpiece--a drinking glass, which had obviously contained a
frothy liquor and a photograph in a mourning frame of a young man in
sailor's costume with the fell stamp of consumption in his eyes and
cheeks.

After a moment there was an unsteady step on the stairs and the
parson came into the room, wearing a faded skull cap and a
dressing-gown much patched and stained.

Fenella told him her story, as she had told it to the Bishop, and
then said,

"So I've come to ask if you dare run the risk of marrying us?"

The old parson, who had been listening intently, seemed eager to
reply, but something checked him, and looking across at his wife, who
continued to stand timidly by the door, he said,

"What do you say, Sarah?"

The old lady did not reply immediately, and pointing to the
photograph on the mantelpiece the parson said,

"If it had been John James's case, eh?"

"Do as you think best, John."

"Then I'll do it!  Certainly I'll do it!  What do I care what the
Governor may do to me?  Once a priest always a priest--he can't take
_that_ from me anyway."

It was just the chance he had been waiting for.  Victor Stowell had
done something for him, and before he died he wanted to do something
for Victor Stowell.

"I will too!  I'll give him a good wife and that's the best thing a
man gets in this world anyway.  I've been publishing your banns too.
Do you know I'd been publishing your banns these three Sunday
mornings, Victor Stowell being one of my parishioners?"

Fenella, who was feeling a tightness in the throat, contrived to say,

"Then perhaps you'll drive back with me to Castletown and celebrate
the service to-morrow?"

"Why shouldn't I?" said the parson, and off he went upstairs (with a
firm step this time) to put on his clerical clothes and pack his
surplice in a hand-bag.

While his quick footsteps were shaking the ceiling above them the two
women stood together in the study, the young one and the old one,
face to face.

"It is very good of you, Mrs. Cowley, to take this risk with your
husband," said Fenella.

"But isn't that what we women have all got to do?" said Mrs. Cowley.

And then Fenella, unable to say more, put her arms about the timid
old thing, who had submerged her own life in the wrecked life of her
husband, and kissed her.



II

Stowell had been four days in prison and his depression had deepened
to despair.  The sense of being buried alive was crushing.  Even when
he was taken into the court-yard for exercise, and the white birds
sailed through the blue sky, he had the sensation of being in a
roofless tomb.

Yet he did not spare himself.  He had a right to certain indulgences,
but asked for none.  They put him into an upstairs room, which had
once been the armoury of the Castle, but he said, "Put me in the cell
that was occupied by Bessie Collister."

He might have continued to wear his own clothes, but said,

"Give me the same clothes as any other prisoner"--a rough tweed,
uncombed and undyed, just as it had come from the back of the sheep.

The silence was terrible.  The first night was calm, and the only
sound that reached him through the thick walls was the monotonous
wash of the waves on the shore, which lay empty and alone under the
dark sky.

Next morning he heard the clamour of the gulls, and knew that the
boats had come in from their night's fishing and the birds were
fighting for the refuse thrown overboard.  A little later he heard
the deadened sound of hammering at a distance--they were caulking the
deck of a new vessel in the shipyard across the bay.  The world was
going on as usual, yet there he was in a silence like that of the
grave.

"Don't people sometimes go mad in a place like this?" he asked the
jailer.

On the second night the sea was loud, but over the wailing of the
waves he heard a raucous voice outside.  It was the voice of Dan
Baldromma, who, ranging round the Castle walls like an evil spirit,
was calling up his taunting message at every lancet window, not
knowing which was the window of Stowell's cell.

"The Spaker is dead the day.  That's the way they go, the big ones
that rob the people.  But there's no pocket in the shroud,
Dempster--no pocket in the shroud."

On the morning of the third day Stowell received a letter from
London, telling him that His Majesty the King had withdrawn his
commission, having no longer any use for his services.  This smote
him like a blow on the brain.  It was an abject degradation, like
that of an officer being stripped of his decorations before the eyes
of the soldiers who had served under him.

But the worst of his pains were his thoughts about Fenella.  Like a
man suddenly struck blind he was always living over again the scenes
of his past life.  Sitting on his bed, with his head in his hands and
his eyes tightly closed, all the beautiful moments of their love
passed in procession before him, from the moment in the glen when he
had picked her up in his quivering arms and carried her across the
stream, to that parting in the porch at Government House, after she
had promised to marry him, and he had seized her about the waist and
fastened his lips to her mouth.

Do what he would, he could not resist the intoxication of these cruel
memories.  But crueller still were his dreams of the future--the dead
dreams of their married love, when she would be wholly his, the
beautiful body as well as the beautiful soul.  Nothing in the world
was to have been so lovely as her bare arms about his neck; nothing
so thrilling as the throbbing of her breasts when he told her how
much he loved her.  But when he opened his eyes and saw the blank
walls of his cell about him, he felt as if some devil from hell had
been tormenting him.

Was this to be his greatest punishment--that what he had lost in
Fenella was to be for ever haunting him?  Was he never to be left in
peace, now that all hope of her was gone from him for ever?

"Better die," he thought.  "A thousand times better."

Several times every day the jailer had been in to talk with him.  The
prison was nearly full of prisoners now, many of the rioters having
been arrested ("Not the ring-leaders, they are always too cunning"),
so that his turnkeys and lady warder had as much as they could do to
keep things going.

This, through the thick haze of his preoccupied mind, brought back to
Stowell's memory a glimpse he had got of a woman in nurse's costume
who had flashed past him when he was being hustled through that
furnace of wrathful faces at the Castle gate, and he asked who she
had been.

"Oh, that .... _that's_ our lady warder," said the jailer.

"Is Mrs. Mylrea better then?"

"No, she's dead.  We have another one now, Sir."

"Who is she?"

The jailer hesitated and then said, "Don't you know, your Honour?"

Stowell looked up quickly and a stifling recollection of Fenella's
last words ("If you have to go to prison, I will follow you") came
surging back on him.

"Is it .... is it .... _she_?" he faltered.

"Yes."

That night, when Stowell's supper was brought to him, he sent it away
untouched.  But the morning broke fair on his sleepless eyes, for he
had made up his mind what to do.

A pale ray of reflected sunshine from the eastern wall of the
court-house was on the upper part of his cell, and he could hear the
voices of children who were playing on the shore.

He asked for a candle, pen and ink and paper, and sat down to write a
letter.


    "My DEAR FENELLA,--They have told me what you have done and I
    cannot bear to think of it.  When it became necessary to do what
    I did, I knew I should have to give up all hope of you, and since
    doing so I have suffered as few men can ever have suffered
    before.  But if you remain in this place I shall never know
    another hour's sleep by night or rest by day.  I shall feel that
    in surrendering to Justice I was not really doing a courageous
    act, as perhaps I thought, but a cowardly one, because I was
    throwing half the burden of my sins on to you, who are innocent
    of any of them.  That thought would break my heart."


He paused.  The sea outside was singing on the shore; the children
were laughing at their play.


    "Fenella, at this last moment I must tell you something.  Ever
    since I came to care for you, it has been the dearest wish of my
    heart that, God helping me, I should make your life a happy
    one--that, whatever happened to me, in a world so full of cloud
    and shadow, you should live in the sunshine.  And now that you
    follow me here, to this prison, this tomb .... it is too much.  I
    cannot bear it.

    "Go home, dear.  Good-bye and God bless you!  Don't let me regret
    the impulse that brought me here.  If it was right and true I
    must bear my punishment alone.  Leave me the comfort of thinking
    that at least your outer life goes on as if I had never shattered
    it.  We have had many happy hours together, but they are over.
    Life is for ever closed against me.  You can do nothing for me
    now.  It was sweet and good of you to come to this place, and I
    feel as if I could give my heart's blood for one more look into
    your dear face, but...."


He had written thus far when the key rattled in the lock of his cell.
The door opened and there was a flash of the jailer's lantern.
Instinctively, without looking up, Stowell covered his letter in his
blotting-paper and busied himself with both for a moment.  When he
raised his eyes the lantern was on the table, but the jailer was gone
and somebody else was standing before him.

It was Fenella.  She was in wedding dress, with the veil thrown back,
looking more lovely than in the most delirious of his dreams.  At
first he thought it was a phantom, born of the preoccupation of his
tortured brain, and in a hushed whisper, trembling all over and
rising from his chair, he said,

"Fenella!"

She, too, was trembling, but she put on a brave air and even a little
of her gay raillery.

"Yes, it is Fenella.  She has come, as she said she would, you know."

"But _why_ have you come?"

"Why?  Don't you know what day this is, Victor?  This was to have
been our wedding-day.  It shall be, too."

"Do you mean it?"

"Look at me.  Do you think I have dressed up like this for nothing?"

"But don't you see it is impossible?"

"Impossible?  Don't you want me any longer then?  You promised to
marry me, Sir--are you going to break your promise?"

She was laughing, but trying at the same time not to cry.  Stowell's
voice grew thick and husky.

"Go home to your father's house, Fenella.  That is the only place for
you."

"But my father has turned me out, so if you send me away also I
shan't have a roof to cover me."

"Is that true?"

She tried to laugh again with her old gaiety.

"Well .... nearly."

"You cannot live in a place like this, Fenella."

"Why not?  I have the apartments of a Queen, and what was good enough
for her will be good enough for me, surely."

"But you forget--I am a prisoner, and if the Governor objects...."

"He doesn't.  He has been told and has raised no objection."

"But there isn't a clergyman in the island who would marry a woman
like you to a man like me."

"Oh yes, there's one, and I have brought him with me."

"Who...."

"Somebody you did a beautiful thing for long ago, and who new wants
to do something for you--for me, I mean.  Come in, Parson Cowley."

Then Stowell saw that the door was open and that Parson Cowley was
standing in the darkness beyond it.  The old parson came into the
cell at Fenella's call, sober as a Judge, but with his face more
broken up by emotion than it had ever been by drink, for he had heard
everything.

"Parson Cowley," said Stowell, in a hoarse voice, "show her it is
impossible."

The old man swallowed something in his throat and answered,

"Nothing seems impossible to love, my son."

"But tell her that no good woman can live all her life with a
dishonoured man like me."

Again the old parson cleared his throat.

"I know one who has been doing so for forty years, Sir."

Stowell fell back on his chair and dropped his head over his arms on
the table.  Parson Cowley, unable to bear more, slipped out of the
cell and pulled the door behind him.

Fenella and Stowell were then alone.  She knew that her last chance
had come.  She had to conquer him now or lose him for ever.  It was
the primitive man against the primitive woman, only their age-long
positions were reversed, and with all the battery of her womanhood
she meant to win him.  Stepping closer she said, in a caressing voice,

"Victor, you won't send me away from you, will you?"

"I shall always love you, Fenella," said Stowell, whose head was
still down.  "I shall love you as an angel."

"But forgive me, dear, I am only a woman, and I want to be loved as a
woman first."

He raised his head and looked at her.  Her eyes were glistening, her
lips were trembling, never before had she seemed to him so beautiful.
Feeling himself weakening he rose and turned away.

"I should never forgive myself, Fenella, if I allowed you to make
this sacrifice."

"What sacrifice?  Everything I want in the world is within these
walls."

"Don't tempt me, Fenella.  Go away, I beg of you."

"Victor, I am for you.  You are for me.  Do you want to rob me of the
only man in the world for me?"

His heart was beating fast.

"Go away, I tell you.  I cannot trust myself any longer."

But the more he commanded her to go, the more her eyes glistened with
a look of triumph.

"If I am to go out of this place, you'll have to carry me out," she
said, "just as you carried me across the river in the glen."

He gasped, and then flung out at her in a torrent of words.

"Why do you come like this?  Is it only to torture me with the
thought of what might have been?  Haven't I done enough wrong to you
already?  If I do this wrong also I shall hate myself.  And the end
of that will be that I shall come to hate you also.  I do hate you.
Go away!  For God's sake go!"

Fenella, with gleaming eyes, took one step closer.

"Victor," she said, "you love me.  You know you do.  You have never
loved any other woman in the world--never for one single moment."

He looked back at her again.  Her arms were stretched out to him; her
bosom was heaving; her lips were quivering and apart.  He could
struggle no longer.

"Fenella!"

"Victor!"

She had conquered.  They were clasped in each other's arms.



III

Half-an-hour afterwards they were married in the prison chapel.  The
little place was naked enough now.  No flowers, no flags, no carpets,
no cushions.  Only the two rows of forms, without backs, and the
placards on the whitewashed walls at either side--"FOR MEN" and "FOR
WOMEN."

The deal table which served for altar was covered by a kitchen
table-cloth, on which nothing stood but a plain brass cross and a
couple of lighted candles in kitchen candlesticks.

Parson Cowley, in his surplice, stood in front of it, with his
well-thumbed prayer-book in his trembling hands.  The two who were
being married were kneeling at his feet--the sin-soiled man and the
daughter of a line of old Manx Kings, bearing a name that had been
written high in English history for five hundred years.  The jailer
and his wife were standing somewhere in the shadows.  There was no
sound except that of the parson's quavering voice within and the low
rumble of the sea outside.


    "_I require and charge you, as ye will answer at the dreadful day
    of Judgment, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed,
    that if either of you know of any impediment why ye may not be
    lawfully joined together in Matrimony, ye do now confess it._"


Stowell made a stifled sound as of protest.  Fenella put down her
hand and took his hand and held it.


    "_Victor Christian, wilt thou have this Woman to thy wedded
    wife?_"


There was a sensible pause, and Parson Cowley leaned down to Stowell
and whispered,

"Say 'I will,' my son."

Then came a slow, half-smothered murmur,

"I .... will."


    "_Fenella Charlotte de la Tremouille, wilt thou have this Man to
    thy wedded husband?_"


In a clear, unfaltering voice Fenella answered,

"I will."

* * * * * * *

It was all over.  The parson and the jailer and his wife were gone.
Stowell and Fenella were alone together in the prison chapel, locked
in a passionate embrace.  The kitchen candles were burning out, but
the little dark place shone with glory.  The air was stirred as with
the presence of angels and lit as by a celestial torch.

In their immense happiness every trouble of life seemed to be gone.
Two years?  It would be like two months, two weeks, two days--it
would be like a walk in the sunshine.

"We must hold together now, dear."

"Yes, until death parts us."

Their hearts swelled with gratitude.  Love had taken the sting out of
suffering--Love, the saviour, the redeemer.  A great hymn of
thanksgiving was going up from body and from soul.

They talked of the future.

"Will you leave the island when your time comes, dear?"

"Indeed no, never."

Where his sin had been there also should be his expiation.

"How great!  How glorious!"

She cried a little, being so happy, and he had to comfort her.  Oh,
mystery of the heart of woman!  They had changed places again, and
now it was she who was the weak one--or pretended to be so--just to
make him feel how strong he was, being the man, and that she would
have to look up to him all her life to guide and protect her.

"Will you love me always, Victor?"

"Always?  As sure as God...."

"Hush!  I know you will, dearest.  But being only a woman I shall
want you to tell me so every night and every morning."

He warned her of the struggles they would have to go through yet,
even when the time came to leave that place and return to the
world--of the many who would look askance at them for his sin's sake.
But she said no, and painted for him a picture of his coming out of
prison.

What a scene it would be!  His people, his beloved countrymen and
countrywomen, who were good at heart, would be at the Castle gates to
meet him.  There would be thousands and tens of thousands of them to
go back with him over the hill to Ballamoar.  Carriages, cars,
spring-carts, stiff-carts, fishermen in their ganzies and lifeboatmen
in their stocking caps--such a procession across the mountains as
nobody had ever seen in that island before, his little nation taking
him home.

"Oh, I see it all, Victor.  When the time comes for you to go through
the Castle gates it will be like passing out of death into life, out
of the cloud of night into the glory of the sunrise."

He smiled, a melancholy smile, and shook his head.

"I have much to go through yet.  You, too, Fenella."

But well she knew that the victory had been won, that the
resurrection of his soul bad already begun, that he would rise again
on that same soil on which he had so sadly fallen, that shining like
a star before his brightening eyes was the vision of a far greater
and nobler life than the one that lay in ruins behind him, and that
she, she herself, would be always by his side--to "ring the morning
bell for him."



CONCLUSION

The herring shoal, which in the early summer comes down from Norway
to the western coast of Man, drifts eastward as the year advances,
past the Calf Island, the Sound and the Spanish Head, with their
deafening clamour of ten thousand sea-fowl, to where the big waves of
the Atlantic roll to their organ music, and the porpoises tumble
through the blue waters of the Channel on their way back to the
frozen seas.

In the late autumn of the year of Victor Stowell's trial and
imprisonment the fishermen from Ramsey and Douglas, going south to
their fishing ground in the evening of the day, would find as they
sailed past Castletown, and opened the Poolvaish, that the sun had
set behind Castle Rushen and its square tower stood up black against
the crimsoning sky.

Then they would go down on their knees on the decks of their boats,
just as in old days they used to do after they had shot their nets at
night, to acknowledge their Maker, and pray, in their Manx, to St.
Bridget and St. Patrick to send them safely home in the morning with
a full cargo of "the living and the dead."

But it was not the harvest of the sea they were thinking of then.  It
was of the two who lay interned within the walls of the grim
fortress--the man who had voluntarily made the great Sacrifice for
his sin, and the woman, who in the greatness of her love was living
out his punishment beside him.

In my early manhood I used to hear old Methodist fishermen say that
when they rose from their knees, after their rough hands had been
held close over their eyes, and looked back at the Castle, they would
sometimes see a golden cross plainly outlined in the sky above it.

Perhaps it was only another of their Manx superstitions, but it
seemed to bring a certain inspiration to their simple hearts for all
that, by reminding them of a story which resembled (very remotely and
feebly) the great one which they told each other every Sunday in
their little wayside chapels--the story of Him Who "gave the world
away and died."


    "He descended into hell; the third day He rose again from the
    dead; He ascended into heaven and sitteth on the right hand of
    God the Father Almighty...."



THE END



* * * * * * * * * * * *




THE DEEMSTER

This is a story of sin and suffering and redemption.  A young man of
great possibilities, Dan Mylrea, having his good angel and his bad
angel on either hand, commits, in a wild fit of momentary passion, a
terrible crime, is condemned (by his own father, who is the ultimate
judge) to life-long banishment and solitude, is purified and ennobled
by his solitary life and finally returns to the society of his
fellow-men as the saviour of his people.  The scene is the Isle of
Man, the period the eighteenth century.  This story was the first to
give Hall Caine his place among British Novelists, being commonly
compared with the work of Victor Hugo.  It was published in 1887, has
since sold in vast numbers and been translated into nearly all
European languages.

_The Scotsman_ says: "This is one of the great novels."



THE CHRISTIAN

_653,098 copies of English editions sold to date._

This is the story of a young Anglican clergyman, John Store, who
tries to live in the twentieth century in strict imitation of the
life of Christ (believing that in the literal interpretation of His
teaching lies the only salvation of the world) and is broken to
pieces, both from within and from without, by his love of a woman and
by the hard facts of modern existence.  The scene is London, and the
period the present age.  The heroine, Glory Quayle, belongs to the
number of the beloved women in fiction.  On its first publication in
1897, the "CHRISTIAN" provoked world-wide discussion, in which
Tolstoy took part.  It has been translated into nearly all European
languages.  Nearly 700,000 copies have been sold in English editions
only.  The story which has been repeatedly dramatised is played in
nearly all countries.

The _Newcastle Chronicle_ says: "This novel is a noble inspiration
carried to noble issues, an honour to Hall Caine and to English
fiction."



THE MANXMAN

_399,426 copies of English editions sold to date._

This is the novel most generally associated with Hall Caine's name.
Two men, who love each other like David and Jonathan, are separated
by the love each bears for the same woman, Kate Cregeen.  The one is
married to her, and by the other, in circumstances of tragic
temptation, she has been betrayed.  Out of this complication comes
situations of searching pathos, culminating in a public confession
and a great renunciation.  The scene throughout is the Isle of Man,
and the deeply injured husband and friend, Pete Quilliam, has become
one of the best known figures in modern fiction and on the stage.
Mr. Gladstone, who was a warm admirer of it, said, that though he
disapproved of divorce, he recognised the integrity of the author's
aim.  Nearly 400,000 of the English edition has been sold already.
It is a love story of great intensity.

_T. P. O'Connor_ says: "This is a very fine and great story--one of
the finest and greatest of our time."



THE BONDMAN

_468,327 copies of English editions sold to date._

This story is intended to show the futility of the spirit of
revenge--that vengeance belongs to God only.  Two sons (born in
different countries) of the same father by different mothers set out
to search for each other to avenge the wrongs they have suffered
through their parents.  When they meet it is as fellow-prisoners
chained together in a penal settlement, where their identity is
unknown (their names being hidden by numbers) and they become the
most passionately devoted friends.  Finally one of the half brothers
gives his life for the life of the man he came to kill, and restores
him to the woman they have both loved.  The scene is chiefly Iceland,
and the period the recent past.  "THE BONDMAN" is one of Hall Caine's
most moving love stories.  In some foreign countries, particularly
Scandinavia, it is thought to be his best.

_The Scotsman_ says: "Hall Caine has, in this work, placed himself
beyond the front rank of the novelists of the day."



THE SCAPEGOAT

This is the story of a young and lovely girl, Naomi, who, born deaf,
dumb, and blind, recovers her senses one by one, in circumstances of
startling excitement in the life of her father, thus having the
beauty of the world revealed to her in sight, sound and speech, after
her intelligence has matured.  Around this central theme a dramatic
narrative gathers of life in Morocco, under the present
half-civilised regime.  _The Times_ says "the 'SCAPEGOAT' is the best
of Hall Caine's novels," and that opinion is shared by many good
judges.  It has had a warm reception in foreign countries,
particularly in Germany, where it has been said that the central
character bears an affinity to Goethe's immortal Mignon.

_The Times_: "This is the author's masterpiece."



THE ETERNAL CITY

_704,371 copies of English editions sold to date._

This is by much the most popular of Hall Caine's novels thus far,
more than a million copies of it having been sold in English editions
only.  It is intended to show that the morality which is required of
individual men should govern nations also.  The chief scene is Rome,
and the Pope (a reverent portrait resembling Pius IX) is one of the
leading characters.  The story, which was first published in 1901,
anticipated the Socialistic and Communistic movement which is now
rife, not only in Italy, but throughout Europe.  A socialist leader
of high character and capacity, David Rossi, makes an effort to carry
into effect the teachings of Mazzini, which he understands to be
according to the precepts of the Lord's Prayer.  At the crisis of his
endeavor he is betrayed into the hands of the authorities by the
woman he loves, who is moved solely by the desire to save his life.
The perils of the communistic and anti-military movement as well as
its spiritual ideals form the background of the story, but its main
theme is love--the upraising of a woman's character under the
influence of a pure affection.  The love story is the strongest
element in this greatly popular book.

_The Methodist Times_ says: "It is an enthralling, delicious, and
most pathetic love story."



THE PRODIGAL SON

_368,925 copies of English editions sold to date._

This is an Iceland story, like "THE BONDMAN," but totally different
in spirit and treatment.  It is a modern rendering of the Biblical
parable of the same name, with a strong appeal for the elder brother,
and it is intended to say that an evil act once done can never be
undone.  Some of the incidents take place on the Riviera, the "far
country," in which the prodigal wastes his substance.  When he
returns home he finds, not the "fatted calf" awaiting him, but the
wreckage caused by his conduct.  "THE PRODIGAL SON" was published
simultaneously in eight foreign countries, and was even more warmly
praised abroad than at home.  Nearly half a million copies of it have
been sold in the English editions.  It was dramatised for Drury Lane
Theatre and produced with great success.

_The Westminster Gazette_ says: "In truth, a work that must certainly
rank with the best in recent fiction."



THE WHITE PROPHET

This is a story of Egypt and the Soudan with its principal scenes in
Cairo and Khartoum.  It was published in 1909, and anticipated by
many years some racial, political and religious problems which are
now agitating those countries.  The central character resembles the
Madhi in his earlier years.  At first he is a religious reformer
only, but later he developes political aims which bring him into
sharp collision with the British rule.  A tragic happening enlists on
his side the son of the English Consul-General who remotely resembles
the late Lord Cromer in his policy, but not his person.  Out of this
fact and the further complication of his affection for an English
woman, Helena, the author developes his love story.  The glamour and
mystery of the East are the background of the novel, which is a
strong contrast to the stark simplicity of the scenes of Hall Caine's
Manx and Icelandic stories.

_The Liverpool Post_ says: "Hall Caine's power of rivetting and
engrossing attention will be found in this novel at its zenith."



THE WOMAN THOU GAVEST ME

_Over 475,000 copies of English editions sold to date_

This novel, as its title indicates, is intended to illustrate the
place which, through all the ages hitherto, woman has held in
relation to man, the place assigned to her by law, custom, and even
religion.  Mary O'Neill, a devout Catholic, is brought up in a
convent in Rome, and then married, before sex has awakened in her, to
a dissolute man of rank.  On realising her position she rebels, and
refuses herself to her husband, but to prevent scandal, continues to
live under his roof.  Later on, love is born in her, but it is for
another and much worthier man.  What is she to do?  In her eyes it is
sin to love anybody except her husband.  And her religion forbids her
to seek her happiness through divorce.  Thus she passes through a
great struggle.  At length her love conquers and she flies from the
house in which she is a wife in name only.  A child is born and she
goes through the still greater struggle of a mother with an
"unwanted" child.  At length salvation comes to her, without the
violation of any law of state or church.  The scene is chiefly
London.  On first publication the "WOMAN" was much criticised for the
frankness of its treatment of a delicate subject, but the criticism
has long died down.

_The Daily Chronicle_ says: "It strikes a great blow for
righteousness, and in that light it is Hall Caine's greatest
achievement."



THE MASTER OF MAN

As "THE WOMAN THOU GAVEST ME" was the woman's story, so "THE MASTER
OF MAN" is the man's story.  Both deal with the same eternal subject.
They are the opposite facets of the same coin.  The new novel is,
like "THE DEEMSTER," a story of sin, suffering and redemption.  But
the story is entirely different.  Victor Stowell, a young man of fine
nature, coming of a family with high traditions, commits a sin
against a woman in circumstances of extreme temptation such as come
to millions of young men in every generation.  He conceals his sin,
and his concealment leads to other and still other sins, until his
whole life is wrapped up in falsehood, and even the little community
in which he lives is in danger of being submerged in the
consequences.  In his sufferings he descends as into Hell, but at
length he sees that there is only one salvation for himself, his
victim and his people--confession and reparation.  After he has
confessed his secret sin and paid the penalty in renunciation, he is
saved from spiritual death by the love of a noble-hearted woman who
has inspired him to the act of atonement--so the climax of the story
is the resurrection of his soul.  The scene is literally the Isle of
Man, and the period the present, but the one may be said to be all
the world, and the other all time, for the subject is universal.



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