The Master of Man: The Story of a Sin

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.