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.
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.
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.