CHAPTER SEVEN
THE DAY OF TEMPTATION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

II

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Do as you please, Miss Curphey."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Nothing shall happen—I give you my word for that, Janet," said Victor.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

III

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER EIGHT
THE CALL OF BESSIE COLLISTER

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It is," said Stowell.

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

"No doubt."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

II

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

III

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"New hat, eh?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bessie leapt up from the table.

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

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

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

"Bessie! Bessie!"

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

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

"What schame?" asked Bessie.

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

"What do I care about his chance?"

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh! Oh!"

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

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

"Who? The gentlemen?"

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

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

IV

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

"Bessie Collister? Where?"

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

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

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

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

"Why not, man?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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