CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
ALICK GELL

For ten days Alick Gell had been searching for Bessie Collister. When he first read her letter on reaching Derby Haven (he read it a hundred times afterwards) he remembered something his father had said in taunting him—"You'll not be the first by a long way!" Then he recalled the case of the Peel fisherman and a black thought came hurtling down on him. At the next moment he hated himself for it.

"What devil out of hell made me think of that?" he asked himself.

But why had Bessie run away from him? The only explanation he could find was the one Stowell had given on the steamboat—women had illnesses which men knew nothing about, and in the throes of their mania they sometimes hid themselves, like sick animals, from their friends—most of all from those they loved. Were not the newspapers full of such cases?

"That's it! That's it! My poor girl!"

Having arrived at this explanation of Bessie's flight, he had no compunction about going in search of her. Her malady might be only temporary, but, while it lasted, Heaven alone knew what dangers she might expose herself to.

At first it occurred to him to call in the assistance of the police. But no, that would lead to publicity, and publicity to misunderstanding. Bessie would get better; he must keep her name clear of scandal. His voice shook and his lip trembled as he told the Misses Brown to say nothing to anybody. His warning was unnecessary. The terrified old maids, who had at length begun to scent the truth, had decided to keep their own counsel.

Within half an hour Alick was on the road. He had no doubt of overtaking Bessie—she was only half an hour gone. But which way would she go? It was easier to say which way she would not go. She would not go to the north of the island where she would be known to nearly everybody. Above all, she would not go home—the home of Dan Baldromma.

All that day he wandered through Castletown—every street and alley. At nightfall he was back at Derby Haven. Had Bessie returned? No! Had anything been heard of her? Nothing!

Next day he set out on a wider journey—all the towns and villages of the south, Port St. Mary, Port Erin, Fleswick, Ballasalla, Colby, Ballabeg and Cregneash. He walked from daylight to dark, and asked no questions, but at every open door he paused and listened. When he saw a farm-house that stood back from the high road he made excuse to go up to it—a drink of milk or water.

Day followed day without result. His heart was sinking. More than once he met somebody whom he knew and had to make excuse for his rambling. Wonderful what a walking tour did to blow the cobwebs from a fellow's brain after he had been shut up too long in an office! His friends looked after him with a strange expression. He had been something of a dandy, but his hair was uncombed and his linen was becoming soiled and even dirty.

At length he became a prey to illusions. He always slept in the last house he came to, and one night, in a fisherman's cottage near Fleswick, he was awakened by the wind blowing over the thatch. He thought it sounded like the voice of Bessie, and that she was wandering over the highway in the darkness, alone and distraught.

Next day he began to inquire if anything had been seen of such a person. He was told of a young woman who, found walking barefoot on the lonely road to Dreamlang, had been taken to the asylum, and he hurried there to inquire. No, it was not Bessie. Some poor young wife who (only six months married and beginning to be happy in the prospect of a child) had lost her husband in an accident at the mines at Foxdale.

The dread of suicide took hold of him. One day a fish-cadger on the road told him that a young woman's body had been washed ashore at Peel. Again it was nothing—nothing to him. The wife of the captain of a Norwegian schooner which had been wrecked off Contrary—with her eyes open and her baby locked in her rigid arms.

Alick's heart was failing him. Do what he would to keep down evil thoughts they were getting the better of him. Sometimes he rested on the seat that usually stands outside the whitewashed porch of a Manx cottage, and although he thought he said so little he found that the women (especially such of them as were mothers of grown-up girls) seemed to divine the object of his journey.

"Aw, yes, that's the way with them, the boghs, especially when there's a man bothering them. Was there any man, now...."

But Alick was up and gone before they could finish their question.

Thus ten days passed. Absorbed in his search, perplexed and tortured, he had seen no newspaper and heard nothing of what was happening in the island. Suddenly it occurred to him that Bessie could not have left him so long without news of her. She could not be so cruel; she must have written, and her letter must be lying at his office.

People who knew him, and saw him return to Douglas, could scarcely recognise him in the pale, unwashed, unshaven man who climbed the steps from the station, looking like a drunkard who had been sleeping out in the fields.

His chambers, when he turned the key (he had no clerk now), were stuffy and cheerless. The ashes of his last fire were on the hearth, and his desk was covered with dust. Behind the door (he had no letter-box) a number of circulars and bills lay on the ground, but, running his trembling fingers through them, he found no letter from Bessie.

There was a large and bulky envelope, though, with the seal of Government House, and marked "Immediate." What could it be? On the top of a thick body of folio paper he found a letter. It was from Fenella Stanley.

"DEAR MR. GELL,—At the suggestion of Mr. Stowell, who is still in London, I am writing on behalf of the Women's Protection League, to ask you if you can undertake the defence of the young woman in the north of the island who is to be charged with the murder of her new-born child."

Alick paused a moment to draw breath.

"You will see by the report of the High Bailiff's inquiry and the copy of the Depositions which I enclose that the girl denies everything, and that her mother supports her, but the evidence is only too sadly against her—particularly that of the doctors and of two neighbours who live higher up the glen."

Alick felt his heart stop and his whole body grew cold.

"Her step-father...."

The letter almost dropped from his fingers.

"Her step-father has not been asked by the prosecution to depose, and it is doubtful if the defence ought to call him."

He was becoming dizzy. The lines of the letter were running into each other.

"Innocent or guilty, the girl has suffered terribly. She has been several days in hospital at Ramsey, but she was to be removed to Castle Rushen this morning. Her case is to come on next week at the Court of General Gaol Delivery, so perhaps you will send me a telegram immediately saying if you can take up the defence.

"As you see the poor creature is herself an illegitimate child—the name by which she is commonly known being Bessie Collister."

Alick shrieked. He had seen the blow coming, but when it came it fell on him like a thunderbolt.

It was all a lie—a damned lie! Nobody would make him believe it. Bessie arrested for the murder of her child! She had never had a child.

He leapt to his feet and tramped the room on stiffened limbs and with a heart throbbing with anger. Then, half afraid, but doing his best to compose himself, he took the report and the Depositions out of the big envelope, and, sitting before the dead hearth with his shaking feet on the fender, and holding the folio pages in his dead-cold hands, he read the evidence.

As he did so he shrieked again, but this time with laughter. What a tissue of manifest lies! The Skillicornes and their quarrel with Dan Baldromma—what a malicious conspiracy! Lord, what blind fools the police could be! And the Attorney, had he come to his second childhood?

Again and again Alick thumped the desk with his fist and filled the air of the room with the dust that rose in the sunshine which was now pouring through the windows.

There was a photograph of Bessie on the mantelpiece—a copy of the same that she had sent to Stowell. He snatched it up and kissed it. Never had Bessie been so dear to him as now—now when she was in prison under a false accusation. And the best of it was that he was to get her off. He must see her at once, though.

"My poor girl! In Castle Rushen!"

The first thing to do was to wash and change (he cut himself badly in shaving), but in less than half-an-hour he was at the Post-office telegraphing to Fenella.

"Gladly."

Brief as the message was, the clerk at the counter could hardly decipher the agitated handwriting.

A few minutes later he was at the Police-office, asking the Chief Constable for an order to allow him, as Bessie's advocate, to see her alone in her cell.

At two o'clock he was back at the railway-station, taking the train for Castletown. As he stepped into his carriage the newsboys were calling the contents of the evening paper:

Victor Stowell appointed Deemster.

Glorious! Bessie would have a human being on the bench. Thank God for that anyway!

II

"I don't know what you are talking about—I really don't. You make me laugh. Whatever will you say next! I was ill and I came home to have my mother nurse me, and that was all I knew until Cain, the constable, came to bring me here."

It was Bessie before the High Bailiff. Her face was thin and pale, and she was clutching the rail of the dock in an effort to keep herself erect, while her shrill voice echoed to the roof.

The magistrate was about to commit her to prison when Dr. Clucas rose in the body of the Court-house.

"Your worship," he said (his voice was husky and his eyes had a look of tears), "the defendant is suffering from the temporary mania which is not unusual in such cases. I suggest that she should be sent to the hospital."

Bessie fainted. The next thing she knew was that she was in bed in a hospital ward, and that another doctor (a younger man with thin hair and a large pugnacious mouth) was leaning over her, and laying his hand on her breast. She pushed it off, and then he said, in an authoritative tone,

"My good woman, if you are innocent, as you say, the best proof you can give is that of a medical examination."

At this Bessie broke into fierce wrath.

"If you touch me again," she cried, "I'll tear your eyes out!"

Then she fainted once more, and for two days lay in a strong delirium. When she came to herself a nurse with a kind face was by her side, saying "Hush!" and doing something at her breast with a glass instrument.

She knew she had been delirious (having a vague memory of crying "Alick! Alick!" as she returned to consciousness) and was in fear of what she might have said.

"Is it morning?" she asked.

"Yes, dear."

"Then it's the next day?"

"The next but one."

"Have I been wandering?"

"A little."

"Did I call for anybody?"

"Yes."

She dare not ask whom, but lay wondering if Alick knew where she was and what had happened to her. After a while she said,

"Is it in the papers?"

The nurse nodded, and after a moment, with her eyes down, Bessie said,

"Has anybody been here to ask for me?"

"Yes, your mother—she comes night and morning."

"Nobody else?"

"Nobody."

Bessie broke into sobs and turned her face to the wall. Alick knew! He had given her up! She had lost him!

When she recovered from an agony of tears her eyes were glittering and her heart was bitter. What did she care what became of her now? They might do what they liked with her. Deny? What was the good? She would deny no longer. She would tell the truth about everything.

Then Fenella Stanley came. Bessie thought she liked Miss Stanley better than any woman, except her mother, she had ever known. But that only made it the harder to hold to her resolution, for if she told the truth she would surely hurt Fenella. "Oh, why do you come to torture me?" she cried, when Fenella asked who was her "friend." And not another word would she say.

Two days later, before breakfast, Cain, the constable, came with a sergeant of police to take her to Castle Rushen. She did not care! Why should she? But as she was leaving the hospital the nurse with the kind face whispered,

"Good-bye, dear. You're all right now. I'm going away and will say nothing."

It was a cruelly beautiful morning, with a golden shimmer from the rising sun upon a tranquil sea. The railway station was full of townspeople going up to Douglas (it was market day there), so Bessie was hurried into the last compartment.

When the train ran into the country a flood of memories swept over her and she found it hard to keep back her tears. The young lambs were skipping on the hill-sides; the sheep were bleating; girls in sun bonnets were coming from the whitewashed outhouses to drive the cattle into the fields.

When they drew up at the station for the glen the shingly platform was crowded with passengers waiting for the train—rosy-faced women with broad open baskets of butter and eggs, and elderly farmers smoking their strong thick twist and surrounded by their panting dogs. Bessie knew them all. At the last moment a young woman in a low cut blouse ran up—it was Susie Stephen.

Bessie crept into a corner of the carriage and closed her eyes. But she could not shut out everything. Over the rumble of the wheels, when the train started again, she heard shrieks of laughter from the compartment in front. The elderly men were jesting in their free way with the girls, and the girls, nothing loth, were answering them back.

At the junction of St. John's, the train had to stop for carriages from Peel to be linked on to it, and while the coupling was going on one of the passengers strolled along the platform. It was Willie Teare, who had wanted to marry Bessie, and he saw her behind the constables. At the next moment a throng of girls gathered outside her window, but the constables pulled down the blinds.

"Take your seats! Take your seats!"

The train went on. There was no more laughter from the passengers in the compartment in front. Bessie understood—they were whispering about her.

Her heart was becoming hard. Sitting in the darkened carriage, with spears of sunlight flashing from the flapping blinds, she heard the constables talking about Mr. Stowell. It was reported that he had been made Deemster. He would make a good Deemster, too.

"A taste young, maybe, but clever—clever uncommon."

On reaching Douglas, where they had to change into the train for Castletown, Bessie was being hustled across the platform, between the constables, when she became aware of a crowd of women and girls who were crushing up to stare at her. There was a whispering and muttering.

"There she is!" "Serve her right, I say!"

Half-an-hour later she was in Castle Rushen. The darkness within was blinding after the sunshine without. A woman with short and difficult breathing was moving about her. It was Mrs. Mylrea, the female warder. She took off Bessie's cloak and hat, and, leaving her a brown blanket and a hard pillow, went away without speaking a word.

But then came Vondy, the head jailer, with words enough for both of them. Bessie did not know she was crying until the old man, in his blundering way, began to comfort her.

"Tut, tut, gel! They're not for hanging you yet at all. While there's life there's hope!"

Left alone at last, and her eyes accustomed to the darkness, she saw where she was—in a stone vault that had a small grill in the door (behind which a candle was burning) and a barred and deeply-recessed window, near the ceiling, through which a dull ray of borrowed light was coming, for the prison overlooked the harbour on the west of the Castle.

By this time her tears were turned to gall. A frightful revulsion had come over her soul. What had she done to deserve all this? The injustice of it, the cruelty, the barbarity, the hypocrisy!

Men were all alike. Go on, she knew what men were! A man only wanted one thing of a girl, and when he got that he forgot all about her. Alick Gell was the best of them, yet even he had forsaken her now that she was in trouble.

She had never intended to do harm to anybody, and yet there she was, and would remain, until they came to take her to the Court-house on the other side of the Castle-yard. Then hundreds of eyes would be on her (women's eyes too) and when she raised her own she would see Mr. Stowell on the bench.

What a mockery! Mr. Stowell her judge! What would he do? His "duty" of course. All right, let him do it! Only she, too, would do something. After he had tried her and sentenced her and finished with her, she would tell him something. Why shouldn't she? And what did she care what happened to anybody else? Fenella Stanley was nothing to her.

Suddenly she thought again about Alick Gell. If she did what she intended to do (tell everything) Alick also would be disgraced. The shame of her misfortune would follow him to the last day of his life. Even his own father would cast it up to him. Hadn't she done enough harm to Alick already? If he had deserted her, she had deceived him. And yet she had deceived him only because she loved him.

"Alick! Alick! Alick!"

Her heart was crying. She was wishing she were dead.

She had flung herself down on her plank bed, with her face to the blank wall, when she heard the dead beating of footsteps in the corridor outside. At the next moment the door of her cell was opened and Tommy Vondy, the jailer, was saying,

"Mr. Alexander Gell, the advocate, to see you alone."

III

"Bessie!"

The jailer had gone. Alick was breathing quickly in the darkness by the door, and Bessie was huddled up on the bed, with the dull ray of reflected light upon her from the wall above.

"Bessie!"

His voice was low and full of tears. At first she did not answer.

"It's Alick. Won't you speak to me?"

"Go away!"

He could hear that she was crying.

"You won't send me away, Bessie. I have been looking for you all over the island. It was only to-day I heard where you were and what had happened. I have come to help you—to save you."

He saw the dark form rising on the bed.

"Do you know what they say I did?"

"Yes, I know everything."

"And you don't believe it?"

"Not one word of it."

"You think I am innocent?"

"I am sure you are."

"Alick!"

With a great sob that shook her whole body she rose to her feet and flung herself upon him. For a long time they stood clasped in each other's arms, and crying like children. Then they sat down side by side on the plank bed. His arm was about her, and her head was on his shoulder.

He was trying to make his voice cheerful, though it cracked sorely, while he reproved her for her tears. She would soon be free to leave that place. There was really nothing against her. Never had there been such a trumped-up case. The police must be crazy.

She clung to him with a frightened tenderness while he told her of the letter from Fenella Stanley asking him to take up the defence on behalf of the Society.

"Of course I should have taken it up in any case, you know. And now you must authorise me to defend you."

She was startled. In the half darkness he saw her pale face (so pale and so thin) raised to his with a frightened look.

"You?"

"Why not, dear? I'm an advocate. You don't suppose I'm going to leave your defence to anybody else, do you?"

"No, no! You must not!"

"But why? Can't you trust me, Bess?"

"It isn't that."

"What then?"

Bessie did not answer him, and he went on talking, though his voice was breaking again. He knew he was not a born lawyer and a great speaker like Stowell, but the facts were so clear that he had only to state them and they would speak for themselves.

A fierce struggle was going on in Bessie's soul. He whom she had wronged (never having wronged anybody else), he for whom she had committed her crime, wanted her to authorise him to stand up in Court and say she had not committed it. She had deceived him once—could she deceive him again?

"No, no, no! I cannot!"

Alick was puzzled. "What do you mean, Bessie? Why shouldn't I be your advocate?"

"I don't want any advocate."

"But you must have one. It isn't enough to be not guilty—we must prove you're not. Why shouldn't I do so?"

At length she was forced to make some explanation. The police were determined to have her condemned; therefore he would lose his case and that would go against him.

"Good gracious, girl, what nonsense! Anybody may lose a case. The greatest lawyers have lost cases. But it's impossible that I should lose this one. And even if I lose it—do you know what I shall do?"

"What?"

"Wait outside the prison door until you come out and marry you the same day to show that I believe in you still."

At that Bessie was in floods of tears again. And again they cried in each other's arms like children.

Then Alick, after drying his eyes in the darkness, put on a brave air, and told her what she had to do.

"Listen to me now. This is a low conspiracy, but if we are to defeat it, you must stick to your story. I shall have to put you in the box, for you must leave the Court without a stain on your character. First of all you must say...."

And then sitting by Bessie's side in the dark cell, with only the candle looking in on them from the outside ledge of the grill, he rehearsed the facts as they were to be given in Court—how by the cruelty of her step-father she had been shut out of the house late at night and had had to go elsewhere; how she had returned, being unwell, and wishing her mother to nurse her, and how she had been put to bed and had never left it until the constables came to take her away.

Bessie listened in silence, gazing before her like a captured sheep, and answering only by a nodding of her head.

"If the Attorney asks you anything else—no matter what—you must say you know nothing about it—-do you understand?"

"Yes."

"Say it after me then—'I know nothing about it.'"

Bessie repeated the words like a woman talking in her sleep—-"'I know nothing about it.'"

"That's all right. Leave the rest to me."

"You think I shall get off?"

"I'm sure of it. If the General Gaol is held next week, we'll be married the week after."

"But, Alick?"

"Yes."

"Your father and sisters, will they not always cast it up at you that your wife has been tried for...."

"Let them! If they do the Isle of Man will be dead to me for ever. We'll go abroad—to America perhaps—and leave everything and everybody behind us."

Bessie was crying once more, and Alick, to conceal his own tears, was going off with great bustle.

"Good-bye! I'll be here again to-morrow. And oh, what do you think, Bess? Great news! Stowell has been made Deemster. So if the good Lord in Heaven will only keep that damned old Taubman in bed a little longer with his rheumatism, Stowell will be on the bench and you'll have a fair trial at all events. Good-bye!"

For the next half-hour Bessie sobbed with joy. Tell the truth and destroy Alick's faith in her? Never! Never in this world!

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
THE DEEMSTER'S OATH

It was the morning of the day of the swearing-in of the new Deemster at Castle Rushen. The Bishop had asked permission to solemnise the ceremony with a religious service—a custom long unobserved.

The service was held in a groined chamber of moderate size within walls thirty feet thick, once the banqueting-hall of the Kings of Man, now the jail chapel, with an atmosphere that seemed to be compounded equally of the intoxicated laughter of the old revellers and the moans of the condemned prisoners.

For the event of the day the chill place had been suitably decorated. Flags hung on the tarred walls, red cushions from the neighbouring church had been laid on the bare benches; a carpet had been stretched down the aisle of the flagged floor; a white embroidered altar-cloth covered the plain communion table, from which the light of four candles in silver candlesticks flickered on the faces of the small congregation—chiefly officials, with their wives and daughters.

Shortly before eleven, the hour fixed for the service, Stowell entered, wearing for the first time the wig and gown of a judge, and he was led to one of three arm-chairs at the front. A little later there came through the thick walls the sound of soldiery clashing arms outside the Castle, and at the next moment the Governor arrived in General's uniform of red and gold, with Fenella behind him in a large spring hat (her face glowing with animation), and they took the two remaining chairs. Then the Bishop in his scarlet robes came in, preceded by his crozier, and the service began.

It was short but solemn. First a psalm of David ("He shall judge thy people with righteousness and thy poor with judgment"); then an epistle to the Romans ("Owe no man anything"); and then an improvised prayer by the Bishop, asking the Almighty to grant His strength and wisdom to His servant who was shortly to take the solemn oath of his great office, that he might deliver the poor and needy, deal faithfully with all men, and show mercy to such as had erred and sinned. Then came the hymn "Thou Judge of quick and dead," and finally the Benediction.

Stowell was strongly affected. He knelt at the prayer, and when the service was at an end and it was time to go, Fenella had to touch his shoulder.

The sun was bright outside, and they blinked their eyes as they crossed the courtyard to the Court-house.

The stately little chamber was full, save for the seats that had been reserved for the officials. There was a flash of faces, a waft of perfume, a flutter of handkerchiefs and a hum of whispering as the Governor stepped up to the scarlet dais, with Stowell following him and taking for the first time the seat of the Judge.

People who had been talking of the youth of the new Deemster were heard to say that in his judge's wig he seemed older than they had expected and so like the portrait on the wall that one could almost fancy that his father was looking through the windows of his eyes.

The proceedings began with the Governor calling upon Stowell for his Commission, and then reading it aloud—"Our trusty and well-beloved Victor Stowell to be Deemster of this isle."

After that everybody stood while the new Judge took the oath of fealty to the King. Then the Deemster's clerk, Joshua Scarff, in his coloured spectacles, handed up a quarto copy of the Bible and a deep hush fell on the assembly, for the time had come for the Deemster's oath.

The Governor and Stowell rose again, but all others remained seated. Each laid one hand on the open Book, and the Governor read the oath, clause by clause in loud, strong tones that seemed to smite the walls as with blows. And, clause by clause, Stowell repeated it after him in a lower voice that was sometimes barely audible:

"By this Book and the holy contents thereof...."

"By this Book and the holy contents thereof...."

"And by all the wonderful works which God hath miraculously wrought in heaven and on the earth beneath in six days and seven nights, I, Victor Christian Stowell...."

"I, Victor Christian Stowell, do swear that I will, without respect or fear or friendship, love or gain, consanguinity or affinity, envy or malice, execute the laws of this isle justly betwixt our Sovereign Lord the King and his subjects within the isle, and betwixt party and party, man and man, man and woman...."

".... man and woman ...."

".... as indifferently as the herring bone doth lie down the middle of the fish."

There was a deep silence until the oath was ended and then a general drawing of breath.

The Governor and the new Deemster sat and the Clerk of the Rolls handed up the Liber Juramentorum, the Book of Oaths, a large volume in faded leather with leaves of discoloured parchment.

It was observed, and afterwards remarked upon, that when Stowell took up the pen to sign he hesitated for a moment, and then wrote his name rapidly and nervously, and that, in the silence, a diamond ring which he wore on his right hand (it was a present from Fenella) clashed with a discordant sound against the glass tray as he threw the pen back.

The business being over, the Bishop gave out the hymn that is sung at the close of nearly all Manx festivals, "O God, our help," and all rose and sang.

Stowell rose with the rest, but he did not sing. He was no longer conscious of the eyes that were on him. The emotion which he had been struggling to repress had at length conquered his self-control. While the Court-house throbbed with the singing he was thinking of the Judges who had stood in the same place and taken that oath before him. There had been a thousand years of them.

He turned to the eastern wall and his father's melancholy eyes seemed to look at him. "Yes, you too," they seemed to say, "must now do the right, whatever it may cost you. You are no longer yourself only. The souls of all your predecessors have this day entered into your soul. You must consider yourself no more. You must be just—or perish."

The hymn came to an end and there was a shuffling of feet like the pattering of water in the harbour at the top of the tide. The next thing Stowell knew was that he was unrobed and going down the Deemster's private staircase to the Court-yard of the Castle.

A large company was there waiting to congratulate him. Janet (he had ordered that a front seat should be reserved for her) was holding a little court of elderly ladies, to whom she was relating wonderful stories of his childhood. She broke away from them to kiss him. And then she kissed Fenella also and whispered,

"Don't forget to send him home in time, dear."

"I'll not forget," said Fenella.

And then she, on her part, with a face aflame, whispered something to the Governor, who, shaking hands all round, was making ready to go.

"What? You want to return in the automobile? Very well, off you go! The Attorney will take pity on your forsaken father."

Outside the gate there was a great crowd, behind a regiment of red-coated soldiers, and when the Governor and the Attorney-General drove off they broke into a cheer which drowned the clash of steel and the first bars of the National Anthem.

But that was as nothing compared with the demonstration when Stowell went off in his car, sitting at the wheel, with Fenella beside him.

"Long live the new Deemster—hip, hip—hip!"

The great shout, the mighty roar of voices, brought a surging to Stowell's throat and a tightening to his breast. It followed his car, going off in the sunshine, until it shot over the bridge that crossed the harbour, and there Fenella turned back her glistening wet eyes and bowed.

* * * * * * *

Others heard it. The prisoners in their dark cells, rising from their plank beds and hunching their shoulders in the chill air, listened to the joyous sounds from without, which broke the usual silence of their gloomy walls, and said to themselves,

"What are they doing now, I wonder?"

There were seven prisoners in the Castle that day. One of them was Bessie Collister.

II

"Addio! See you at supper!"

Fenella was waving to the Governor and the Attorney, and laughing at their slow speed, as she and Stowell shot past them before they had left the town.

The morning was beautiful, the sky blue, the sea glistening under a fresh breeze. They were running, bounding, leaping along the roads, and talking loudly above the hum of the car. Stowell had caught the contagion of Fenella's high spirits and awakened from his long trance.

"Well, what did you think of it?"

"The ceremony? Lovely!"

"But you were crying all the time!"

"It must have been through looking at you, then. There was everybody doing you honour, and you looked like a man going to execution."

He laughed; she laughed; they laughed together, but they had their serious moments for all that. One of them came when she spoke of the Oath, saying how quaint and amusing it was.

"A little frightening, though," said Stowell.

"Frightening?"

"Well, yes, I thought so. Made one feel as if old Job had had something to say for himself. Who was I to judge others, having done wrong myself?"

"Really! You wicked fellow! I wasn't aware you had so many sins to answer for. But I know!"

And then, in flash after flash, each sparkling like a diamond, came pictures of his predecessors. The solemn judge; the jesting judge; the judge who suspected all men of lying; the judge who believed everybody told the truth; the sour, dour, swearing and hanging judge, who served Justice as if she had been a Juggernaut, and the gay Judge who bought and sold her as he did his mistresses.

"What a procession! And the question was, which kind were you going to belong to—eh?"

Again he laughed; they both laughed; and the car flew on. Another serious moment came. He mentioned the Book of Oaths, saying that while turning over its leaves with their faded ink he had been seized with a sudden fear of writing his name, whereupon Fenella, with a mischievous look of gravity, cried again,

"I know. You thought you were signing your death-warrant."

Yet another serious moment came when she asked him if he had not been proud of the send-off his countrymen had given him at the Castle gate. He replied that he would have been so but for the wretched thought that if anything happened to him their love would as suddenly turn to hate, and they would howl as loudly as they had cheered.

"But what nonsense!" cried Fenella. "Love—what I call love—is not like that. It never dies and never changes."

"Never?"

"Never! If I loved anybody and anything happened, I should fight the world for him."

"Even if he were in the wrong?"

"Goodness yes! Where would be the merit of fighting for him if he were in the right?"

"Darling!" cried Stowell, and, the road being clear, and nobody in sight, he had to slow down the car to kiss her.

After that he threw off the solemnity of the ceremony and gave himself up to the intoxication of love. With Fenella by his side, looking up at him with her beaming eyes, and laughing with her gay raillery, what else could he think about? A few miles out of Castletown he said,

"Let us take the old road back—it's longer."

"Yes, it's longer."

Every fresh mile was a fresh delight. How the Spring was coming on! Look at the gorse, already in its glory! And the lambs just born and still trembling on their doddering limbs! And the tragic old hens with their fluffy yellow broods! And then the cottages, half buried in their big fuchsias! And the farmers whitewashing their farmhouses to wipe out the stains of winter!

"What a jolly old world it is, isn't it?" he cried.

"Isn't it?" she answered, and without looking to see if the way was clear, he had to slow down the car and kiss her again.

A few miles south of Douglas they turned into a road that ran like a shelf along the edge of the cliffs, with the sea surging on the grey rocks below, and nothing but its round rim against the sky. The breeze was stronger out there, but every gust was a joy. Stowell took off his hat and threw it to the bottom of the car. Fenella unpinned hers and held it on her knee. His black hair tumbled over his forehead, and her bronze-brown hair, loosened from its knot, flew about her head like a flag.

More than ever now they had the sense of flying. The sun danced on the breakers; the foam floated in trembling flakes into the blue sky; the sea-fowl screamed about them. With the taste of the brine on their lips, and the sting of it in their blood, they shouted at every sight and sound.

"Look at that white horse down there! See how he rears his head and plunges forward. Ah, he has had enough! No, he's coming on again with a roar!"

"But look at the sea-holly and the wild thyme! And the rabbits scuttling into their holes! And the goats on the peaks of the cliffs!"

"Lord! What a jolly old world it is, though!"

"Didn't you say that before, Victor?"

"Did I? Well, I'm going to say it every blessed day of my life to come."

"No, no! Take care! We're on the edge of the cliff. We'll be over!"

"No matter—another kiss!"

The wind was from the south, and the sea, breaking along the broken line of the coast, was making a sound like that of the ringing of bells. It was the phenomenon of nature which gave rise to the tradition that a town lies buried under the sea at that point, so that Manx fishermen, coming back from their fishing-ground at sunrise, will sometimes say, "The wedding bells are ringing!"

Stowell heard them now, over the roar of the waves in their mad welter, and he cried,

"Listen to the bells!"

"What bells?"

"Our bells!" he cried.

And then at the full power of their lungs, over the hum of the engine and the boom of the breakers, they sang a verse of the song of the submerged city:

"Here where the ocean is whitened with foam,
Here stood a city, an altar, a home.
    Hark to the bells that ring under the sea,
        Salve Regina! Salve Regina!
    Love is the Queen for you and for me,
        Salve, Salve Regina!"

After that they laughed again, and in sheer gaiety of heart, sang every nonsensical thing they could think about, until, being breathless and hoarse and compelled to stop, Fenella said,

"I wonder what those people in the Court-house would think if they could see their great man now! But I suppose there has never been a great man since the beginning of the world but some woman has known him for what he really is—just a big boy!"

At three o'clock in the afternoon luncheon was over at Government House; the Governor and the Attorney-General had gone off to smoke; Miss Green, like a wise woman, had betaken herself to her room, and Fenella and Stowell were alone.

"Now you must get away to Ballamoar. I promised Janet to send you back in time. Some kind of welcome home, you know."

But Stowell stood over her (she was at the piano) and whispered,

"When?"

She pretended not to understand him, and again, and in a more emphatic voice, he demanded,

"When?"

She was compelled to comprehend at last, and said that if all went well, and he behaved himself, and her father approved, a month that day, perhaps .... no, two months....

"Done!"

A few minutes later they were in the porch for their last parting. He was holding her in a long embrace. He felt like Jacob who had waited so long for Rachel. He would never be entirely happy until she was wholly his.

She laughed—a nervous and palpitating laugh.

"Rachel indeed? Take care it isn't Leah in the morning, Sir."

But seeing the cloud that crossed his face at that word, she kissed him of herself, saying they belonged to each other already and nothing could ever separate them.

"Nothing?"

"Nothing!"

And then a long tremulous kiss and he was gone.

III

Home!

He had reached the top of the mountain road, and the setting sun was striking him full in the face. To right and left, before and behind, across the broad waters, stood the dim ghosts of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales. But what did he care for these greater scenes? Down yonder was Ballamoar, and to him, as to his father, it was enough to be Deemster of Man and Judge of his own people.

News of his home-coming had been telegraphed from Douglas, and when his car shot out of the glen the church bells were ringing all over the Curagh. People working in the fields climbed the hedges to wave as he went by, and feeble old men came to the doors of the cottages to lift up the hooked handles of their sticks to him.

On reaching the entrance to Ballamoar he found a crowd waiting at the gate, and a streamer from post to post, saying—

      WELCOME TO
HIS FATHER'S SON.

The hum of the automobile awakened the colony of rooks in the tall trees, and, swirling above the lawn, they raised a deafening clamour. This brought from the porch Janet (back from Castletown) with a flutter of black frocks and white aprons behind her.

A great company of the people of the parish were at tea in the hall, chiefly women, but of all classes, from the nervous wife of the Vicar to the widow of the cowman.

"Don't get up," cried Stowell.

He had entered with a shout, tossing his hat on to the settle and saluting everybody by name, just as he used to do when he was a boy and annexed them all for relations.

"Sit here, Auntie Kitty. This is your seat, Alice. Parson, won't you take the bottom of the table? And, Dad" (this to Robbie Creer in his Sunday homespun), "take my place by Mrs. Creer while I help Jane with the teacups."

"Did thou hear that, mistress?" said Robbie behind his hand to Janet, who was turning the tap of the tea urn. "They may make him Dempster, but he doesn't forget his old friends for all."

In a moment everybody was talking and laughing. It was just as if a fresh breeze had come down from the mountains on a hot day in harvest.

During tea Joshua Scarff arrived with a green portfolio under his arm.

"I've brought some documents you'll wish to look at before the Court sits, your Honour."

"Good! Put them on the desk in the library and then come back and have some tea."

The twilight deepened and the company prepared to go. Stowell stood at the door, with Janet beside him, while the young girls of the choir of the Methodist chapel ranged themselves in front of the house and sang in their sweet young voices, which floated through the gathering gloom, "God be with you till we meet again."

"Good-night, all!"

"Good-night, your Honour!"

Night! The great day had dropped asleep; the clock on the landing was striking nine; dinner was over; Janet (she had "a head") had gone to her room, and Stowell was stepping on to the piazza.

The wind had fallen and the night was silent, almost breathless. The revolving light on the Point of Ayre was answering to the gleam on Galloway; and the moon, which was almost at the full, was glistening on the waters that rolled between.

How beautiful, how limpid! It was just such a night as that on which Fenella and he had sat out there together. He could still see her as she was then—the slim young girl in a white dress and satin slippers, with her intoxicating face in the frame of the silk handkerchief which she had bound about her head. And now she was to become his wife!

A great new vista was opening out to him. Life was about to begin in earnest. With that splendid woman by his side he was going to rise (if God would be so good to him) out of the muddy imperfections of his lower nature. His breast swelled; his throat tightened; his heart sang; he was entirely happy.

Suddenly he remembered Alick Gell. He had not seen him at Castletown that day, or at all since he returned from London. Why was that? Could it be possible that the matter they had spoken about on the steamer ....

No, no! Still he must fulfil his promise. He would step into the library and write a line saying he was ready to go down to Derby Haven if necessary.

As he passed through the dining-room he framed the words of his letter: "Where were you, you old scoundrel, that you were not at the Swearing-in? I suppose the matter you mentioned has righted itself since I went away, but if not and you still want me...."

IV

The house was very quiet. He felt an unaccountable chill coming over him. On the threshold of the library he paused. He had the sense of a mysterious presence in the room. The log fire had burnt low; the lamp on the desk, under his mother's portrait, had been turned down; deep shadows lay around.

Making an effort he entered, stepping softly, yet hardly knowing why he did so. On reaching the desk he turned up the light and then his eye fell on the green portfolio which he had last seen under Joshua Scarff's arm. It bore a label on which was written:

"Calendar of Cases to be tried at the Spring Session of the Court of General Gaol Delivery. Presiding Deemster—DEEMSTER VICTOR STOWELL."

Then came a moral thunderclap. Opening the Calendar he read these words on the first page of it:

REX v. CORTEEN
FOR MURDER
DEPOSITIONS.

That Elizabeth Corteen, commonly called Bessie Collister, on or about the fifth day of April—in the parish of Ballaugh, in the Isle of Man, feloniously, wilfully, and of her malice aforethought, did kill and murder a certain male child, contrary to the form of the Statute in such cases made and provided, and against the peace of our Sovereign Lord the King, his Crown and dignity.

A mist rose before Stowell's eyes. He could not read any more, but stood for a moment looking down at the writing. Life seemed to run out of him in a pounding rush. The walls of the room, and particularly the picture of his mother, began to reel about in a rapidly increasing vertigo. He put his hand on a chair but felt nothing. At the next moment darkness came and he knew no more.

END OF THIRD BOOK

FOURTH BOOK
THE RETRIBUTION

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
THE WIND AND THE WHIRLWIND

Next day the insular newspapers announced that the new Deemster, on his return home from Castletown, after the ceremony of his swearing-in, had had a sudden seizure. A heavy fall had been heard by the servants, and they had found their master lying on the floor of the library, unconscious.

Early in the morning Robbie Creer had driven into town for Dr. Clucas, who had ordered rest—absolute rest.

"We must have three full days in bed, Mr. Stowell, Sir. And if it is necessary to postpone the Court of General Gaol Delivery, I think .... I really think we must ask his Excellency to do so."

Stowell drew a deep breath and fell asleep. When he awoke it was mid-day. He was in bed in his father's bedroom and Fenella was sitting by his side, holding his hand. After he had opened his eyes she leaned over him and kissed him, saying in a soft voice that he would soon be better.

"It was that oath-taking, dear. I could see you were taking it too seriously."

His heart was still warm with the embraces of yesterday, yet he tried in vain to kiss her back. But he laughed a little and made light of his seizure. It was nothing, but a little dizziness; he would be about again in a day or two.

"Would you like me to stay and nurse you?"

"No, no! .... I mean you needn't...."

His stammering broke down and his face gloomed, but with a quick smile she said,

"Oh, very well, Sir, if you won't have me, Janet will take care of you, and send me a telegram night and morning to say how you are. Won't you, Janet?"

From some unseen place behind the curtains of the four-poster, Janet, snuffling and blowing her nose, answered that she would.

"And now I'll be wishing you good-morning, Sir," said Fenella, making (after another kiss) a stately curtsey to him as he lay in bed.

The sounds of the wheels of the Governor's carriage having died off on the drive, Stowell found himself alone and face to face with a tragic problem—what was he to do about the trial of Bessie Collister?

This, then, was the case Fenella had written about while he was in London. Why had he not thought of it before? He could not pretend that he had never had misgivings. Again and again the evil shadow of a dread possibility had crossed his mind like a vanishing dream at the moment of awakening.

He had put it aside, banished it, explained it away to himself. In the fullness of his happiness he had even forgotten it altogether. But Nature did not forget. And now his sin had fallen on him like an avalanche—fallen as only an avalanche falls, when the sky is blue, the air is warm and the sun is shining.

He had no doubt about Bessie's guilt. But what about his own? And if he were guilty (in the second degree), being the first cause of the girl's crime, how could he sit in judgment upon her?

To try his own victim, to question her, to go through the mockery of weighing the evidence against her, to condemn her, to sentence her—it would be impossible, utterly impossible, contrary to all legal usage, a violation of the spirit if not the letter of his oath in his first hour as a Judge.

And then the human side of it—the terror, the peril! That poor girl in the dock, in the depths of her shame and the throes of her temptation, while he, her fellow sinner....

No, no, no! It would not only be a crime against Justice; it would be a sin against God.

Joshua Scarff came in the afternoon. Standing by the bed, and looking down through his dark spectacles, he said,

"This is a pity, your Honour! A great pity! Such interesting cases! Your Honour must have wished to study them before sitting in Court."

"Joshua," said Stowell (he was breathing hard and speaking with difficulty), "go to Deemster Taubman, tell him what has happened, and say that if, as a great favour, he can take the Court next week, I shall be eternally grateful."

The Deemster's clerk was almost speechless with dismay. His Honour's first Court! Pity! Great pity!

But Stowell felt an immense relief. Thank God, there was another Deemster to fall back upon. He need not break the spirit of his oath. Bad as the event was at the best, at least there need be no Conflict between his private interests and his public duty.

II

Stowell, in spite of Dr. Clucas, got up next morning. He was sitting before the fire in the library when Janet came in to say that Mrs. Collister of Baldromma was asking to see the Deemster. She had come to plead for her daughter—that girl who was to be tried for killing her baby.

"I told her she shouldn't have come here and that the old Deemster would never have seen her. But it's pitiful to see the poor thing. She is lame, too, and has walked all the way. What am I to say to her?"

Stowell struggled with himself for a moment, and then, with an embarrassed utterance said,

"Let her come in."

"This is very wrong of you, Mrs. Collister" (he was trying to keep a firm lip and to speak severely); "you know it is against all rule."

The old woman, trembling and wiping her eyes, said she knew it was, but she had known his father. There had been none like him—no, not the whole island over. He had been every poor person's friend. If anybody had been injured she had only to draw to him for refuge and he had protected her. And if any poor girl had gone wrong, and broken the law, perhaps, it was the big man himself who was always there to show her mercy.

"That's why I thought maybe his son, if he had his father's heart .... and people are saying he has too .... maybe his son wouldn't send a poor mother away when she's in trouble and has nobody else to go to."

"Sit down, Mrs. Collister."

The old woman sat in the chair which Janet turned for her, and began on her story.

"It's about Bessie."

She had always been a good girl. No mother ever had a better. And if people were saying she had been in trouble before, might the Lord forgive them when their own time came, for it was lies they were putting on the girl.

"And if she's in trouble now, your Honour, it's like it's not all her own fault neither."

First there was her father. He had been shocking hard on the girl, shutting her out of the house in the dark of night and so throwing her into the way of temptation.

"Until they lay me under the sod I'll never get it out of my ears, Sir—-the sound of her foot going off on the street."

And when the girl came home again, looking that weak that it seemed as if the world wasn't willing to stand under her, the father had taunted her with coming back to eat them up, and maybe bringing another mouth to feed.

"So if she did the terrible shocking thing they're saying .... I don't know if she did, your Honour .... I don't know if she ever left the dairy loft from the minute I took her up to it until Cain the constable (may the Lord forgive him!) came dragging her down .... but if she did, it's like it was because the poor child was alone in the dark midnight, and out of herself entirely, and not knowing what she was doing, and perhaps freckened of what the old man would be saying in the morning."

Stowell was silent. The old woman cried softly to herself for a moment and then said,

"Nobody knows what that is, your Honour, except them that has gone through it."

Then she wiped her eyes, one after another, and said she could not sleep "a wink on the night," lying in her white bed and thinking of Bessie where she was now. And having read "in class" last evening how the Lord heard the cry of Hagar for her son in the wilderness she had thought his Honour might hear her cry for her daughter.

Stowell knew that his feelings as a man were getting the better of his duty as a Judge, so he tried to be severe with the old woman, telling her she had no right to come to him, and that he had done wrong to listen to her.

"In fact I could not have received you at all but for one thing—I am not going to try your daughter's case."

The old woman was appalled.

"Do you mean, Sir, that you'll not be trying Bessie?"

"No, Deemster Taubman will probably do so."

At that the old woman broke into a flood of tears.

"Aw dear! Aw dear! And me praying on my knees on the kitchen floor that the Lord would bring you back in time from London—someones being so hard on poor girls in trouble!"

Again Stowell was silent, and for some moments nothing was heard but the woman's broken sobs. At length, unable to bear any longer the sight of the old mother's disappointment, he said he would do what he could for her. If he could not sit on her daughter's case he would write to Deemster Taubman, explaining her condition and describing her temptations.

"God bless you for that," cried the old woman. And then Janet said it was time to go, his Honour being unwell.

"May the Lord give him health and strength and long life, ma'am!"

People were right when they were telling her he had his father's heart. He had too. She was going out of the room with hope kindled, when she said,

"You must excuse a poor woman if she did wrong in coming to you, Sir."

"We'll say no more about that now," said Stowell. "Go home and rest, mother."

At that word the old woman broke down utterly. But after a moment her weak eyes shone and she said,

"Bessie is not your quality, Sir, but if she gets off she'll write to thank you."

"No, no! She must never do that," said Stowell.

"Come now, Mrs. Collister," said Janet.

But having reached the door, the old woman turned her wet face, and seeing the portrait of Stowell's mother on the wall, and mistaking it for that of Fenella, she said,

"They're telling me you're to be married soon, your Honour. May the Lord give you peace and love in your own home, and that's better than gold or lands, Sir."

Stowell tried to reply, but he could only wave his hand and turn to the window as the old woman left the room.

Why not? What sin against God would it be to unite this suffering woman to her suffering daughter, if he could do so without wronging Justice?

A moment afterwards Janet came back wiping her eyes.

"Oh, these mothers! They're fit enough to break one's heart, Victor."

III

Stowell was in the dining-room next day when he heard the clatter of a horse's hoofs on the drive, and, a moment later, a voice in the hall, saying,

"The Deemster will see me, Jane."

It was Alick Gell. His tall figure was more bent than usual; his hair was disordered; his eyes glittered; he was deeply agitated.

"Excuse me, old fellow. You know why I've not been here before. It's Bessie. I'm busy every hour, getting up her case. Awful, isn't it? I can't make myself believe it even yet. Sometimes in the middle of the night I hear myself crying 'Good God, it can't be true!'"

Stowell could scarcely find voice to reply. He remembered what he had advised Fenella to get Gell to do. Had Bessie told him?"

"I received Fenella's letter and of course I am taking up the defence. I've seen Bessie, too, and arranged everything. She's innocent and I'll fight for her to the last breath in my body. But look here—read this," he said, dragging a crumbled newspaper from his pocket, and handing it to Stowell with a trembling hand.

It was a copy of the day's insular paper containing a paragraph which said that the continued illness of the new Deemster would probably prevent him from presiding at the forthcoming sitting of the Court of General Gaol Delivery.

"That's the first edition. When it was published at twelve o'clock I couldn't wait until the afternoon train, so I hired a horse from Fargher, the jobmaster, and I've galloped all the way. Don't tell me it's true."

Stowell answered in a low tone that perhaps it might have to be, whereupon Gell made a cry of dismay.

"Then God help my poor girl! It will be Taubman, and she'll not have a dog's chance with him."

Taubman was a brute—especially in cases of this kind. What did people say about him—that when he saw a woman in the dock he was like a cat who had seen a rat? It was true. He was always bullying the juries who showed humanity to girls in trouble.

"The infernal old blockhead! He has rheumatism in the legs, they say. I wish to heaven he had it in his throat, and it would choke him."

And then the barbarous old Statute! Practically repealed in every other country, but still capable of operation in the Isle of Man. Think of it! Five years, ten years, fifteen years—even death itself, perhaps!

"Stowell, we are old chums .... it's not right of me, I know that .... but for the sake of our old friendship, sit on Bessie's case yourself."