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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “So that’s the end of the big man, Bella the beginning of the end anyway.”

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

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

  “What’s this she says that you’ve run away?” said the Speaker.

  “Yes, I have I told her so myself,” said Alick, who was half crying.

  “Did you though? And now perhaps you will tell me something why?”

  “Because Stowell had been expelled, and I couldn’t stay when he was gone.”

  “Couldn’t you now? And why couldn’t you?”

  “He was innocent.”

  “Innocent, was he? Who says he was innocent?”

  “I do, Sir, because …. because it was I.”

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

  “You did it …. what Stowell was expelled for?” he stammered.

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

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

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

  “Where did you get the money to travel with?”

  “I had no money, Sir. I walked.”

  “Walked from Castletown? What have you eaten since breakfast?”

  “Only what I got on the road, Sir.”

  “You mean …. begged?”

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

  “Did she know who you were?”

  “She asked me I had to answer her.”

  “You told her you were my son?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

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

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “You fool! You infernal fool!”

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

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

  “She was …. a servant girl, mother.”

  “But who?”

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

  “Yes, Sir.”

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

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

  “You couldn’t stand it! You dunce! If you were younger I should take the whip to you.”

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

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

  Alick made no answer.

  “You’ve given the story a fine start, it seems, and it won’t take long to travel.”

  Still Alick made no answer.

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

  “I don’t care about that,” cried Alick.

  “You don’t care!”

  “I had to do my duty to my chum, Sir.”

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

  Alick dropped his head.

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

  “I won’t go back to school, Sir,” said Alick.

  “Won’t you, though? We’ll see about that. I’ll take you back.”

  “Then I’ll run away again, Sir.”

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

  “I’ll get a ship and go to sea, Sir.”

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

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

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

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

  IV

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

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

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

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

  “Count it for yourself; I belave you’ll find it right, Sir.”

  “Quite right. I suppose you’ll want a receipt?”

  “If you plaze.”

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

  “And now about my lease,” said Dan.

  “What about it?” said the Speaker.

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

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

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

  “Mr. Spaker, the Dempster’s son has come home in disgrace, they’re saying.”

  “What’s that got to do with it?” said the Speaker.

  “My daughter has come home in disgrace, too my wife’s daughter, I mane.”

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

  “It was, ma’am. Bessie Corteen Collister, they’re calling her.”

  “What’s all this to me?” said the Speaker.

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

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

  “Caesar Qua trough might have prosecuted but he didn’t, out of respect for the Dempster,” said Dan.

  “So they say,” said the Speaker.

  “But if somebody gave him a scute into the truth he mightn’t be so lenient with another man one other anyway.”

  The Speaker was silent.

  “There have been bits of breezes in the Kays, they’re telling me.”

  Still the Speaker was silent.

  “Caesar and me were middling well acquaint when I was milling at Ballabeg and he was butching at Port St. Mary in fact we were same as brothers.”

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

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

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

  “I’ll hear what Kerruish has to say. I have to see him in the morning.”

  “I lave it with you, Sir; I lave it with you,” said Dan.

  “Good-day, Mr. Collister.”

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

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

  “That will be all right I know my son,” said the Speaker.

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

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

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

  “Aw, dear! Aw, dear!” said Mrs. Gell.

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

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

  “I wonder you hadn’t more respect for your sisters?” said Isabella.

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

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

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

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

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

  “I’ll do my best to please you, Sir,” said Alick.

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

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

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ENTER FENELLA STANLEY

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

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

  “Leave him alone,” said Janet it would all come right some day.

  Left to himself, Victor became the great practical joker of the countryside. Every prank for which no other author could be found was attributed to him. If any pretentious person fell into a ridiculous mare’s nest people would say, “But where was young Stowell while that was going on?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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