Complete works of hall c.., p.574
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 574
Gell made shift to answer for the sisters he had not seen for months, and then went off.
And then Fenella, taking the chair that Stowell had set for her, and dropping her voice to a deeper note, said, “And now to business. You know we’ve established on the island a branch of the Women’s Protection League?”
“I know.”
“One of its objects is to protect women from the law.”
“The law?”
“Yes, sir, the law,” said Fenella smiling. “Your law can be very cruel sometimes especially to women. But our first case is not one of that kind. It is a case in which the law, if rightly guided, can best do justice by showing mercy.”
A young wife in Castletown had killed her husband. She had already appeared at the High Bailiff’s Court and been committed for trial to the Court of General Gaol Delivery the Manx Court of Assize.
“There seems to be no question of her guilt,” said Fenella, “so we can neither expect nor desire that she should escape punishment altogether. The poor thing she’s scarcely more than a girl will say nothing in self-defence, but when we remember how the soul of a woman shrinks from a crime of that kind we feel that she must have suffered some great injustice, some secret wrong, which, if it could be brought out in Court....”
“I see,” said Stowell.
Fenella paused a moment and then said, in a voice that was becoming tremulous, “Therefore we have thought that for this case we need an advocate who loves women as women and can see into the heart of a woman then she’s down and done, because God has made him so. And that’s why..”
“Yes?”
“That’s why I’ve brought this first case to you.”
Stowell could scarcely speak to answer her. But after a moment he stammered that he would do his utmost; and then Fenella brought out of her hand-bag some printed papers that were a report of the preliminary inquiry.
“I’ll read them to-night,” he said, putting them into his breast pocket.
“Of course you’ll require to see the prisoner?”
“Yes.”
“She hasn’t opened her lips yet, but you must get her to speak.”
“I’ll try.”
“That’s all for the present,” said Fenella, rising; and at the next moment she was smiling again, and her eyes were beginning to glow. “So this is where you live?”
“No, this is my office; I live at the other side of the house.”
“Really? I wonder....”
“You would like to see my living rooms?”
“I’d love to. I’ve always wanted to see how young bachelors live alone.”
“Come this way then.”
Stowell had not realised what he was doing for himself until he was on the landing, with the key in the lock, and Fenella behind him, but then came a stabbing memory of another woman in the same position.
“Come in,” he cried (his voice was quivering now), and drawing up the Venetian blind he let in a flood of sunshine and the soft song of the sea.
“What a comfy little room!” said Fenella. As she looked around her eyes seemed to light up everything. “It’s easy to see that you’ve been racing all over the earth, sir. That Neapolitan girl on the mantelpiece came from Rome, didn’t she?”
“She did.”
“And that lamp from Venice, and that silver bowl from Cairo, and that cedar- wood photograph frame from Sorrento?”
“Quite right.”
“Books! Books! Books! All law books, I see. Not a human thing among them, I’ll be bound. And yet they’re all terribly, fearfully, tragically human, I suppose?”
“That’s so.”
“Gas fire? So you have a gas fire for the cold wet nights?”
“Yes, a bachelor has to have …” But another stabbing memory came, and he could get no further.
“And so this is where you sit alone until all hours of the night reading, reading, reading?”
He tried to speak, but could not. She glanced at the bedroom door which stood open, and said, with eyes that seemed to laugh, “Is that your ….?”
He nodded, breathing deeply, and trying to turn his eyes away.
“May I perhaps ….?”
“If you would like to.”
“What fun!”
She stood in the doorway, looking into the room for a moment, with the sunlight on her bronze-brown hair, and then, turning back to him with the warmer sunshine of her smile, she said, “Well, you young bachelors know how to make yourselves comfortable, I must say. But I seem to scent a woman about this place.”
He found himself stammering: “There’s my housekeeper, Mrs. Quayle. She comes every morning …”
“Ah, that accounts for it.”
She walked downstairs by his side, and said, as he opened the carriage door for her, “You’ll do your best for that poor girl?”
“My very best.”
“And by the way, the Deemster has invited the Governor and me to Ballamoar. We go on Monday and stay a week. Of course you’ll be there?”
“I’m afraid...”
“Oh, but you must.”
“I’ll … I’ll try.”
“Au revoir!”
He stood, after the carriage had gone until it had crossed to the other side of the square, where, from the shade of the inside (it had been closed in the meantime) Fenella reached her smiling face forward and bowed to him again. Then he went back to his room now empty, silent and dead.
Oh God, why had that senseless thing been allowed to happen! Lord, what a little step in front of him on life’s highway a man was permitted to see!
Stowell did not return to his office that afternoon. His young clerk locked up, left the keys, went downstairs and shut the door after him, but still he sat in the gathering darkness like a man nursing an incurable wound. He would never forgive himself for allowing Fenella to come into his rooms never!
“You fool!” he thought, leaping up at last. “What’s done is done, and all you’ve got to do now is to stand up to it.”
Then he lit the gas and taking the report out of his pocket he began to read it. What a shock! As, little by little, through the thick-set hedge of question, and answer, the story of the wretched young wife came out to him, he saw, to his horror, that it was the story of Bessie Collister as he had imagined it might be if he deserted her.
What devil out of hell had brought this case to him as a punishment? By the hand of Fenella, too! No matter! If the unseen powers were concerning themselves with his miserable misdoings perhaps it was only to strengthen him in his resolution to compel him to go on.
Suffer? Of course he would suffer! It was only right that he should suffer. And as for the haunting presence of Fenella’s face in that room, there was a way to banish that.
So, sitting at his desk, he wrote, “DEAR BESSIE, Please go into Castletown to-morrow and have your photograph taken, and send it on to me immediately.”
After that he felt more at ease and sat down before the fire to study his case.
III.
“I must not go to Ballamoar while she’s there. It would be madness,” thought Stowell.
To escape from the temptation he made a still deeper plunge into the cauldron of work, going to Courts all over the island and whining his cases everywhere.
Twice he went to Castle Rushen to see the young wife in her cell. What happened there was made known to the frequenters of the “Manx Arms” by Tommy Vondy, the gaoler. Tommy, who had been coachman at Ballamoar hi the “Stranger’s” days, and appointed to his present post by the Deemster’s influence, was accustomed to scenes of loud lamentation. But having listened outside the cell door, and even taken a peep or two through the grill, he was “free to confess” that “the young Master” could not get a word out of the prisoner.
As the week of Fenella’s visit to Ballamoar was coming to a close, Stowell’s nervousness became feverish. One day, as he was walking down the street, a dog-cart drew up by his side and a voice called, “Mr. Stowell!”
It was Dr. Clucas, a jovial, rubicund full-bearded man of middle age, not liable to alarms.
“I’ve just been out to Ballamoar to see the Deemster, and I think perhaps you ought to keep in touch with him.”
“Is my father....”
“Oh no, nothing serious, no immediate danger. Still, at his age, you know....”
“I’ll go home to-morrow,” said Stowell.
On the following afternoon he walked to Ballamoar. It was a bright day in early September. There was a hot hum of bees on the gorse hedges and the light rattle of the reaper in the fields, but inside the tall elms there was the usual silence, unbroken even by the cawing of the rooks.
The house, too, when he reached it, seemed to be deserted. The front door was open but the rooms were empty.
“Janet!” he cried, but there came no answer. Then he heard a burst of laughter from the back, and going through the dining-room to the piazza, he saw what was happening.
The yellow corn field which had been waving to a light breeze when he was there a fortnight before, was now bare save for the stooks which were dotted over part of it, and in the corner nearest to the mansion house a group of persons stood waiting for the cutting of the last armful of the crop the Deemster, leaning on his stick; the Governor smoking his briar-root pipe; Parson Cowley, with his round red face; Janet in her lace cap; the house servants in their white aprons; Robbie Creer, in his sleeve waistcoat; young Robbie, stripped to the shirt; a large company of farm lads and farm girls, and Fenella, in a sunbonnet and with a sickle in her hand. It was the Melliah the harvest home.
“Now for it,” cried Robbie, “strike them from their legs, miss.” And at a stroke from her sickle Fenella brought the last sheaf to the ground.
Then there was a shout of “Hurrah for the Melliah!” and at the next moment Robbie was dipping mugs into a pail and handing them round to the males of the company, saying, when he came to the Parson, “The Parson was the first man that ever threw water in my face” (meaning his baptism), “but there’s a jug of good Manx ale for his own.”
The rough jest was received with laughter, and then the Deemster, being called for, spoke a few words with his calm dignity, leaning both hands on his stick:
“‘Custom must be indulged with custom, or custom will weep.’ So says our old Manx proverb. The sun is going west on me, and I cannot hope to see many more Melliahs. But I trust my dear son, when he comes after me, will encourage you to keep up all that is good in our old traditions.”
Then there was another shout, followed by some wild horse-play, with the farm- boys vaulting the stooks and the girls stretching straw ropes to trip them up, while the Deemster and his company turned back to the house.
Fenella, coming along in her sun bonnet (a little awry) and with her sheaf over her arm, was the first to see Victor, and she cried, “At last! The Stranger has come at last!”
Janet was in raptures, and the Deemster said, while his slow eyes smiled, “You are sleeping at home to-night, Victor?”
“Yes, father.”
“Good!”
After saluting everybody Victor found himself walking by Fenella’s side, and she was saying in a low voice, with a side-long glance, “And how do you like me in a sun bonnet, sir? You rather fancy sun bonnets, I believe.” But at that moment a wasp had settled on her arm and he was too busy removing it to reply.
At dinner that night Stowell found himself drawn into the home atmosphere as never before since his days as a student-at-law. The dining-table was bright with silver and many candles, and the wood fire, crackling on the hearth, filled the low-ceiled room with the resinous odour of the pine.
Everybody except himself and the doctor (who had arrived as they were sitting down) had dressed. The beauty of Fenella, who came in with the Deemster, seemed to be softened and heightened by her pale pink evening gown like the beauty of a flower-bud when it opens and becomes a rose.
With Janet’s complete approval Fenella had taken control of everything, and as Victor entered she said, “That’s your place, Mr. Stranger,” putting him at the end of the table, with Janet and the doctor on either side.
She herself sat by the Deemster, whose powerful face wore an expression of suffering, although, as often as she spoke to him, he turned to her and smiled.
“She’s lovelier than ever, really,” whispered Janet, and then (with that clairvoyance in the heart of a woman which enables her to read mysteries without knowing it),” What a pity she ever went away!”
As a sequel to the Melliah the talk during dinner was of the ancient customs and old life of the island. The Deemster, who could have told most, said little, but the Governor spoke of the riots of the Manx people (especially the copper riot when they wanted to burn down Government House), and Janet of the roysterers and haffsters of the Athols who kept racehorses and fought duels her mother in her girlhood had seen the blue mark of the bullet on the dead forehead of one of them.
Such sweetness, such nobility, the men, the women, and the manners! Fenella joined in the talk with great animation, but Stowell was silent and in pain. Here they were, his family and friends, without a suspicion that some day, perhaps soon, he would bring quite another atmosphere into this house, this room. Visions of the mill, the miller, his wife and his daughter rose before him, and he felt like a traitor.
But it was not until they went into the library (it was library and drawing-room combined) that he knew the full depth of his humiliation. The Deemster, who was by the fire, asked Fenella to sing to them, and she did so, sitting at the piano, with Doctor Clucas (who in his youth had been the best dancer in the island) tripping about her with old-fashioned gallantry to find the music and turn over the leaves.
“This is for the Stranger,” she said (cutting deeper than she knew), and then followed a series of old Manx ballads, some of them like the wailing of the wind among the rushes on the Curraghs, and some like the dancing of the water in the harbour before a fresh breeze on a summer day.
Then the doctor brought out from a cupboard a few faded sheets inscribed “Isobel Stowell,” and Fenella sang “Allan Water” and “Annie Laurie.” And then the Deemster closed his eyes, and it seemed to Victor who sat on a hassock by his side, that his father’s blue-veined hands trembled on his knees.
“And this is for myself,” said Fenella, dropping into a deeper tone as she sang:
“Less than the weed that grows beside thy door …. Even less am I.”
Victor wanted to fly out of the room and burst into tears. But just then the clock on the landing struck, and Fenella rose from the piano.
“Ten o’clock! Time to go upstairs, Deemster.”
The old man seemed to like to be controlled by the young woman, and leaning on her arm, he bowed all round in his stately way, and permitted himself to be led from the room.
Then the Governor (being a privileged person) lit his pipe with a piece of red turf from the fire, and Janet whispered to the maid who had come back for the coffee-tray, “See that Mr. Victor’s night-things are laid out, Jane.”
But Victor himself was in the hall, helping the Doctor with his overcoat, and saying,*
“Can you take me back to town with you?”
“Certainly, if you’ll wait at the lodge while I look in on the cowman’s wife.”
“Why, what’s this mischief you are plotting?” It was Fenella coming downstairs.
The doctor explained, and Victor said, “There’s that case. It comes on soon. I must see the poor woman again in the morning.”
“Well, if you must, you must, and I’ll go down to the gate with you,” said Fenella. And putting something over her head she walked by his side (the doctor having gone on), taking his arm unasked and keeping step with him.
“I was just wanting a word with you.”
“Yes?”
“It’s about your father. You must really come back to live with him.”
“Has he asked....”
“Not to say asked! ‘Victor doesn’t come to see me very often – that’s all.”
“After this case is over I’ll....”
“Do. You can’t think how much it will mean to him.”
On the way back to Ramsey, with the lamps of the dog-cart opening up the dark road in front of them, Stowell was silent, but the doctor talked continuously, and always on the same subject.
“I’ve seen something of the ladies in my time, Mr. Stowell, sir, but I really think... yes, sir, I really do think …” and then rapturous praises of Fenella. They rang like joy-bells in Stowell’s ear, but struck like minute-bells also.
When he closed the street door to his chambers he found a large envelope in the letter-box behind it. Bessie’s photograph! As he held it under the gas globe in his cold room the pictured face gave him a shock. Beautiful? Yes, but there was something common in its beauty which he had never observed before.
His first impulse was to hide the photograph out of sight. But at the next moment he tore open the cedar-wood frame on the mantelpiece, removed the portrait it contained, inserted Bessie’s in its place, and then put it to stand on the table by the side of his bed.
“There! That shall be the last face I see at night and the first I see in the morning!”
But oh vain and foolish thought! With the first sleep of the night another face was in his dream.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE DEATH OF THE DEEMSTER
THE Deemster had not intended to sit at the next Court of General Gaol Delivery, and had already arranged for the second Deemster to take his place, but when, next morning at breakfast, he heard from Fenella that Victor was to plead, he determined to preside.
“I must hear Victor’s first case at the General Gaol,” he said.
“We shall have to be careful, then,” said Dr. Clucas. “No excitement, your Honour! No more heart-strain!”
On the morning of the trial he was up early. Janet heard him humming to himself in the conservatory as he cut the flowers for the vase in front of his young wife’s picture. When he was ready to go she helped him on with his overcoat, turning up the collar and putting a muffler about his neck. And when young Robbie came round with the dog-cart he stepped up into it with surprising strength.
