Complete works of hall c.., p.583
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 583
A little before midnight the clergyman rose and asked for silence. And then, while all heads were bowed and there was a solemn hush within, the great clock of the Castle struck twelve in the darkness outside. After that the organ pealed out “Hark, the herald angels sing,” and everybody who had a candle extinguished it, and all stood up and sang.
The bells were ringing joyfully as the congregation trooped out of the church, but for some while longer they moved about on the crinkling snow in front of it, saluting and shaking hands, everybody with everybody.
“A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you.”
“Same to you, and many of them.”
They saluted and shook hands with Bessie also.
Then the Verger put out the lights in the church behind them, and in the sudden darkness the crowd broke up, one more Oie’l Verry over, and under the slow descent of the starlight the cheerful voices and crinkling footsteps went their various ways home.
Back at Derby Haven, Bessie, who had been on the point of crying during the latter part of the service, ran up to her room, flung herself face down on her bed and burst into a flood of tears.
If she, too, could only fly away, and stay away, until her trouble was over! But how could she do that? And where could she go to?
II.
Two months passed. Bessie’s time was fast approaching, and the nearer it came the more she was terrified by the signs of it. The symptoms of coming maternity which are a joy and a pride to married mothers were a dread and a terror to her. Had she brought herself so low that she could not live through the time that was before her? At one moment she thought of going to Fenella. Everybody said how good Miss Stanley was to girls in trouble. But when she remembered Fenella’s relation to Stowell, and Stowell’s to Gell, and her own to all three, she told herself that Fenella Stanley was the one woman in the world whom she must never come face to face with.
At length, thinking death was certain, she saw only one thing left to do to go back to her mother. It was not thus that she had expected to return, but nothing else was possible now. In her helplessness and ignorance, having no one to reassure her, the high-spirited girl became a child again. Twenty years of her life flipped back at a stride, and she felt as she used to do when she ran bare-foot on the roads and fell and bruised her knees, or tore her little hairy legs in the gorse and then went home to lie on her mother’s lap and be rocked before the fire and comforted.
But going home had its terrors also. There was Dan Baldromma! What could she do? Was there no way out for her?
One day the elder of the Misses Brown (she gave music lessons to old pupils at their own homes) came back from Castletown with a” shocking story.” It was about a witch-doctor at Cregnaish a remote village at the southernmost extremity of the island, where the inhabitants were supposed to be descended from a crew of Spanish sailors who had been wrecked on the rocky coast below.
The witch-doctor was a woman, seventy years of age, and commonly called Nan. Hitherto she had lived by curing ring-worms on children and blood-letting in strong men by means of charms that were half in Latin and half in Manx. But now young wives were going to her to be cured of barrenness, or for mixtures to make their husbands love them; and worst of all, the young girls from all parts of the island were flocking to her to be told their fortunes whether their boys at the mackerel fishing were true to them, or going astray with the Irish girls of Kinsale and Cork.
“It’s shocking, this witchcraft,” said old Miss Brown. “In my young days it was given for law that the women who practised such arts should stand in a white sheet on a platform in the market-place with the words For Charming and Sorcery in capital letters on their breasts.”
Bessie said nothing, but next day, after breakfast, making excuse of her need of a walk, she hurried out, took train to Port Erin, and climbed, with many pauses, the zigzag path up the Mull Hills to where a Druids’ circle sits on the brow, and Cregnaish (like a gipsy encampment of mud huts thatched with straw) sprawls over the breast of them.
It was a fine spring morning, with the sea lying still on either side of the uplands, and the sun, through clouds of broken crimson, peering over the shoulder of the Calf like a blood-shot eye.
Bessie had no need to ask her way to the witch-doctor’s house, for troops of young girls were coming down from it, generally in pairs, whispering and laughing merrily. At length she came upon it a one-storey thatched cottage with a queue of girls outside.
When the last of the girls had gone, and Bessie still stood waiting on the opposite side of the rutted space which served for a road, a wisp of a woman, with hair and eyebrows as black as a sloe, but a face as wrinkled as the trunk of the trammon tree, came to the door and said, “Come in, my fine young woman. There’s nothing to be freckened of.”
It was Nan, the witch-doctor, and Bessie followed her into the house.
The inside was a single room with a fire at one end and a bed at the other. The floor was of hardened clay and the scraas of the roof were so low overhead that a tall man could scarcely have stood erect under them. Bundles of herbs hung from nails in the sooty rafters and when the old woman closed the door, Bessie saw that the Crash cuirn (the cross of mountain ash) was standing at the back of it.
“I’m in trouble, ma’am,” said Bessie, who was on the verge of tears, “and I’m wanting to know what to do and what is to happen to me.”
The witch-doctor, whose quick eyes had taken in the situation at a glance, said, “Aw yes, bogh, trouble enough. But knock that cat off the cheer in the choillagh and sit down and make yourself comfortable.”
Bessie loosened her fur-lined cloak and sat in the ingle, with the fire at her feet and a peep of the blue sky coming down on her from the wide chimney.
“They were telling me a fine young woman was coming,” said the witch-doctor (she meant the invisible powers), “and it was wondering and wondering I was would she have strength to climb the brews. But here you are, my chree, and now a cup o’ tay will do no harm at all.”
Bessie tried to refuse, but the old woman said, “Chut! A cup o’ tay is nothing and here’s my taypot on the warm turf and the tay at the best, too.”
While Bessie sipped at her cup the witch-doctor went on talking, but she took quick glances at the girl from time’ to time and sometimes asked a question.
At length she bolted the door, drew a thick blind over the window, knelt before the hearth, and called on Bessie to do the same, so that they were kneeling side by side, with no light in the darkened room except the red glow from the fire on their faces and the blue streak from the sky behind the smoke from the chimney.
After that the witch-doctor mumbled some rhymes about St. Patrick and the blessed St. Bridget, then put her ear to the ground, saying she was listening to the Sheean ny Feaynid, the invisible beings who were always wandering over the world. And then she began on the fortune, which Bessie, who was trembling, interrupted with involuntary cries.
“There’s a fair young man in your life, my chree (Yes) and if you’re not his equal you’re the apple of his eye. There’s a poor ould woman, too, and she praying and praying for her bogh-millish to come home to her (Oh!) and the longing that’s taking the woman at times is pitiful to see. ‘Where is my wandering girl to -night?’ she’s singing when she’s sitting by her fireside; and when she’s going to bed she’s saying, ‘In Jesu’s keeping nought can harm my erring child.’”
At this Bessie broke down utterly, and the witch-doctor had to stop for a moment. Then she began again in a different strain, “There’s an ould man too... yes … no … (Yes, yes!) as imperent as sin and as bould as a white stone, and with a vice at him as loud as a trambone. Aw, yes, woman-bogh, yes, there’s trouble coming on you, but take heart, gel, for things will come out right before long and it’s a proud woman you’re going to be some day. But you must go home to the mother, my chree, and never take rest till you’re laying your head under the same roof with her.”
“And will the young man be true to me whatever happens?”
“True as true, my chree, and his heart that warm to you at last – that it will be like gorse and ling burning on the mountains.”
“And will the old man be able to do him any injury?
“Lough bless me, no! Neither to him nor you, gel. Roaring and tearing and mad as a wasp, maybe, but nothing to do no harm at all.”
Bessie had crossed the old woman’s palm with sixpence as she came into the house, but she emptied her purse into it going out, and then went down the hill with a light step and a lighter heart.
Alick Gell was at Derby Haven when she got back, having been waiting for more than an hour. Seeing her coming down the road with her face aglow, he dashed off to meet her, and broke into a flood of joyous words.
“Helloa! Here you are at last! Looking as fresh as a flower, too! What did I say? Didn’t I tell you that you had only to get about and take exercise and you would be as right as rain in no time? But, look here, Bess” (he had drawn her arm through his), “you’ve kept me waiting all winter and now that you’re getting better I’m going to stand no more nonsense.”
Bessie was laughing.
“I’m not! Upon my soul, I’m not! You wouldn’t let me put up the banns at Malew, thinking Dan Baldromma would hear of them through Caesar Qualtrough, and come here making a noise at Miss Brown’s, though he has no more right over you than the Coroner, and no more power over me than a tomtit. But there are other ways of marrying besides being called in church, and one of them is by Bishop’s licence.”
“Bishop’s licence?”
“Certainly! You just go up to the Registrar’s in Douglas, sign your names in a book, pay a few pounds, get the Bishop’s certificate, and then you can be married wherever you like and as quietly as you please. And that’s what we’re going to do now.”
“Now? You mean to-day?”
“Well, no, not to-day. I have to go to the Castle this afternoon. They’re unveiling a portrait of the old Deemster. And what do you think, Bess?”
“What?”
“There’s a whisper that Stowell is to be made Deemster in succession to his father. Glorious, isn’t it? Splendid chap! Straight as a die! Rather young, certainly, but there’s not one of the old gang fit to hold a candle to him. He’s to go up to London to-morrow, so I want to see the last of him. But I’ll be clown by the first train after the boat sails in the morning, and then we’ll go back to Douglas together.”
They had reached the gate of the old maid’s house by this time and Gell was looking at his watch.
“Pshew! I must be off! Ceremony begins at three and it’s that already. Wouldn’t miss it for worlds. By-bye!... Another one!.. Oh, but you must, though.”
Bessie looked after him as he hurried down the road, swinging his arms and pitching his shoulders, as he always did when his heart was glad. Then she went indoors, ran upstairs and set herself to think things out.
She must go before Alick could get back. When he arrived tomorrow she must be on her way to her mother’s. It was earlier than she had intended, but there was no help for that now. And then it would be all right in the end the Sheean ny Feaynid (the Voices of Infinity) had said so.
After her child had been born her mother would take it and bring it up as her own she had heard of such things happening in Manx houses, hadn’t she? And when all was over and everything was covered up, she would come back, and then... then Alick and she would be married.
In the light of what the witch-doctor had said it seemed to her so natural, so simple, so sure. But later in the evening, it tore her heart woefully to think of Alick coming from Douglas on the following day and finding her gone. So she wrote this note and stole out and posted it:
“Don’t come to-morrow. I’ll be writing again in the morning, telling you the reason why.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
VICTOR STOWELL’S VOW
THE old Court-house at Castle Rushen was full to overflowing. Nearly all the great people of the island were there the Legislative Council, the Keys, the leaders of the Bar, the more prominent members of the clergy, the long line of insular officials, with their wives and daughters.
A pale shaft of spring sunshine from the lantern light was on the new portrait of the Deemster, which had been hung on the eastern wall and was still covered by a white sheet.
The time of waiting for the proceedings to begin was passed in a low buzz of conversation, chiefly on one subject. “Is it true that he is to follow his father?”
“So they say.”
“So young and with so many before him I call it shocking.”
“So do I, but then he’s the son of the old Deemster, and is to marry the daughter of the Governor.”
At the last moment Stowell and Fenella arrived and were shown into seats reserved for them at the end of the Jury-box. Then the conversation (among the women at least) took another turn. “Well, they’re a lovely pair I will say that for them.”
The Governor, accompanied by the Bishop and the Attorney-General, stepped on to the crimson-covered dais, and the proceedings commenced.
The Governor’s own speech was a short, one. They had gathered to do honour to the memory of one of the most honoured of their countrymen. The memory of its great men was a nation’s greatest inheritance. If that was true of the larger communities it was no less true of the little realm of Man.
“Hence the island,” said the Governor, “is doing a service to itself in setting up in this Court-house, the scene of his principal activities, the memorial to its great Deemster which I have now the honour to unveil.”
When the Governor pulled a cord and the white sheet fell from the face of the picture there was a gasp of astonishment. The impression of reality was startling. The Deemster had been painted in wig and gown and as if sitting on the bench in that very Court-house. The powerful yet melancholy eyes, the drawn yet firm-set mouth, the suggestion of suffering yet strength it was just as he had been seen there last, summing up after the trial of the woman who had killed her husband.
As soon as the spectators, who had risen, had resumed their seats, the Governor called on the Attorney- General.
The old man was deeply moved. The Deemster had been his oldest and dearest friend. It was difficult for him to remember a time when they had not been friends and impossible to recall an hour in which their friendship had been darkened by so much as a cloud. If it was true that the memory of its great men was a nation’s greatest inheritance, the island had a great heritage in the memory of Deemster Stowell. He had been great as a lawyer, great as a judge, great as a gentleman, as a friend, as a lover, as a husband, and (with a glance in the direction of the jury-box) as a father also.
“I pray and believe,” said the Attorney, “that this memorial to our great Deemster may be a stimulus and an inspiration to all our young men whatsoever, particularly to such as are in the profession of the Bar, and especially to one who bears his name, has inherited many of his splendid talents, and may yet be called, please God, to fill his place and follow in his footsteps.”
When the old man sat down there was general applause, a little damped, perhaps, by the last of his references, and then followed the event of the afternoon.
By the blind instinct that animates a crowd, all eyes turned in the direction of Victor Stowell. He sat by Fenella’s side, breathing audibly with head down and hands clasped tightly about one of his knees.
There was a pause and then a low stamping of feet and Fenella whispered, “They want you to speak, dear.”
But Stowell did not seem to hear, and at length the Governor called on him by name.
When he rose he looked pale and much older, and bore a resemblance to the picture of his father on the opposite wall which few had observed before.
He began in a low tense voice, thanking His Excellency for asking him to speak, but saying he would have given a great deal not to do so.
“The only excuse I can have for standing here to-day,” he said, “is that I may thank you, Sir, and this company, and my countrymen and countrywomen generally, in the name of one whose voice, so often heard within these walls, must now be silent.”
After that he paused, as if not quite sure that he ought to go further, and then continued, “If my father was a great Judge, it was chiefly because he was a great lover of Justice. Justice was the most sacred thing on earth to him, and no man ever held higher the dignity and duty of a Judge. Woe to the Judge who permitted personal motives to pervert his judgment, and thrice woe to him who committed a crime against justice. Therefore if I know my father’s heart and have any right to speak for him, I will say that what you have done this afternoon is not so much to perpetuate the memory of Douglas Stowell, Deemster of Man, as to set up in this old Court-house, which has witnessed so many tragic scenes, an altar to the spirit of Justice, so that no Judge, following him in his place, may ever forget that his first and last and only duty is to be just and fear not.”
He paused again and seemed to be about to stop, but, in a voice so low as to be scarcely audible, he said, “As for myself I hardly dare to speak at all. What my dear master has said of me makes it difficult to say anything. Some people seem to think it is a great advantage to a young man to be the son of a great father. But if it is a great help it is also a great responsibility and may sometimes be the source of a great sorrow. I never knew what my father had been to me until I lost him. I had always been proud of him, but I had rarely or never given him reason to be proud of me. That is a fault I cannot repair now. But there is one thing I can do and one thing only. I can take my solemn vow and here and now I do so that whatever the capacity in which my duty calls me to this place, I will never wilfully do anything in the future, with my father’s face on the wall in front of me, that shall be unworthy of my father’s son.”
