Complete works of hall c.., p.602
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 602
When he reached this point on his dark way he was horrified.
“What? A Judge break the law!”
He thought of his oath as Deemster and of the execration that would fall on him if found out. He remembered his father’s motto: “Justice is the most sacred thing on earth.” No, no, it was impossible! His honour as a Judge forbade it.
But, as the train ran on, the call of nature conquered and he asked himself what, after all, was his honour as a Judge compared with that poor girl’s life?
“Nothing! Nothing!”
Bessie Collister must not die! She must not remain in prison! She must escape! He must help her to do so. Secretly, though, nobody knowing, not even the girl herself or Fenella.
At St. John’s, a junction between the north of the island and the south, the Bishop of the island stepped into Stowell’s compartment. He had been holding a confirmation service at a neighbouring church, and a company of young girls, in white muslin frocks, were seeing him off from the platform. While the carriages were being coupled he stood at the open door and said good-bye to them.
“And now go home, dear children, and have your suppers and get to bed. Home, sweet home, you know!”
But the children would not go until they had sung again in their sweet young voices the hymn they had just been singing in church – “Now the day is over.” By the time the engine whistled and the train was moving out of the station, they had reached the verse –
“Comfort every sufferer, Watching late in pain; Those who plan some evil From their sin restrain.”
Stowell dare not look at them. He was thinking of the girl in Castle Rushen and picturing to himself a similar scene of joy and innocence which might have taken place only a few years before in the station by the glen.
“Ah!” said the Bishop, settling himself in his seat.
He was a short, dapper, almost dainty little man, who talked continually like the brook that often runs behind a Manx cottage and fills it with cheerful chatter.
“I suppose you’ve heard the news, Deemster?”
He produced a small evening newspaper.
“That poor young person in Castle Rushen is to be executed after all! Terrible, isn’t it?”
Stowell bent his head.
“I really thought that after your address to the Jury she would have been pardoned. But who am I to set up my opinion against that of the King’s advisers? And then think of the effect of bad example! Those dear children, for instance, they are not too young to remember. And if that unhappy girl had got off who knows what effect...”
Stowell, nursing the fires of his rebellion, hardly heard the running stream of commonplace.
“And then Holy Wedlock! I always say that every act of carnal transgression is a sin against the marriage altar.”
The train was running along the western coast; the sun was setting; the Irish mountains were purple against the red glow of the sky behind them.
“And then think of the poor soul herself! It may be best for her too! God knows to what depths she might have descended!”
Stowell wanted to burst out on the Bishop, but a secret voice within him whispered,” Hold your tongue! Say nothing!”
“All the same, I’m sorry for the poor creature, and only yesterday I was using my influence to get her into a Refuge Home for Fallen Women across the water.”
The train drew up at the station for Bishop’s Court, and the Bishop, after a cheerful adieu, hopped like a bird along the platform to where his carriage stood waiting for him, with its two high-stepping horses and its coachman in livery.
Stowell’s heart was afire.
“Refuge Home! Send some of your fashionable women to your Refuge Homes! Holy Wedlock! There are more fallen women inside your Holy Wedlock than outside of it!”
At the station for the glen Stowell got out himself, and there he saw a different spectacle an elderly woman in a satin mantle, surrounded by a group of other elderly women in faded sun -bonnets.
It was Mrs. Collister again. In one hand she held her blackthorn stick, and in the other she carried a small bundle in a print handkerchief probably containing her underclothing.
Stowell understood. The news about Bessie had reached her home, and the heart-broken (almost brain-broken) old mother was waiting for the south-going train to Castletown.
A hush fell on the women when Stowell stepped out of the railway carriage, but as he made his way to his dog-cart at the gate, he heard one of them say, “It’s a wicked shame! But you’ll be with the poor bogh at the end and that will comfort her.”
A kind of savage pride had taken possession of Stowell.
“Not yet! Not yet!” he thought.
The law was wrong, therefore it was right to resist the law. It was more than right it was a kind of sacred duty.
II
From that time forward the Judge went about like a criminal.
He stayed at home the following day to think out his plans. All his schemes revolved about Castle Rushen. The great, grey, bastioned fortress how was he to get the prisoner out of it?
His first idea was to use the jailer, who was a simple soul and had obligations to his family. But he abandoned this thought rather from fear of the old man’s garrulous tongue than from qualms of conscience.
It was Tuesday, and Bessie’s execution had been fixed for the Monday following, but the day passed without bringing any better thought to him.
Somewhere in the dark reaches of Wednesday morning an idea flashed upon him. It was usual for one of the Deemsters to make an annual examination of the prisons of the island, the time being subject to his own convenience. Stowell determined to make his examination of Castle Rushen now.
At eleven o’clock he was going round the Castle with the jailer. There were two sides to the prison, a debtor side and a criminal side, and they went over both the jailer complaining of decaying doors and rusty padlocks, and the Deemster, with a sense of shame, pretending to make notes of them, while his eyes and his mind were on other matters.
“Not much chance of a prisoner escaping from a place like this, Mr. Vondy.”
“Not a ha’porth! Those old Normans knew how to keep people out and in too, Sir. But there’s one cell you haven’t looked at yet, your Honour the girl Collister’s.”
“We’ll leave her alone, Mr. Vondy. How is she now, poor creature?”
“Wonderful! That cheerful and smart you wouldn’t believe, Sir.”
“Then she doesn’t know...”
“‘Deed she does, Sir. But she thinks Mr. Gell, the advocate, is up in London getting her pardon, and she’s listening and listening for his foot coming back with it.”
Stowell went to bed on Wednesday night also without any scheme for Bessie Collister’s escape. But in the grey dawn of Thursday morning, when the world was awakening from a heavy sleep, another idea came to him. The Antiquarian Society of the island had made him a Vice -President when he became a Deemster, and having opened up certain portions of the Castle that were outside the precincts of the prison, they had asked him to inspect their discoveries.
With another spasm of hope, Stowell returned to Castletown.
“Give me your lantern, and let me wander about by myself, Mr. Vondy.”
“‘Deed I will, Sir. Your Honour knows the Castle as well as I do.”
There was said to be a subterranean passage under the harbour for escape in case of siege. Stowell found it (a noisome, slimy, rat-infested place, dripping with water) but the further end of it had been walled up.
There was a foul dungeon in which a Bishop had been confined when he came into collision with the civil authorities, and tradition had it that he had preached through a window to his people on the quay. Stowell found that also, but the window was narrow and barred.
There were ramparts round the four-square walls, but on one side they looked down into the back yards of the little houses that lay against the great fortress and on the other three sides they were exposed to the market-place, the Parliament-square and the harbour.
For the second time Stowell went home in the lowering nightfall with a heavy heart. As the time approached for the execution his agitation increased, and on Thursday night also he tossed about, thinking, thinking. At length he remembered something. He had a key to the Deemster’s private entrance to the Castle, and though the door was always bolted on the inside, a plan of escape occurred to him.
On Friday morning he was in the jailer’s room. It had been the guard-room of the Castle and was hung about with souvenirs of earlier times maps, plans, a cutlass that had been captured in a fight with Spanish pirates, a blunderbuss that had been used by Manx Fencibles, a keyboard, a line of handcuffs, and a rope, in a glass case, that had been used in the hanging of a Manx criminal.
“You haven’t many prisoners in the Castle now, Mr. Vondy?”
“Aw, no! Didn’t your Honour discharge all but one at the last General Gaol?”
“And not much company?”
“Only Willie Shimmin, the turnkey, and he’s a drunken gommeral, always wanting out, and never sure of coming back at all.”
“What about your female warder?”
“Mrs. Mylrea? A dying woman, Sir. Not been here since the trial, and if it wasn’t for Miss Stanley...”
“Does she come often?”
“Nearly every day now, Sir.”
At that moment there was the clang of a bell.
“There she is, I’ll go bail,” said the jailer, and snatching a big key from the keyboard he turned to go.
In the collapse of his better nature Stowell was afraid to meet Fenella, knowing well she would see through him.
“Don’t trouble about me, or mention that I’m here,” he said, and picking up his lantern he made a show of going on with his researches.
But as soon as the jailer had disappeared he turned rapidly to the Deemster’s door and had opened it and stepped out and closed it behind him, before the jailer and Fenella (whose voices he could hear) had emerged from the Portcullis into the courtyard.
It was done! Light had fallen on him at last. Now he knew how Bessie Collister was to escape from Castle Bushen.
But it was not enough that Bessie should escape from her prison; she must escape from the island also; and to do so by means of the regular steam packet from Douglas to England was impossible. Was this to be another and still greater difficulty?
The tide was up in the harbour and the fishing-boats were making ready to go out for the night. As Stowell walked down the quay he saw a blue-coated and brass -buttoned elderly man coming up with unsteady steps the harbour-master. A sudden thought came to him. Why not by a fishing-boat?
He remembered his night with the herrings on the Governor’s yacht, when, lying off the Carlingford sands, he had seen the lights of Dublin. Why could not a fishing-boat steal away in the darkness and put Bessie ashore in Ireland?
It was the very thing! Only it must not be a Castletown boat, lest she should be missed when the fleet came back to port in the morning. Why not a Ramsey boat, or, better still, a boat from Peel?
After dinner that night he walked on the gravelled terrace in front of the house. The moon was shining in a pale sky and the bald crown of old Snaefell was visible through the motionless trees. He drew up on the spot on which he had first parted from Fenella, and a warm vision of the scene of so many years ago returned to him. Then came the memory of their last parting and of the scorching words with which she had driven him away from her.
“But wait! Only wait!” he thought.
He was satisfied with himself. He was sure he was doing right. He even believed God was using him as an instrument of His divine justice, to correct the infamy of the world by a signal action. It was one of those lulls between the wings of a circling storm which come to the soul of man as well as to nature.
He was almost happy.
III
Next morning, under pretext of the Deemster’s fortnightly Court at Douglas and of important business to do before it, Stowell breakfasted by the light of a lamp and the crackling of a fire, and set out in his car for Peel.
Soon after six he was descending into the little white fishing-port that lies in the lap of its blue circle of sea, with the red ruins of its Cathedral at its feet and the green arms of its hills behind it.
The little town was still half asleep. Middle-aged women were gutting herrings from barrel to barrel, while blood dripped from their broad thumbs; old men were baiting lines with shell-fish; cadgers’ carts were standing empty at the foot of the pier, with their horses’ heads in bags of oats and chopped hay; a hundred fishing-boats by the quay, with their sails hanging slack from their masts, were swaying to the ebbing tide, and an Irish tramp steamer, the Dan O’Connor, was lazily letting down the fires under her black and red funnel.
But at the pier-head, close under the blind eyes of the Cathedral, there was a scene of real activity. It was the fish auction for the night’s catch. The auctioneer, an Irishman, was standing on a barrel, with a circle of fish-cadgers around him, and an empty space, like a cock-pit, in front, to which the long-booted fishermen, one by one, with ponderous agility, were carrying specimen baskets of herrings and dropping them down on the red flags with a thud.
“Now, gintlemen, here’s your last chance of a herring this week. We’re a religious people in the Isle of Man and sorra a wan more will ye get till Tuesday.”
Stowell, who had drawn up his car, and was standing at the back of the crowd, was startled. How had he come to forget that Manx fishing boats did not go out on Saturday or Sunday? Was this going to defeat his plan?
The fish auction went on.
“Now, min, what do you say to forty mease from the Mona? Thirty-five shillin’! Thank you, Mr. Flynn! Any incrase on thirty-five?”
“Thirty-six and a quid for yourself if you’ll lave me to put a sight up on the wife,” said a voice from the back of the crowd.
During the laughter which the rude jest provoked, Stowell looked at the speaker. He was the skipper of the Irish tramp steamer a grizzly old salt, spitting tobacco juice from behind a discoloured hand, and having rascal written on every line of his face.
Turning away, Stowell walked slowly to the further end of the bay, and as slowly back again. A new scheme had occurred to him something better than a fishing-boat, far better. He was now more sure than ever that the Almighty was using him for His righteous ends since even his failures of memory were helping him.
By the time he returned the auction was over. The pier was empty and nobody was in sight except the Irish Captain who was standing on the deck of his ship by the side of the cabin companion. After looking to right and left, Stowell saluted him.
“Where are you going to when you leave Peel, Captain?”
“To Castletown, Sir.”
“And from there?”
“To wherever the dust” (the money)” looks brightest.”
“May I come aboard, Captain? I have something to say to you.”
“Shure!”
After another look to right and left, Stowell stepped on to the steamer and followed the Captain to his cabin.
When he came on deck r half-an-hour later, his face was flushed.
“Then it’s settled, Captain?”
“Take the world aisy it’s done, Sir.”
“At what time will it be high water on Sunday night?”
“Elivin o’clock, Sir.”
“You’ll sail immediately your passengers come aboard?”
“The minit they put foot on deck, Sir.”
“What about the harbour-master?”
“Him and me are same as brothers.”
“And the turnkey?”
“Willie Shimmin? He’s got a petticoat at the ‘Manx Arms.’”
“You have no doubt you can do it?”
“Divil a doubt in the world, Sir.”
Stowell, back in his car, was driving to Douglas. The Judge had bribed a blackguard, but he was still sure that he was doing God’s service.
Only one thing remained to do now, and through the long hours of an uneasy night he had thought of it. It was not even enough that Bessie Collister should escape from the island. If she were not to be tracked and brought back it was essential that somebody should go with her. Who should it be? There was only one answer to this question Alick Gell.
Would Alick go? He must! Betrayed and deceived as he had been, if he did not see that he must forgive the woman who had faced death for him, and save her from an unjust punishment, Stowell would feel like taking him by the throat and choking him.
But would Gell forgive him also? That was a different matter. Memory flowed back, and he saw again the fierce yet broken creature who had come stumbling into Ballamoar on the night after the adjournment, crying in the torment of his betrayal, “Damn him, whoever he is! Damn him to the devil and hell!”
“No matter! I must face it out,” thought Stowell.
He must unite those two injured ones. And perhaps some day, when they were gone from the island, and safe in some foreign country, the Almighty would accept his act as a kind of reparation and cover up all his wretched wrongdoing in the merciful veil which is God’s memory. But meantime he must go about for a few days longer, a few days after to-day, warily, secretly, unseen and unsuspected by anybody.
Driving into Douglas, he came upon the Chief Constable, Colonel Farrell (a cringer to all above him and a bully to all beneath), who hailed him and said, “Just the gentleman I wished to see, Sir. It’s about Mr. Gell. Ever since you sentenced that woman of his he has been threatening you, and we’ve had to keep a close watch on him. But he seems to be going out of his mind, and I’ve been warning the Speaker that we may have to put him away. The other night he gave us the slip and we believe he went to Ballamoar.”
“Well?”
“We wish you to allow a plain-clothes man to go about with you for the next few days.”
Stowell was startled.
“No, certainly not. It is quite unnecessary,” he said.
“Well, if you say so it’s all right, Sir. Still, with a madman about, who may make a murderous attack on you...”
