Complete works of hall c.., p.604
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 604
He was going home to say good-bye to his mother not with his tongue, for he had no hope of speaking to her, but with his eyes and his heart. If he could only see her for a moment before leaving the island!
It was late when he reached the lane to his father’s house, and the night was dark, for it was the time between the going and the coming of two moons.
At length the blacker darkness of the house stood out against the gloomy sky. There was no light in any of the windows the family had gone to bed. But Alick had been born there, and he thought he could find his way blindfold.
For some time he walked stealthily about, trying to discover the dining-room window, for he remembered what his father had said about his mother sitting with her feet in the fender. He found it at last, but, peering behind the edge of the blind, he saw nothing except the dull slack of the fire dropping to ashes in the grate.
Groping about in the darkness on the gravel his footsteps had made a noise and presently a dog inside began to bark. It was his own dog, Mona, and he remembered that when he was a boy he had bought her as a pup for five shillings from a farmer and brought her home in his arms, licking his hand.
The dog’s clamour awakened the household, and presently, through the long staircase window, he saw his sisters on the landing, in their nightdresses and curl-papers, carrying candles and looking frightened.
Then the sash of a window went up with a bang and his father’s voice came in a husky roar through the night, “Who’s that?”
With a chill down his back, Alick turned about and hurried away, feeling that he was being driven from the home of his boyhood as if he were a thief.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
THE ESCAPE
NEXT day was Sunday. It was a blind day at Ballamoar, with a chill air and white mists sweeping up from the sea.
In the morning Stowell went to church. In the afternoon he sat in the Library, reading in many volumes the stories of prison-breakings and escapes. He saw that in nearly every case of failure chance had played a part at the last moment, and he thought hard to foresee every possible contingency.
Towards evening he brought his car round from the garage and told Janet not to wait up for him. She had delivered Fenella’s message (“ Tell him to come back to me “) and thought she knew where he was going to. He was going to Government House. The sweet old soul was very happy.
“I’ll leave the piazza door on the catch, dear,” she said, as he “as going off into the moving shadows of the trees.
By the time he reached Castletown the mist had deepened to a fog. The broad tower of the Castle looked monstrously large and forbidding against the gloom of the sky, and the fog-horn of the light-house on Langness was blowing with a measured and melancholy sound across the unseen sea.
Coming upon a tholthan (a ruined cottage) by the roadside he ran his car into it, and then walked into the town.
The little place was once the capital of the island, and still retained many of its primitive characteristics. There were no lamps in the streets, which were therefore quite dark. Only a few of the houses gave out light, for the younger children were already in bed and their parents were trooping to church or chapel.
The church bells were ringing. Save for that, and the footsteps of his fellow pedestrians who walked in the darkness beside him, Stowell heard nothing but the blowing of the far-off fog-horn. Everything favoured his design. “It was meant to be,” he told himself.
Nevertheless he was conscious of making his steps light and of trying to escape observation. He took the least frequented thorough – fares, so that he might walk fast and not be recognised, but in a narrow lane that ran along under the Castle he came upon a pitiful spectacle and was compelled to stop.
An elderly woman, wearing little except her nightdress, with her feet bare and her long grey hair hanging loose, was kneeling on the paved way and praying.
“Oh Lord, as Thou didst send Thine angel to take Peter out of prison, send him now to take my poor girl out of the Castle.”
By a dull light from a curtained window, Stowell saw who the poor demented creature was. It was Mrs. Collister. Little as he desired it, he had to pick her up and take her home.
“Come, mother,” he said, raising her to her feet.
She looked into his face with awe, and permitted herself to be led away by the hand like a child. A group of boys and girls who had gathered round told him where she lived and that she was the mother of the woman who was to be “hangt” in the morning.
Just then the people, a man and his wife, with whom she lodged, came hurrying up, saying they had left her in bed while they went into their yard on some errand and on returning to the kitchen they had missed her.
In a few moments they were all at the open door of the house, a tiny place two steps down from the street, with a lamp burning on the table.
Finding the light on his face Stowell said Good-evening and hurried away, but not before the man and his wife had seen him.
“That must be the young Dempster,” said the man.
“It was his father,” said Mrs. Collister.
“But his father is dead, woman,” said the wife.
“It was his father, I tell thee,” said Mrs. Collister, and they let her have her way.
Still the church-bells rang, the fog-horn blew and Stowell stepped lightly through the dark streets of the little town. He passed the new Methodist chapel with the dark figure of the pew-opener against the coloured glass screen of the vestibule; the barracks, with the sentinel pacing outside and a number of red -coated soldiers in a bare room within, smoking and playing cards. The market-square was ablaze with light from the windows of the church (the same at which Bessie had kept Oie’l Verree) and the shadowy forms of the congregation were passing in at the porch.
At length he reached the quay with its smell of rock-salt and tar. The Dan O’Connell was lying under the Castle gates, lazily getting up steam, and the Captain was smoking by the gangway.
“Everything right, Captain?”
“Everything, Sir.”
“Will the fog interfere?”
“Not a ha’porth, yer Honour.”
“What about the Harbour-master?”
“In church with the wife, but I’m to have supper with him after the sarvice and take a bottle of something.”
“And the Turnkey?”
“Blind polatic at the ‘Manx Arms,’ Sir.”
There came a dull hammering from inside the Castle. Stowell shivered.
“Will they be gone in time?”
“Going back by the last train they’re telling me.”
“You’ll whistle when you’re clear away?”
“Shure!”
As Stowell crossed the foot-bridge at the back of the Church, he heard the congregation singing the opening hymn (“Nearer, my God, to Thee “) and thought he knew the subject of the forthcoming sermon. The melancholy blowing of the fog-horn was coming through the blindness of the sea; the revolving light was blinking in and out on Langness.
A quarter of an hour later he was at Derby Haven. Most of the houses of the little port were dark, but the window of one of them gave out a faint light. Stowell tapped at it and Gell opened the door.
For two hours they sat together in the old maids’ stuffy sitting-room, talking in whispers. Stowell gave Gell his last instructions.
“You remember that there are two gates to the Castle?”
“Yes.”
“At eleven o’clock exactly, the moment the clock has ceased striking, you’ll ring at the big gate, and then step round to the Deemster’s.”
“Yes!”
“Somebody will open the gate. It will be the jailer. If he calls you’ll make no answer.”
“Yes?”
“As soon as he has closed the big gate the little one will be opened and Bessie will be brought out to you.”
“Yes?”
“That’s all. You know the rest.”
After that there was a cold silence, quite unlike the warmth of yesterday. Each was thinking of the cruel thing which had come between them, and neither dared to talk about. At length Gell, taking something from his pocket, said, “I owe you some money.”
“No, you don’t. Remember the terms I lent it on.”
“Then take this anyway,” said Gell, handing Stowell a sealed envelope.
After that there was another long silence, and then Gell said, in a thick voice, “When we’re far enough away I’ll write.”
“No, -no!”
“Do you mean that I’m never to write to you?”
“Never.”
“But I will … I must....”
“Don’t be a damned fool, man. Can’t you see you never can?”
There was a pause.
“Victor,” said Gell, “that’s the first unkind word you have ever said to me.”
“Alick,” said Stowell, “it shall be the last.”
The wash of the tide (it was near to the flood) on the stones of the shore, the monotonous blowing of the fog-horn and the deliberate ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece were the only sounds they heard except the irregular heave of their own breathing.
The two men were alternately watching the fingers of the clock and gazing down at the pattern of the carpet. At a few minutes to ten Stowell got up and said, “I must go now.”
“I’ll walk down the road with you,” said Gell.
They walked side by side in the mist until they came to the ruins of Hango Hill (where long before Alick had had his fight with the townsmen) and were breast to breast with King William’s College.
“You had better go back now. We must not be seen together,” said Stowell.
They stood for some moments without speaking. The clock in the school tower was striking ten. The school itself was in darkness. Another generation of boys were lying asleep in it now.
“I suppose we’ve got to say good-bye,” said Gell.
Stowell made no reply, but he took Gell’s hand and there was a long handclasp. Then they separated, Stowell going on towards the town, and Gell turning back to Derby Haven. Each had walked a few paces when Gell stopped and called, “Vic!”
“What is it?”
There was a pause, and then, in a thick voice, “Nothing! S’long!”
And so they parted.
There was loud laughter and a voice with a brogue from a house on the quay with the blind down but the top sash of the window partly open. The church was dark and the market-place silent, save for the measured tread of the sentry.
But as Stowell crossed the square he heard a light step and saw through the thick air the shadowy form of a woman coming from the direction of the Castle and going towards the hotel opposite.
He hung back until she had passed, and when the door of the hotel opened to her knocking, and the light from within rushed out on her, he saw who it was.
It was Fenella. Stowell understood. She had come from the cell of the condemned woman, and was sleeping in Castletown that night in order to be with her in the morning.
“But wait! Only wait!”
In spite of his certainty that Providence was on his side he stepped more lightly than ever as he went down to the quay.
The funnel of the Irish steamer was now throbbing hard, and a few sailors on the forward deck were swearing. Save for this and the wash of the tide against the sides of the harbour, all was still.
Stowell looked around and listened for a moment. Then he stepped up to the Deemster’s door and pulled the bell, and heard its clang inside the walls.
II
“Ah, is it you, Dempster? You’ve come for Miss Stanley? She’s just gone, Sir.”
“I know. I saw her. Are you alone, Mr. Vondy?”
“Alone enough, Sir. It’s shocking! The night before an execution too! That Willie Shimmin, the drunken gommeral, went off at four and isn’t back yet. I wouldn’t trust but I’ll be here by myself until the High Bailiff and the Inspector and long Duggie Taggart come at six in the morning.”
“How is your prisoner to-night, Mr. Vondy?”
“Wonderful quiet, Sir.”
“Still expecting her pardon?”
“‘Deed she is, poor bogh, and listening for Mr. Cell’s feet to fetch it. Now she thinks he’ll come in the morning. ‘Something tells me he’ll come at daybreak,’ she said, and that’s the for she’s gone to sleep.”
They had reached the guard-room, where a fire was burning, and an old oak armchair (once the seat of the Kings of Man) was drawn up in front of the hearth.
“Gone to sleep, has she? I must see her though. I have something to tell her.”
“Is it the pardon itself, Sir? Has it come then?”
“Not yet, but a telegram may come from London at any moment.”
“You don’t say?”
“Give me your key, and sit here and make your supper” (a kettle was singing on the hob),” and if you hear the bell you will go off to the gate immediately.”
“I will that, Sir.”
At the end of a long corridor Stowell stopped at a cell that had a label on the door-post (“ Elizabeth Corteen. Murder. Death “) and looked in through the grill. In the dim light he saw the prisoner lying on her plank bed under her brown prison blanket. With a tremor of the heart he opened the door quietly and closed it behind him.
“Bessie!”
It had been hardly more than a whisper, but through the mists of sleep Bessie heard it. There was a cry, a bound, and then a rapturous voice saying in the half darkness, “Ah, you are here already! I knew you would come.”
But at the next moment, seeing who her visitor was, she stared at him with wide-open eyes, and then fell on him with reproaches.
“So it’s you, is it? What have you come for? Is it only to tell me that I’m to die in the morning?”
Stowell stood with head down, feeling like a prisoner before his Judge. Then he said, “You are not to die, Bessie.”
She caught her breath and put up her hands to her breast.
“Do you mean that I am...”
“You are pardoned and have to leave this place immediately.”
For a perceptible time Bessie stood silent, save for her breathing, which was loud and rapid.
“Is it true? Really true?”
“Quite true.”
There is something childlike in sudden joy; Paradise itself must be a place of children. Bessie dropped back on her bed clasped her hands together like a child, and said, “I see it all now, and it has been just as I thought at first. You wrote a letter to the King and he has pardoned me. The law is hard but the King is so tender-hearted. ‘Poor girl,’ he thought, ‘she didn’t mean to kill her baby not after it came, anyway.’”
Her eyes, which had been glistening, suddenly became grave, and lifting them to the ceiling, with her hands clasped before her face, she began to pray.
“Oh God, I’ve not been a good girl and I don’t know how to pray right, but …” and then came a flood of words too sacred to be set down.
When she had finished her prayer she said, “But you have been good too, and I have been insulting you! That’s the way with a girl when she has been in trouble. You’ll forgive me, won’t you?”
Her face lit up and she went on talking, more to herself than to Stowell.
“Did you say I was to leave this place immediately? That means first thing to-morrow, doesn’t it? I’ll go to mother. She’s staying with some Methodist people in Quay Lane. Poor mother, she won’t be able to believe it. We’ll go home by the first train.”
Thinking of home she found a kind of proud revenge in triumphing over her enemies.
“Dan Baldroma will have to hold his tongue now. And those Skillicornes will never be allowed to show their ugly old faces again. And Cain the constable will have to find another beat, too, and those impudent girls who stared at me at Douglas station they’ll never have the face to sit in the singing-seat again.”
But the smiling background of her thoughts was love.
“Alick will hear of it, won’t he? I wrote to him but he didn’t answer. Perhaps his sisters prevented him they’ve always been casting me up to him. Poor Alick! He’ll forgive me I know he will. It was for Alick I did it. And just think! Next Sunday, perhaps, when people are walking about, we’ll go down Parliament Street together! And me on Alick’s arm, and nobody to say a word against it, now that the King has forgiven me!”
Stowell hardly dared to look at the girl. For a long time he could not speak. But at length he compelled himself to tell her that she was not to go home. It was a condition of her pardon that she should leave the island.
“Leave the island?”
“Yes, there’s a steamer in the harbour, and you are to sail by it to-night.”
“To-night?”
“Yes, to Ireland, and from there, by another steamer, to New York.”
“To New York?”
“Yes, but Alick is to go with you. I’ve just left him. We have arranged everything.”
She looked searchingly into his agitated face and the radiance died off her own.
“But are you telling me the truth?” she said. “Am I really pardoned? You are not helping me to escape, are you?”
He pretended to laugh it was hollow laughter.
“What an idea! A Deemster helping a prisoner to escape!
Who would believe such a thing?”
“No! People wouldn’t believe such a thing, would they?” she said, and her eyes again began to shine.
“At eleven o’clock the big bell will ring,” said Stowell. “That will be Alick coming for you. You must give me your hand and I’ll take you down to him.”
“Oh, how happy we shall be!” she said.” We shall go far away, I suppose where nobody will know what has happened here?”
“Yes, but you must make no noise on going out, and not call to anybody.”
“But Mr. Vondy he has been so good I may stop and thank him?”
“He won’t be there. I’ll give him your message.”
“But mother if I’m going so far away I must say good-bye to her.”
“No, I’m sorry the steamer will sail immediately.”
She looked again into his agitated face and then, raising her voice, she said, “Mr. Stowell, you are deceiving me. I have not been pardoned. You are helping me to escape.”
