Complete works of hall c.., p.608
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 608
A terrible scene had followed. The Speaker had had one of his brain-storms. His neck had swelled until it was nearly as broad as his face.” Sit down, Sir,” he had shouted, but Qualtrough had refused to do so. At length, overcome by the clamour of his enemies and the silence of his friends, the Speaker had risen to resign. Since he could not maintain the authority of the chair he had no choice but to get out of it.
It had been a pitiful spectacle. None of them who were fathers had been able to look at it with dry eyes. The old man was trembling like a leaf and his legs seemed to be giving way under him.
“They say the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children, but maybe it’s as true the other way about. I’m going blind and deaf. The sands of my life are running out …”
He swayed forward and they thought he would have fallen on his face, but the Secretary of the House caught him in his arms, and then two of them were nominated to bring him home.
“Sorry to say it to your Honour, being his friend,” said the member of the Keys, as they parted at the turn of the road, “but that young fellow has something to answer for.”
That lie had done harm then! Was this the mystery of sin that it must go on and on, from consequence to consequence, deep as the sea and unsearchable as the night?
On returning to Ballamoar, Stowell found Janet in great agitation. Mrs. Gell had sent across to ask if Robbie could run into Ramsey to fetch Doctor Clucas. The doctor had come and gone. The Speaker had had a stroke. It was his second. The third would almost certainly prove fatal.
All that day Stowell was shaken by a chill terror. If the Speaker died would Alick Gell come back to claim his inheritance? If so he would hear it said on all sides that he had killed his father by the disgrace he had brought on him.
What then? Would he tell the whole truth under that terrible temptation, and thus bring down Stowell himself to ruin and extinction?
“But what nonsense I’m talking,” thought Stowell.
Gell could never come back, because Bessie could never do so. Then who was to know that it was a lie that Gell had killed his father?
Suddenly came the thought, “I am to know.”
This fell on him like a thunderbolt. How was he to marry Fenella with a thought like that in his heart? It would be with him night and day. He might even blurt it out in his sleep. “Assassin! It was I who killed the old man by letting that lie go on.”
Feeling feverish and unable to remain indoors, he went out to walk on the gravel path in front of the house. The fresh air revived him and he took possession of himself again.
“If the Speaker dies it will be the act of God,” he thought.
He would be in no way responsible. Neither would Gell. If rumour charged the son with killing the father it would be a lie a damned lie, manufactured by Fate, the great liar.
It was not as if Gell were in any danger the danger of arrest for instance. That would be different. But Gell was in no danger none whatever.
“Therefore bury the thing! Bury it and go on as usual,” he told himself.
The evening was closing in. It was beautiful and limpid. With a high step Stowell was walking to and fro on the path. Visions were rising before him of Gell and Bessie Collister on the big liner, ploughing their way through the darkening ocean to that free continent “where the clouds sailed higher” Archibald Alexander and his sister Elizabeth going out to the new world to begin a new life.
He had visions of Fenella too how he would go up to Government House to-morrow morning. “Tell him to come back to me,” she said to Janet, and now he would go. How happy he was going to be!
“Surely I’ve a right to some happiness after all I’ve gone through.”
He gave himself up to the intoxication of living by anticipation through those most blissful moments to a man and woman who love each other the first moments of reconciliation after a quarrel.
Night had fallen. It was very dark. The late birds were silent, and only the soft young leaves of May were rustling in the darkness overhead with that gentleness that is like the whispering of angels. All at once a red light jogged up from the gate, making shadows among the trees that bordered the drive.
“Good ever in’, Dempster! A letter for you, Sir.”
It was Killip the postman.
“Thank you, Mr. Killip,” said Stowell, taking the letter. He could not see it in the darkness, but at the touch of the large envelope a heavy foreboding came over him.
“I suppose you’ve heard about that affair, your Honour?”
“What affair?”
“Tommy Vondy. He’s got himself kicked out of the Castle for letting that girl escape. The gorm! He’s my first cousin, and he’s in his seventy-seven, but he was always a toot, was Tommy!”
“Good-night, Mr. Killip.”
“Good-night, your Honour!”
When Stowell returned to the porch he looked at his letter by the light of the lamp on the landing. It was from the Governor. He went into the Library and tore it open.
II
“DEAR STOWELL, Of course you have heard what has happened. The escaped prisoner must be recaptured and dealt with according to law. And not she only, but her accomplice also. You know who that is young Gell. The evidence against him is overwhelming. We have traced him almost to the door of the Castle on Sunday evening, and find, too, that a trading steamer left Castletown late the same night. There can hardly be a doubt that the fugitives sailed in her. We must find where she has gone to and bring her passengers back.
“Come here to-morrow morning to issue the necessary warrant and assist Farrell to the ‘distinguishing marks ‘which may be needful for Cell’s identification. I know there is a certain risk in re -opening this wretched inquiry. I had hoped to bury it once for all when I decided on what you thought the extreme step of sending the guilty woman to the gallows. But law and order must be upheld, and the sooner we can silence the people who are saying we are winking at the corruption of justice to spare the son of the Speaker and the friend of the Deemster the better for everybody.
“Be here at eleven. We (the Attorney and the Chief Constable are coming) will be waiting for you. Good Lord, haven’t you been long enough away from this house anyway? If there are strained relations between you and Fenella let them be faced squarely and straightened out at once Yours, etc., “JOHN S. STANLEY.
“Brig. -Gen., K.C.B.
“P.S. Fenella says you have a photograph of Gell which was taken in America some years ago. It is probably the only one on the island, and therefore invaluable to Farrell at this moment. Bring it with you don’t forget.”
Stowell was struck with stupor. Alick Gell was in danger, then, and the whole situation was different.
Raising his eyes after reading the Governor’s letter he saw Gell’s photograph on the mantelpiece in front of him. At that sight a flame of passion took possession of him, and snatching up the picture he flung it in the fire.
“No, by God!” he said aloud. And if Farrell ever asked him for “distinguishing marks” towards Gell’s identification he would take him by the throat and choke him.
But what about the warrant? Any Justice of the peace might issue it, but if the Governor asked him to do so the request would be equal to a command. Suppose he did, what would be the result? Bessie would be brought back and executed. Worse than that, even worse in its different way, Gell would be arrested and tried perhaps by him, and under his warrant!
“No, no, no! It would be a crime a base, cowardly, infamous, abominable crime!”
The veins of his forehead swelled as he thought of the trial. It would be more terrible than the other one. To sit in judgment on an innocent man, being himself the guilty one not Jeffries, or Braxfield, or Brandon or Harebottle or any of the bewigged barbarians whose names befouled the annals of jurisprudence had done anything so awful.
“Never,” he thought. “Never in this world.”
Yet what alternative had he? After dinner (he had tried to eat to keep up appearances before Janet) he drew to the fire and tried to think things out. He had sat long hours in pain, and the fire had died down, when a kind of melancholy peace came to him and he thought he saw what he had to do.
He had to get up early in the morning, reach Government House before the others had arrived, see the Governor alone and say to him in secret, “I cannot issue this warrant for the arrest of Alick Gell for breaking prison to procure that girl’s release because I did it.”
What would happen then? The Governor (he was a just man if a hard one) would say, “In that case, you cannot be a Judge in this island any longer.”
But that would be all. Out of consideration for his daughter, and perhaps for the man who was to become his daughter’s husband, the Governor would go no farther. Some show he might make of publishing the police notice, but he would never send it to a foreign country.
There would be no scandal. The public would know nothing. They had heard that the new Deemster had been unwell, and would be told that his health had broken down altogether, and he had had to resign his office. It would be a month’s talk, and then Time would cover up the whole miserable story in the merciful veil in which it hides so many of our misdoings.
And Fenella? He would tell Fenella also. It would be a shock to her, but she would be on his side now. She would see that he had only tried to prevent a judicial murder, to secure the happiness of two unhappy creatures who, but for him, would have been plunged in misery. They would marry and go away from the island, to Switzerland perhaps, and live there for the rest of their lives.
“Yes, that’s it, that’s it,” he told himself.
It was a cruel comforting like the surgeon’s knife, which, while taking away a man’s disease, takes some of his life-blood also.
He thought of his father, how proud the old Deemster had been of his judicial position and how anxious that his son should succeed to it it was pitiful. He thought of Fenella, what great things they had planned to do when he became a Judge, and now all their hopes had fallen to dust and ashes it was agonising.
Was it necessary? Inevitable? To be cast aside on life’s highway in suffering and shame everlasting; to be like a wretched ship that lies at the bottom of the sea, swaying to the ground-swell below, and moaning like a lost soul to the moans of the other wrecks in the womb of the ocean?
It was not as if he had injured anybody. He had done harm to nobody and nothing. Yet he must do what he had thought of. There was no help for it.
It was late. The household was asleep. The log fire he had been crouching over had fallen to ashes on the hearth. He was shivering and he got up to go to bed. Before leaving the library he sat at the desk under his mother’s picture and wrote “Please call me at six. I must take the first train to Douglas.”
He was laying this on the table on the landing, lighting his candle and putting out the lamp, when he heard wheels on the carriage drive, and then a loud ringing at the front door bell.
Who could have come at this time of night? Candle in hand he went down and opened the door. It was Joshua Scarff.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
“HE DROVE OUT THE MAN”
“SORRY to trouble you at this hour, your Honour, but I had to come and tell you what has happened.”
“What is it, Joshua?”
“There has been a fearful outbreak of lawlessness in Douglas this evening breaking of shop-windows, looting of the houses of well-to-do people, assaults and outrages of all kinds.”
“What is the reason of it?”
“Mob reason, and you know what that is, your Honour. They say justice in the island is corrupt. If you are rich you get whatever you want. If you are poor you get nothing. A guilty man and a guilty woman have been allowed to escape. Why? Because the man belongs to a family of ‘the big ones ‘and is a friend of the Deemster.”
“Who say that?”
“Old Qualtrough and Dan Baldromma.”
“Baldromma? If his step -daughter has escaped what has he to complain of?”
“Nothing, but that’s not the worst, Sir.”
“What is?”
“The Governor has telegraphed for soldiers from across the water. They are to come over by the first boat in the morning. It’s a frightful blunder, Sir.”
Beads of perspiration were rolling down from Joshua’s bald crown.
“There’ll be bloodshed, and Manxmen won’t stand for that. They’ve been their own masters for a thousand years. The Governor can’t treat them as if they were Indian coolies.”
“What do you think ought to be done?”
“That’s what I’ve come to say, Sir. I had gone to bed but I couldn’t take rest, so I got Willie Dawson to drive me over. The people may be wrong about justice, but the only way to pacify them is to prove it.”
“How?”
“The guilty man in this case must give himself up.”
“Give himself up?”
Joshua took off his coloured spectacles and wiped the damp off them.
“I thought your Honour might know where he was. He can’t be far away, Sir.”
“Well?”
“He ought to be told to deliver himself up to the Courts to save the island from ruin. And if he won’t he ought to be denounced.”
“Denounced?”
“It will be a terrible ordeal I know that, Sir. Your friend! Your life-long friend! Pity! Great pity!”
For a perceptible time Stowell did not speak. Then, in a voice which Joshua had never heard before, he said, “Go home and go to bed, Joshua. I’ll see what can be done.”
Joshua had gone, the door had closed behind him and his wheels were dying away down the drive, but Stowell continued to stand in the hall, candle in hand and stiff as a statue. At length he returned to the dining-room, put the candle on the table and sat before the empty hearth.
It was all over! The plan he had made for himself was impossible. There could be no resigning in secret and stealing away from the island.
He had done harm to something. He had done harm to Justice. If Justice fell down what stood up? The man who took the law into his own hands was a criminal, and as a criminal he ought to be punished.
Punished? The shock was terrible. Was he then to give himself up? To confess publicly?
He saw himself pleading guilty to having broken prison. He heard the whole wretched tale of his relation to the unhappy prisoner, and of his trying and condemning her, coming out in open Court. He heard the howls of execration from the people who had hitherto loved and cheered him.
“Is there no other way?” he asked himself.
He saw himself in prison, in prison clothes, in the prison cell, on the prison bed. Above all he saw another Deemster going upstairs to sit on the bench while he lay in the vaults below.
He thought of his father and his family four hundred years of the Ballamoars and not a stain on the name of one of them until now. He thought of Fenella the cruel shame he would bring on her. Granted he was guilty, and deserved punishment, had he any right to punish Fenella also?
The clock on the landing struck one. An owl shrieked in the plantation. He got up and strode about the room. The impulses of the natural man began to fight for safety.
“Good God, what am I thinking about?” he asked himself.
What had he done to deserve all this? He had broken a wicked law which had no right to exist, but did that require that he should denounce himself, go to prison, degrade his father’s name, break Fenella’s heart and put himself up on a gibbet for every passer-by to jeer at and spit upon?
“What madness! What rank madness!”
He thought of the thousands of” great” men in all ages of the world who had broken bad laws, and yet lived in honour and died in glory. Why should he suffer for doing the same thing? Why he and not the others? He laughed in scorn of his own weakness, but at the next moment a mocking voice within him seemed to say, “Go on! Go on! Issue that warrant! Let the unhappy girl who trusted you be brought back and executed. Let the friend who loved you be arrested and tried and sent to jail for the crime you have committed. Go through all that duplicity again. Let the whole community be submerged in anarchy as the consequence of your sin. But remember, when you come out of it all, you will be a devil, and your soul will be damned.”
That terrified him and he sat down by the empty hearth once more. After a while he found his hands wet under his face. He heard a soft, caressing voice pleading with him, “Victor, my darling heart! Resist this great temptation and peace will come to you. Do the right, and no matter how low you may fall in the eyes of men, you will look upon the face of God.”
It was Fenella’s voice he was sure of that. Across the mountain and through the darkness of the night her pure soul was speaking to him.
The candle had burnt to the socket by this time, but a new light came to him. For more than a year he had been a slave, dragging a chain of sin behind him. At every step in his wrong-doing his chain had lengthened. He must break it and be free.
“Yes, I will go up to Government House in the morning,” he thought, “confess everything and take my punishment.”
It was only right, only just. And when the cruel thought came that the next time he entered the court-house it would be to stand in the dock, with the dread certainty of his doom, he told himself that that would be right too the Judge also must be judged.
II
Groping his way upstairs in the darkness he entered his bedroom and locked the door behind him. He found a fire burning, the sofa drawn up in front of it, a lamp burning on the bureau that stood at one side, and at the other the high-backed arm-chair in which his father used to undress for bed. He was surprised to see that the fire had been newly made up, but hearing footsteps in the adjoining bedroom he understood.
“Poor Janet!” he thought.
His thoughts were thundering through his brain like waves in a deep cavern. He was convinced that he would never survive the ordeal that was before him. When men lived through long imprisonments it was because they had hope that the beautiful days would come again. He had no such hope, so, sitting at his bureau, he began to sort and arrange his papers like one who was going away on a long journey.
