Complete works of hall c.., p.609
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 609
After that he wrote a letter to the Attorney-General:
“DEAR MASTER, When this letter comes to your hand you will know the occasion for it. I am aware that it cannot have the authority of a will, but (in the absence of a more regular document) I trust the Clerk of the Rolls may find a way to act upon it as an expression of my last wishes.
“I desire that Janet Curphey should be suitably provided for as long as she lives. She has been a mother to me all my life, the only mother I have ever known.
“I desire that Mrs. Collister of Baldromma may have such a provision made for her as will liberate her from the tyrannies of her husband.
“I desire that Thomas Vondy, formerly the jailer at Castle Rushen, should be taken care of in any way you may consider best.
“Finally, if I do not live to return home, I desire that everything else of which I die possessed should be offered to Fenella Stanley as a mark of my deep love and devotion.
“I think that is all.”
Having signed, sealed and inscribed his letter he put it in his breast pocket. Then taking a drawer out of the bureau he carried it to the sofa, intending to destroy the contents of it.
The first thing that came to his hand was the letter which Alick Gell had given him at Derby Haven. It was marked “To be opened after we have gone,” and turned out to be a memorandum to his father’s executors, telling them he was leaving the island with no intention of returning to it, and asking (as his only request) that in the event of an inheritance becoming due to him, seven hundred pounds, which had been advanced to him at various times, should be repaid to Deemster Victor Stowell “the best friend man ever had.”
Feeling a certain twinge, Stowell hesitated for a moment, with the memorandum shaking in his hand, and then threw it into the fire.
There were other papers of the same kind (I O U’s and the like) which shared the same fate, and then up from the bottom of the drawer, came a leather-bound book. It was “Isobel’s Diary.” He had decided to destroy that also. As the sanctuary of his father’s soul he could not allow it to be looked into by other eyes.
But, never having looked at it himself since the night of his father’s death, he could not resist the temptation to glance through it once more before committing it to the flames. It fell open at the page which said, “So it’s all well at last, Isobel. Your son can do without me now. He needs his father no longer. With that brave woman by his side he will go up and up. They will marry and carry on the traditions of the Ballamoars. It is the dearest wish of my heart that they should do so.”
His throat throbbed. Ah, those hopes, all wrecked and dead! Going down on one knee before the fire, and holding the book on the other, he tore out page by page and burnt it, feeling as if he were burning his right hand also. He was afraid of tears and had rarely given way to them, but he was weeping like a heart-broken woman before the last page had been consumed.
Then, taking Fenella’s letters from his pocket-book, he prepared to burn them too. They brought a faint perfume, a feeling of warmth, a sense of her physical presence. Most of them were notes of no consequence appointments to ride, drive, fish, skate, all touched by her gay raillery (“ eight o’clock in the morning is that too early for you, Viccy, dear?”) he had preserved every scrap in her hand-writing. But one was the letter she wrote to him when he was in London, and with palpitating tenderness he held it under the lamp to read it again:
“Victor, when I think of the life that is so surely before you, and that I shall walk through it by your side, perfectly united with you, sharing the same hopes and aims and desires, enjoying the same sunshine and weathering the same storms, I have a vision of happiness that makes me cry with joy.”
His heart swelled like a troubled sea, and to conquer his emotion he thrust the letter hurriedly into the flames. But before it was more than scorched he snatched it back and was preparing to return it to his pocket when he bethought himself how soon it must pass into other hands with everything he carried about him. And then, turning his head away, and feeling as if he were burning his heart also, he put it into the fire.
After that he dropped back on to the sofa with feelings about Fenella that found no relief in tears. One by one the joyous hours of their love returned to his memory. They seemed to ring in his ears with the melancholy sound of far-off bells. It was a cruel pleasure.
All at once came a moment of fierce rebellion. When he had told himself downstairs that in making the great renunciation of his public office he must renounce Fenella also he had not realised what it meant. It meant that never again, for as long as he lived (Fenella being impossible to him), would Woman take any part in his existence.
A cold fear took possession of him at that thought. He was a man was he for the rest of his life, if he survived his imprisonment, to be cut off from his kind, separated, alone?
Better be dead than live such a life!
Then another and still more startling thought came to him why not? A letter to the Governor, exonerating Gell, and then it would all be over. No warrant! No trial! Why not?
Outside the night was dark. Not a breath of wind was stirring. In the silence of earth and sky he could hear the “swish, swish” of the sea on the shingle at the top of the shore. It must be high water.
“Why not? Why not?”
His head was dizzy. He was thinking of a boat that lay among the lush grass on the sandy bank above the beach. Alick and he had often gone fishing in her. She was heavy, but he was strong he could push her into the water.
He saw himself pulling out to sea, far out, beyond the Point, to where the Gulf Stream in its long race round half the world swept by the island to the coast of Iceland. And then, as the dawn broke in the eastern heavens, he saw himself scuttling the boat and going down with her.
No one would know. The boat would lie at the bottom of the sea until she fell to pieces, and he would go north on the way of the great waters until he came to the feet of the frozen Jokulls, where nobody would be able to say who he was or where he came from.
No scandal! No outcry! No vulgar sensation! Just a pang to Fenella, and then the darkness of death over all.
Thinking the lamp was burning low he was reaching out his hand to turn up the wick when a sense came of somebody being in the room with him. He looked round. All was silent.
“Is anybody there?” he asked aloud.
There was no answer. The dread of miscarrying for ever if he died by his own act began to struggle on the battlefield of his soul with the fear of being cut off from the living who live in God’s peace. He shivered and was trying to rise when again he had the sense of somebody else in the bedroom.
“Who is it?”
At the next moment, raising his eyes, bethought he saw his father in the arm-chair where he had seen him so often. The august face was the same as when he saw it last in that room, except that the melancholy eyes were now open.
“I’m ill,” he thought, and he closed his eyes and put his hand over them.
But when he opened his eyes again his father was still there, looking at him with tenderness and compassion. His brain reeled and he fell face down on the cushions of the sofa.
Then he heard his father speaking to him, gently, affectionately, but firmly, just as he used to do when he was alive.
“My son! My dear son! I know what you are thinking of doing, and I warn you not to do it. No man can run away from the consequences of his sins. If he flies from them in this life he must meet them in the life hereafter, and then it will be a hundred-fold more terrible to be swept from the face of the living God.”
“Father!”
Stowell tried to cry aloud but could not. His father’s voice ceased and at the next moment a vision flashed before him. A line of miserable-looking men were standing before an awful tribunal:
He knew who they were the unjust judges of the world who had corrupted justice. All the grandeur in which they had clothed themselves on earth was gone, and they were there in the nakedness of their shame crying, “Mercy! Mercy! Mercy!”
Stowell felt as if he were falling off the world into a void of unfathomable night. Then blindness fell upon the eyes of his mind and he knew no more.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
THE DAWN OF MORNING
“VICTOR! Victor!”
It was Janet’s voice outside the door.
“Eh?”
“Six o’clock. Didn’t you want to catch the first train to town, dear?”
“Oh yes! All right. I’ll be down presently.”
Stowell found it difficult to recover consciousness. He was lying on the sofa, and he looked around. There was the arm-chair it was empty. But the lamp on the bureau was still burning. He must have slept, for he was feeling refreshed and even strong.
Leaping to his feet he blew out the lamp and pulled back the window curtains. It was a beautiful morning, tranquil as the sky and noiseless as the dew. Over the tops of the tall trees the bald crown of old Snaefell was bathed in sunshine.
He was like another man. Life had no terrors for him now. It was just as if a curse had fallen from him in the night. No more visions! No more spectres! He knew what he had to do and he would do it. He had a sense of immense emancipation. He felt like a slave who had broken the chain which he had dragged after him for years. He was a free man once more.
Throwing off coat and waistcoat he washed lashing the cold water over face and head and neck as if he were diving into one of the dubs in the glen and then went downstairs with a strong step.
Breakfast was not quite ready, so he stepped out over the piazza to the farmyard. The cheerful place was full of its morning activities. Cows were mooing their way to the grass of the fields before barking dogs, and milkmaids were carrying their frothing pails across to the dairy.
He saluted everybody he came upon. “Good-morning, Betty!”
“Good-morning, Mary!” The girls smiled and looked proud, but they said afterwards that the young master’s voice sounded as if he were saying good-bye to them.
Unconsciously he was going about like one who was taking a last look round before setting out on a long journey. He went into the stable, and Molly, his young chestnut mare, turned her head and neighed at him. He went into the empty cow-house, and four young calves in boxes licked, with their long moist tongues, the hand he held down to them.
On the way back to the house he met Robbie Creer, who was full of another story of Mrs. Collister of Baldromma. She had taken the ground with the ebb tide, poor woman. They had put her into the asylum. The doctors said her case was incurable. She was always saying the old Dempster had come from the dead to take her Bessie out of prison.
“But what a blessed end,” said Stowell. “She’ll think her daughter is in heaven, so she’ll always be happy.”
“It’s like she will, Sir,” said Robbie, looking puzzled, and going indoors for his morning bowl of porridge he said to his wife, “A mortal quare thing to say, though, and the woman in the madhouse.”
Stowell ate with an appetite (Janet plying him with coffee and eggs and toasted muffins), and then young Robbie brought round the dog-cart. Janet helped him on with his light loose overcoat and went to the door with him.
He paused there, pulling on his driving-gloves and thinking what cruel pain the dear soul would suffer when she heard that night what he had done during the day. At last he threw his arms about her and kissed her, saying with a gulp, “Good-bye, mother! God bless you!”
And then he sprang up into the cart, snatched at the reins, pulled them taut, and (after the young mare had leapt on her forelegs) darted away.
As he approached the turn of the drive where the house was hidden by the trees he turned and looked back at it what a home to lose!
Janet, who was still at the porch, smoothing her silvery hair, thought he had looked back at her, and she waved her hand to him. Nobody had said a word to her, yet she knew he had been suffering as a result of some terrible wrong-doing. She thought she knew what it was, too, and she had wept bitter tears over it. But he had not a fault in her eyes now.
Her boy! Hers all the way up since he was a child and used to run about the lawn in pinafores. Heaven bless him! He was the best thing God had ever made.
II
The train to town was full to overflowing. The northside people, having heard of yesterday’s doings, were going up to see for themselves” what them toots in Douglas” were doing.
In spite of the guard’s deferential protests Stowell stepped into an open third-class carriage. It had been humming like a beehive until then, but except for a general salutation it became silent when he entered.
A draper’s assistant who sat opposite handed him an English newspaper, two days old, with an article on the escape from Castle Rushen. The incident was a disgrace to the insular administration, and if the Governor could not offer a satisfactory explanation the sooner the island’s Home Rule came to an end the better for Justice.
One or two of the passengers tried to draw Stowell into conversation about the article, but he said little or nothing. Then some black-coated persons (well-to-do farmers and the like) gave the talk another turn.
“Still and for all,” said one,” that doesn’t justify such doings as there are in Douglas!”
“Chut!” said another. “It isn’t justice the agitators are wanting, it’s robbery.”
“Truth enough,” said a third,” it’s the land they’re after, and if the Governor isn’t doing something soon, there’ll be not an acre left at the one of us.”
“Give them a pig of their own sow,” said a fat farmer. “Men like Qualtrough and Baldromma ought to be taken out to say and dropped overboard.”
Again the passengers tried to draw Stowell into conversation, and when they found they could not get him to speak to them they spoke at him.
“Where’s the big men of the island that they’re not telling the people they’re bringing it to wreck and ruin?”
“When a man is claver claver uncommon and mighty with the tongue, he ought to be showing the ignorant gommerals the way they’re going.”
“Yes,” said a little man (he was a local preacher), “when a man has the gift it’s his duty to the Lord to use it.”
“He must be a right man though,” said the fat farmer, “straight as a mast himself, same as some we’ve had at Ballamoar in the good ould days gone by.”
There was silence for a moment after this, and then an old man by the opposite window was heard to whisper, “Lave him alone, men; he knows what hour the clock is striking.”
When the train reached Douglas, Stowell went off with a heavy face. It was remarked that he had not shaken hands his father used to shake hands with everybody.
“He’s his father’s son for all,” said the old man by the window.
Stowell took the cable -car at the bottom of the Prospect Hill which is at the foot of the town. Douglas was still in a state of agitation and the driver had as much as he could do to forge his way, without accidents, through the tumultuous throngs in the thoroughfare.
A cordon of red-coated soldiers from Castletown surrounded Government office, and a noisy crowd (including women with children) were jeering at them from the middle of the street, and shouting up at the windows, under the impression that the Governor was within.
The shops bore signs of yesterday’s rioting many having their shutters up, while the windows of others were barricaded with new boarding.
Stowell got out of the car at the terminus and made the rest of his journey afoot. At the top of the hill, where the road turns towards the Governor’s house, he came upon a mass meeting. From a horseless lorry, decorated with banners, a burly old ruffian with shaggy grey hair (Qualtrough, M.H.K.) was speaking in a voice of thunder, while, on the cross -seat by his side, Dan Baldromma was sitting with the air of a martyr.
“There’s a man on this platform who has gone to prison for his principles. That’s what Justice in the Isle of Man is. And that’s what they would like to be doing with the lot of ye, the big ones of the island. But, gentlemen and ladies, their rotten ould ship is floating on the pumps and she’ll soon be sinking.”
When Stowell reached the Governor’s gate he paused, being out of breath and not so strong as he had imagined. From that point he could see a broad stretch of the coast, as well as the shadowy outlines of the English hills on the other side of the channel. A steamer was sailing into the bay. Perhaps she was bringing the English cavalry the Governor had sent for.
Life is sweet when death is at the door. At that last moment, although he had thought his mind was made up, Stowell found that his heart was failing him. Must he go on? Deliberately destroy himself? No outside power compelling him? The world was wide why not leave all this wreck and ruin behind him and in some other country begin life anew?
The moment of weakness passed and he went on. Half way up the drive, where the trees broke clear and the long white facade of Government House became visible, he dropped his head. He was thinking of the last time he had been there and remembering again the stinging words with which Fenella had driven him away. But there was strength in the thought that he was about to break the chain which he had dragged after him so long, and save his people at the same time.
When the maid opened the door, he asked for the Governor.
“Yes, your Honour,” said the maid, “but Miss Fenella wishes to see you first, Sir.”
His heart was beating hard when he stepped into the house.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
“GOD GAVE HIM DOMINION”
THREE times during breakfast that morning Fenella had seen some body coming up the drive. The first to come was the Major from Castletown, riding at a fast trot. On being shown into the breakfast-room, with spurs clanking, he told the Governor that a mob had gathered about Government Office and were very threatening.
“Tell the Mayor to read the Riot Act, and then do what is necessary for the protection of life and property,” said the Governor.
