Chapter TWELVE: The Death of the Deemster

The Deemster had not intended to sit at the next Court of General Gaol Delivery, and had already arranged for the second Deemster to take his place, but when, next morning at breakfast, he heard from Fenella that Victor was to plead, he determined to preside.

"I must hear Victor's first case at the General Gaol," he said.

"We shall have to be careful, then," said Dr. Clucas. "No excitement, your Honour! No more heart-strain!"

On the morning of the trial he was up early. Janet heard him humming to himself in the conservatory as he cut the flowers for the vase in front of his young wife's picture. When he was ready to go she helped him on with his overcoat, turning up the collar and putting a muffler about his neck. And when young Robbie came round with the dog-cart he stepped up into it with surprising strength.

And then Janet, who had smuggled a brandy-flask into the luncheon basket at the back of the dog-cart, stood with a swollen heart and watched the old man as he went off in the morning mist, with the awakened rooks cawing over the unseen tops of the trees.

Three hours later, the Deemster arrived at Castletown. The sun was up, and there was a crowd at the castle gate. All hats were off as he passed through the Judge's private passage-way to the dark robing-room with its deeply recessed window. The Governor, in General's uniform, was there already, for he sat also in the high court of the island.

A few minutes later they were in the Court-house. It was densely crowded, and all rose as they entered. But at that moment the Deemster was conscious of one presence only--his own youth in wig and gown (himself as he used to be forty years before) in the curved benches for the advocates immediately below. It was Victor.

Then the prisoner was brought in--a forlorn-looking creature of three or four-and-twenty, not without traces of former comeliness, but now a rag of a woman, ill-clad and slatternly.

When asked to plead she said nothing, therefore the customary plea of Not Guilty was made for her, and without more ado the Attorney-General embarked on the history of her crime.

It was not a case for refinement; the crime was palpable; it had no redeeming feature, and for the protection of life in the island it called for the extreme penalty of the law.

Then, with the usual long pauses, the woman's story was raked out of the witnesses--her neighbours in the low streets that crept under the Castle walls, the police and the doctor. She had been an orphan from her birth, brought up at the expense of the parish by a woman who had ill-treated her. As a young servant-girl she had been "taken advantage of" in the big house she lived in, perhaps by the footman, more probably by an officer of the regiment then garrisoned in the town. Finally she had married the dead man, lived a cat-and-dog life with him (there was a dark record of drink and assaults) and at last stabbed him to the heart in a fatal quarrel and been found standing over his body with a table-knife in her hand.

Stowell's cross-examination consisted of three questions only. When the dead man was found had he anything in his hand? "Yes, a poker," said the policeman. When the prisoner was arrested were there any wounds on her? "Yes, three on the head," said the doctor. Were there any wounds on the dead man's body except the heart-stab from which he died? "None whatever."

"Ah!" said the Deemster, and he reached forward to make a note.

When the Court adjourned for luncheon, the case for the Crown was over, and it almost seemed as if the rope of the hangman were already about the prisoner's neck.

Stowell did not leave the Court-house. He sat in his place with folded arms and closed eyes. Tommy Vondy, the gaoler, looked in on him sitting alone, and presently returned (from the direction of the Deemster's room) with a plate of sandwiches and something in a glass, but he sent back both untouched.

When the Court resumed it appeared to be still more crowded and excited than before. As the Deemster took his seat, he saw that his son's face was strongly illumined by the sun (which was now streaming from a lantern light in the roof) and that it was pale and drawn. Immediately behind Victor a lady was sitting--it was Fenella Stanley.

Then Stowell rose for the defence. There was a hush, and the Deemster found himself breathing audibly and wishing that he could pour something of himself into his son--himself as he used to be in the old days when God had given him strength.

But that was only for a moment. Stowell began slowly, almost nervously, but was soon speaking with complete command, and the Deemster, who had been bending forward, leaned back.

He did not intend to call witnesses. Neither would he put the prisoner into the box. He would content himself with the evidence for the Crown. He knew no more about the crime than the jury did. The accused had told him nothing, and degraded as they might think her, he had not thought it right to invade the sanctity of a woman's soul. That she had killed her husband was clear. If killing him was a crime she was guilty. But was it a crime? To answer that let the jury follow him while he did his best to piece together, from the evidence before them, the torn manuscript of this poor creature's story.

Then followed such speaking as none could remember to have heard in that court before. Flash after flash of spiritual light seemed to recreate the stages of the prisoner's life. First, as the child, who should have been happy as the birds and bright as the flowers, but had never known one hour of the love and guidance of her natural protectors. Next, as the young girl, pretty perhaps, with the light of love dawning on her, but betrayed and abandoned. Next, as the deserted creature, braving out her disgrace with "Wait! only wait! My gentleman will come back and marry me yet!" Next, as the badgered and shame-ridden woman, with all hope gone, saying to her despairing heart, "What do I care what happens to me now? Not a toss!" and then marrying (as the last cover for a hunted dog) the brute who afterwards had beaten her, brutalized her, cursed her, taught her to drink, and brought her down, down, down to .... what they saw.

Kill him? Yes, she had killed him--there couldn't be a doubt about that. But if she had three wounds on her body, and he had only the wound from which he died, was it not clear as noonday that she had been the victim of a murderous assault, and had struck back to save her life? If so her act was not murder and the only righteous verdict would be Not Guilty.

For the last passage of his defence Stowell faced full upon the jury, and spoke in a ringing and searching voice:

"Long ago, in Galilee, out of the supreme compassion which covered with forgiveness the transgressions of one who had sinned much but loved much, it was said, 'Let him that is without sin among you cast the first stone.' We have all done something we would fain forget, and when we lay our heads on our pillow we pray that the darkness may hide it. But does anybody doubt that if the all-seeing Justice could enter this Court this day another figure would be standing there in the dock by the side of that unhappy woman--a man in scarlet uniform perhaps, with decorations on his breast, and that the Deemster would have to say to him, 'You did this, for you were the first.' Mercy, then--mercy for the beaten, the broken, the scapegoat, the sinner."

People said afterwards that Stowell was a full half minute in his seat before anybody seemed to be aware that he was no longer speaking.

The spectators had listened without making a sound; the jury (a panel of stolid Manx farmers) had sat without moving a muscle; the prisoner had raised her head for the first time during the trial and then dropped it lower than before and her shoulders had shaken as if from inaudible sobs; the Governor, who had all day been drawing geometrical patterns on the sheet of foolscap in front of him, had let his pencil fall and stared down at the paper, and the Deemster had looked up at the lantern light from which the sunlight (it had moved on) was now streaming upon his face, showing at last a solitary tear that was rolling slowly down his cheek to the end of his firm-set mouth.

Then there was a rustle, as if the windows of a room on the edge of the sea had suddenly been thrown open. The Attorney-General was speaking again. After the defence they had just listened to (there being no evidence to rebut) he would waive his right of reply--the Crown desired justice, not revenge.

The Deemster's summing-up was the shortest that had ever been heard from him. There were legal reasons which justified the taking of human life, but the cases to which they applied were few. If the jury thought the prisoner had wilfully killed her husband they would find her Guilty. If they were satisfied from what they had heard that she had reasonable grounds for thinking that a felony was being committed upon her which endangered her own life they would find her Not Guilty.

Without leaving their box the jury promptly gave a verdict of Not Guilty; and then the Deemster in a loud, clear, almost triumphant voice said:

"Let the prisoner be discharged."

A few minutes later there was a scene of excitement on the green within the Castle walls. The spectators, being turned out of the Court-house with difficulty, were waiting for the chief actors in the life-drama to come down the stone steps, and from the private door to the Deemster's room.

"Wonderful! He snatched the woman out of the jaws of death, Sir!" "The Deemster's a grand man, but he'll have to be looking to his laurels!" "Man alive, that was a speech that must have been dear to a father's heart, though!"

Stowell was one of the first to appear. He looked pale, almost ill, and was carrying his soft felt hat in his hand, for the Courthouse had been close and there was perspiration on his forehead still. A way was made for him and he passed through the courtyard without speaking or making sign, until he came under the arch of the Portcullis and there he was stopped by someone. It was Fenella. She was waiting for the Governor and hoping she might come upon Stowell also. Her eyes were red and swollen.

"How magnificent you were!" she said. And then with a half-tremulous laugh: "But how could you see into a woman's heart like that? I shall always be afraid of you in future, Sir!"

The Deemster came next. He was muffled in his great-coat and scarf, and was walking heavily on his stick, but there was a proud look in his uplifted face. With his left hand he grasped Victor's right, but he did not look at him, and he passed on without a word. Fenella followed, offering her arm, but he insisted on giving his--the grand old gentleman to the last.

But this time the Attorney-General had taken possession of Stowell. He had lost his case, but one of his "boys" had won it. "I've just been telling your father I always knew the root of the matter was in you," he said, and then others gathered around.

The Governor came last, having had documents to sign, and taking Stowell's arm, he carried him away, saying, "Come along--they'll kill you."

The Deemster's dog-cart had now gone, but the Governor's carriage was at the gate, with Fenella inside.

"Don't forget your promise about Ballamoar," she said.

"I'm going to-morrow," said Stowell.

Just then there was a commotion among the crowd. The liberated woman was coming out of the Castle, surrounded by a tumultuous company of her friends from the back streets. She saw Stowell by the carriage door, and breaking away from her companions she rushed up to him, threw herself at his feet, laid hold of his hand and covered it with kisses.

"That settles it," said Fenella, in a thick voice, after the woman had been carried off. "Now you know what the future of your life is to be--that of the champion of wronged and helpless women."

At the railway station, and in the railway carriage, Stowell's fellow advocates overwhelmed him with congratulations, but he hardly heard them. At last he folded his arms and closed his eyes, and, thinking he was tired, they left off troubling him.

On arriving at Ramsey his pulses were beating fast, and on going down the High Street, past the Old Plough Inn, he hardly felt the ground under his feet.

Clashing his door behind him he went into his bedroom and threw himself down on his bed. An immense joy had taken possession of him. Ambition, dead so long, had been restored to vivid life under Fenella's last words.

And then came a shock. Turning to the table by his bedside, his eyes fell on the photograph that stood upon it.

Bessie Collister!

II

The Deemster had a cheerful homegoing. Young Robbie Creer said afterwards that he had never seen the old man so strong and hearty. Driving himself, he saluted everybody on the roads, always by name and generally in the Anglo-Manx. All the way back it was "How do, John?" or "Grand day done, Mr. Killip."

Janet was waiting for him at the porch of Ballamoar.

"You must be tired after your long day, your Honour?"

"Not at all!"

"And Victor--how did he get on, Sir?"

"Wonderfully! Won his case and covered himself with honour."

At dinner (he insisted on Janet dining with him) he talked of nothing but Victor and the trial.

"He has got his foot on the ladder now, Miss Curphey, and there is no height to which he may not ascend."

Janet could do nothing but wipe her shining eyes and say,

"Aw, well now! Think of that now!" And then, with a wise shake of her old head, "But nobody can say I didn't know he would make us proud of him some day."

Night fell. Janet began to be afraid of the Deemster's excitement. She remembered Doctor Clucas's order (privately given to her) to knock at the Deemster's door between six and seven every morning, and, if she got no answer, to go into the room. She would do so to-morrow.

After Janet had gone to bed the Deemster sat at his desk in the Library and wrote for a long time in his leather-bound book. When he rose the clock on the landing was striking twelve.

He closed the book, but instead of putting it under lock and key, as he had always done before, he left it open on the desk, merely shutting the lid on it. Then with a long look round the room he put out the lamps and turned to go upstairs.

The reaction had begun by this time, and he staggered a little and laid hold of the handrail. He paused three times on the stairs, but his weakness did not frighten him. Lighting his candle on the landing, he wound the clock, extinguished the lamp that stood by it and faced the last flight with a smile. All was silent in the house now.

On reaching his own bedroom he paused again, and then stepped down the corridor to Victor's. The door was ajar. He pushed it open, took a step into the empty room and looked round--at the cocoa-nut matting, the rugs, the bed in the shadow, the discoloured school trunk in the corner. And then he smiled again. But he was breathing deeply at intervals and had the look of a man who knew that he was doing familiar things for the last time.

The window in his own room was open, and the smell of tropical plants (especially the magnolia, with its sleep-inducing odour) was coming up from the garden. He remembered that his own father had brought them from the East long ago, when he was himself a boy.

The sky was dark, but the hidden moon broke through silvery clouds for a moment, and, looking through the surrounding blackness, he saw the bald crown of Snaefell, far beyond the trees and above the glen. He remembered that he had seen it so all the way up since he was a child.

He closed the curtains slowly and taking his candle again he walked around the room and looked long at the pictures on the walls. They were chiefly portraits or miniatures of Victor, at various periods of childhood and youth--the latest being a photograph sent home to him from abroad.

That was the last oscillation of the pendulum. When he was about to prepare for bed he found his strength exhausted, and he was compelled to sit several times while he undressed. But he continued to smile, and when he lay down at length and put his head on the-pillow he did it with a will.

Then he closed his eyes, and drew a deep breath, as one who has gone through a long day's labour but has seen it finish up well at the end. And then he closed his eyes and the surge of sleep passed over him.

Outside the house everything seemed to slumber. It was a night strangely calm and dark. The tall elms stood like soundless sentinels in the darkness. Not a leaf stirred. The rivers flowed without noise, as if a supernatural hand had been laid on them to silence them. The only sound was the slow boom of the sea, which seemed to come up out of the ground and to be the pulse of the earth itself. The deep mystery of night was over all.

Towards morning there was a faint waft of wind in the trees and along the grass. Was it the movement in the earth's bosom of the new day about to be born? Or some invisible presence striding along with noiseless footsteps?

Within the house everything seemed to sleep. But the Deemster lay dead.

III

"Mr. Victor, Sir! Mr. Victor!"

It was Robbie Creer, who, after knocking in vain at Stowell's door in the grey hours of morning, was shouting up at his window. He had driven into town in the dog-cart and the little mare was steaming with perspiration.

Stowell threw up the window and heard the dread news. After a moment he answered, in a voice that sounded strange in Robbie's ears:

"Wait for me. I will go back with you."

When he was ready to go he wrote a message to Fenella, and left it for Mrs. Quayle to send off as soon as the telegraph office opened:

"_He has gone, heaven, forgive me. I am going home now._"

It was Sunday morning, and the sleeping streets echoed to the rattle of the flying wheels. When they got into the country (they were taking the shortest cuts) the farms were lying idle and quiet. Stowell sat with folded arms while they raced past the whitewashed cottages with thatched roofs, and scattered flocks of geese that went off with screams and stretched necks.

On arriving at Ballamoar he paused before entering the house. The pastoral tranquillity of the place was heart-breaking. The sun had risen, the rooks were cawing, the linnets were twittering in the eaves, a kitten was playing with a butterfly in the porch--it was just as if nothing had happened during the night.

Janet was in his father's room, with red eyes and a handkerchief in her hand. She did not speak, but her silence seemed to say, "Why didn't you come before?"

Stowell advanced to the side of the bed. The august face on the pillow, in the majesty and tranquillity of death, had never before looked so calm and noble, but that also seemed to say: "Why didn't you come before?" He reached over and put his lips to the cold forehead. And then, with head down, he hurried from the room.

He could never afterwards remember what he did during the rest of that day--only that to escape from the vague cheerfulness, the hushed bustle, the half-smothered hysteria, which come to a house after a death, he had strolled along the shore and past the ruined church in which he had walked with Fenella.

At length Janet came to him in the library to say "Good-night" and to sob out something about not grieving too much. And then he was left alone.

Sitting at the desk, where his father had sat the night before, he took up the leather-bound book and read it from end to end--not without a sense of looking into the sanctuary of another soul, where only God's eyes should see.

It was a large volume, of some five hundred quarto pages, with "Isobel's Diary" inscribed on its first page, and these words below:

"Inasmuch as I cannot believe that my beloved companion who has
died to-day is lost to me even in this life, and being convinced
that the divine purpose in leaving me behind is that I may care
for and guard her child, I dedicate this book to the record of my
sacred duty."

Then followed, in the Deemster's steady handwriting, a daily entry, sometimes only a phrase or a line, sometimes a page, but always about his son:

"This morning in the library, making my desk under your portrait
his altar, Parson Cowley baptised your boy--Janet Curphey
standing godmother, and the Attorney his other sponsor. We
called him Victor, so the last of your dear wishes has been
fulfilled."

Stowell looked up and around him. He was on the very spot of that scene of so many years ago. Then came records of his childhood, his childish talk, his childish rhymes, his childish ailments:

"Your boy contracted a cold yesterday, and fearing it might
develop into bronchitis, I sat up most of the night that I might
go into the nursery at intervals to mend the fire under the steam
kettle, Janet being worn out and sleepy. Thank God his breathing
is better this morning!"

Stowell felt as if he were choking. Then came the records of his school-days; his expulsion; the slack times before he set to work; the bright ones when he was a student-at-law; the dark ones when he was going headlong to the dogs. After these latter entries it would be:

"A son is a separate being, Isobel. I can only stand and wait."

Or sometimes, as if for comfort, a line from one of the great books, not rarely the Bible:

"Thy way is in the sea, and thy path is the great waters, and thy
footsteps are not known."

It was now the middle of the night. A dog was howling somewhere in the farm. Stowell paused and thought of the superstition about a howling dog and a dead body. When he resumed his reading he turned the pages with a trembling hand:

"It is six months since Victor returned to the island and he has
only been here twice. I had hoped he would come to live with me
at Ballamoar. But I must not complain. Nature looks forward,
not backward. No son can love his father as the father loves the
son. That is the law of life, Isobel, and we who are fathers
must reconcile ourselves to it."

Stowell felt his head reel and his eyes swim. If he had only known. If somebody had only told him!

The fire behind him had gone out by this time and he had begun to shiver. But he turned back to the book for the few remaining pages. And then came a shock. They were all about Fenella, and the Deemster's hope that she and his son would marry.

"Never were two young people better matched to the outer eye,
Isobel--that splendid girl with her conquering loveliness or your
son with his mother's face. Her influence on him seems to be
wonderful. She has only been a month back from London, but he is
like a new man already."

Overwhelmed with confusion Stowell tried to close the book, but he could not do so.

"A man looks for a woman who is a heroine, and a woman for a man
who is a hero, and please God these two have found each other."

Then came a glowing account of the trial at Castle Rushen, and then:

"So it's all well at last, Isobel. Your son can do without me
now. He needs his father no longer. With that fine woman by his
side he will go up and up. They will marry and carry on the
tradition of the Ballamoars. It is the dearest wish of my heart
that they should do so."

There was only one entry after that, and it ran:

"I am tired and my work is done. Now I can rejoin you, having
waited so long. When I close my eyes to-night I shall see your
face--I know I shall. So Good-night, Isobel! Or should I say,
Good-morning?"

The clock on the landing was striking three--the most solemn hour of day and night, for it is the hour between. Stowell, with a heavy heart, the book in one hand and his candle in the other, was going to bed. Reaching the door of his father's room he dropped to his knees.

"Forgive me! Forgive me! Forgive me!"

But after a while a light seemed to break on him. Where his father now was he would know that there was no help for it--that he, too, must follow the line of honour.

"Yes," he thought, rising and going on to his own room. "I must do the right, whatever it may cost me."

IV

On the morning of the burial, Stowell received a letter from Bessie Collister:

"Dere Victor,

"I am sorry to here from Alick about the death of the Deemster
you must feel it verry much the loss of such a good kinde father
everrybody is talking about him and saying he was the best
gentleman that everr was thank you for the nice cloths Mrs.
Quayle bought me. Alick is very kinde--

"Bessie."

The poor, illiterate, inadequate, ill-spent message made Stowell's heart grow cold, and with a certain shame he read it by stealth and then smuggled it away.

The news of the Deemster's death had fallen on the Manx people like a thunder-bolt. The one great man of Man had gone. It was almost as if the island had lost its soul.

No work was done on the day of the funeral. At ten o'clock in the morning the whole population seemed to be crossing the Curragh lanes to Ballamoar. By eleven the broad lawn was covered with a vast company of all classes, from the officials to the crofters. A long line of carriages, cars and stiff carts, lined the roads that surrounded the house.

The day had broken fair, with a kind of mild brightness, but out on that sandy headland the wind had risen and white wreaths of mist were floating over the land. It was late September and the leaves were falling rapidly.

Nobody entered the house. According to Manx custom all stood outside. At half-past eleven the front door was opened and the body was brought out, under a pall, and laid on four chairs in front of it. A moment later Victor Stowell came behind, bare-headed and very pale. A wide space was left for him by the bier. A creeper that covered the house was blood-red at his back.

Somebody started a hymn--"Abide with me"--and it was taken up by the vast company in front. The rooks swirled and screamed over the heads of the singers. The bald head of old Snaefell looked down through the trees.

Then the procession was formed. It took the grassy lane at the back by which the Deemster had always gone to church. Everybody walked, and six sets of bearers claimed the right "to carry the old man home."

They sang two hymns on the way: "Lead, Kindly Light" and "Rock of Ages." Between the verses the wind whistled through the gorse hedges on either side. Sometimes it raised the skirt of the pall and showed the bare oak beneath.

When they reached the cross roads in front of the church the bell began to toll. At that moment a white mist was driving across the church tower and almost obscuring it.

The Bishop of the island was at the gate, waiting for the procession, but Parson Cowley, pale and trembling, was also there, and he would have fought to the death for his right to bury the Deemster.

"I am the Resurrection and the Life," he began in his quavering voice, as the procession came up, and at the next moment the mists vanished. The little churchyard with its weather-beaten stones, seemed to look up at the wonderful sky and out on the sightless sea. The bearers had to bend their knees as they passed through the low door.

Every seat in the body of the church was occupied, and great numbers had to remain outside. But Victor Stowell sat alone in the pew of the Ballamoars with the marble tablet on the wall behind him--four hundred years of his family and he the last of them. During the reading of the Epistle the lashing and wailing of the wind outside almost drowned the Bishop's voice.

The service ended with the singing of another hymn, "O God our help in ages past." Everybody knew the words, and they were taken up by the people outside:

"_Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
Bears all its sons away._"

Thus far Victor Stowell had gone through everything in a kind of stupor. He was conscious that the island was there to do honour to her greatest son, but that was nothing to him now. When he came to himself he was standing by the open vault of the Stowells. A line of stones lay over the closed part of it, some of them old and worn and with the lettering almost obliterated. But a cross of white marble, which had been dislodged from its place, lay at his feet, and it bore the words:

"_To the dear memory of Isabel, the beloved wife of Douglas
Stowell, Deemster of this Isle._"

Victor's throat was throbbing. He was losing (what no man can lose twice) his father and greatest friend, whose slightest word and wish should be as sacred to him as his soul.

He heard the words "dust to dust" and they were like the reverberation of eternity. Then came a dead void, after Parson Cowley's voice had ceased, and it was just as if the pulse of the world had stopped.

And then, at that last moment as he stepped forward and looked down, and everybody fell back for him, and only the sea's boom was audible as it beat on the cliffs below, somebody (he did not turn to look, for he knew who it was) coming up to his side, and putting her arm through his, said in a tremulous voice,

"He is better there. In their death they are not divided."

It was Fenella.

At the next moment, something he could not resist, something unconquerable and overwhelming, made him put his arms about her and kiss her.