Chapter THIRTY-TWO: The Voice of the Sea

"Forgive you? Never while that girl lies in prison as the consequence of your sin."

The words beat on Stowell's brain with the paralysing effect of a muffled drum. He was driving up the mountain road. Char-à-bancs, full of English visitors (who were laughing and singing in chorus), were coming down. The drivers shouted at him from time to time. This irritated him until he realised that his motor-car was oscillating from side to side of the road.

When he reached the top, where the road turns towards the glen, all the heart was gone out of him. The great scene no longer brought the old joyousness. With love lost and hope quenched the soul of the world was dead, and the heavens were dark above him.

At the bottom of the glen, where it dips into the Curragh, he came upon a group of bare-headed women, with their arms under their aprons, surrounding a little person with watery eyes, in a poke bonnet and a satin mantle. Mrs. Collister had returned from Castletown, and her neighbours were taking her home.

"Never mind, woman! It will be all set right at the judgment. And then the man will be found out and punished, too!"

At the corner of the cross roads Dan Baldromma threw himself in front of the car, to draw it up, and in his raucous voice he fell on Stowell with a torrent of abuse.

"You've been locking up a respectable man, Dempster, but you can't lock up his tongue, and the island is going to know what justice in the Isle of Man can be."

Stowell made no answer. Any poor creature could insult him now.

Janet was waiting for him at Ballamoar, with a fire in the library, and the tea-tray ready. But the sweet home atmosphere only made him think of the happiness that had been so nearly within his reach.

Seeing that something was amiss, Janet assumed her cheeriest tone, brought out two patterns of damask, laid them over chairs, and asked which Fenella would like best for her boudoir.

"I don't know. I can't say. But .... it doesn't matter now."

Janet gathered up her patterns and went out of the room without a word.

"Forgive you? Never while that girl lies in prison." The stinging words followed him to his bedroom. They broke up his sleep. They rang like the screech of an owl through the darkness of the night.

Next day, not trusting himself to drive his car, he returned to Castletown by train. There were only two first-class compartments and both were full. He was about to step into a third-class carriage when a voice cried,

"This way, Deemster. Always room enough for you."

There was to be a sitting of the Keys that day and the compartment was full of northside members. The talk was about yesterday's trial, and Stowell realised that his management of the case had created a favourable impression. Merciful to the prisoner? Yes, until her guilt was established, but then just, even at the expense of friendship.

This led to talk about Gell as the girl's fellow-sinner.

"Shocking! But it's not the first time he has been mixed up with a woman."

Stowell felt an intolerable shame at Gell's undeserved obloquy and his own unmerited glory, but he could say nothing.

"It will kill the old man," said one of the Keys. The train had drawn up at a side station and his voice was loud in the vacant air.

"Hush!"

The Speaker was in the next compartment.

When the train started again a little man with the face of a ferret began to make facetious references to "Fanny." Stowell's hands were itching to take the ribald creature by the throat and fling him out of the window, but something whispered, "Who are you to be the champion of virtue?"

At Court that day, and the day following, he found it hard to concentrate. At one moment an advocate said,

"Perhaps your Honour is not well this morning?"

"Oh no! I heard you. You were saying...."

The rapidity of his mind enabled him to make up for his lapses in attention, and when his time came to sum up he was always ready.

He was indulgent to the accused. All the other prisoners were acquitted--the fat woman for the reason that, bad as her character might be, the characters of her drunken sailors were yet worse (therefore no credit could be attached to their evidence), and the boy who had embezzled on the ground that his superiors at the bank had been guilty of almost criminal negligence, and the four months he had been in prison already were sufficient to satisfy the claims of justice.

The boy's mother, who was standing at the back, threw her arms about him and kissed him when he stepped out of the dock, and then, turning her streaming face up to the bench, she cried,

"God bless you, Deemster! May you live long and every day of your life be a happy one."

Back at home, Stowell plunged into the task of drawing up the report for the English authorities which was to accompany the recommendation to mercy. In two days (having his father's library to fall back upon) he knew more about the grounds upon which the prerogative of the Crown could properly be exercised than anybody in the island had ever before been required to learn, and when he had finished his task he had no misgivings.

Bessie's sentence would be commuted to imprisonment. And then (life for the poor soul being at an end in the Puritanical old island) he must find some secret means of sending her away.

"Never while that girl...." But wait! Only wait!

Being legislator as well as Judge, he attended the first meeting of Tynwald Court after his appointment. The Governor administered the oath to him in a private room, and then, taking his arm, led the way to the legislative chamber.

"Do you know it's six days since you were at Government House, my boy? What is Fenella to think of you?"

"Has she .... has she been asking for me, Sir?"

"Well, no, not to say asking, but still .... six days, you know."

Stowell sat on a raised daïs between the Attorney-General and Deemster Taubman, who was sufficiently recovered to hobble in on two sticks. The proceedings were of the kind that is usual in such assemblies, the Manx people being the children of their mothers, loving to talk much and about many things.

He found it difficult to fix his attention, and was watching for an opportunity to slip away, when the vain repetitions which are called debate suddenly ceased and the Governor called on an Inspector by Police to carry round a Bill which had to be signed by all.

In the interval of general conversation that followed, Deemster Taubman, a gruff and grizzly person, leaned back in his seat, put his thumbs in the armholes of his soiled white waistcoat and talked to Stowell.

"You did quite right in that case of the girl Collister, Sir. In fact you were only too indulgent. I have no pity for the huzzies who run away from the consequences of their misconduct. Murder is murder, and there is no proper punishment for it but death."

"But the Jury recommended the girl to mercy, and her sentence will be commuted," said Stowell.

"Eh? Eh? Then you haven't heard what has happened?"

"What?"

"The Governor has reported against the recommendation."

"Reported against it?"

"Certainly. And as the authorities in London are not likely to read the report and are sure to act on the Governor's advice, the girl will go to the gallows."

Stowell felt as if he had been struck over the eyes by an unseen hand. As soon as he had signed the Bill (in a trembling scrawl) he whispered to the Attorney-General that he was unwell and fled from the chamber.

"Humph!" said Taubman, looking after him. "That young man is going to break down, and no wonder. His appointment as Deemster was the maddest thing I ever knew."

II

"No, Mr. Stowell, no! You must stay in bed for the next two days at least. I must really insist this time. No work, no excitement, no heart-strain. Remember your father, and take my advice, Sir."

It was Doctor Clucas, who, sent for by Janet, had arrived at Ballamoar before Stowell got out of bed in the morning.

With closed eyes Stowell reviewed the situation. It was shocking, horrible, intolerable. Not for fifty years had a woman suffered the full penalty of such a crime. He must find some way to prevent it.

But after a while a terrible temptation came to him. "Why can't I leave things alone?" he asked himself.

He had done all he could be expected to do. If the Crown, acting on the advice of the Governor, refused to exercise its prerogative of mercy, what right had he to interfere?

It might be best for himself, too, that the law should take its course--best in the long run. If Bessie's sentence were commuted to imprisonment what assurance had he that on coming out of prison she would allow him to send her away from the island? On the contrary she might refuse to be banished, and if she found that the blame of her misfortune had fallen on Gell she might tell the truth to free him.

What then? _He_ would be a dishonoured man. His position as a Judge would be imperilled; his marriage with Fenella would be impossible, and his whole life would crash down to a welter of disgrace and ruin. But if Bessie were gone there would be no further danger. And after all, it would not be he but the law that had taken her life.

"Then why can't I leave things alone?" he thought.

He decided to do so, but his decision brought him no comfort. Towards evening he got up and went out to walk in the farmyard. There he met Robbie Creer, who was just home from the mill with his head full of a pitiful story.

It was about Mrs. Collister. Since her daughter's trial the old woman had fallen into the habit of walking barefoot in the glen, chiefly at midnight, and generally in the neighbourhood of the _Clagh-ny-Dooiney_. At first she had seen a light. Then she had heard a pitiful cry. She was certain it was the cry of a child, a spirit-child, unbaptised and therefore unnamed, and for that reason doomed to wander the world, because unable to enter Paradise. At length she had taken heart of God and going out in her nightdress she had called through the darkness of the trees, "If thou art a boy I call thee John. If thou art a girl I call thee Joney." After that she had heard the cry no more, and now she knew it had been Bessie's child, and the bogh-millish was at rest.

This story of the old mother's developing insanity rested heavily on Stowell's heart and went far to shake his resolution.

After a day or two he began to find his own house and grounds haunted. He could not go into the library without the kind eyes in his mother's picture following him about the room with a pleading look. He could not sit in the dining-room after dinner without remembering his week-ends as a student-at-law, when his father and he would draw up at opposite cheeks of the hearth, and the great Deemster would talk of the great crimes, the great trials and the great Judges.

But his worst ordeal was with Janet. Not a word of explanation had passed between them, yet he was sure she knew everything. One evening, going into her sitting-room, he found her with her knitting on her lap, and a copy of the insular newspaper on the floor, looking out on the lawn with a far-off expression. That brought memories of another evening when he had told her that no girl on the island had ever fallen into trouble through him, or ever should do.

"Ah! Is that you, Victor?" she cried, recovering herself and making her needles click, but he had gone, and her voice followed him from the room.

Still wrestling with his temptation to stand aside and let the law take its course, Ballamoar became intolerable to him. On the lame excuse of his fortnightly court in the northside town he decided to go to Ramsey, and wrote to Mrs. Quayle to get his old rooms ready.

But going from Ballamoar to his chambers was like leaping out of the fire into the furnace. When he opened a disordered drawer up came the Castletown portrait of Bessie Collister like a ghost out of the gloom. When he went for a walk to tire himself for the night his steps involuntarily turned towards the pier where the lighthouse had been shattered by lightning. When he returned and was putting the key in the lock of his outer door he had the tingling sense of a woman's warm presence behind him. When he pulled down his bedroom blind the broken cord brought a stabbing memory. And when he awoke in the morning he felt that he had only to open his eyes to see a girl's raven black hair on the pillow beside him.

But Mrs. Quayle's presence was the keenest torment of all. The good old Methodist moved about him at breakfast without speaking, but one morning, fumbling with her bonnet strings before going, she said,

"Deemster, have you remembered this case of Bessie Collister in your prayers?"

He removed to Douglas--the Fort Anne Hotel, a breezy place, which sits on the ledge of the headland and just over the harbour. At first the babble and movement of the hotel distracted him, but after a day or two he was drawn back into the maelstrom of his own thoughts.

Having a private sitting-room he borrowed law books from the Law Library and sat far into the night to read them. He selected the treatises on Infanticide--those bitter records of the age-long strife between the laws of man and of God. Particularly he read the charges of the British Judges (Scottish too frequently), the bewigged ruffians who, in the abomination of their Puritanical tyranny, and the brutal lust of their judicial vengeance, had hounded poor women to the gallows in the very nakedness of shame.

"Damn them! Damn them!" he would cry, leaping up with a desire to trample on the dead Judges' graves. But then the same persistent voice within would say, "Wait awhile! Who are you to stand up for justice and mercy?"

Crushed and ashamed he would creep up to bed through the silent house, and thinking of the girl whose dark eyes had intoxicated him in the glen (the girl he had afterwards held in his arms) he would say,

"Is it possible that I can stand by and see her given over to the hangman?"

That terrified him. In the darkness he pictured to himself the scene of Bessie's death and burial, and thought of his after-life as a Judge, when he would have to go to Court to try other such cases--and Bessie lying out there in the prison-yard.

After Ballamoar, with its pastoral tranquillity, the twittering of birds and the sleepy singing of the streams, Fort Anne was sometimes a tempestuous place, with the wash of the waves in the harbour, the monotonous moan of the sea outside and the melancholy wail of the gulls. He thought he heard Bessie's cry in the voice of the sea--her piercing cry when she was being carried out of Court after he had sentenced her.

One night he thought Bessie was dead. He was dead too. They were standing side by side in an awful tribunal and she was accusing him before God.

"He let me die! He killed me! He is my assassin!"

The sound of his own voice awakened him. A dream! It was the grey of dawn; a storm had risen in the night; the white sea was rolling over the breakwater and the sea-fowl were screaming through the mist and roar.

No, by God! If it was a question of Bessie witnessing against him in this world or in the next, he had no longer any doubt which it should be. No more temptations! No more hypocrisy and self-doubt! No more wandering about like a lost soul!

He would go up to the Governor. He would call upon him to withdraw his objection to the Jury's recommendation. And if he refused .... he should see what he should see.

At eight o'clock in the morning he was walking down the quay in the calm sunshine, looking at the activities of the harbour, and nodding cheerfully to the fishermen as he passed. He was on his way to Government House, and his conscience, with which he had wrestled so long, was triumphant and erect.

Then came a shock.

He was crossing the stone bridge that leads up to the town when he saw the Governor's blue landau coming down in the direction of the railway station. It was open. Fenella was sitting in it.

Stowell was certain she saw him. But she only coloured up to the eyes and dropped her head. At the next instant her carriage had crossed in front of him and swept into the station-yard.

Something surged in his throat; something blinded his eyes. But after a moment he threw up his head and walked firmly forward.

"Wait! Only wait! We'll see!"