In his heavy days at Ballamoar, before he went abroad, his father's
house had been like a dam to which the troubled waters of the island
flowed--the little jealousies and envies of the island community, the
bickerings of church and chapel, of town and country, of town and
town, not to speak of the darker maelstrom of more unworthy quarrels.
While the Deemster had moved through all this with his calm dignity
as the great mediator, the great pacifier, Victor with his quick
brain and wounded heart had stood by, seeing all and saying nothing.
But now, making a call upon his memory, for the amusement of his
fellow clubmen, out of sheer high spirits and with no thought of
evil, he composed a number of four-line "Limericks" on the big-wigs
of the island.
Such scorching irony and biting satire had never been heard in the
island before. If any pompous or hypocritical person (by preference
a parson, a local preacher, a High Bailiff or a Key) had a dark
secret, which he would have given his soul's salvation not to have
disclosed, it was held up, under some thin disguise, to withering
ridicule.
A long series of these reckless lampoons Victor fired off weekly over
the worm-eaten table at Mount Murray, to the delirious delight of the
clubmen, who, learning them by heart, carried them to their little
world outside, with the result that they ran over the island like a
fiery cross and set the Manx people aroar with laughter.
The good and the unco' good were scandalized, but the victims were
scarified. And to put an end to their enemy, and terminate his
hostilities, these latter, laying their heads together to tar him
with his own brush, found a hopeful agency to their hand in the
person of a good-looking young woman of doubtful reputation called
Fanny, who kept a house of questionable fame in the unlit reaches of
the harbour south of the bridge.
One early morning word went through the town like a searching wind
that Fanny's house had been raided by the police, in the middle of
the night, about the hour when the Clubmen usually clattered back to
Douglas. The raid had been intended to capture Stowell, but had
failed in its chief object--that young gentleman having gone on, when
some of his comrades had stopped, put up his horse at his
job-master's and proceeded to Gell's chambers where he slept on his
nights in town. Others of his company had also escaped by means of a
free fight, in which they had used their hunting crops and the police
their truncheons. But Alick Gell, with his supernatural capacity for
getting into a scrape, had been arrested and carried off, with Fanny
herself, to the Douglas lock-up.
Next day these two were brought up in the Magistrate's Court, which
was presided over by his Worship the Colonel of the "Nunnery," a
worthy and dignified man, to whom the turn of recent events was
shocking. The old Court-house was crowded with the excited
townspeople, and as many of the Clubmen were present as dare show
their bandaged heads out of their bedrooms.
When the case was called, and the two defendants entered the dock,
they made a grotesque and rather pitiful contrast--Gell in his tall,
slim, fair-haired gentlemanliness, and Fanny in her warm fat
comeliness, decked out in some gaudy finery which she had sent home
for, having been carried off in the night with streaming locks and
naked bosom.
In the place of the Attorney-General, the prosecutor was a
full-bodied, elderly advocate named Hudgeon, who had been the subject
of one of the most withering of the lampoons. He opened with bitter
severity, spoke of the case as the worst of the kind the island had
known; referred to the "most unholy hour of the morning" which had
lately been selected for scenes of unseemly riot; said his "righteous
indignation" was roused at such disgraceful doings, and finally hoped
the Court would, for the credit of lawyers "hereafter" make an
example, "without respect of persons," of the representative of a
group of young roysterers, who were a disgrace to the law, and had
nothing better to do (so rumour and report were saying) than to
traduce the good names of their elders and betters.
When he had examined the constables and closed his case it looked as
if Gell were in danger of Castle Rushen, and the consequent wrecking
of his career at the Bar, and that nothing was before Fanny but
banishment from the island, with such solace as the bribe of her
employers might bring her.
But then, to a rustle of whispering, Stowell, who was in wig and gown
for the first time, got up for the defence. It had been expected
that he would do so, and many old advocates who had heard much of
him, had left their offices, and filled the advocates' box, to see
for themselves what mettle he was made of.
They had not long to wait. In five minutes he had made such play
with his "learned friend's" "unholy hour of the morning," "his
righteous indignation" and his "hereafter" for lawyers (not without
reference to a traditional personage with horns and a fork) that the
merriment of the people in Court rose from a titter to a roar, which
the ushers were powerless to suppress. Again and again the writhing
prosecutor, with flaming face and foaming and spluttering mouth,
appealed in vain to the Bench, until at length, getting no
protection, and being lashed by a wit more cutting than a whip, he
gathered up his papers and, leaving the case to his clerk, fled from
the Court like an infuriated bat, saying he would never again set
foot in it.
Then Stowell, calling back the constables, confused them, made them
contradict themselves, and each other, and step down at last like men
whose brains had fallen into their boots. After that he called Gell
and caused him to look like a harmless innocent who had strayed out
of a sheepfold into a shambles. And finally he called Fanny, and
getting quickly on the woman's side of her, he so coaxed and cajoled
and flattered and then frightened her, that she seemed to be on the
point of blurting out the whole plot, and giving away the names of
half the big men in the island.
His Worship of the Nunnery closed up the case quickly, saying "young
men will be young men," but regretting that the eminent talents
exhibited in the defence were not being employed in the service of
the island.
The Court-house emptied to a babel of talking and a burst of
irrepressible laughter, and that was the end of the "Ellan Vannin."
But the one ineffaceable effect of the incident, most material to
this story, was that Alick Gell, who was still as innocent as the
baby of a girl, had acquired a reputation for dark misdoings
(especially with women) whereof anything might be expected in the
future.
After the insular newspapers had dwelt with becoming severity on this
aspect of the "distressing proceedings," the Speaker walked over in
full-bearded dignity to remonstrate with the Deemster.
"Your son is dragging my lad down to the dirt," he said, "and before
long I shall not be able to show my face anywhere."
"What do you wish me to do, Mr. Speaker?" asked the Deemster.
"Do? Do? I don't know what I want you to do," said the Speaker.
"I thought you didn't," said the Deemster, and then the full-bearded
dignity disappeared.
Concerning Victor, although he had made the island laugh (the
shortest cut to popularity), opinions were widely divided.
"There's only the breadth of a hair between that young man and a
scoundrel," said Hudgeon, the advocate.
"Lave him rope and he'll hang himself," said Cæsar Qualtrough, from
behind his pipe in the smoking-room of the Keys.
"Clever! Clever uncommon! But you'll see, you'll see," said the
Speaker.
"I've not lost faith in that young fellow yet," said the Governor.
"Some great fact will awaken a sense of responsibility and make a man
of him."
The great fact was not long in coming, but few could have foreseen
the source from which it came.