"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."