The Governor was waiting for Stowell at the side gate to Ballamoar.
"You look ill, my boy, and no wonder," he said. "Fenella and I are
to take a short cruise in the yacht before the autumn ends. You must
come along with us."
For the farmers and fishermen who had travelled long distances a meal
had been provided in the barn--a kind of robustious after-wake for
the Deemster, presided over by the elder and younger Robbie Creers.
Alick Gell alone returned with Stowell to the house. In his black
frock coat and tall silk hat he had walked back from the Church by
Stowell's side, snuffling audibly but saying nothing. To Stowell's
relief he was still silent through luncheon and for several hours
afterwards. It was not until they were in the porch, and Gell was on
the point of going, that anything of consequence was said.
"What about Bessie?" asked Stowell.
"Oh, Bessie?" said Gell (he looked a little confused) "Bessie's all
right, I think. But there's trouble coming in that quarter, I'm
afraid."
"What trouble?"
"As we were walking along Langness yesterday--I went down to tell her
about the Deemster--we met Cæsar Qualtrough coming from the farm."
"Qualtrough?"
"You know--father of the young scoundrel who got us into that scrape
at King William's."
"I remember."
"He's a friend of Dan Baldromma's, and Dan is a tenant of my father's
and .... But good Lord, what matter! I've worse things than that to
worry about."
As Gell was going out of the gate, the night was falling and the
stars were out, and he was saying to himself, "Does he really care
for the girl, or is it only a sense of duty?"
And Stowell, as he closed the door and went back into the house
(empty and vault-like now, as a house is on the first night after the
being who has been the soul of it has been left outside) was
thinking, "I can't allow Alick to be my scapegoat any longer."
But at the next moment he was thinking of Fenella. With mingled
shame and joy he was asking himself what was being thought of the
incident in the churchyard--by Fenella herself, by the Governor, by
everybody.
Next day the Attorney-General came with the will. Except for a few
legacies to servants, the Deemster had left everything to his son.
"So, with your mother's fortune, you are one of the rich men of the
island, now, Victor. A great responsibility, my boy! I pray God you
may choose the right partner. But" (with a meaning smile) "that will
be all right, I think."
During the next days Stowell occupied himself with Joshua Scarff, the
Deemster's clerk (a tall, thin, elderly man wearing dark spectacles)
in paying-off the legacies. Only one of these gave him any anxiety.
This was Janet's, and it was accompanied by a pension, in case Victor
should decide to superannuate her. Against doing so all his heart
cried out, but something whispered that if Janet were gone it might
be the easier for Bessie.
Janet was in floods of tears at the possibility.
"I couldn't have believed it of the Deemster!" she said. "I really
couldn't! You can keep the legacy, dear. I have no use for it
except to give it back to you. But I won't leave Ballamoar. 'Deed,
I won't! Not until another woman comes to be mistress in it, and
wants me to go. And she never will, the darling--I'll trust her for
that, anyway."
A day or two later Stowell was in his father's room, when he came
upon an envelope inscribed: "_To be opened by my son._" It contained
a ring, a beautiful and valuable gem, with a note saying:
"_This was your mother's engagement ring. I wish you to give it to
Fenella Stanley. Take it yourself._"
Stowell was stupefied. Struggling with a sense of his duty to the
girl whom he had sent to Derby Haven he had been telling himself that
he must never see Fenella again. But here was a sacred command from
the dead.
For three days he thought he could not possibly go to Government
House. On the fourth day he went.
The beauty and charm of the atmosphere of Fenella's home were
heart-breaking. And Fenella herself, in a soft tea-gown, was almost
more than he could bear to look upon.
She, too, seemed embarrassed, and when Miss Green (an English
counterpart of Janet) left them alone with each other, and he gave
her the ring, saying what his father had told him to do with it, her
embarrassment increased.
She held it in her fingers, turned it over and looked at it, and
said, "How lovely! How good of him!" And then, trembling and
tingling, and with a slightly heightened colour, she looked at
Stowell.
Suddenly a thought flashed upon him. Why had his father told him to
take the ring to her himself? The answer was speaking in Fenella's
eyes--that, at the topmost moment of their love, he should put it on.
At the next instant the Governor entered the drawing-room, and
Fenella, holding up her hand (she had put the ring on for herself by
this time) cried:
"See what the Deemster has left to me!"
"Beautiful!" said the Governor, and then he looked from Stowell to
his daughter.
Stowell rose to go. He had the sense of flying from the house.
Fenella must have thought him a fool. The Governor must have thought
him a fool. But better be a fool than a traitor!
A week passed and then an idea came to him. He would tell the truth
to Bessie's people--the whole truth if necessary. That would commit
him once for all to the line of honour. Having taken that public
plunge there could be no looking back, and the bitter struggle
between his passion and his duty would then be over.
With a certain pride at the thought of being about to do an heroic
thing he set out one day for Ramsey, intending to return by
Baldromma. But on entering his outer office his young clerk told him
that Mr. Daniel Collister was in his private room, that he had been
waiting there for two hours, and refusing to go away.
Dan, with his short, gross figure, was standing astride on the
hearthrug, and without so much as a bow he plunged into his business.
A respectable man's house was in disgrace. His step-daughter had run
away. Been carried off by a scoundrel--there couldn't be a doubt of
it. A month gone and not the whisper of a word from her. The mother
was broken-hearted, so he had been traipsing the island over to find
the girl.
"I belave I'm on the track of her at last though. She's down
Castletown way, and the man that's been the cause of her trouble
isn't far off, I'm thinking."
"And whom do you say it is, Mr. Collister?"
"Somebody that's middling close to yourself, sir--Mr. Alick Gell, the
son of the Spaker."
"No, no, no!"
"Who else then?"
Stowell tried to speak but could not.
"Wasn't he the cause of her disgrace at the High Bailiff's? And
hasn't he been keeping up his bad character ever since--standing by
the side of disorderly walkers in the Douglas Coorts, they're saying?"
He must have promised to marry the girl. But he hadn't. He (Dan)
had been to the Registrar's at Douglas and found that out.
"The toot! The boght! The booby! I was warning her enough. The
man that takes advantage of a dacent girl isn't much for marrying her
afterwards."
Remembering Dan's share in the catastrophe, Stowell was feeling the
vertigo of a temptation to take the gross creature by the neck and
fling him through the window.
"Why do you come to me?" he asked.
"To ask you to tell your friend that he's got to make an honest woman
of the girl."
"Is that all you are thinking about?"
Dan drew a quick breath, then dug both hands into the upright pockets
of his trousers, thrust forward his thick neck, with a gesture
peculiar to the bull, and answered:
"No, I'm thinking of myself as well, and what for shouldn't I? I'm
going to stand up for my own rights, too. The man that treats my
girl like that has got to marry her, and I'm not going to be
satisfied with nothing less."
Then picking up his billycock hat and making for the door he said:
"I lave it with you, Mr. Stowell, Sir. If the Dempster was the grand
gentleman people are saying, his son will be seeing justice done to
me and mine. If not, the island will be too hot for the guilty man,
I'm thinking."
When Dan had gone Stowell felt sick and dizzy, and as if he were
drawing back from the edge of a precipice. His heroic act of
self-sacrifice had dwindled to a ridiculous weakness.
This man, with his blatant vulgarity of mind and soul, at Ballamoar!
His father-in-law! A member of his family! Riding over him with a
degrading tyranny! In the dining-room, with his broad buttocks to
the fire--never, never, never!
Hardly had Dan's footsteps ceased on the stair when the young clerk
came from the outer office in great excitement.
"His Excellency is here. He's coming upstairs, Sir."