"VICTOR! VICTOR! MY VICTOR!"
"Good heavens, how was I to know that things would turn out so badly?"
It was the Governor, alone with Stowell in the Deemster's room, at
the end of the second day of the Court of General Gaol Delivery.
"As for you, what have you to reproach yourself with? So far as this
case is concerned you have done nothing that is wrong or irregular.
The girl was guilty. You gave her a fair trial. The law required
that she should be condemned. You had to condemn her. Then why take
things so tragically?"
"But Fenella?"
"She will get over it. Of course she will. What sensible woman is
going to throw away the happiness of a life-time because of something
that happened before she came on to the scene?"
"You heard what she said, Sir?"
"I did, and thought it nonsense. I heard what you said also, and
thought it madness. What a providential escape! Thank God it is all
over! The miserable case is at an end. Let us think no more about
it."
An Inspector of Police cams into the room to say that Miss Stanley
had left the Castle at the close of the murder trial and asked him to
tell her father that she was going home by train. The Governor, with
knitted eyebrows and a frown, dismissed the Inspector, and then said
to Stowell, as he turned to go,
"All the same I am bound to say the whole thing has been
unfortunate--damnably unfortunate!"
Stowell continued to sit for some minutes in his robes after the
Governor had left him. Joshua Scarff came with a glass of brandy.
"Take this, your Honour. It will strengthen your nerves for your
drive home. I could see you were not well when you arrived this
morning."
Stowell had drunk the brandy and was setting down the tumbler when
the Inspector came back to say that after the murder trial he had
liberated Dan Baldromma, but had just been compelled to arrest
somebody else.
"Who else?"
"Mr. Gell. The gentleman seems to have gone clean off it, Sir. It's
the loss of his case, I suppose."
Ever since the Court had risen he had been demanding to be allowed to
see the Deemster and threatening what he would do to him. So to
prevent the Advocate from doing a mischief the police had put him in
the cells.
"Set him at liberty at once," said Stowell.
"Before your Honour leaves the Castle?"
"Instantly."
The Inspector being gone (with the intention of disobeying the
Deemster's command in order to ensure his safety), Joshua Scarff
proceeded to read Gell's conduct by quite a different light. It was
easy to see now that Mr. Gell had been the girl's fellow-sinner and
therefore the cause of her crime.
"Pity! Great pity!" said Joshua, as he helped Stowell to unrobe.
"But such connections always begin to end badly."
There were still a few of the spectators at the gate, waiting to see
the Deemster away, and when he came out, with his white face, another
wave of sympathy went out to him.
"They've been putting the young colt into the shafts too soon--that's
what it is, I tell thee."
Driving over the harbour bridge in his automobile Stowell began to
feel better. The fresh air from the sea, after the close atmosphere
of the Court-house, brought the blood back to his brain, and he
thought he saw things more clearly.
The Governor had been right. He could not have acted otherwise
without being false to his oath as a Judge. And if the miserable
fact remained that he should never have been the Judge in this case
at all, it was Fenella herself, above everybody else, who had thrust
him into the furnace of that position. Surely she would remember
this, and it would plead in her heart for him?
Half-a-mile beyond the town he passed the Governor's big blue landau,
and realised that by some half-conscious impulse he was taking the
road to Government House instead of the direct way home. So much the
better! He must see Fenella at the first possible moment, and find
out what his fate was to be.
His spirits rose as he bounded along. Granted he had done wrong in
the first instance, terribly and cruelly wrong, hadn't he had many
excuses? If Bessie Collister had told her everything, surely Fenella
would see this, too, and seeing it, would understand?
But the great fact of all was that (except for the first catastrophe)
his love of Fenella had been the root cause of all that had happened.
If he had not loved Fenella with that deep, unconquerable,
unquenchable love which had swept everything else away (all qualms
and perhaps all conscience), nothing worse could have occurred. He
would have married that poor girl now lying in prison. Yes, whatever
the consequences to himself, he would have married her before Gell
came back into her life, and further complications ensued. But after
Fenella returned to the island no other woman had been possible to
him. Surely she would see this also? And, if she did, nothing else
would matter to either of them--nothing in this world.
Presently, driving at high speed, he realised that the half-conscious
impulse which had carried him on to the road to Government House was
sweeping him on to the rocky shelf on the coast along which he had
driven with Fenella on the day he took his oath.
How fortunate! What was that she had said, then, as they sang
together in the fulness of their joy over the hum of the engine and
the boom of the sea?--that love, what she called love, never died and
never changed, and if she loved anybody, and anything happened to
him, she would fight the world for him, even though he were in the
wrong!
Even though he were in the wrong!
She would do it now! He was sure she would! Yes, the first shock of
the wretched revelation being over, she would see how he had
suffered, and how he had striven to do the right, and then--then
everything would be well.
Thus, as he flew over the roads, he built himself up in the hope of
Fenella's forgiveness. But as he approached Government House his
heart failed him again. Something whispered that the excuses he had
been making for himself were no better than a pretence--that Fenella
would see him now for the first time as the man he really was, not
the man she had imagined him to be.
And then--what would happen then?