"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!"