It was near to noon when Stowell awoke at Ballamoar. His bedroom
(formerly his father's) faced to the south and flashes of sunshine
from the chinks of the window curtains were crossing the bed on which
he lay with his head on his arm.
It was a startling moment.
His long sleep had washed his brain as in a spiritual bath, and with
the awakening of his body his conscience had awakened also. The
events of the previous night rolled back on him like a flood, and
now, for the first time, he saw what he had done.
To prevent the law from committing a crime he had committed a crime
against the law! He, the Judge, sworn to uphold Justice, had
deliberately betrayed it! Had anything so monstrous ever been heard
of before?
After a while, through the deafening buzzing of his brain, he became
aware of the droning sound of voices in the room below, and then of
their sharp clack as the speakers (they were Janet and Joshua Scarff)
stepped out of the house to the gravel path in front of it.
"No, don't waken his Honour, Miss Curphey. He hasn't been well
lately, and sleep does no harm to anyone. Besides he'll hear the bad
news soon enough."
"'Deed he will, Mr. Scarff."
"It will be a terrible shock to him--especially if my suspicions
about a certain person prove to be justified. But that's the way,
you see--one act of wrong-doing leads to another. Pity! Great pity!"
It was out! Stowell felt as if the bed under him were rocking from
the first tremor of an earthquake.
Half-an-hour later he was at breakfast downstairs. For a long time,
Janet was trying to break the news to him. At last it came. The
young woman who was to have been executed that morning had escaped.
Joshua Scarff had had it from the Inspector at Ramsey--it was being
telegraphed all over the island.
For the sake of appearances Stowell made an exclamation of surprise,
despising himself for doing so and feeling as if the toast in his
mouth were choking him.
"It's impossible not to be glad," said Janet, "that the poor guilty
creature has escaped the gallows, but Joshua thinks things are not
likely to end there."
"And what does he say?...."
"He says she must have had an accomplice, and when the man is found
out it will be the worse for both of them."
"And who .... who does Joshua think...."
"Alick Gell. It seems he put appearances against himself at the
trial, poor boy!"
Instead of going to town that day, as he had intended to do, Stowell
rambled through the trackless Curraghs. He was trying to be alone
with the melancholy swish of the sally bushes and the mournful cry of
the curlews. But his anxiety to know what was being done brought him
back to the house. Hearing nothing there, he walked to the village
for a copy of the insular newspaper. He found some excuse for
speaking to everybody he met on the road--on other subjects, though,
always on other subjects.
At the door of the little general store, with its mixed odour of many
condiments coming out to him, he stopped and called,
"How's the rheumatism this morning, Auntie Kitty?"
"Aw, better, your Honour, a taste better to-day. But it's moral
sorry I am to hear the bad newses you've had yourself, Sir. It's
feeling it terrible you'll be, your Honour--you and the young man
being the same as brothers. It will kill his mother--and her such a
proud stomach. The woman couldn't see the sun for the boy, and she's
been fighting the father all his life for him."
On his way back he met Cain, the constable, looking large and
important.
"I'm sarching for them two runaways," he said, with his short
asthmatical breathing, "and the Chief Constable is telling me I'll
have to be finding them if they're lying like a toad under a stone."
Gell again! The report of the escape had passed over the island with
the swift flight of a bird of prey--everywhere he could hear the
flapping of its wings. And to the question of who could have
assisted the young woman to escape from a place like Castle Rushen
there was only one answer--Gell.
Towards nightfall Joshua Scarff called at Ballamoar on his way home
from town. Things had turned out as he had expected--suspicion had
fastened on Mr. Gell, and the Governor had ordered the police to
scour the island for him.
"But everybody is sorry for your Honour. His friend! His bosom
friend! Pity! Great pity!"
Gell! Always Gell! Again Stowell felt as if the earth were rocking
beneath him. Where had his head been that he had not thought of this
before--that in helping Alick Gell to go away with Bessie Collister
he had put him into the position of the guilty man--guilty not only
of the prison-breaking, but also of the earlier and uglier offence of
being the girl's fellow-sinner?
He had thought he had buried his sin in the sea--had he only cast the
burden of it upon Gell?
He recalled Alick's gratitude on going away, the undeserved praises
which had cut to the heart, and then thought of Gell (far away in a
foreign country) coming to hear of the evil name he had left behind.
What was Alick to think of him then? That what he had done had not
been at the call of friendship, but of mere self-protection--to
divert suspicion from himself, to remove the only witnesses against
him, and thus to build his future life on the unprotected name of an
innocent man?
"Must I let that lie run on without saying a word against it?"
And then Fenella! He had seen himself going to her and saying, "Now
that the girl is no longer in prison the barrier between us is broken
down." He had seen himself marrying her, and then rising higher and
higher in the esteem of his people, with that brave woman by his side.
But now--what now?
Fenella would find him out! It was impossible that she could live
long with a man who carried such a corroding secret without
discovering it sooner or later. And when she had done so what would
she think of him? A traitor to his friend and to the law! A Judge
who had broken his oath! A wrong-doer, not a righter of the wronged,
sitting in judgment upon others, yet himself a criminal! A man of
honour to the outer world, a hypocrite in his own house; a pillar of
the island in the eyes of his people, a liar in the eyes of his wife!
"No, God forbid it! I cannot let that lie run on. I cannot allow
myself to be pilloried in life-long hypocrisy."
All the same he would wait to see what the Governor might do next.
It was no good acting hastily.