"Good heavens, what does it matter? A lie is only dangerous when it
does some harm!"
Stowell awoke on the second day after the escape putting his
situation to himself so. Where was the harm if Gell was suspected?
He had gone with the woman he loved. He was happy. What would Alick
care about the evil name he had left behind him?
"Then where's the harm?" he asked himself.
He would let things go on as usual--of course he would. Only he must
make sure that the fugitives had got clear away.
Remembering that he had seen placards of the Atlantic sailings in the
railway-station, he walked over to the station from the glen. It was
all right--a big Atlantic liner was timed to leave Queenstown at
twelve that day. It was now half-past twelve. Gell and Bessie would
be out on the open sea by this time--steaming past Kinsale where the
Manx boats fished for mackerel.
"Where's the harm?"
But just as he was leaving the station with a sense of security and
even triumph, a train from Douglas drew up at the platform. The
guard shouted something to the station-master; and, looking back,
Stowell saw a crowd gathering about a first-class carriage.
Somebody was being assisted to alight. It was the Speaker. He was
utterly helpless. Between two members of the House of Keys the
stricken man was half led, half carried to a dog-cart that was
waiting for him at the gate.
His mouth was agape, his legs were dragging behind him, and his large
hands were shaken by senile trembling. He did not speak, but as he
went by he looked up, and Stowell felt that from his red eyes a mute
malediction was being thrown at him.
When the dog-cart had gone, with the Speaker stretched out in it,
stiff as a dead horse, and one of the Keys to see him home, the other
joined Stowell and walked down the road by his side.
"Then your Honour hasn't heard what has happened?"
"No. What?"
There had been a sitting of the Keys that morning. The debate had
been on some new scheme of land tenure--a thinly disguised form of
confiscation. The Speaker had opposed it passionately, saying a man
had a right to keep what he had earned and hand it on to his
children. Then Qualtrough (a firebrand who possessed nothing) had
taunted him with the unfortunate affair of yesterday. Why did _he_
want to hand on his land, his son having run away with the woman he
had corrupted?
A terrible scene had followed. The Speaker had had one of his
brain-storms. His neck had swelled until it was nearly as broad as
his face. "Sit down, Sir," he had shouted, but Qualtrough had
refused to do so. At length, overcome by the clamour of his enemies
and the silence of his friends, the Speaker had risen to resign.
Since he could not maintain the authority of the chair he had no
choice but to get out of it.
It had been a pitiful spectacle. None of them who were fathers had
been able to look at it with dry eyes. The old man was trembling
like a leaf and his legs seemed to be giving way under him.
"They say the sins of the fathers are visited-upon the children, but
maybe it's as true the other way about. I'm going blind and deaf.
The sands of my life are running out...."
He swayed forward and they thought he would have fallen on his face,
but the Secretary of the House caught him in his arms, and then two
of them were nominated to bring him home.
"Sorry to say it to your Honour, being his friend," said the member
of the Keys, as they parted at the turn of the road, "but that young
fellow has something to answer for."
That lie had done harm then! Was this the mystery of sin--that it
must go on and on, from consequence to consequence, deep as the sea
and unsearchable as the night?
On returning to Ballamoar, Stowell found Janet in great agitation.
Mrs. Gell had sent across to ask if Robbie could run into Ramsey to
fetch Doctor Clucas. The doctor had come and gone. The Speaker had
had a stroke. It was his second. The third would almost certainly
prove fatal.
All that day Stowell was shaken by a chill terror. If the Speaker
died would Alick Gell come back to claim his inheritance? If so he
would hear it said on all sides that he had killed his father by the
disgrace he had brought on him.
What then? Would he tell the whole truth under that terrible
temptation, and thus bring down Stowell himself to ruin and
extinction?
"But what nonsense I'm talking," thought Stowell.
Gell could never come back, because Bessie could never do so. Then
who was to know that it was a lie that Gell had killed his father?