"HE DROVE OUT THE MAN"
"Sorry to trouble you at this hour, your Honour, but I had to come
and tell you what has happened."
"What is it, Joshua?"
"There has been a fearful outbreak of lawlessness in Douglas this
evening--breaking of shop-windows, looting of the houses of
well-to-do people, assaults and outrages of all kinds."
"What is the reason of it?"
"Mob reason, and you know what that is, your Honour. They say
justice in the island is corrupt. If you are rich you get whatever
you want. If you are poor you get nothing. A guilty man and a
guilty woman have been allowed to escape. Why? Because the man
belongs to a family of 'the big ones' and is a friend of the
Deemster."
"Who say that?"
"Old Qualtrough and Dan Baldromma."
"Baldromma? If his step-daughter has escaped what has he to complain
of?"
"Nothing, but that's not the worst, Sir."
"What is?"
"The Governor has telegraphed for soldiers from across the water.
They are to come over by the first boat in the morning. It's a
frightful blunder, Sir."
Beads of perspiration were rolling down from Joshua's bald crown.
"There'll be bloodshed, and Manxmen won't stand for that. They've
been their own masters for a thousand years. The Governor can't
treat them as if they were Indian coolies."
"What do you think ought to be done?"
"That's what I've come to say, Sir. I had gone to bed but I couldn't
take rest, so I got Willie Dawson to drive me over. The people may
be wrong about justice, but the only way to pacify them is to prove
it."
"How?"
"The guilty man in this case must give himself up."
"Give himself up?"
Joshua took off his coloured spectacles and wiped the damp off them.
"I thought your Honour might know where he was. He can't be far
away, Sir."
"Well?"
"He ought to be told to deliver himself up to the Courts to save the
island from ruin. And if he won't he ought to be denounced."
"Denounced?"
"It will be a terrible ordeal--I know that, Sir. Your friend! Your
life-long friend! Pity! Great pity!"
For a perceptible time Stowell did not speak. Then, in a voice which
Joshua had never heard before, he said,
"Go home and go to bed, Joshua. I'll see what can be done."
Joshua had gone, the door had closed behind him and his wheels were
dying away down the drive, but Stowell continued to stand in the
hall, candle in hand and stiff as a statue. At length he returned to
the dining-room, put the candle on the table and sat before the empty
hearth.
It was all over! The plan he had made for himself was impossible.
There could be no resigning in secret and stealing away from the
island.
He had done harm to something. He had done harm to Justice. If
Justice fell down what stood up? The man who took the law into his
own hands was a criminal, and as a criminal he ought to be punished.
Punished? The shock was terrible. Was he then to give himself up?
To confess publicly?
He saw himself pleading guilty to having broken prison. He heard the
whole wretched tale of his relation to the unhappy prisoner, and of
his trying and condemning her, coming out in open Court. He heard
the howls of execration from the people who had hitherto loved and
cheered him.
"Is there no other way?" he asked himself.
He saw himself in prison, in prison clothes, in the prison cell, on
the prison bed. Above all he saw another Deemster going upstairs to
sit on the bench while he lay in the vaults below.
He thought of his father and his family--four hundred years of the
Ballamoars and not a stain on the name of one of them until now. He
thought of Fenella--the cruel shame he would bring on her. Granted
he was guilty, and deserved punishment, had he any right to punish
Fenella also?
The clock on the landing struck one. An owl shrieked in the
plantation. He got up and strode about the room. The impulses of
the natural man began to fight for safety.
"Good God, what am I thinking about?" he asked himself.
What had he done to deserve all this? He had broken a wicked law
which had no right to exist, but did that require that he should
denounce himself, go to prison, degrade his father's name, break
Fenella's heart and put himself up on a gibbet for every passer-by to
jeer at and spit upon?
"What madness! What rank madness!"
He thought of the thousands of "great" men in all ages of the world
who had broken bad laws, and yet lived in honour and died in glory.
Why should he suffer for doing the same thing? Why he and not the
others? He laughed in scorn of his own weakness, but at the next
moment a mocking voice within him seemed to say,
"Go on! Go on! Issue that warrant! Let the unhappy girl who
trusted you be brought back and executed. Let the friend who loved
you be arrested and tried and sent to jail for the crime you have
committed. Go through all that duplicity again. Let the whole
community be submerged in anarchy as the consequence of your sin.
But remember, when you come out of it all, you will be a devil, and
your soul will be damned."
That terrified him and he sat down by the empty hearth once more.
After a while he found his hands wet under his face. He heard a
soft, caressing voice pleading with him,
"Victor, my darling heart! Resist this great temptation and peace
will come to you. Do the right, and no matter how low you may fall
in the eyes of men, you will look upon the face of God."
It was Fenella's voice--he was sure of that. Across the mountain and
through the darkness of the night her pure soul was speaking to him.
The candle had burnt to the socket by this time, but a new light came
to him. For more than a year he had been a slave, dragging a chain
of sin behind him. At every step in his wrong-doing his chain had
lengthened. He must break it and be free.
"Yes, I will go up to Government House in the morning," he thought,
"confess everything and take my punishment."
It was only right, only just. And when the cruel thought came that
the next time he entered the court-house it would be to stand in the
dock, with the dread certainty of his doom, he told himself that that
would be right too--the Judge also must be judged.