Groping his way upstairs in the darkness he entered his bedroom and
locked the door behind him. He found a fire burning, the sofa drawn
up in front of it, a lamp burning on the bureau that stood at one
side, and at the other the high-backed arm-chair in which his father
used to undress for bed. He was surprised to see that the fire had
been newly made up, but hearing footsteps in the adjoining bedroom he
understood.
"Poor Janet!" he thought.
His thoughts were thundering through his brain like waves in a deep
cavern. He was convinced that he would never survive the ordeal that
was before him. When men lived through long imprisonments it was
because they had hope that the beautiful days would come again. He
had no such hope, so, sitting at his bureau, he began to sort and
arrange his papers like one who was going away on a long journey.
After that he wrote a letter to the Attorney-General:
"DEAR MASTER,--When this letter comes to your hand you will know
the occasion for it. I am aware that it cannot have the
authority of a will, but (in the absence of a more regular
document) I trust the Clerk of the Rolls may find a way to act
upon it as an expression of my last wishes.
"I desire that Janet Curphey should be suitably provided for as
long as she lives. She has been a mother to me all my life, the
only mother I have ever known.
"I desire that Mrs. Collister of Baldromma may have such a
provision made for her as will liberate her from the tyrannies of
her husband.
"I desire that Thomas Vondy, formerly the jailer at Castle
Rushen, should be taken care of in any way you may consider best.
"Finally, if I do not live to return home, I desire that
everything else of which I die possessed should be offered to
Fenella Stanley as a mark of my deep love and devotion.
"I think that is all."
Having signed, sealed and inscribed his letter he put it in his
breast pocket. Then taking a drawer out of the bureau he carried it
to the sofa, intending to destroy the contents of it.
The first thing that came to his hand was the letter which Alick Gell
had given him at Derby Haven. It was marked "To be opened after we
have gone," and turned out to be a memorandum to his father's
executors, telling them he was leaving the island with no intention
of returning to it, and asking (as his only request) that in the
event of an inheritance becoming due to him, seven hundred pounds,
which had been advanced to him at various times, should be repaid to
Deemster Victor Stowell--"the best friend man ever had."
Feeling a certain twinge, Stowell hesitated for a moment, with the
memorandum shaking in his hand, and then threw it into the fire.
There were other papers of the same kind (I O U's and the like) which
shared the same fate, and then up from the bottom of the drawer, came
a leather-bound book. It was "Isobel's Diary." He had decided to
destroy that also. As the sanctuary of his father's soul he could
not allow it to be looked into by other eyes.
But, never having looked at it himself since the night of his
father's death, he could not resist the temptation to glance through
it once more before committing it to the flames. It fell open at the
page which said,
"So it's all well at last, Isobel. Your son can do without me
now. He needs his father no longer. With that brave woman by
his side he will go up and up. They will marry and carry on the
traditions of the Ballamoars. It is the dearest wish of my heart
that they should do so."
His throat throbbed. Ah, those hopes, all wrecked and dead! Going
down on one knee before the fire, and holding the book on the other,
he tore out page by page and burnt it, feeling as if he were burning
his right hand also. He was afraid of tears and had rarely given way
to them, but he was weeping like a heart-broken woman before the last
page had been consumed.
Then, taking Fenella's letters from his pocket-book, he prepared to
burn them too. They brought a faint perfume, a feeling of warmth, a
sense of her physical presence. Most of them were notes of no
consequence--appointments to ride, drive, fish, skate, all touched by
her gay raillery ("eight o'clock in the morning--is that too early
for you, Victor, dear?")--he had preserved every scrap in her
hand-writing. But one was the letter she wrote to him when he was in
London, and with palpitating tenderness he held it under the lamp to
read it again:
"Victor, when I think of the life that is so surely before you,
and that I shall walk through it by your side, perfectly united
with you, sharing the same hopes and aims and desires, enjoying
the same sunshine and weathering the same storms, I have a vision
of happiness that makes me cry with joy."
His heart swelled like a troubled sea, and to conquer his emotion he
thrust the letter hurriedly into the flames. But before it was more
than scorched he snatched it back and was preparing to return it to
his pocket when he bethought himself how soon it must pass into other
hands with everything he carried about him. And then, turning his
head away, and feeling as if he were burning his heart also, he put
it into the fire.
After that he dropped back on to the sofa with feelings about Fenella
that found no relief in tears. One by one the joyous hours of their
love returned to his memory. They seemed to ring in his ears with
the melancholy sound of far-off bells. It was a cruel pleasure.
All at once came a moment of fierce rebellion. When he had told
himself downstairs that in making the great renunciation of his
public office he must renounce Fenella also he had not realised what
it meant. It meant that never again, for as long as he lived
(Fenella being impossible to him), would Woman take any part in his
existence.
A cold fear took possession of him at that thought. He was a
man--was he for the rest of his life, if he survived his
imprisonment, to be cut off from his kind, separated, alone?
Better be dead than live such a life!
Then another and still more startling thought came to him--why not?
A letter to the Governor, exonerating Gell, and then it would all be
over. No warrant! No trial! Why not?
Outside the night was dark. Not a breath of wind was stirring. In
the silence of earth and sky he could hear the "swish, swish" of the
sea on the shingle at the top of the shore. It must be high water.
"Why not? Why not?"
His head was dizzy. He was thinking of a boat that lay among the
lush grass on the sandy bank above the beach. Alick and he had often
gone fishing in her. She was heavy, but he was strong--he could push
her into the water.
He saw himself pulling out to sea, far out, beyond the Point, to
where the Gulf Stream in its long race round half the world swept by
the island to the coast of Iceland. And then, as the dawn broke in
the eastern heavens, he saw himself scuttling the boat and going down
with her.
No one would know. The boat would lie at the bottom of the sea until
she fell to pieces, and he--he would go north on the way of the great
waters until he came to the feet of the frozen Jokulls, where nobody
would be able to say who he was or where he came from.
No scandal! No outcry! No vulgar sensation! Just a pang to
Fenella, and then the darkness of death over all.
Thinking the lamp was burning low he was reaching out his hand to
turn up the wick when a sense came of somebody being in the room with
him. He looked round. All was silent.
"Is anybody there?" he asked aloud.
There was no answer. The dread of miscarrying for ever if he died by
his own act began to struggle on the battle field of his soul with
the fear of being cut off from the living who live in God's peace.
He shivered and was trying to rise when again he had the sense of
somebody else in the bedroom.
"Who is it?"
At the next moment, raising his eyes, he thought he saw his father in
the arm-chair where he had seen him so often. The august face was
the same as when he saw it last in that room, except that the
melancholy eyes were now open.
"I'm ill," he thought, and he closed his eyes and put his hand over
them.
But when he opened his eyes again his father was still there, looking
at him with tenderness and compassion. His brain reeled and he fell
face down on the cushions of the sofa.
Then he heard his father speaking to him, gently, affectionately, but
firmly, just as he used to do when he was alive.
"My son! My dear son! I know what you are thinking of doing, and I
warn you not to do it. No man can run away from the consequences of
his sins. If he flies from them in this life he must meet them in
the life hereafter, and then it will be a hundred-fold more terrible
to be swept from the face of the living God."
"Father!"
Stowell tried to cry aloud but could not. His father's voice ceased
and at the next moment a vision flashed before him. A line of
miserable-looking men were standing before an awful tribunal. He
knew who they were--the unjust judges of the world who had corrupted
justice. All the grandeur in which they had clothed themselves on
earth was gone, and they were there in the nakedness of their shame
crying,
"Mercy! Mercy! Mercy!"
Stowell felt as if he were falling off the world into a void of
unfathomable night. Then blindness fell upon the eyes of his mind
and he knew no more.