Early next morning Stowell was removed to Castle Rushen.
There was a rumour (probably inspired by the police) that he would
travel by the seven o'clock train, therefore at half-past six the
railway station and its approaches were full of a noisy crowd. But
at ten minutes to seven the prison van, drawn by two horses, drew up
at the back door under the court-house and Stowell was hustled into
it.
"Come, get in, quick," said the Chief Constable (all his former
deference gone), and then the van rolled away, Stowell being shut up
in the windowless compartment within, while the Chief Constable and
his Inspector of Police occupied the outer one with the grill.
Crossing a swing-bridge which spanned the top of the harbour, they
climbed the lane to the Head until they reached the cliff road, and
had the town behind them under a veil of morning mist, and the open
sea in front. There had been wind overnight, and a fiery sun was
blazing out of a fierce sky like the red light from the open door of
a furnace.
Stowell, in his dark compartment, had not yet asked himself which way
he was going. The feeling of exaltation, of doing a divinely
appointed duty, which had buoyed him up during the trial, was now
gone. The nullity of his past life, the hopelessness of the future
had left him with the sense of being already a dead man. Two years
inside the blind walls of the Castle Rushen, while the sun shone and
the flowers grew and the birds sang outside, and the world went on
without him--how could he live through it?
At length, having a sense of physical as well as spiritual
suffocation, he tapped timidly at his door, and asked, when it was
opened, if it might remain so for a few moments that he might have a
breath of air.
"Certainly not," said the Chief Constable, and he clashed the door
back.
"Better so," thought Stowell.
He had caught a glimpse of the scene outside, and knew where they
were--on the rocky shelf along which he had driven with Fenella after
the oath-taking at Castletown.
The memory of that day came back to him like a stab. He could feel
Fenella's warm presence by his side; he could see her gleaming eyes;
he could hear her rich contralto voice as they sang together above
the boom of the sea below and the cry of the sea-fowl overhead:
"_Love is the Queen for you and for me,
Salve, Salve Regina!_"
What memories! What regrets! Only now did he know how necessary
Fenella had been to him--only now when he had lost her. He felt like
a dead man--dead, yet doomed to remember his former existence.
An hour and a half passed. Stowell sat huddled up in the close
atmosphere of the van, with the thunderous rumble of the roof above
him and the crack of the driver's whip outside. He knew every mile
of the way. When the van swung round at a turn of the road, or the
horses slowed down at the foot of a hill, the memory of some moment
in his drive with Fenella came back to him, and he told himself how
far they had still to go.
At length they were entering Castletown. He knew that by the hollow
sound under the horses' hoofs as they crossed the bridge over the
harbour--the bridge from which Fenella had looked back and waved her
hand to the crowd about the Castle gate who had raised the deafening
shout--"Long live the new Deemster, hip, hip, hip!"
Groaning audibly, digging with his fingernails deep trenches in his
palms, praying for strength of spirit, he waited for the ordeal which
he felt was before him.
Another crowd had gathered about the Castle gate that morning.
Telegrams had been received from Douglas saying that Stowell was
travelling by road, so half the people of Castletown had come down to
the quay as to a funeral to see the last of the condemned man before
he was buried in his living tomb.
They were of two classes. The larger and noisier class consisted of
raw youths and young men to whom the trial of the Deemster had been
mainly a subject for lewd jests about Bessie Collister.
One of them, with the small eyes of a sow and the thick lips of a
cod, wore a butcher's apron and a steel attached to a belt about his
waist. This was John Qualtrough (son of Cæsar), the lusty ruffian
whose skull had been cracked in his boyhood by the blow from the
stick which had been intended for Alick Gell.
The Castle walls were low by the gate, and off the shoulders of a
comrade Qualtrough clambered to a seat on the battlements. From that
elevation he beguiled the time of waiting by conducting a chorus of
his companions on the ground, using his steel for baton. He selected
the crudest of the old Manx ditties, and amid shrieks of laughter, he
emphasised the doubtful lines by frequent repetition.
"_I'm not engaged to any young man I solemnly do swear,
For I mane to be a vargin and still the laurels wear.
For I mane to be a vargin and still the laurels wear._"
The other class, consisting chiefly of women, demure and severe,
occupied themselves with serious talk about Fenella. That splendid
young woman! It was shocking the way Sto'll had treated her--worse
than the other in a manner of speaking.
"They're telling me she wasn't at the trial in Douglas yesterday."
"What wonder if she wasn't, poor thing! I wouldn't trust but she'll
never show her face in public again."
"It's no use talking, the man has brought shame on the lot of us and
is a disgrace to the name of a Manxman."
Suddenly, over the loud clamour there came a wild shout from the
battlements.
"Here he is!"
The prison van was seen to cross the bridge, and as it came up to the
gate, it was received with a howl of execration.
Stowell heard it. In his dark compartment the surging of the crowd
around the outside of the van was like the breaking of a tidal wave
on a sleeping town in the middle of the night. The van stopped with
a sickening jolt, and he heard the Inspector of Police crying,
"Stand back! Make way!"
Then there was a flash of daylight and the voice of the Chief
Constable saying peremptorily,
"Come, get out! Be quick about it."
At the next moment he was on the ground with a roar of hoarse voices
and a rush of contorted faces around him. There were screams of lewd
laughter and yells of merciless derision. Arms were raised as if to
strike him. He felt himself being pushed and pulled by the police
through the open gate and up the passage way to the Portcullis.
The crowd, not yet appeased, tried to force their way past the jailer
and his turnkeys as if to lynch him. But they were checked by an
unexpected sight. A young woman, in the costume of a nurse, with
heaving breast, quivering nostrils, and flaming eyes, rushed through
the gate with outstretched arms to stop them.
They recognised her instantly, but it was not that alone that cowed
them. There is something in a brave act which pierces the noisiest
crowd to the core of its cruel soul. Certainly this crowd fell back
and its uproar died down.
Then in a voice which vibrated with contempt and scorn, Fenella tried
to speak to them.
"You .... you .... you...." she began, but further words would not
come, and returning to the Castle she clashed its iron-studded gate
in the people's faces.
The crowd broke up rapidly and slank away, subdued and ashamed.
"Morning, men!"
"Morning!"
Within two minutes nearly all were gone. The open space in front of
the Castle gate was empty, save for two old women with little black
shawls over their heads, who were wiping their eyes on their cotton
aprons.
"Did thou see that, Bella?"
"'Deed I did, though."
"I belave in my heart it was the girl herself--the one they say he
has done so bad to."
"Aw well, if a woman isn't willing to stand up for her man, whatever
he has done, what _is_ she anyway?"