FIRST BOOK THE SIN

CHAPTER ONE THE BREED OF THE BALLAMOAR

We were in full school after breakfast, when the Principal came from his private room with his high, quick, birdlike step and almost leapt up to his desk to speak to us. He was a rather small, slight man, of middle age, with pale face and nervous gestures, liable to alternate bouts of a somewhat ineffectual playfulness and gusts of ungovernable temper. It was easy to see that he was in his angry mood that morning. He looked round the school for a moment over the silver rims of his spectacles, and then said,

"Boys, before you go to your classes for the day I have something to tell you. One of you has brought disgrace upon King William's, and I must know which of you it is."

Then followed the "degrading story." The facts of it had just been brought to his notice by the Inspector of Police for Castletown. He had no intention of entering into details. They were too shameful. Briefly, one of our boys, a senior boy apparently, had lately made a practice of escaping from his house after hours, and had so far forfeited his self-respect as to go walking in the dark roads with a young girl—a servant girl, he was ashamed to say, from the home of the High Bailiff. He had been seen repeatedly, and although not identified, he had been recognised by his cap as belonging to the College. Last night two young townsmen had set out to waylay him. There had been a fight, in which our boy had apparently used a weapon, probably a stick. The result was that one of the young townsmen was now in hospital, still insensible, the other was seriously injured about the face. Probably a pair of young blackguards who had intervened from base motives of their own and therefore deserved no pity. But none the less the conduct of the King William's boy had been disgraceful. It must be punished, no matter who he was, or how high he might stand in the school.

"I tell you plainly, boys, I don't know who he is. Neither do the police—the townsmen never having heard his name and the girl refusing to speak."

But he had a suspicion—a very strong suspicion, based upon an unmistakable fact. He might have called the boy he suspected to his room and dealt with him privately. But a matter like this, known to the public authorities and affecting the honour and welfare of the college, was not to be hushed up. In fact the police had made it a condition of their foregoing proceedings in the Courts that an open inquiry should be made here. He had undertaken to make it, and he must make it now.

"Therefore, I give the boy who has been guilty of this degrading conduct the opportunity of voluntary confession—of revealing himself to the whole school, and asking pardon of his Principal, his masters and his fellow-pupils for the disgrace he has brought on them. Who is it?"

None of us stirred, spoke or made sign. The Principal was rapidly losing his temper.

"Boys," he said, "there is something I have not told you. According to the police the disgraceful incident occurred between nine and nine-thirty last night, and it is known to the house-master of one of your houses that one boy, and one only, who had been out without permission, came in after that hour. I now give that boy another chance. Who is he?"

Still no one spoke or stirred. The Principal bit his lip, and again looked down the line of our desks over the upper rims of his spectacles.

"Does nobody speak? Must I call a name? Is it possible that any King William's boy can ask for the double shame of being guilty and being found out?"

Even yet there was no sign from the boys, and no sound except their audible breathing through the nose.

"Very well. So be it. I've given that boy his chance. Now he must take the consequences."

With that the Principal stepped down from his desk, turned his blazing eyes towards the desks of the fifth form and said,

"Stowell, step forward."

We gasped. Stowell was the head boy of the school and an immense and universal favourite. Through the mists of years some of us can see him still, as he heaved up from his seat that morning and walked slowly across the open floor in front to where the Principal was standing. A big, well-grown boy, narrowly bordering on eighteen, dark-haired, with broad forehead, large dark eyes, fine features, and, even in those boyish days, a singular air of distinction. There was no surprise in his face, and not a particle of shame, but there was a look of defiance which raised to boiling point the Principal's simmering anger.

"Stowell," he said, "you will not deny that you were out after hours last night?"

"No, Sir."

"Then it was you who were guilty of this disgraceful conduct?"

Stowell seemed to be about to speak, and then with a proud look to check himself, and to close his mouth as with a snap.

"It was you, wasn't it?"

Stowell straightened himself up and answered, "So you say, Sir."

"I say? Speak for yourself. You've a tongue in your head, haven't you?"

"Perhaps I have, Sir."

"Then it was you?"

Stowell made no answer.

"Why don't you answer me? Answer, Sir! It was you," said the Principal.

And then Stowell, with a little toss of the head and a slight curl of the lip, replied,

"If you say it was, what is the use of my saying anything, Sir?"

The last remnant of the Principal's patience left him. His eyes flamed and his nostrils quivered. A cane, seldom used, was lying along the ledge of his desk. He turned to it, snatched it up, and brought it down in two or three rapid sweeps on Stowell's back, and (as afterwards appeared) his bare neck also.

It was all over in a flash. We gasped again. There was a moment of breathless silence. All eyes were on Stowell. He was face to face with the Principal, standing, in his larger proportions, a good two inches above him, ghastly white and trembling with passion. For a moment we thought anything might happen. Then Stowell appeared to recover his self-control. He made another little toss of the head, another curl of the lip and a shrug of the shoulders.

"Now go back to your study, Sir," said the Principal, between gusts of breath, "and stay there until you are told to leave it."

Stowell was in no hurry, but he turned after a moment and walked out, with a strong step, almost a haughty one.

"Boys, go to your classes," said the Principal, in a hoarse voice, and then he went out, too, but more hurriedly.

Something had gone wrong, wretchedly wrong, we scarcely knew what—that was our confused impression as we trooped off to the class-rooms, a dejected lot of lads, half furious, half afraid.

II

At seven o'clock that night Stowell was still confined to his study, a little, bare room, containing an iron bedstead, a deal washstand, a table, one chair, a trunk, some books on a hanging bookshelf, and a small rug before an iron fender. It was November and the day had been cold. Jamieson (the Principal's valet) had smuggled up some coal and lit a little fire for him. Mrs. Gale (the Principal's housekeeper), bringing his curtailed luncheon, had seen the long red wheal which the cane had left across the back of his neck, and insisted on cooling it with some lotion and bandaging it with linen. He was sitting alone in the half-darkness of his little room, crouching over the fire, gloomy, morose, fierce and with a burning sense of outraged justice. The door opened and another boy came into the room. It was Alick Gell, his special chum, a lad of his own age, but fair-haired, blue-eyed, and with rather feminine features. In a thick voice that was like a sob half-choked in his throat, he said,

"Vic, I can't stand this any longer."

"Oh, it's you, is it? I thought you'd come."

"Of course you didn't do that disgraceful thing, as they call it, but you've got to know who did. It was I."

Stowell did not answer. He had neither turned nor looked up, and Gell, standing behind him, tugged at his shoulders and said again,

"Don't you hear me? It was I."

"I know."

"You know? How do you know? When did you know? Did you know this morning?"

"I knew last night."

Going into town he had seen Gell on the opposite side of the road. Yes, it was true enough he was out after hours. The Principal himself had sent him! Early in the day he had told him that after "prep" he was to go to the station for something.

"Good Lord! Then he must have forgotten all about it!"

"He had no business to forget."

"Why didn't you tell him?"

"Not I—not likely!"

"But being out after hours wasn't anything. It wasn't knocking those blackguards about. Why didn't you deny that anyway?"

"Oh, shut up, Alick."

Again Gell tugged at his shoulders and said,

"But why didn't you?"

"If you must know, I'll tell you—because they would have had you for it next."

Mrs. Gale had found the big window of the lavatory open at a quarter-past nine, and when she sent Jamieson down he saw Gell closing it.

"Do you mean that.... that to save me, you allowed yourself to...."

"Shut up, I tell you!"

There was silence for a moment and then Gell began to cry openly, and to pour out a torrent of self-reproaches. He was a coward; a wretched, miserable, contemptible coward—that's what he was and he had always known it. He would never forgive himself—never! But perhaps he had not been thinking of saving his own skin only.

"That was little Bessie Collister."

"I know."

If he had stood up to the confounded thing and confessed, and given her away, after she had been plucky and refused to speak, and his father had heard of it.... her father also.... her stepfather....

"Dan Baldromma, you know what he is, Vic?"

"Oh, yes, there would have been the devil to pay all round."

"Wouldn't there?"

"The College, too! Dan would have had something to say to old Peacock (nickname for the Principal) on that subject also."

Yes, that was what Gell had thought, and it was the reason (one of the reasons) why he had stood silent when the Principal challenged them. Nobody knew anything except the girl. The Police didn't know; the Principal didn't know. If he kept quiet the inquiry would end in nothing and there would be no harm done to anybody—except the town ruffians, and they deserved all they got. How was he to guess that somebody else was out after hours, and that to save him from being exposed, perhaps expelled, his own chum, like the brick he was and always had been....

"Hold your tongue, you fool!"

Gell made for the door. "Look here," he said, "I'm going to tell the Principal that if you were out last night it was on an errand for him—that can't hurt anybody."

"No, you're not."

"Yes, I am—certainly I am."

"If you do, I'll never speak to you again—on my soul, never."

"But he's certain to remember it sooner or later."

"Let him."

"And when he does, what's he to think of himself?"

"That's his affair, isn't it? Leave him alone."

Gell's voice rose to a cry. "No, I will not leave him alone. And since you won't let me say that about you, I'll tell him about myself. Yes, I will, and nobody shall prevent me! I don't care what happens about father, or anybody else, now. I can't stand this any longer. I can't and I won't."

"Alick! Alick Gell! Old fellow...."

But the door had been slammed to and Gell was gone.

III

The Principal was in his Library, a well-carpeted room, warmed by a large fire and lighted by a red-shaded lamp. His half-yearly examination had just finished and his desk was piled high with examination papers, but he could not settle himself to his work on them. He was harking back to the event of the morning, and was not too pleased with himself. He had lost his temper again; he had inflicted a degrading punishment on a senior boy, and to protect the good name of the school he had allowed himself to be intimidated by the police into a foolish and ineffectual public inquiry.

"Wretched! Wretched! Wretched!" he thought, rising for the twentieth time from his chair before the fire and pacing the room in a disorder.

He thought of Stowell with a riot of mingled anger and affection. He had always liked that boy—-a fine lad, with good heart and brain in spite of obvious limitations. He had shown the boy some indulgence, too, and this was how he had repaid him! Defying him in the face of the whole school! Provoking him with his prevarication, the proud curl of his lip and his damnable iteration: "If you say so, Sir...." It had been maddening. Any master in the world might have lost his temper.

Of course the boy was guilty! But then he was no sneak or coward. Good gracious, no, that was the last thing anybody would say about him. Quite the contrary! Only too apt to take the blame of bad things on himself when he might make others equally responsible. That was one reason the under-masters liked him and the boys worshipped him. Then why, in the name of goodness, hadn't he spoken out, made some defence, given some explanation? After all the first offence was nothing worse than being out after hours for a little foolish sweethearting. The Principal saw Stowell making a clean breast of everything, and himself administering a severe admonition and then fighting it all out with the police for school and scholar. But that was impossible now—quite impossible!

"Wretched! Wretched! Wretched!"

He thought of the boy's father—the senior judge or Deemster of the island, and easily the first man in it. One of the trustees of the college also, to whom serious matters were always mentioned. This had become a serious matter. Even if nothing worse happened to that young blackguard in the hospital the police might insist on expulsion. If so, what would be the absolute evidence against the boy? Only that he had been out of school when the disgraceful incident had happened! The Deemster, who was cool and clear-headed, might say the boy could have been out on some other errand. Or perhaps that some other boy might have been out at the same time.

But that couldn't be! Good heavens, no! Stowell wasn't a fool. If he had been innocent, why on earth should he have taken his degrading punishment lying down? No, no, he had been guilty enough. He had admitted that he was out after hours, and, having nothing else to say even about that (why or by whose permission), he had tried to carry the whole thing off with a sort of silent braggadocio.

"Wretched! Wretched! Wretched!"

The Principal had at length settled himself at his desk, and was taking up some of the examination papers, when he uncovered a small white packet. Obviously a chemist's packet, sealed with red wax and tied with blue string. Not having seen it before he picked it up, and looked at it. It was addressed to himself, and was marked "By Passenger Train—to be called for."

The Principal felt his thin hair rising from his scalp. Something he had forgotten had come back upon him with the force and suddenness of a blow. Off and on for a week he had suffered from nervous headaches. Somebody had recommended an American patent medicine and he had written to Douglas for it. The Douglas chemist had replied that it was coming by the afternoon steamer, and he would send it on to Castletown by the last train. The letter had arrived when he was in class, and Jamieson the valet, being out of reach, he had asked Stowell, who was at hand, to go to the Station for the parcel after preparation and leave it on his Library table. And then the headache had passed off, and in the pressure of the examination he had forgotten the whole matter!

The Principal got up again. His limbs felt rigid, and he had the sickening sensation of his body shrinking into insignificance. At that moment there came a knocking at his door. He could not answer at first and the knocking was repeated.

"Come in then," he said, and Gell entered, his face flooded with tears.

He knew the boy as one who was nearly always in trouble, and his first impulse was to drive him out.

"Why do you come here? Go to your house-master, or to your head, or...."

"It's about Stowell himself, Sir. He's innocent," said Gell.

"Innocent?"

"Yes, Sir—it was I," said Gell. And then came a flood of words, blurted out like water from an inverted bottle. It was true that he was with the girl last night, but it was a lie that he had made a practice of walking out with her. She came from the north of the island, a farm near his home, and he hadn't known she was living in Castletown until he met her in the town yesterday afternoon. They were on the Darby Haven Road, just beyond the college cricket ground, about nine o'clock, when the blackguards dropped out on them from the Hango Hill ruins and started to rag him. It was true he smashed them and he would do it again, and worse next time, but it was another lie that he had done it with a stick. They had the stick, and it was just when he was knocking out one of them that the other aimed a blow at him which fell on his chum instead and tumbled him over insensible. The girl had gone off screaming before that, and seeing the police coming up he had leapt into the cricket ground and got back into school by the lavatory window.

"But why, boy .... why .... why didn't you say all this in school this morning?"

"I was afraid, Sir," said Gell, and then came the explanation he had given to Stowell. He had been afraid his father would get to know, and the girl's father, too—that was to say her step-father. Her step-father was a tenant of his own father's; they were always at cross purposes, and he had thought if the girl got into any trouble at the High Bailiff's and it came out that he had been the cause of it, her step-father....

"Who is he? What's his name?"

"Dan Collister—but they call him Baldromma after the farm, Sir."

"That wind-bag and agitator who is always in the newspapers?"

"Yes, Sir."

"But, good heavens, boy, don't you see what you've done for me?—allowed me to punish an innocent person?"

"Yes, I know," said Gell, and then, through another gust of sobs, came further explanations. It had all been over before he had had time to think. The Principal had said that nobody knew, and he had thought he had only to hold his tongue and nothing would be found out. But if he had known that Stowell knew, and that he had been out himself....

"And did he know?"

"Yes, Sir. He saw me with Bessie Collister as he was going to the station and he thought he couldn't get out of this himself without letting me in for it."

"Do you mean to tell me that he took that punishment to .... to save you from being discovered?"

Gell hesitated for a moment, then choked down his sobs, and said with a defiant cry:

"Yes, he did—to save me, and the school, and .... and you, too, Sir."

The Principal staggered back a step, and then said: "Leave me, boy, leave me."

He did not go to bed that night, or to school next day, or the day after, or the day after that. On the fourth day he wrote a long letter to the Deemster, telling him with absolute truthfulness what had happened, and concluding:

"That is all, your Honour, but to me it is everything. I have not only punished an innocent boy, but one who, in taking his punishment, was doing an act of divine unselfishness. I am humiliated in my own eyes. I feel like a little man in the presence of your son. I can never look into his face again.

"My first impulse was to resign my post, but on second thoughts I have determined to leave the issue to your decision. If I am to remain as head of your school you must take your boy away. If he is to stay I must go. Which is it to be?"

CHAPTER TWO THE BOYHOOD OF VICTOR STOWELL

Deemster Stowell was the only surviving member of an old Manx family. They had lived for years beyond memory at Ballamoar (the Great Place) an estate of nearly a thousand acres on the seaward angle of the Curragh lands which lie along the north-west of the island. The fishermen say the great gulf-stream which sweeps across the Atlantic strikes the Manx coast at that elbow. Hence the tropical plants which grow in the open at Ballamoar, and also the clouds of snow-white mist which too often hang over it, hiding the house, and the lands around, and making the tower of Jurby Church on the edge of the cliff look like a lighthouse far out at sea.

The mansion house, in the Deemster's day, was a ramshackle old place which bore signs of having been altered and added to by many generations of his family. It stood back to the sea and facing a broad and undulating lawn, which was bordered by lofty elms that were inhabited by undisturbed colonies of rooks. From a terrace behind, opening out of the dining-room, there was a far view on clear days of the Mull of Galloway to the north, and of the Morne Mountains to the west. People used to say—

"The Stowells have caught a smatch of the Irish and the Scotch in their Manx blood."

The Deemster was sixty years of age at that time. A large, spare man with an almost Jovian white head, clean-shaven face, powerful yet melancholy eyes, bold yet sensitive features and long yet delicate hands—a strong, silent, dignified, rather solemn personality.

He was a man of the highest integrity. Occupying an office too often associated, in his time, with various forms of corruption, the breath of scandal never touched him. He was a legislator, as well as a Judge, being ex officio a member of the little Manx Parliament, but in his double capacity (so liable to abuse) nobody with a doubtful scheme would have dared to approach him.

"What does the old Deemster say?"—the answer to that question often settled a dispute, for nobody thought of appealing against his judgment.

"Justice is the strongest and most sacred thing on earth"—that was his motto, and he lived up to it.

His private life had been saddened by a great sorrow. He married, rather late in life, a young Englishwoman, out of Cumberland—a gentle creature with a kind of moonlight beauty. She died four or five years afterwards and the Manx people knew little about her. To the last they called her the "Stranger."

The Deemster bore his loss in characteristic silence. Nobody intruded on his sorrow, or even entered his house, but on the day of the funeral half "the north" lined the long grass-grown road from the back gates of Ballamoar to the little wind-swept churchyard over against the sea. He thanked none of them and saluted none, but his head was low as his coach passed through.

Next day he took his Court as usual, and from that day onward nobody saw any difference in him. But long afterwards, Janet Curphey, the lady housekeeper at Ballamoar, was heard to say in the village post-office, which was also the grocer's shop, that every morning after breakfast the Deemster had put a vase of fresh-cut flowers on the writing-desk in his library under his young wife's portrait, until it was now a white-haired man who was making his daily offering to the picture of a young woman.

"Aw, yes, Mrs. Clucas, yes! And what did it matter to the woman to be a stranger when she was loved like that?"

The "Stranger" had left a child, and this had been at once the tragedy and the triumph of her existence. Although an ancient family of exceptional longevity the Stowells had carried on their race by a very thin line. One child, rarely two, never three, and only one son at any time—that had been all that had stood from generation to generation between the family name and extinction. After three years of childlessness the Deemster's wife had realised the peril, and, for her husband's sake, begun to pray for a son. With all her soul she prayed for him. The fervour of her prayers made her a devoutly religious woman. When her hope looked like a certainty her joy was that of an angel rejoicing in the goodness and greatness and glory of God. But by that time the sword had almost worn out its scabbard. She had fought a great fight and under the fire of her spirit her body had begun to fail.

The Deemster had sent for famous physicians and some of them had shaken their heads.

"She may get through it; but we must take care, your Honour, we must take care."

Beneath his calm exterior the Deemster had been torn by the red strife of conflicting hopes, but his wife had only had one desire. When her dread hour came she met it with a shining face. Her son was born and he was to live, but she was dying. At the last moment she asked for her husband, and drew his head down to her.

"Call him Victor," she said—she had conquered.

II

It was then that the lady housekeeper took service at Ballamoar. Janet Curphey was the last relic of a decayed Manx family that had fallen on evil times, and having lost all she had come for life. She quickly developed an almost slave-like devotion to the Deemster (during her first twenty years she would never allow anybody else to wait on him at table) as well as a motherly love for his motherless little one. The child called her his mother, nobody corrected him, and for years he knew nothing to the contrary.

He grew to be a braw and bright little man, and was idolized by everybody. Having no relations of his own, except "mother," and the Deemster, he annexed everybody else's. Bobbie, the young son of the Ballamoar farmer (there was a farm between the mansion-house and the sea) called his father "Dad," so Robbie Creer was "Dad" to Victor too. The old widow in the village who kept the post-office-grocer's shop was "Auntie Kitty" to her orphan niece, Alice, so she was "Auntie Kitty" to Victor also.

"Everybody loves that child," said Janet. It was true. As far back as that, under God knows what guidance, he was laying his anchor deep for the days of storm and tempest.

During his earlier years he saw little of his father, but every evening after his bath he was taken into the Library to bid Good-night to him, and then the Deemster would lift him up to the picture to bid Good-night to his mother also.

"You must love and worship her all your life, darling. I'll tell you why, some day."

He was a born gipsy, often being lost in the broad plantations about the house, and then turning up with astonishing stories of the distances he had travelled.

"I didn't went no farther nor Ramsey to-day, mother"—seven miles as the crow flies.

He was born a poet too, and after the Deemster had made a "Limerick" on his Christian name, he learnt to rhyme to the same measure, making quatrains almost as rapidly as he could speak, though often with strange words of his own compounding. Thus he celebrated his pet lamb, his kid, his rabbits, the rooks on the lawn, and particularly a naughty young pony his father had given him, who "lived in the fiel'" and whom he "wanted to go to Peel," but whenever he went out to fetch her she "always kicked up her heel." Janet thought this marvellous, miraculous. It was a gift! The little prophet Samuel might have been more saintly but he couldn't have been more wonderful.

Janet was not the only one to be impressed. It is known now that day by day the Deemster copied the boy's rhymes, with much similar matter, into a leather-bound book which he had labelled strangely enough, "Isabel's Diary." He kept this secret volume under lock and key, and it was never seen by anyone else until years afterwards, when, in a tragic hour, the childish jingles in the Judge's sober handwriting, under the eyes that looked at them, burnt like flame and cut like a knife.

It was remarked by Janet that the Deemster's affection for the child grew greater, while the expression of it became less as the years went on. "Is the boy up yet?" would be the first word he would say when she took his early tea to him in the morning; and if a long day in the Courts kept him from home until after the child had been put to bed, he would never sit down until he had gone upstairs to look at the little one in his cot.

In common with other imaginative children brought up alone the boy invented a playmate, but contrary to custom his invisible comrade was of the opposite sex, not that of the little dreamer. He called her "Sadie," nobody knew why, or how he had come by the name, for it was quite unknown in the island. "Sadie" lived with her mother, "Mrs. Corlett," in the lodge of Ballamoar, which had been empty and shut up since "the Stranger" died, when the coachman, who had occupied it, was no longer needed. On returning from some of his runaway jaunts the boy accounted for his absence by saying he had been down to the gate to see "Sadie." He filled the empty house with an entire scheme of domestic economy, and could tell you all that happened there.

"Sadie was peeling the potatoes this morning and Mrs. Corlett was washing up, mamma."

His pony's name was Molly and by six years of age he had learnt to ride her with such ease and confidence that to see them cantering up the drive was to think that boy and pony must be a single creature. Molly developed a foal, called Derry, which always wanted to be trotting after its mother. That suited the boy perfectly. Derry had to carry "Sadie"—a rare device which enabled his invisible comrade to be nearly always with him.

But at length came a dire event which destroyed "Sadie." The master of Ballamoar was rising seven when a distant relative of the Derby family (formerly the Lords of Man) was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of the island. This was Sir John Stanley, an ex-Indian officer—a man in middle life, not brilliant, but the incarnation of commonsense, essentially a product of his time, firm of will, conservative in opinions, impatient of all forms of romantic sentiment, but kindly, genial and capable of constant friendship.

The Deemster and the new Governor, though their qualities had points of difference, became good friends instantly. They met first at the swearing-in at Castle Rushen where, as senior Judge of the island, the Deemster administered the oath. But their friendship was sealed by an experience in common—the Governor having also lost a beloved wife, who had died in childbirth, leaving him with an only child. This was a girl called Fenella, a year and a half younger than Victor, a beautiful little fairy, but a little woman, too, with a will of her own also.

The children came together at Ballamoar, the Governor having brought his little daughter, with her French governess, on his first call. There was the usual ceremonious meeting of the little people, the usual eyeing of each other from afar, the usual shy aloofness. Then came swift comradeship, gurgling laughter, a frantic romping round the rooms, and out on to the lawn, and then—a wild quarrel, with shrill voices in fierce dispute. The two fathers rose from their seats in the Library and looked out of the windows. The girl was running towards the house with screams of terror, and the boy was stoning her off the premises.

"You mustn't think as this is your house, 'cause it isn't."

Janet made peace between them, and the children kissed at parting, but going home in the carriage Fenella confided to the French governess her fixed resolve to "marry to a girl," not a boy, when her time came to take a husband.

The effect on Victor was of another kind but no less serious. It was remarked that the visit of little Fenella Stanley had in some mysterious way banished his invisible playmate. Sadie was dead—stone dead and buried. No more was ever heard of her, and Mrs. Corlett's cottage returned to its former condition as a closed-up gate-lodge. When Derry trotted by Molly's side there was apparently somebody else astride of her now. But—strange whispering of sex—whoever she was the boy never helped her to mount, and when she dismounted he always looked another way.

III

Four years passed, and boy and girl met again. This time it was at Government House and the boot was on the other leg. Fenella, a tall girl for her age, well-grown, spirited, a little spoiled, was playing tennis with the three young Gell girls—daughters of a Manx family of some pretensions. When Victor, in his straw hat and Eton jacket, appeared in the tennis court (having driven over with his father and been sent out to the girls by the Governor) the French governess told Fenella to let him join in the game. She did so, taking a racquet from one of the Gell girls and giving it to the boy. But though Victor, who was now at the Ramsey Grammar School, could play cricket and football with any boy of his age on the island, he knew nothing about tennis, and again and again, in spite of repeated protests, sent the balls flying out of the court.

The Gells tittered and sniffed, and at length Fenella, calling him a booby, snatched the racquet out of his hand and gave it back to the girl. At this humiliation his eyes flashed and his cheeks coloured, and after a moment he marched moodily back to the open window of the drawing-room. There the Governor and the Deemster were sitting, and the Governor said,

"Helloa! What's amiss? Why aren't you playing with the girls?"

"Because I'm not," said the boy.

"Victor!" said the Deemster, but the boy's eyes had began to fill, so the matter ended.

There was a show of peace when the girls came in to tea, but on returning to Ballamoar the boy communicated to Janet in "open Court" his settled conviction that "girls were no good anyway."

Boy and girl did not meet again for yet another four years and then the boot had changed its leg once more. By that time Victor had made his boy-friendship. It was with Alick Gell, brother of the three Gell girls and only son of Archibald Gell, a big man in Manxland, Speaker of the House of Keys, the representative branch of the little Manx Parliament. Archibald Gell's lands, which were considerable, made boundary with the Deemster's, and his mansion house was the next on the Ramsey Road, but his principal activities were those of a speculative builder. In this capacity he had put up vast numbers of boarding-houses all over the island to meet the needs of the visiting industry, borrowing from English Insurance Companies enormous sums on mortgage, which could only be repaid by the thrift and forethought of a second generation.

Alick knew what was expected of him, but down to date he had shown no promise of capacity to fulfil his destiny. He had less of his father's fiery energy than of the comfortable contentment of his mother, who came of a line of Manx parsons, always shockingly ill-paid, generally thriftless and sometimes threadbare. Yet he was a lovable boy, not too bright of brain but with a heart of gold and a genuine gift of friendship.

At the Ramsey Grammar School he had attached himself to Victor, fetching and carrying for him, and looking up to him with worshipful devotion. Now they were together at King William's College, the public school of the island, fine lads both, but neither of them doing much good there.

It was the morning of the annual prize day at the end of the summer term. The Governor had come to present the prizes, and he was surrounded by all the officials of Man, except the Deemster, who rarely attended such functions. The boys were on platforms on either side of the hall, and the parents were in the body of it, with the wives and sisters of the big people in the front row, and Fenella, the Governor's daughter, now a tall girl in white, with her French governess, in the midst of them.

At this ceremony Gell played no part, and even Stowell did not shine. One boy after another went down to a tumult of hand-clapping and climbed back with books piled up to his chin. When Stowell's turn came, the Principal, who had been calling out the names of the prize-winners, and making little speeches in their praise, tried to improve the occasion with a moral homily.

"Now here," he said, making one of his bird-like steps forward, "is a boy of extraordinary talents—quite extraordinary. Yet he has only one prize to receive. Why? Want of application! If boys of such great natural gifts .... yes, I might almost say genius, would only apply themselves, there is nothing whatever, at school or in after life...."

P'shew! During this astonishing speech Stowell was already on the platform, only a pace back from the Principal, in full view of everybody, with face aflame and a burning sense of injustice. And, although, when the interlude was over, and he stepped forward to receive his Horace (he had won the prize for Classics) the Governor rose and shook hands with him and said he was sure the son of his old friend, the Deemster, would justify himself yet, and make his father proud of him, he was perfectly certain that Fenella Stanley's eyes were on him and she was thinking him a "booby."

But his revenge came later. In the afternoon he captained in the cricket match, with fifteen of the junior house against the school eleven. Things went badly for the big fellows from the moment he took his place at the wicket, so they put on their best and fastest bowlers. But he scored all round the wicket for nearly an hour, driving the ball three times over the roof of the school chapel and twice into the ruins beyond the Darby-Haven road, and carrying his bat for more than sixty runs. Then, as he came in, the little fellows who had been frantic, and Gell, who had been turning cart-wheels in delirious excitement, and the big fellows, who had been beaten, stood up together and cheered him lustily.

But at that moment he wasn't thinking about any of them. He knew—although, of course, he did not look—that in the middle of the people in the pavilion, who were all on their feet and waving their handkerchiefs, there was Fenella Stanley, with glistening eyes and cheeks aglow. Perhaps she thought he would salute her now, or even stop and speak. But no, not likely! He doffed his cap to the Governor as he ran past, but took no more notice of the Governor's winsome daughter than if she had been a crow.

IV

After that—nothing! Neither of the boys distinguished himself at college. This was a matter of no surprise to the masters in Gell's case, but in Stowell's it was a perpetual problem. Their favourite solution was that the David-and-Jonathan friendship between two boys of widely differing capacity was at the root of the trouble—Gell being slow and Stowell unwilling to shame him.

As year followed year without tangible results the rumour came home to Ballamoar that the son of the Deemster was not fulfilling expectations. "Traa de liooar" (time enough) said Robbie Creer of the farm; but Dan Baldromma, of the mill-farm in the glen, who prided himself on being no respecter of persons, and made speeches in the market-place denouncing the "aristocraks" of the island, and predicting the downfall of the old order, was heard to say he wasn't sorry.

"If these young cubs of the Spaker and the Dempster," said Dan, "hadn't been born with the silver spoon in their mouths we should be hearing another story. When the young birds get their wings push them out of the nest, I say. It's what I done with my own daughter—my wife's, I mane. Immajetly she was fifteen I packed her off to sarvice at the High Bailiff's at Castletown, and now she may shift for herself for me."

The effect on the two fathers was hardly less conflicting. The Speaker stormed at his son, called him a "poop" (Anglo-Manx for numskull), wondered why he had troubled to bring a lad into the world who would only scatter his substance, and talked about making a new will to protect his daughters and to save the real estate which the law gave his son by heirship.

The Deemster was silent. Term by term he read, without comment, the Principal's unfavourable reports, with the "ifs" and "buts" and "althoughs," which were intended to soften the hard facts with indications of what might have been. And he said not a word of remonstrance or reproach when the boy came home without prizes, though he wrote in his leather-bound book that he felt sometimes as if he could have given its weight in gold for the least of them.

At seventeen and a half Stowell became head of the school, not so much by scholastic attainment as by seniority, by proficiency in games and by influence over the boys. But even in this capacity he had serious shortcomings. Gell had by this time developed a supernatural gift of getting into scrapes, and Stowell, as head boy, partly responsible for his conduct, often allowed himself to become his scapegoat.

Then the rumour came home that Victor was not only a waster but a wastrel. Janet wouldn't believe a word of it, 'deed she wouldn't, and "Auntie Kitty" said the boy was the son of the Deemster, and she had never yet seen a good cow with a bad calf. But Dan Baldromma was of another opinion.

"The Dempster may be a grand man," said Dan, "but sarve him right, I say. Spare the rod, spoil the child! Show me the man on this island will say I ever done that with my own child—my wife's, I mane."

Finally came a report of the incident on the Darby-Haven road. John Cæsar, a "lump" of a lad, son of Qualtrough, the butcher (a respectable man and a member of the Keys), had been brutally assaulted while doing his best to protect a young nurse-girl from the unworthy attentions of a college boy. The culprit was Victor Stowell, and the father of the victim had demanded his prosecution with the utmost rigour of the law. But out of respect for the Deemster, and regard for the school, he was not to be arrested on condition that he was to be expelled.

For three days this circumstantial story was on everybody's lips, yet the Deemster never heard it. But he was one of those who learn ill tidings without being told, and see disasters before they happen, so when the Principal's letter came he showed no surprise.

Janet saw him coming downstairs dressed for dinner (he had dressed for dinner during his married days and kept up the habit ever afterwards, though he nearly always dined alone) just as old Willie Killip, the postman, with his red lantern at his belt, came through the open porch to the vestibule door. Taking his letter and going into the Library, he had stood by the writing desk under the "Stranger's" picture, while he opened the envelope and looked at the contents of it. His face had fallen after he read the first page, and it was the same as if the sun was setting on the man, but when he turned the second it had lightened, and it was just as if the day was dawning on him.

Then, without a moment's hesitation, he sat at the desk and wrote a telegram for old Willie to take back. It was to the Principal at King William's, and there was only one line in it—

"Send him home—Stowell."

After that—Janet was ready to swear on the Holy Book to it—he rose and looked up into the "Stranger's" face and said, in a low voice that was like that of a prayer:

"It's all right, Isobel—it is well."

CHAPTER THREE FATHERS AND SONS

Next day the Deemster drove to Douglas to meet his son coming back. The weather was cold, he had to leave home in the grey of morning, and he was driving in an open dog-cart, but the Deemster knew what he was doing. Ten minutes before the train came in from Castletown he had drawn up in the station yard. The passengers came through from the platform and saw him there, and he sainted some of them. Cæsar Qualtrough was among them, a gross-bodied and dark-faced man, darker than ever that day with a look of animosity and scorn.

When, at the tail of the crowd, Victor came, in the sour silence of the disgraced, no longer wearing his college cap, and with his discoloured college trunk being trundled behind him, the Deemster said nothing, but he indicated the seat by his side, and the boy climbed up to it. Then with his white head erect and his strong eyes shining he drove out of the station yard.

It was still early morning and he was in no hurry to return home. For half an hour he passed slowly through the principal thoroughfares of the town, bowing to everybody he knew and speaking to many. It was market day and he made for the open space about the old church on the quay, where the farmers' wives were standing in rows with their baskets of butter and eggs, the farmers' sons with their tipped-up carts of vegetables, and the smaller of the farmers themselves, from all parts of the island, with their carcases of sheep and oxen. Without leaving his seat the Deemster bought of several of them and had his purchases packed about the college trunk behind him.

It was office hours by this time and he began to call on his friends, leaving Victor outside to take care of the horse and dog-cart. His first call was on the Attorney-General, Donald Wattleworth, who had been an old school-fellow of his own at King William's, where forty odd years ago he had saved him from many troubles.

The Attorney was now a small, dapper, very correct and rather religious old gentleman (he had all his life worn a white tie and elastic side-boots), with the round and wrinkled face that is oftenest seen in a good old woman. For a quarter of an hour the Deemster talked with him on general subjects, his Courts and forthcoming cases, without saying a word about the business which had brought him to Douglas. But the Attorney divined it. From his chair at his desk on the upper story he could see Victor, with his pale face, in the dog-cart below, twiddling the slack of the reins in his nervous fingers, and when the Deemster rose to go he followed him downstairs to the street, and whispered to the boy from behind, as his father was taking his seat in front,

"Cheer up, my lad! Many a good case has a bad start, you know."

The Deemster's last call was at Government House, and again Victor, to his relief, was left outside. But when, ten minutes later, the Governor, with his briar-root pipe in his hand, came into the porch to see the Deemster off, and found Victor in the dog-cart, looking cold and miserable, with his overcoat buttoned up to his throat, he stepped out bareheaded, with the wind in his grey hair, and shook hands with him, and said,

"Glad to see you again, my boy. You remember my girl, Fenella? Yes? Well, she's at college now, but she'll be home for her holiday one of these days—and then I must bring her over to see you. Good-bye!"

The Deemster was satisfied. Not a syllable had he said from first to last about the bad story that had come from Castletown, but before he left Douglas that day, it was dead and done for.

"Now we'll go home," he said, and for two hours thereafter, father and son, sitting side by side, and never speaking except on indifferent subjects, followed the high mountain road, with its far view of Ireland and Scotland, like vanishing ghosts across a broken sea, the deep declivity of the glen, with Dan Baldromma's flour mill at the foot of it, and the turfy lanes of the Curraghs, where the curlews were crying, until they came to the big gates of Ballamoar, with the tall elms and the great silence inside of them, broken only by the loud cawing of the startled rooks, and then to Janet, in her lace cap, at the open door of the house, waiting for her boy and scarcely knowing whether to laugh or cry over him.

II

Meantime there had been another and very different homecoming. In a corner of an open third-class carriage of the train that brought Victor Stowell from Castletown there was a little servant girl with a servant's tin box, tied about with a cord, on the seat beside her. This was Bessie Collister, dismissed from the High Bailiff's service and being sent home to her people. She was very young, scarcely more than fifteen, with coal-black eyes and eyebrows and bright complexion—a bud of a girl just breaking into womanhood.

Dan Baldromma had no need to say she was not his daughter. Her fatherhood was doubtful. Rumour attributed it to a dashing young Irish Captain, who sixteen years before had put into Ramsey for repairs after his ship, a coasting schooner had run on the Carrick rock. Half the girls of "the north" had gone crazy over this intoxicating person, and in the wild conflict as to who should win him Liza Corteen had both won and lost, for as soon as his ship was ready for sea he had disappeared, and never afterwards been heard of.

Liza's baby had been born in the following spring, and two years later Dan Collister, a miller from "the south" who had not much cause to be proud of his own pedigree, had made a great virtue of marrying her, child and all, being, as he said, on "conjergal" subjects a man of liberal views and strong opinions.

In the fourteen years that followed Liza had learned the liberality of Dan's views on marriage and Bessie the strength of his hand as well as opinions. But while the mother's nerves had been broken by the reproaches about her "by-child," which had usually preceded her husband's night-long nasal slumbers, the spirits of the girl had not suffered much, except from fear of a certain strap which he had hung in the ingle.

"The world will never grow cold on that child," people used to say in her earliest days, and it seemed as if it was still true, even in the depth of her present trouble.

The open railway carriage was full of farming people going up to market, and among them were two buxom widows with their baskets of butter and eggs on their broad knees and their faces resplendent from much soap. Facing these was a tough and rough old sinner who bantered them, in language more proper to the stud and the farmyard, on their late married lives and the necessity of beginning on fresh ones. The unvarnished gibes provoked loud laughter from the other passengers, and Bessie's laugh was loudest of all. This led to the widows looking round in her direction, and presently, in the recovered consciousness of her situation, she heard whispers of "Johnny Qualtrough" and the "Dempster's son" and then turned back to her window and cried.

There was no one to help her with her luggage when she had to change at Douglas, so she carried her tin box across the platform to the Ramsey train. The north-going traffic was light at that hour, and sitting in an empty compartment she had time to think of home and what might happen when she got there. This was a vision of Dan Baldromma threatening, her mother pleading, herself screaming and all the hurly-burly she had heard so often.

But even that did not altogether frighten her now, for she had one source of solace which she had never had before. She was wearing a big hat with large red roses, a straw-coloured frock and openwork stockings, with shoes that were much too thin for the on-coming winter. And looking down at these last and remembering she had bought them out of her wages, expressly for that walk with Alick Gell, she thought of something that was immeasurably more important in her mind than the incident which had led to all the trouble—Alick had kissed her!

She was still thinking of this, and tingling with the memory of it, and telling herself how good she had been not to say who her boy was when the "big ones" questioned her, and how she would never tell that, 'deed no, never, no matter what might happen to other people, when the train drew up suddenly at the station that was her destination and she saw her mother, a weak-eyed woman, with a miserable face, standing alone on the shingly platform.

"Sakes alive, girl, what have thou been doing now?" said Mrs. Collister, as soon as the train had gone on. "Hadn't I trouble enough with thy father without this?"

But Bessie was in tears again by that time, so mother and daughter lifted the tin box into a tailless market cart that stood waiting in the road, climbed over the wheel to the plank seat across it, and turned their horse's head towards home.

Dan Baldromma's mill stood face to the high road and back to the glen and the mountains—a substantial structure with a thatched and whitewashed dwelling-house attached, a few farm buildings and a patch of garden, which, though warm and bright in summer under its mantle of gillie-flower and fuchsia, looked bleak enough now with its row of decapitated cabbage stalks and the straw roofs of its unprotected beehives.

As mother and daughter came up in their springless cart they heard the plash of the mill-wheel and the groan of the mill-stone, and by that they knew that their lord and master was at work within. So they stabled their horse for themselves, tipped up their cart and went into the kitchen—a bare yet clean and cosy place, with earthen floor, open ingle and a hearth fire, over which a kettle hung by a sooty chain.

But hardly had Bessie taken off her coat and hat and sat down to the cup of tea her mother had made her when the throb of the mill-wheel ceased, and Dan Baldromma's heavy step came over the cobbled "street" outside to the kitchen door.

He was a stoutly-built man, short and gross, with heavy black eyebrows, thick and threatening lips, a lowering expression, and a loud and growling voice. Seeing the girl at her meal he went over to the ingle and stood with his back to the fire, and his big hands behind him, while he fell on her with scorching sarcasm.

"Well! Well!" he said. "Back again, I see! And you such a grand woman grown since you were sitting and eating on that seat before. Only sixteen years for Spring, yet sooreying (sweet-hearting) already, I hear! With no wooden-spoon man neither, like your father—your stepfather, I mane! The son and heir of one of the big ones of the island, they're telling me! And yet you're not thinking mane of coming back to the house of a common man like me! Wonderful! Wonderful!"

Bessie felt as if her bread-and-butter were choking her, but Dan, whose impure mind was not satisfied with the effect of his sarcasm, began to lay out at her with a bludgeon.

"You fool!" he said. "You've been mixing yourself up with bad doings on the road, and now a dacent lad is lying at death's door through you, and the High Bailiff is after flinging you out of his house as unfit for his family—that's it, isn't it?"

Bessie had dropped her head on the table, but Mrs. Collister's frightened face was gathering a look of courage.

"Aisy, man veen, aisy," said the mother. "Take care of thy tongue, Dan."

"My tongue?" said Dan. "It's my character I have to take care of, woman. When a girl is carrying a man's name that has no legal claim to it, he has a right to do that, I'm thinking."

"But the girl's only a child—only a child itself, man."

"Maybe so, but I've known girls before now, not much older than she is, to bring disgrace into a dacent house and lave others to live under it. 'What's bred in the bone comes out in the flesh,' they're saying."

The woman flinched as if the lash of a whip had fallen on her face, and Dan turned back to the girl.

"So you're a fine lady that belaves in the aristocracks, are you? Well, I'm a plain man that doesn't, and nobody living in my house can have any truck with them."

"But goodness me, Dan, the boy is not a dale older than herself," said Mrs. Collister. "Nineteen years at the most, and a fine boy at that."

"Chut! Nineteen or ninety, it's all as one to me," said Dan, "and this island will be knowing what sort of boy he is before he has done with it."

The young cubs of the "big ones" began early. They treated the daughters of decent men as their fathers treated everybody—using them, abusing them, and then treading on them like dirt.

"But Manx girl are hot young huzzies," said Dan, "and the half of them ought to be ducked in the mill pond.... What did you expect this one would do for you, girl, after you had been colloquing and cooshing and kissing with him in the dark roads? Marry you? Make you the mistress of Ballamoar? Bessie Corteen, the by-child of Liza Collister? You toot! You booby! You boght! You damned idiot!"

Just then there was the sound of wheels on the road, and Dan walked to the door to look out. It was the Deemster's dog-cart, coming down the glen, with father and son sitting side by side. The women heard the Deemster's steady voice saluting the miller as he went by.

"Fine day, Mr. Collister!"

"Middlin', Dempster, middlin'," said Dan, in a voice that was like a growl. And then, the dog-cart being gone, he faced back to the girl and said, with a bitter snort:

"So that's your man, is it—driving with the Dempster?"

"No, no," said the girl, lifting her face from the table.

"No? Hasn't he been flung out of his college for it—for what came of it, I mane? And isn't the Dempster taking him home in disgrace?"

"It was a mistake—it wasn't the Dempster's son," said Bessie.

"Then who was it?"

There was no reply.

"Who was it?"

"I can't tell you."

"You mean you won't. We'll see about that, though," said Dan, and returning to the fireplace, he took a short, thick leather strap from a nail inside the ingle.

At sight of this the girl got up and began to scream. "Father! Father! Father!"

"Don't father me! Who was it?" said Dan.

The blood was rising in the mother's pallid face. "Collister," she cried, "if thou touch the girl again, I'll walk straight out of thy house."

"Walk, woman! Do as you plaze! But I must know who brought disgrace on my name. Who was it?"

"Don't! Don't! Don't!" cried the girl.

The mother stepped to the door. "Collister," she repeated, "for fourteen years thou's done as thou liked with me, and I've been giving thee lave to do it, but lay another hand on my child..."

"No, no, don't go, mother. I'll tell him," cried the girl. "It was .... it was Alick Gell."

"You mean the son of the Spaker?"

"Yes."

"That's good enough for me," said Dan, and then, with another snort, half bitter and half triumphant, he tossed the strap on to the table, went out of the house and into the stable.

An hour afterwards, in his billycock hat and blue suit of Manx homespun, he was driving his market-cart up the long, straight, shaded lane to the Speaker's ivy-covered mansion-house, with the gravelled courtyard in front of it, in which two or three peacocks strutted and screamed.

III

The Speaker had only just returned from Douglas. There had been a sitting of the Keys that day and he had hurried home to tell his wife an exciting story. It was about the Deemster. The big man was down—going down anyway!

Archibald Gell was a burly, full-bearded man of a high complexion. Although he belonged to what we called the "aristocracy" of the island, the plebeian lay close under his skin. Rumour said he was subject to paralysing brain-storms, and that he could be a foul-mouthed man in his drink. But he was generally calm and nearly always sober.

His ruling passion was a passion for power, and his fiercest lust was a lust of popularity. The Deemster was his only serious rival in either, and therefore the object of his deep and secret jealousy. He was jealous of the Deemster's dignity and influence, but above all (though he had hitherto hidden it even from himself) of his son.

Stooping over the fire in the drawing-room to warm his hands after his long journey, he was talking, with a certain note of self-congratulation, of what he had heard in Douglas. That ugly incident at King William's had come to a head! The Stowell boy had been expelled, and the Deemster had had to drive into town to fetch him home. He, the Speaker, had not seen him there, but Cæsar Qualtrough had. Cæsar was a nasty customer to cross (he had had experience of the man himself), and in the smoking-room at the Keys he had bragged of what he could have done. He could have put the Deemster's son in jail! Yes, ma'am, in jail! If he had had a mind for it young Stowell might have slept at Castle Rushen instead of Ballamoar to-night. And if he hadn't, why hadn't he? Cæsar wouldn't say, but everybody knew—he had a case coming on in the Courts presently!

"Think of it," said the Speaker, "the first Judge in the island in the pocket of a man like that!"

Mrs. Gell, who was a fat, easy-going, good-natured soul, with the gentle eyes of a sheep (her hair was a little disordered at the moment, for she had only just awakened from her afternoon sleep, and was still wearing her morning slippers), began to make excuses.

"But mercy me, Archie," she said, "what does it amount to after all—only a schoolboy squabble?"

"Don't talk nonsense, Bella," said the Speaker. "It may have been a little thing to begin with, but the biggest river that ever plunged into the sea could have been put into a tea-cup somewhere."

This ugly business would go on, until heaven knew what it would come to. The Deemster, who had bought his son's safety from a blackguard without bowels, would never be able to hold up his head again—he, the Speaker never would, he knew that much anyway. As for the boy himself, he was done for. Being expelled from King William's no school or university across the water would want him, and if he ever wished to be admitted to the Manx Bar it would be the duty of his own father to refuse him.

"So that's the end of the big man, Bella—the beginning of the end anyway."

Just then the peacocks screamed in the courtyard—-they always screamed when visitors were approaching. Mrs. Gell looked up and the Speaker walked to the window and looked out without seeing anybody. But at the next moment the drawing-room door was thrust open and their eldest daughter, Isabella, with wide eyes and a blank expression was saying breathlessly,

"It's Alick. He has run away from school."

Alick came behind her, a pitiful sight, his college cap in his hand, his face pale, drawn and smudged with sweat, his hair disordered, his clothes covered with dust, and his boots thick with soil.

"What's this she says—that you've run away?" said the Speaker.

"Yes, I have—I told her so myself," said Alick, who was half crying.

"Did you though? And now perhaps you will tell me something—why?"

"Because Stowell had been expelled, and I couldn't stay when he was gone."

"Couldn't you now? And why couldn't you?"

"He was innocent."

"Innocent, was he? Who says he was innocent?"

"I do, Sir, because .... it was I."

It was a sickening moment for the Speaker. He gasped as if something had smitten him in the mouth, and his burly figure almost staggered.

"You did it .... what Stowell was expelled for?" he stammered.

"Yes, Sir," said Alick, and then, still with the tremor of a sob in his voice, he told his story. It was the same that he had told twice before, but with a sequel added. Although he had confessed to the Principal, they had expelled Stowell. Not publicly perhaps, but it had been expelling him all the same. Four days they had kept him in his study, without saying what they meant to do with him. Then this morning, while the boys were at prayers they had heard carriage wheels come up to the door of the Principal's house, and when they came out of Chapel the Study was empty and Stowell was gone.

"And then," said the Speaker (with a certain pomp of contempt now), "without more ado you ran away?"

"Yes, Sir," answered the boy, "by the lavatory window when we were breaking up after breakfast."

"Where did you get the money to travel with?"

"I had no money, Sir. I walked."

"Walked from Castletown? What have you eaten since breakfast?"

"Only what I got on the road, Sir."

"You mean .... begged?"

"I asked at a farm by Foxdale for a glass of milk and the farmer's wife gave me some bread as well, Sir."

"Did she know who you were?"

"She asked me—I had to answer her."

"You told her you were my son?"

"Yes, Sir."

"And perhaps—feeling yourself such a fine fellow, what you were doing there, and why you were running away from school?"

"Yes, Sir."

"You fool! You infernal fool!"

The Speaker had talked himself out of breath and for a moment his wife intervened.

"Alick," she said, "if it was you, as you say, who walked out with the girl, who was she?"

"She was .... a servant girl, mother."

"But who?"

"Tut!" said the Speaker, "what does it matter who? .... You say you confessed to the Principal?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Then if he chose to disregard your confession, and to act on his own judgment, what did it matter to you?"

"It was wrong to expel Stowell for what I had done and I couldn't stand it," said the boy.

"You couldn't stand it! You dunce! If you were younger I should take the whip to you."

The Speaker was feeling the superiority of his son's position, but that only made him the more furious.

"I suppose you know what this running away will mean when people come to hear of it?"

Alick made no answer.

"You've given the story a fine start, it seems, and it won't take long to travel."

Still Alick made no answer.

"Stowell will be the martyr and you'll be the culprit, and that ugly incident of the boy with the broken skull will wear another complexion."

"I don't care about that," cried Alick.

"You don't care!"

"I had to do my duty to my chum, Sir."

"And what about your duty to me, and to your mother and to your sisters? Was it your 'duty' to bring disgrace on all of us?"

Alick dropped his head.

"You shan't do that, though, if I can help it. Go away and wash your dirty face and get something on your stomach. You're going back to Castletown in the morning."

"I won't go back to school, Sir," said Alick.

"Won't you, though? We'll see about that. I'll take you back."

"Then I'll run away again, Sir."

"Where to, you jackass? Not to this house, I promise you."

"I'll get a ship and go to sea, Sir."

"Then get a ship and go to sea, and to hell, too, if you want to. You fool! You damned blockhead!"

After the Speaker had swept the boy from the room, his mother was crying. "Only eighteen years for harvest," she was saying, as if trying to excuse him. And then, as if seeking to fix the blame elsewhere, she added,

"Who was the girl, I wonder?"

"God's sake, woman," cried the Speaker, "what does it matter who she was? Some Castletown huzzy, I suppose."

The peacocks were screaming again; they had been screaming for some time, and the front-door bell had been ringing, but in the hubbub nobody had heard them. But now the parlour-maid came to tell the Speaker that Mr. Daniel Collister of Baldromma was in the porch and asking to see him.

IV

Dan came into the room with his rolling walk, his eyes wild and dark, his billy-cock hat in his hand and his black hair 'strooked' flat across his forehead, where a wet brush had left it.

"Good evening, Mr. Spaker! You too, Mistress Gell! It's the twelfth to-morrow, but I thought I would bring my Hollantide rent to-day."

"Sit down," said the Speaker, who had given him meagre welcome.

Dan drew a chair up to a table, took from the breast pocket of his monkey-jacket a bulging parcel in a red print handkerchief (looking like a roadman's dinner), untied the knots of it, and disclosed a quantity of gold and silver coins, and a number of Manx bank notes creased and soiled. These he counted out with much deliberation amid a silence like that which comes between thunderclaps—the Speaker, standing by the fireplace, coughing to compose himself, his wife blowing her nose to get rid of her tears, and no other sounds being audible except the nasal breathing of Dan Baldromma, who had hair about his nostrils.

"Count it for yourself; I belave you'll find it right, Sir."

"Quite right. I suppose you'll want a receipt?"

"If you plaze."

The Speaker sat at a small desk, and, as well as he could (for his hand was trembling), he wrote the receipt and handed it across the table.

"And now about my lease," said Dan.

"What about it?" said the Speaker.

"It runs out a year to-day, Sir, and Willie Kerruish, the advocate, was telling me at the Michaelmas mart you were not for renewing it. Do you still hould to that, Mr. Spaker?"

"Certainly I do," said the Speaker. "I don't want to enter into discussions, but I think you'll be the better for another landlord and I for another tenant."

There was another moment of silence, broken only by Dan's nasal breathing, and then he said:

"Mr. Spaker, the Dempster's son has come home in disgrace, they're saying."

"What's that got to do with it?" said the Speaker.

"My daughter has come home in disgrace, too—my wife's daughter, I mane."

Mrs. Gell raised herself in her easy chair. "Was it your girl, then..." she began.

"It was, ma'am. Bessie Corteen—Collister, they're calling her."

"What's all this to me?" said the Speaker.

"She's telling me it's a mistake about the Dempster's son, Sir. It was somebody else's lad did the mischief."

"I see you are well informed," said the Speaker. "Well, what of it?"

"Cæsar Qualtrough might have prosecuted but he didn't, out of respect for the Dempster," said Dan.

"So they say," said the Speaker.

"But if somebody gave him a scute into the truth he mightn't be so lenient with another man—one other anyway."

The Speaker was silent.

"There have been bits of breezes in the Kays, they're telling me."

Still the Speaker was silent.

"Cæsar and me were middling well acquaint when I was milling at Ballabeg and he was hutching at Port St. Mary—in fact we were same as brothers."

"I see what you mean to do, Mr. Collister," said the Speaker, "but you can save yourself the trouble. My lad is in this house now if you want to know, but I'm sending him to sea, and before you can get to Castletown he will have left the island."

"And what will the island say to that, Sir?" said Dan. "That Archibald Gell, Spaker of the Kays, chairman of everything, and the biggest man going, barring the Dempster, has had to send his son away to save him from the lock-up."

The Speaker took two threatening strides forward, and Dan rose to his feet. There was silence again as the two men stood face to face, but this time it was broken by the Speaker's breathing also. Then he turned aside and said, with a shamefaced look:

"I'll hear what Kerruish has to say. I have to see him in the morning."

"I lave it with you, Sir; I lave it with you," said Dan.

"Good-day, Mr. Collister."

"Good-day to you, Mr. Spaker! And you, too, Mistress Gell!" said Dan. But having reached the door of the room he stopped and added:

"There's one thing more, though. If my girl is to live with me she must work for her meat, and there must be no more sooreying."

"That will be all right—I know my son," said the Speaker.

"And I know my step-daughter," said Dan. "These things go on. A rolling snowball doesn't get much smaller. Maybe that Captain out of Ireland isn't gone from the island yet—his spirit, I mane. Keep your lad away from Baldromma. It will be best, I promise you."

Then the peacocks in the courtyard screamed again and the jolting of a springless cart was heard going over the gravel. The two in the drawing-room listened until the sound of the wheels had died away in the lane to the high road, and then the Speaker said:

"That's what comes of having children! We thought it bad for the Deemster to be in the pocket of a man like Cæsar Qualtrough, but to be under the harrow of Dan Baldromma!"

"Aw, dear! Aw, dear!" said Mrs. Gell.

"He was right about Alick going to sea, though," said the Speaker, and, touching the bell for the parlour-maid, he told her to tell his son to come back to him.

Alick was in the dining-room by this time, washed and brushed and doing his best to drink a pot of tea and eat a plate of bread-and-butter, amid the remonstrances of his three sisters, who, seeing events from their own point of view, were rating him roundly on associating with a servant.

"I wonder you hadn't more respect for your sisters?" said Isabella.

"What are people to think of us—Fenella Stanley, for instance?" said Adelaide.

"I declare I shall be ashamed to show my face in Government House again," said Verbena.

"Oh, shut up and let a fellow eat," said Alick, and then something about "first-class flunkeys."

But at that moment the parlour-maid came with his father's message and he had to return to the drawing-room.

"On second thoughts," said the Speaker, "we have decided that you are not to go to sea. We have only one son, and I suppose we must do our best with him. You haven't brains enough for building, so, if you are not to go back to school, you must stay on the land and learn to look after these farms in Andreas."

"I'll do my best to please you, Sir," said Alick.

"But listen to this," said the Speaker, "Dan Baldromma has been here, and we know who the girl was. There is to be no more mischief in that quarter. You must never see her or hear from her again as long as you live—is it a promise?"

"Yes, Sir," said Alick, and he meant to keep it.

CHAPTER FOUR ENTER FENELLA STANLEY

The winter passed, the spring came and nothing was done for Victor. His father made no effort to provide for his future, whether at another school, at college, or in a profession.

"I wonder at the Dempster, I really do," said Auntie Kitty.

"Leave him alone," said Janet—it would all come right some day.

Left to himself, Victor became the great practical joker of the countryside. Every prank for which no other author could be found was attributed to him. If any pretentious person fell into a ridiculous mare's nest people would say,

"But where was young Stowell while that was going on?"

In this dubious occupation of "putting the fun" on folks he soon found the powerful assistance of Alick Gell. That young gentleman, for his training on the land, had been handed over to the charge of old Tom Kermode, the Speaker's steward. But Tom, good man, foresaw the possibility of being supplanted in his position if the Speaker's son acquired sufficient knowledge to take it, and therefore he put no unnecessary obstacles in the way of the boy's industrious efforts not to do so. On the contrary he encouraged them, with the result that Alick and Victor foregathered again, and having nothing better to do than to make mischief, they proceeded to make it.

How much the Deemster heard of his son's doings nobody knew. Twice a day he sat at meat with him without speaking a word of reproof. But Janet saw that when report was loudest he wrote longer than usual in his leather-bound book before going to bed, and that his head was lower than ever in the morning.

At length Janet entered into a secret scheme with herself for lifting it up again. This consisted in prompting her dear boy to do something, to make an effort, to justify himself. So making excuse of the Deemster's business she would take Victor's breakfast to his bedroom before he had time to get up to it.

It was a bright room to the north-east, flooded with sunshine at that season after she had drawn the blind, and fresh, after she had thrown up the sash, with morning air that smacked of the blue sea (which came humming down from the dim ghost of Galloway), and relished of the sandy soil of Man, with its yellowing crops of rustling oats, over which the larks and the linnets tumbled and sang.

Victor was always asleep when she went in at eight o'clock, for he slept like a top, and after she had scolded him for lying late, he would sit up in bed, with his sleepy eyes and tousled hair, to eat his breakfast, while she turned his stockings, shook out his shirt, gathered up his clothes (they were usually distributed all over the room) and talked.

Victor noticed whatever she began upon she always ended with the same subject. It was Fenella Stanley. That girl was splendid, and she was getting on marvellously. Still at college "across"? Yes, Newnham they were calling it, and she was carrying everything before her—prizes, scholarships, honours—goodness knows what.

The island was ringing with her praise but Janet was hearing everything direct from Miss Green, the Governor's housekeeper, with whom she kept up a constant correspondence. That woman worshipped the girl—you never saw the like, never! As for the Governor, it was enough to bring tears into a woman's eyes to see how proud he was of his daughter. When he had news that she had taken a new honour it was like new life to the old man. You would think the sun was shining all over the house, and that was saying something there—the Keys being so troublesome. Of course he was "longing" for his daughter to come home to him, and that was only natural, but knowing how hard she was working now—six in the morning until six in the evening, Catherine Green was saying—he was waiting patiently.

"Aw, yes, yes, that's the way with fathers," said Janet. "Big men as they may be themselves, they are prouder of their children's successes than of their own—far prouder."

The effect of Janet's scheme was the reverse of what she had expected. By a law of the heart of a boy, which the good soul knew nothing of, Victor resented the industry, success and reputation of Fenella Stanley. It was a kind of rebuke to his own idleness. The girl was a bookworm and would develop into a blue-stocking! He had not seen her for years and did not want to see her, but in his mind's eye he pictured her as she must be now—a pale-faced young person in a short blue skirt and big boots, with cropped hair and perhaps spectacles!

Describing this vision to Alick Gell, as they were drying themselves on the shore after a swim, Victor said with emphasis that if there was one thing he hated it was a woman who was half a man.

"Same here," said Alick, who had had liberal doses of the same medicine at home, less delicately administered by his sister Isabella.

But where Janet failed, a greater advocate, nature itself, was soon to succeed. The boys were then in their nineteenth year, a pair of full-grown, healthy, handsome lads as ever trod the heather, or stripped to the sea, but there was a great world which had not yet been revealed to either of them—the world of woman. That world was to be revealed to one of them now.

II

It was a late afternoon early in September. The day had been wonderful. Over the bald crown above Druidsdale the sun came slanting across the Irish Sea from a crimsoning sky beyond the purple crests of the Morne mountains. Stowell and Gell had been camping out for two days in the Manx hills, and, parting at a junction of paths, Gell had gone down towards Douglas while Stowell had dropped into the cool dark depths of the glen that led homewards.

Victor was as brown as a berry. He was wearing long, thick-soled yellow boots almost up to his knees, with his trousers tucked into them, a loose yellow shirt, rolled up to the elbows of his strong round arms, no waistcoat, his Norfolk jacket thrown over his left shoulder, and a knapsack strapped on his back.

With long, plunging strides he was coming down the glen, singing sometimes in a voice that was partly drowned by the louder water where it dipped into a dub, when, towards the Curragh end of it, on the "brough" side of the river, he came upon a startling vision.

It was a girl. She was about seventeen years of age, bare-headed and bare-footed, and standing ankle-deep in the water. Her lips, and a little of the mouth at either side, were stained blue with blackberries—she had clearly been picking them and had taken off shoes and stockings to get at a laden bush.

She was splendidly tall, and had bronze brown hair, with a glint of gold when the sun shone on it. The sun was shining on it now, through a gap in the thinning trees that overhung the glen, and with the leaves pattering over her head, and the river running at her feet, it was almost as if she herself were singing.

With her spare hand she was holding up her dress, which was partly of lace—light and loose and semi-transparent—and when a breeze, which was blowing from the sea, lapped it about her body there was a hint of the white, round, beautiful form beneath. Her eyes were dark and brilliantly full, and her face was magnificently intellectual, so clear-cut and clean. And yet she was so feminine, so womanly, such a girl!

She must have heard Stowell's footsteps, and perhaps his singing as he approached, for she turned to look up at him—calmly, rather seriously, a little anxiously but without the slightest confusion. And he looked at her, pausing to do so, without being quite aware of it, and feeling for one brief moment as if wind and water had suddenly stopped and the world stood still.

There was a moment of silence, in which he felt a certain chill, and she a certain warmth, and both a certain dryness at the throat. The girl was the first to recover self-control. Her face sweetened to a smile, and then, in a voice that was a little husky, and yet sounded to him like music, she said, as if she had asked and answered an earlier question for herself:

"But of course you don't know who I am, do you?"

He did. Although she was so utterly unlike what he had expected (what he had told himself he expected) he knew—she was Fenella Stanley.

As often as he thought of it afterwards he could never be quite sure what he had said to her in those first moments. He could only guess at what it must have been by his vivid memory of what she had said in reply.

She watched him, womanlike, for a moment longer, to see what impression she had made upon him, now that she knew what impression he had made upon her. Then she glanced down at her bare feet, that looked yellow on the pebbles in the running water, and then at her shoes and stockings, which, with her parasol, lay on the bank, and said:

"I suppose you ought to go away while I get out of this?"

"Why?"

He never knew what made him say that, but she glanced up at him again, with the answering sunshine of another smile, and said:

"Well, you needn't, if you don't want to."

After that she stepped out of the river, and sat on the grass to dry her feet and pull on her stockings. As she did so, and he stood watching, forgetting (such was the spell of things) to turn his eyes away, she shot another look up at him, and said:

"I remember that the last time I was in these parts you ordered me off, Sir."

"And the last time I was at Government House you turned me out of the tennis court," he answered.

She laughed. He laughed. They both laughed together. Also they both trembled. But by the time she had put on her shoes he was feeling braver, so he went down on his knees to tie her laces.

It was a frightening ordeal, but he got through at last, and to cover their embarrassment, while the lacing was going on, they came to certain explanations.

Yesterday the Governor had telegraphed to the Deemster that he would like to fulfil his promise to visit Ballamoar and stay the night if convenient. So they had driven over in the carriage and arrived about two hours ago, and were going back to-morrow morning.

"Of course you were not there when we came," she said, "being, it seems, a gentleman of gipsy habits, so when Janet (I mean Miss Curphey) mentioned at tea that you were likely to come down the glen about sunset....

"Then you were coming to meet me?" he said.

She laughed again, having said more than she had intended and finding no way of escape from it.

When all was done and he had helped her up (how his fingers tingled!) and they stood side by side for the first time (she was less than half a head shorter than himself and her eyes seemed almost on the level of his own) and they were ready to go, he suddenly remembered that they were on the wrong side for the road. So if she hadn't to take off her boots and stockings and wade through the water again, or else walk half a mile down the glen to the bridge, he would have to carry her across the river.

Without more ado she let him do it—picking her up in his quivering arms and striding through the water in his long boots.

Then being dropped to her feet she laughed again; and he laughed, and they went on laughing, all the way down the glen road, and through the watery lanes of the Curragh, where the sally bushes were singing loud in the breeze from the sea—but not so loud as the hearts of this pair of children.

III

That night, after dinner, leaving the Deemster and the Governor at the table, discussing insular subjects (a constitutional change which was then being mooted), Victor took Fenella out on to the piazza, (his mother had called it so), the uncovered wooden terrace which overlooked the coast.

He was in a dark blue jacket suit, not yet having possessed evening wear, but she was in a gauzy light dress with satin slippers, and her bronze-brown hair was curled about her face in bewitching ringlets.

The evening was very quiet, almost breathless, with hardly a leaf stirring. The revolving light in the lighthouse on the Point of Ayre (seven miles away on its neck of land covered by a wilderness of white stones) was answering to the far-off gleam of the light on the Mull of Galloway, while the sky to the west was a slumberous red, as if the night were dreaming of the departed day.

They had not yet recovered from their experience in the glen, and, sitting out there in the moonlight (for the moon had just sailed through a rack of cloud), they were still speaking involuntarily, and then laughing nervously at nothing—nothing but that tingling sense of sex which made them afraid of each other, that mysterious call of man to maid which, when it first comes, is as pure as an angel's whisper.

"What a wonderful day it has been!" she said,

"The most wonderful day I have ever known," he answered.

"And what a wonderful home you have here," she said.

"Haven't we?" he replied. And then he told her that over there in the dark lay Ireland, and over there Scotland, and over there England, and straight ahead was Norway and the North Pole.

That caught them up into the zone of great things, the eternities, the vast darkness out of which the generations come and towards which they go; and, having found his voice at last, he began to tell her how the island came to be peopled by its present race.

This was the very scene of the Norse invasion—the Vikings from Iceland having landed on this spot a thousand years ago. When the old sea king (his name was Orry) came ashore at the Lhen (it was on a starlight night like this) the native inhabitants of Man had gone down to challenge him. "Where do you come from?" they had cried, and then, pointing to the milky way, he had answered, "That's the road to my country." But the native people had fought him to throw him back into the sea—yes, men and women, too, they say. This very ground between them and the coast had been the battlefield, and it must still be full of the dead who had died that day.

"What a wonderful story!" she said.

"Isn't it?"

"The women fought too, you say?"

"Thousands of them, side by side with their men, and they were the mothers of the Manxmen of to-day."

"How glorious! How perfectly glorious!"

And then, clasping her hands about her knee, and looking steadfastly into the dark of the night, she, on her part, told him something. It was about a great new movement which was beginning in England for a change in the condition of women. Oh, it was wonderful! Miss Clough, the Principal, and all the girls at Newnham were ablaze with it, and it was going to sweep through the world. In the past the attitude towards women of literature, law, even religion, had been so unfair, so cruel. She could cry to think of it—the long martyrdom of woman through all the ages.

"Do you know," she said, "I think a good deal of the Bible itself is very wicked towards women .... That's shocking, isn't it?"

"Oh, no, no," said Victor—he was struggling to follow her, and not finding it easy.

"But all that will be changed some day," said Fenella.

It might require some terrible world-trouble to change it, some cataclysm, some war, perhaps (she didn't know what), but it would be changed—she was sure it would. And then, when woman took her rightful place beside man, as his equal, his comrade, his other self, they would see what would happen.

"What?"

All the old laws, so far as they concerned the sexes (and which of them didn't?) would have to be made afresh, and all the old tales about men and women (and which of them were not?) would have to be re-told.

"The laws made afresh, you say?"

"Yes, and some of the judges, too, perhaps."

"And all the old tales re-told?"

"Every one of them, and then they will be new ones, because woman will have a new and far worthier place in them."

They had left the stained-glass door to the dining-room ajar, and at a pause in Fenella's story they heard the voice of the Governor, in conversation with the Deemster on the constitutional question, saying,

"Well, well, old friend, I don't suppose either the millennium will dawn or the deluge come whether the Keys are reformed or not."

That led Victor to ask Fenella what her father thought of her opinions.