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Fenella Stanley had been two and a half years at the head of the Women's Settlement. Her work as Lady Warden had been successful. It had been a great, human, palpitating experience. There were days, and even weeks, when she felt that it had brought her a little nearer to the soul of the universe and helped her to touch hands across the ages with the great women who had walked through Gethsemane for the poor, despoiled and despairing victims of their own sex.

But nevertheless it had left her with a certain restlessness which at first she found it hard to understand. Only little by little did she come to realise that nature, with its almighty voice, was calling to her, and that under all the thrill of self-sacrifice she was suffering from the gnawing hunger of an underfed heart.

The seven years that had passed since her last visit to the island had produced their physical effects. From a slim and beautiful school-girl she had developed into a full and splendid woman. When the ladies of her Committee (matrons chiefly) saw the swing of her free step and the untamed glance of her eye they would say,

"She's a fine worker, but we shall never be able to keep her—you'll see we shall not."

And as often as the men of the Committee (clergymen generally, but manly persons, for the most part, not too remote from the facts of life) came within range of the glow and flame of her womanhood, they would think,

"That splendid girl ought to become the mother of children."

During the first year of her wardenship her chief touch with home (her father being estranged) had been through correspondence with his housekeeper. Miss Green's letters were principally about the Governor, but they contained a good deal about Victor Stowell also. Victor had been called to the Bar, but for some reason which nobody could fathom he seemed to have lost heart and hope and the Deemster had sent him round the world.

Fenella found herself tingling with a kind of secret joy at this news. She was utterly ashamed of the impulse to smile at the thought of Victor's sufferings, yet do what she would she could not conquer it.

Her tours abroad with her father had ceased by this time, but in her second year at the Settlement she took holiday with a girl friend, going through Switzerland and Italy and as far afield as Egypt. During that journey fate played some tantalizing pranks with her.

The first of them was at Cairo, where, going into Cook's, to enter her name for a passage to Italy, her breath was almost smitten out of her body by the sight of Victor's name, in his own bold handwriting, in the book above her own—he had that day sailed for Naples.

The second was at Naples itself (she would have died rather than admit to herself that she was following him), where she saw his name again, with Alick Gell's, in the Visitors' List, and being a young woman of independent character, marched up to his hotel to ask for him—he had gone on to Rome.

The third, and most trying, was in the railway station at Zurich, where stepping out of the train from Florence she collided on the crowded platform with the Attorney-General and his comfortable old wife from the Isle of Man, and was told that young Stowell and young Gell had that moment left by train for Paris.

But back in London she found her correspondence with Miss Green even more intoxicating than before, and every new letter seemed like a hawser drawing her home. Victor Stowell had returned to the island, but he was not showing much sign of settling to work. He seemed to have no aim, no object, no ambition. In fact it was the common opinion that the young man was going steadily to the dogs.

"So if you ever had any thoughts in that direction, dear," said Miss Green, "what a lucky escape you had (though we didn't think so at the time) when you signed on at the Settlement!"

But the conquering pull of the hawser that was dragging her home came in the letters of Isabella Gell, with whom she had always kept up a desultory correspondence.

The Deemster was failing fast ("and no wonder!"); and Janet Curphey, who had been such a bustling body, was always falling asleep over her needles; and the Speaker (after a violent altercation in the Keys) had had a profuse bleeding at the nose, which Dr. Clucas said was to be taken as a warning.

But the only exciting news in the island just now was about Victor Stowell. Really, he was becoming impossible! Not content with making her brother Alick the scapegoat of his own misdoings in a disgraceful affair of some sort (her father had forbidden Alick the house ever since, and her mother was always moping with her feet inside the fender), he was behaving scandalously. A good-looking woman couldn't pass him on the road without his eyes following her! Any common thing out of a thatched cottage, if she only had a pretty face, was good enough for him now!! The simpletons!! Perhaps they expected him to marry them, and give them his name and position? But not he!! Indeed no!! And heaven pity the poor girl of a better class who ever took him for a husband!!!

Fenella laughed—seeing through the feminine spitefulness of these letters as the sun sees through glass. So mistress Isabella herself had been casting eyes in that direction! What fun! She had visions of the Gell girls having differences among themselves about Victor Stowell. The idea of his marrying any of them, and keeping step for the rest of his life with the conventions of the Gell family, was too funny for anything.

But those Manx country girls, with their black eyes and eager mouths, were quite a different proposition. Fenella had visions of them also, fresh as milk and warm as young heifers, watching for Victor at their dairy doors or from the shade of the apple trees in their orchards, and before she was aware of what was happening to her she was aflame with jealousy.

That Isabella Gell was a dunce! It was nonsense to say that the Manx country girls out of the thatched cottages expected Victor to marry them. Of course they didn't, and neither did they want his name or his position. What they really wanted was Victor himself, to flirt with and flatter them and make love to them, perhaps. But good gracious, what a shocking thing! That should never happen—never while she was about!

Of course this meant that she must go back to save Victor. Naturally she could not expect to do so over a blind distance of three hundred miles, while those Manx country girls in their new Whitsuntide hats were shooting glances at him every Sunday in Church, or perhaps hanging about for him on week-evenings, in their wicked sun-bonnets, and even putting up their chins to be kissed in those shady lanes at the back of Ballamoar, when the sun would be softening, and the wood-pigeons would be cooing, and things would be coming together for the night.

That settled matters! Her womanhood was awake by this time. Seven years of self-sacrifice had not been sufficient to quell it. After a certain struggle, and perhaps a certain shame, she put in her resignation.

Her Committee did not express as much surprise as she had expected. The ladies hoped her native island would provide a little world, a little microcosm, in which she could still carry on her work for women, (she had given that as one of her excuses), and the gentlemen had no doubt her father, "and others," would receive her back "with open arms."

She was to leave the Settlement at the close of the half year, that is to say at the end of July, but she decided to say nothing, either to her father or to Miss Green, about her return to the island until the time came for it at the beginning of August.

She was thinking of Victor again, and cherishing a secret hope of taking him unawares somewhere—of giving him another surprise, such as she gave him that day in the glen, when he came down bareheaded, with the sea wind in his dark hair, and then stopped suddenly at the sight of her, with that entrancing look of surprise and wonder.

And if any of those Manx country girls were about him when that happened .... Well, they would disappear like a shot. Of course they would!

II

Meantime, another woman was hearing black stories about Victor, and that was Janet. She believed them, she disbelieved them, she dreaded them as possibilities and resented them as slanders. But finally she concluded that, whether they were true or false, she must tell Victor all about them.

Yet how was she to do so? How put a name to the evil things that were being said of him—she who had been the same as a mother to him all the way up since he was a child, and held him in her arms for his christening?

For weeks her soft heart fought with her maidenly modesty, but at length her heart prevailed. She could not see her dear boy walk blindfold into danger. Whatever the consequences she must speak to him, warn him, stop him if necessary.

But where and when and how was she to do so? To write was impossible (nobody knew what might become of a letter) and Victor had long discontinued his week-end visits to Ballamoar.

One day the Deemster told her to prepare a room for the Governor who was coming to visit him, and seizing her opportunity she said,

"And wouldn't it be nice to ask Victor to meet him, your Honour?"

The Deemster paused for a moment, then bowed his head and answered,

"Do as you please, Miss Curphey."

Five minutes afterwards Janet was writing in hot haste to Ramsey.

"He is to come on Saturday, dear, but mind you come on Friday, so that I may have you all to myself for a while before the great men take you from me."

Victor came on Friday evening and found Janet alone, the Deemster being away for an important Court and likely to sleep the night in Douglas. She was in her own little sitting-room—a soft, cushiony chamber full of embroidered screens and pictures of himself as a child worked out in coloured silk. A tea-tray, ready laid, was on a table by her side, and she rose with a trembling cry as he bounded in and kissed her.

Tea was a long but tremulous joy to her, and by the time it was over the darkness was gathering. The maid removed the tray and was about to bring in a lamp, but Janet, being artful, said:

"No, Jane, not yet. It would be a pity to shut out this lovely twilight. Don't you think so, dear?"

Victor agreed, not knowing what was coming, and for an hour longer they sat at opposite sides of the table, with their faces to the lawn, while the rooks cawed out their last congress, and the thrush sang its last song, and Janet talked on indifferent matters—whether Mrs. Quayle (his sleeping-out housekeeper) was making him comfortable at Ramsey, and if Robbie Creer should not be told to leave butter and fresh eggs for him on market-day.

But when, the darkness having deepened, there was no longer any danger that Victor could see her face, Janet (trembling with fear of her nursling now that he had grown to be a man) plunged into her tragic subject.

People were talking and talking. The Manx ones were terrible for talking. Really, it ought to be possible to put the law on people who talked and talked.

"Who are they talking about now, Janet? Is it about me?" said Victor.

"Well, yes .... yes, it's about you, dear."

Oh, nothing serious, not to say serious! Just a few flighty girls boasting about the attentions he was paying them. And then older people, who ought to know better, gibble-gabbling about the dangers to young women—as if the dangers to young men were not greater, sometimes far greater.

"Not that I don't sympathise with the girls," said Janet, "living here, poor things, on this sandy headland, while the best of the Manx boys are going away to America, year after year, and never a man creature younger than their fathers and grandfathers about to pass the time of day with, except the heavy-footed omathauns that are left."

What wonder that when a young man of another sort came about, and showed them the courtesy a man always shows to a woman, whatever she is, when he is a gentleman born—just a smile, or a nod, or a kind word on the road, or the lifting of his hat, or a hand over a stile perhaps—what wonder if the poor foolish young things began to dream dreams and see visions.

"But that's just where the danger comes in, dear," said Janet. "Oh, I'm a woman myself, and I was young once, you know, and perhaps I remember how the heavens seem to open for a girl when she thinks two eyes look at her with love, and she feels as if she could give herself away, with everything she is or will be, and care nothing for the future. But only think what a terrible thing it would be if some simple girl of that sort got into trouble on your account."

"Don't be afraid of that, Janet," said Victor in a low voice. "No girl in the island, or in the world either, has ever come to any harm through me—or ever will do."

There came the sound of a faint gasp in the darkness, and then Janet cried:

"God bless you for saying that, dear! I knew you would! And don't think your silly old Janet believed the lying stories they told of you. 'Deed no, that she didn't and never will do, never! But all the same a young man can't be too careful!"

There were bad girls about also—real scheming, designing huzzies! Some of them were good-looking young vixens too, for it wasn't the good ones only that God made beautiful. And when a man was young and handsome and clever and charming and well-off and had all the world before him, they threw themselves in his way, and didn't mind what disgrace they got into if they could only compel him to marry them.

"But think of a slut like that coming to live as mistress here—here in the house of Isobel Stowell!"

Then the men folk of such women were as bad as they were. There was a wicked, lying, evil spirit abroad these days that Jack was as good as his master, and if you were up you had to be pulled down, and if you were big you had to be made little.

"Only think what a cry these people would make if anything happened," said Janet, "wrecking your career perhaps, and making promotion impossible."

"Don't be afraid of that either, Janet. I can take care of myself, you know."

"So you can, dear," said Janet, "but then think of your father. Forty years a judge, and not a breath of scandal has ever touched him! But that's just why some of these dirts would like to destroy him, calling to him in the Courts themselves, perhaps, with all the dirty tongues at them, to come down from the judgment-seat and set his own house in order."

"My father can take care of himself, too, Janet," said Victor.

"I know, dear, I know," said Janet. "But think what he'll suffer if any sort of trouble falls on his son! More, far more, than if it fell on himself. That's the way with fathers, isn't it? Always has been, I suppose, since the days of David. Do you remember his lamentations over his son Absalom? I declare I feel fit enough to cry in Church itself whenever the Vicar reads it: 'O my son Absalom! Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son.'"

There was silence for a moment, for Victor found it difficult to speak, and then Janet began to plead with him in the name of his family also.

"The Deemster is seventy years old now," she said, "and he has four hundred years of the Ballamoars behind him, and there has never been a stain on the name of any of them. That's always been a kind of religion in your family, hasn't it—that if a man belongs to the breed of the Ballamoars he will do the right—he can be trusted? That's something to be born to, isn't it? It seems to me it is more worth having than all the jewels and gold and titles and honours the world has in it. Oh, my dear, my dear, you know what your father is; he'll say nothing, and you haven't a mother to speak to you; so don't be vexed with your old Janet who loves you, and would die for you, if she could save you from trouble and disgrace; but think what a terrible, fearful, shocking thing it would be for you, and for your father, and for your family, and .... yes, for the island itself if anything should happen now."

"Nothing shall happen—I give you my word for that, Janet," said Victor.

"God bless you!" said Janet, and rising and reaching over in the darkness she kissed him—her face was wet.

After that she laughed, in a nervous way, and said she wasn't a Puritan either, like some of the people in those parts whom she saw on Sunday mornings, walking from chapel in their chapel hats, after preaching and praying against "carnal transgression" and "bodily indulgence" and "giving way to the temptations of the flesh"—as if they hadn't as many children at home as there were chickens in a good-sized hen-roost.

"Young men are young men and girls are girls," said Janet, "and some of these Manx girls are that pretty and smart that they are enough to tempt a saint. And if David was tempted by the beauty of Bathsheba—and we're told he was a man after God's own heart—what better can the Lord expect of poor lads these days who are making no such pretensions?"

She was only an old maid herself, but she supposed it was natural for a young man to be tempted by the beauty of a young woman, or the Lord wouldn't have allowed it to go on so long. But the moral of that was that it was better for a man to marry.

"So find a good woman and marry her, dear. The Deemster will be delighted, having only yourself to follow him yet. And as for you," she added (her voice was breaking again), "you may not think it now, being so young and strong, but when you are as old as I am .... and feeling feebler every year .... and you are looking to the dark day that is coming .... and no one of your own to close your eyes for you .... only hired servants, or strangers, perhaps...."

It was Victor's turn to rise now, and to stop her speaking by taking her in his arms. After a moment, not without a tremor in his own voice also, he said,

"I shall never marry, and you know why, Janet. But neither will I bring shame on my father, or stain my name, as God is my help and witness."

The rooks were silent in the elms by this time, but the gong was sounding in the hall, so, laughing and crying together, and with all her trouble gone like chased clouds, Janet ran off to her room to wipe her eyes and fix her cap before showing her face at supper.

III

Next morning the Deemster returned from Douglas, and in the afternoon, the Governor arrived. They took tea on the piazza, the days being long and the evenings warm.

The Deemster was uneasy about the case they had tried the day before, and talked much about it. A farmer had killed a girl on his farm after every appearance of gross ill-usage. The crime and the motive had been clear and therefore the law could show no clemency. But there had been external circumstances which might have affected the man's conduct. Down to ten years before he had been a right-living man, clean and sober and honest and even religious. Then he had been thrown by a young horse and kicked on the head and had had to undergo an operation. After he came out of the hospital his whole character was found to have changed. He had become drunken, dishonest, a sensualist and a foul-mouthed blasphemer, and finally he had committed the crime for which he now stood condemned.

"It makes me tremble to think of it," said the Deemster, "that a mere physical accident, a mere chance, or a mere spasm of animal instinct, may cause any of us at any time to act in a way that is utterly contrary to our moral character and most sincere resolutions."

"It's true, though," said the Governor, "and it doesn't require the kick of a horse to make a man act in opposition to his character. The loudest voice a man hears is the call of his physical nature, and law and religion have just got to make up their minds to it."

Next morning, Sunday morning, they went to church. Janet drove in the carriage by way of the high road, but the three men walked down the grassy lane at the back, which, with its gorse hedges on either side, looked like a long green picture in a golden frame. The Deemster, who walked between the Governor and Victor, was more than usually bent and solemn. He had had an anonymous letter about his son that morning—he had lately had shoals of them.

The morning was warm and quiet; the clover fields were sleeping in the sunlight to the lullaby of the bees; the slumberous mountains behind were hidden in a palpitating haze, and against the broad stretch of the empty sea in front stood the gaunt square tower from which the far-off sound of the church bells was coming.

Nowhere in the island could they have found a more tragic illustration of the law of life they had talked about the evening before than in the person of the Vicar of the Church they were going to.

His name was Cowley, and down to middle life he had been all that a clergyman should be. But then he had lost a son under circumstances of tragic sorrow. The boy had been threatened with a consumption, so the father had sent him to sea, and going to town to meet him on his return to the island, he had met his body instead, as it was being brought ashore from his ship, which was lying at anchor in the bay.

The sailors had said that at sight of them and their burthen, Parson Cowley had fallen to the stones of Ramsey harbour like a dead man, and it was long before they could bring him to, or staunch the wound on his forehead. What is certain is that after his recovery he began to drink, and that for fifteen years he had been an inveterate drunkard.

This had long been a cause of grief and perhaps of shame to his parishioners; but it had never lessened their love of him, for they knew that in all else he was still a true Christian. If any lone "widow man" lay dying in his mud cabin on the Curragh, Parson Cowley would be there to sit up all the night through with him; and if any barefooted children were going to bed hungry in the one-roomed hovel that was their living-room, sleeping-room, birth-room and death-room combined, Parson Cowley would be seen carrying them the supper from his own larder.

But his weakness had become woeful, and after a shocking moment in which he had staggered and fallen before the altar, a new Bishop, who knew nothing of the origin of his infirmity, and was only conscious of the scandal of it, had threatened that if the like scene ever occurred again he would not only forbid him to exercise his office, but call upon the Governor (in whose gift it was) to remove him from his living.

The bells were loud when the three men reached the white-washed church on the cliff, with the sea singing on the beach below it, and Illiam Christian, the shoemaker and parish clerk, standing bareheaded at the bottom of the outside steps to the tower to give warning to the bell-ringers that the Governor had arrived.

In expectation of his visit the church was crowded, and with Victor going first to show the way, the Governor next, and the Deemster last, with his white head down, the company from Ballamoar walked up the aisle to the family pew, in which Janet, in her black silk mantle, was already seated.

The Deemster's pew was close to the communion rails, and horizontal to the church with the reading-desk and pulpit in the open space in front of it, and a marble tablet on the wall behind, containing the names of a long line of the Ballamoars, going as far back as the sixteenth century.

The vestry was at the western end of the church, under the tower, and as soon as the bells stopped and the clergy came out, it was seen that the Vicar was far from sober. Nevertheless he kept himself erect while coming through the church behind his choir and curate, and tottered into the carved chair within the rail of the communion.

The curate took the prayers, and might have taken the rest of the service also, but the Vicar, thinking his duty compelled him to take his part in the presence of the Governor, rose to read the lessons. With difficulty he reached the reading-desk, which was close to the Deemster's pew, and opened the Book and gave out the place. But hardly had he begun, in a husky and indistinct voice, with "Here beginneth the first chapter of the Second Book of Samuel" (for it was the sixth Sunday after Trinity) when he stopped as if unable to go farther.

For a moment he fumbled with his spectacles, taking them off and wiping them on the sleeve of his surplice, and then he began afresh. But scarcely had he said, in a still thicker voice, "Now it came to pass" .... when he stopped again, as if the words of the Book before him had run into each other and become an unreadable jumble.

After that he looked helplessly about him for an instant, as if wondering what to do. Then he grasped the reading-desk with his two trembling hands, and the perspiration was seen to be breaking in beads from his forehead.

A breathless silence passed over the church. The congregation saw what was happening, and dropped their heads, as if knowing that for their beloved old Vicar this (before the eyes of the Governor) was the end of everything.

But suddenly they became aware that something was happening. Quietly, noiselessly, almost before they were conscious of what he was doing, Victor Stowell, who had been sitting at the end of the Deemster's pew, had risen, stepped across to the reading-desk, put a soft hand on the Vicar's arm, and was reading the lesson for him.

"Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided .... I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan; thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women."

People who were there that morning said afterwards that never before had the sublime lament of the great King, the great warrior and the great poet, for his dead friend and dead enemy been read as it was read that day by the young voice, so rich and resonant, that was ringing through the old church.

But it was not that alone that was welling through every bosom. It was the thrilling certainty that out of the greatness of his heart the son of the Deemster (of whom too many of them had been talking ill) had covered the nakedness of the poor stricken sinner who had sunk back in his surplice to a seat behind him.

When the service was over, and the clergy had returned to the vestry, the congregation remained standing until the Governor had left the church. But nobody looked at him now, for all eyes were on the two who followed him—the Deemster and Victor.

The Deemster had taken his son's arm as he stepped out of his pew, and as he walked down the aisle, through the lines of his people, his head was up and his eyes were shining.

"Did thou see that, Mistress?" said Robbie Creer, in triumphant tones to Janet Curphey, as she was stepping back, with a beaming face, into her carriage at the gate.

"Thou need have no fear of thy lad, I tell thee. The Ballamoar will out!"

But the day of temptation was coming, and too soon it came.