University Physics with Modern Physics in SI

Units 15th By Hugh Wei Zhi pdf download

https://ebookgrade.com/product/university-physics-with-modern-
physics-in-si-units-15th-by-hugh-wei-zhi/

Get Instant Ebook Downloads – Browse at https://ebookgrade.com

More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

University Physics with Modern Physics in SI Units

https://ebookgrade.com/product/university-physics-with-modern-physics-
in-si-units/

ebookgrade.com

University Physics with Modern Physics 15th Edition

https://ebookgrade.com/product/university-physics-with-modern-
physics-15th-edition/

ebookgrade.com

University Physics with Modern Physics Global 14th Edition

by Hugh D. Young

https://ebookgrade.com/product/university-physics-with-modern-physics-
global-14th-edition-by-hugh-d-young/

ebookgrade.com

University Physics with Modern Physics 12th Edition

https://ebookgrade.com/product/university-physics-with-modern-
physics-12th-edition/

ebookgrade.com
(TestBank) University Physics with Modern Physics 14th
Edition by Young

https://ebookgrade.com/product/testbank-university-physics-with-
modern-physics-14th-edition-by-young/

ebookgrade.com

(Solution Manual) University Physics with Modern Physics

13th Edition

https://ebookgrade.com/product/solution-manual-university-physics-
with-modern-physics-13th-edition/

ebookgrade.com

(Solution Manual) University Physics with Modern Physics

(14th Edition)

https://ebookgrade.com/product/solution-manual-university-physics-
with-modern-physics-14th-edition/

ebookgrade.com

(Test Bank) University Physics with Modern Physics 13th

Edition

https://ebookgrade.com/product/test-bank-university-physics-with-
modern-physics-13th-edition/

ebookgrade.com
Random documents with unrelated
content Scribd suggests to you:
 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.

CHAPTER EIGHT
THE CALL OF BESSIE COLLISTER

It was the first Saturday in August, when the throbbing and thunging of
the vast machinery of the mills and factories of the English industrial
counties comes to a temporary stop, and for three days at least, tens of
thousands of its servers, male and female, pour into the island for health and
holiday.
 Stowell and Gell had never yet seen the inrushing of the liberated ones,
so with no other thought, and little thinking what fierce game fate was
playing with them, they had come into Douglas that day, in flannels and
straw hats, in eager spirits and with high steps, to look on its sights and
scenes.

It was late afternoon, and they made first for the pier, where a crowd of
people had already assembled to witness the arrival of an incoming steamer.

She was densely crowded. Every inch of her deck seemed to be packed
with passengers, chiefly young girls, as the young men thought, some of
them handsome, many of them pretty, all of them comely. With sparkling
eyes and laughing mouths they shouted their salutations to their friends on
the pier, while they untied the handkerchiefs which they had bound about
their heads to keep down their hair in the breeze on the sea, and pinned on
their hats before landing.

The young men found the scene delightful. A little crude, perhaps a little
common, even a little coarse, but still delightful.

Then they walked along the promenade, and that, too, was crowded.
From the water's edge to the round hill-tops at the back of the town, every
thoroughfare seemed to be thrilling with joyous activity. Hackney carriages,
piled high with luggage and higher still with passengers, were sweeping
round the curve of the bay; windows and doors were open and filled with
faces, and the whole sea-front, from end to end, seemed to be as full of
women's eyes as a midnight sky of stars.

For tea they went up to Castle Mona—a grave-looking mansion in the

middle of the bay, built for a royal residence by one of the Earls of Derby
when they were lords of Man before the Athols, but now declined to the
condition of an hotel for English visitors, with its wooded slopes to the sea
(wherein more than one of our old Manx Kings may have pondered the
problems of his island kingdom), transformed into a public tea-garden, on
which pretty women were sitting under coloured sunshades and a string
band from London was playing the latest airs from Paris.
 The young men took a table at the seaward end of the lawn, with the
rowing boats skimming the fringe of the water in front, the white yachts
scudding across the breast of the bay, the brown-sailed luggers dropping out
of the harbour with the first flood of the flowing tide; and then the human
tide of joyous life running fast on the promenade below—girls chiefly, as
they thought, usually in white frocks, white stockings and white shoes,
skipping along like human daisy-chains with their arms entwined about
each other's waists, and sometimes turning their heads over their shoulders
to look up at them and laugh.

The sun went down behind the hills at the back of the town, the string
band stopped, the coloured sunshades disappeared, the gong was sounded
from the hall of the hotel and they went indoors for dinner.

They sat by an open window of the stately dining-room (wherein our old
Earls and their Countesses once kept court), and being in higher spirits than
ever by this time, they ate of every dish that was put before them, drank a
bottle of champagne, toasted each other and every pretty woman they could
remember of the many they had seen that day ("Here's to that fine girl with
the black eyes who was standing by the funnel"), and looked at intervals at
the scenes outside until the light failed and the darkness claimed them.

At one moment they saw the dark hull of another steamer, lit up in every
port-hole, gliding towards the pier, and at the next (or what seemed like the
next), shooting across the white sheet of light from the uncovered windows
of their dining-room, a large blue landau, drawn by a pair of Irish bays,
driven by a liveried coachman. Gell leapt up to look at it.

"Vic," he cried, "I think that must be the Governor's carriage."

"It is," said Stowell.

"And that's the Governor himself inside of it."

"No doubt."

"And the lady sitting beside him is .... yes, no .... yes ..... upon my soul I
believe it was his daughter."
 "Impossible," said Stowell, and, remembering what Janet had told him,
he thought no more of the matter.

They returned to the lawn to smoke after dinner, and then the sky was
dark and the stars had begun to appear; the tide was up but the sea was
silent; the rowing-boats were lying on the shingle of the beach; the yachts
were at anchor in the bay; the last of the fishing-boats, each with a lamp in
its binnacle, were doubling the black brow of the head, and from the
farthest rock of it the revolving light in the lighthouse was sweeping the
darkness from the face of the town as with an illuminated fan. The young
men were enraptured. It was wonderful! It was enchanting! It was like
walking on the terrace at Monte Carlo!

Then suddenly, as at the striking of a clock, the town itself began to

flame. One by one the façades of the theatres and dancing palaces that lined
the front were lit up by electricity. It raced along like ignited gunpowder
and in a few minutes the broad curve of the bay from headland to headland,
was sparkling and blazing under ten thousand lights.

It was now the beginning of night in the little gay town. The young men
could hear the creak of the iron turn-stile to one of the dancing-halls near at
hand, and the shuffling of the feet of the multitudes who were passing
through it, and then, a few minutes later, the muffled music of the orchestra
and the deadened drumming of the dancing within.

That was more than they could bear, in their present state of excitement,
without taking part in the scene of it, so within five minutes more, they
were passing through the turn-stile themselves and hurrying down a tunnel
of trees, lit up by coloured lamps, to the open door of the dancing-hall—
deep in a dark garden which seemed to sleep in shadow on either side of
them.

The vast place, decorated in gold and domed with glass, was crowded,
but going up into the gallery the young men secured seats by the front rail
and were able to look down. What a spectacle! Never before, they thought,
though they had travelled round the world, had they seen anything to
compare with it. To the clash of the brass instruments and the boom of the
big drums, five thousand young men and young women were dancing on
the floor below. Most of the men wore flannels and coloured waist-scarves,
and most of the girls were in muslin and straw hats. They were only the
workers from the mills and factories of Lancashire and Yorkshire, but the
flush of the sun and the sea was in their faces and the joy and health of
young life was in their blood.

Stowell felt himself becoming giddy. Waves of perfume were floating up

to him, with the warmth of women's bright eyes, red lips and joyous
laughter. His nerves were quivering; his pulses were beating with a
pounding rush. He was beginning to feel afraid of himself and he had an
almost irresistable impulse to get up and go.

II

One other person important to this story had come to Douglas that day—
Bessie Collister. During the first three years after her return home from
Castletown she had lived in physical fear of Dan Baldromma; but during
the next three years, having grown big and strong and become useful on the
farm, she had been more than able to hold her own with him, and he had
even been compelled to pay her wages.

"I don't know in the world what's coming over the girls," he would say.
"In my young days they were content with priddhas and herrings three
times a day, and welcome, but nothing will do now, if it's your own
daughter itself, but ten pounds a year per annum, and as much loaf bread
and butcher's mate as would fill the inside of a lime kiln."

"Aw, but the girl's smart though," Mrs. Collister would answer.

"I'm saying nothing against her," Dan would reply. "A middling good
girl enough, and handy with the bases, but imperent grown—imperent
uncommon and bad with the tongue."
 There was scarcely a farmer on the island who would not have given
Bessie twice the wages Dan paid her, but she remained at home, partly for
reasons of her own and partly to protect her mother from Dan's brutalities
by holding over his head the threat of leaving him.

Mrs. Collister, who had been stricken with sciatica and was hobbling
about on a stick, had by this time taken refuge from her life-long
martyrdom in religion, having joined the "Primitives," whose chapel (a
whitewashed barn) stood at the opposite angle of the glen and the high road.
She had tried to induce her daughter to follow her there, but Bessie had
refused, having come to the conclusion that the "locals" on the "plan-beg,"
whose favourite subject was the crucifixion of the flesh, were always
preaching at her mother, or pointing at her.

So on Sunday mornings when the church bells were ringing across the
Curragh, and the chapel-going women of the parish were going by with
their hymn-books in their handkerchiefs, and old Will Skillicorne, who was
a class-leader, was coming down from his thatched cottage in his tall
beaver, black frock coat and black kid gloves, Bessie, in her sunbonnet and
a pair of Dan's old boots, and with her skirt tucked up over her linsey-
wolsey petticoat, would be seen feeding the pigs or washing out a bowl of
potatoes at the pump.

And on Sunday evenings, while the Primitives were singing a hymn

outside their chapel before going in for service, she would be tripping past,
lightly shod, and wearing a hat with an ostrich feather, on her way to town,
where a German band played sacred music on the promenade, and young
people, walking arm-in-arm, laughed and "glimed" at each other under the
gas-light.

"I wonder at herself though, bringing up her daughter like a haythen in a

Christian land," old Will would say. "But then what can you expect from a
child of sin and a son of Belial"—the latter being a dig at Dan, whose lusty
voice could always be heard over the singing, reading aloud to himself in
the kitchen the "Rights of Man" or "The Mistakes of Moses."

Bessie was a full-developed and warm-blooded woman by this time,

living all day and every day in the natural world of the farmyard, ready to
break loose at the first touch of the hand of a live man if only he were the
right one, and having no better relief for the fever of her womanhood than
an occasional dance in the big barn at Kirk Michael Fair.

But then came her adventure with Stowell and Gell in the glen and it
altered everything. Running down in her excitement she told her mother
what had happened, and her mother, in a moment of tenderness, told Dan,
and Dan, in the impurity of his heart, drew his own conclusions.

"It's the Spaker's son again," he said, making a noise in his nostrils.

The young men had camped out there expressly to meet Bessie, and it
wasn't the first time the girl had gone up to them.

"Goodness sakes, man veen, how do thou know that? And what's the
harm done anyway?" said Mrs. Collister.

"Wait and see what's the harm, woman. Girls is not to trust when a
wastrel like that is about. We've known it before now, haven't we?"

To one other person Bessie told the story of the glen, and that was her
chief friend, Susie Stephen, the English barmaid at the Ginger Hall Inn—a
girl of fair complexion and some good looks who had shocked the young
wives of the parish by wearing short frocks, transparent stockings and a
blouse cut low over the bosom.

It was at closing-time a few nights after the event, and as the girls stood
whispering together by the half-open door, with the lights put out in the bar
behind them, they squealed with laughter, laid hold of each other and
shuddered.

The young men had gone from the glen by that time, but the August
holidays were coming, so they decided to go up to Douglas on the Saturday
following to dance off their excitement.

At five o'clock that day, having milked her cows, and given a drink of
meal and water to her calves, Bessie was in her bedroom making ready for
her journey.
 It was a stuffy little one-eyed chamber over the dairy, entered from the
first landing of the stairs, open to the whitewashed scraas (which gave it a
turfy odour), having a skylight in the thatch, a truckle bed, a deal table for
wash-stand and a few dried sheepskins on the floor for rugs.

Bessie threw off the big unlaced boots and the other garments of the
cow-house, kicking the one into a corner and throwing the others in a
disorderly mass on to the bed over her pink-and-white sunbonnet, washed
to the waist and then folded her arms over each other in their warmth and
roundness and laughed to herself in sheer joy of bounding health and
conscious beauty.

While doing so she heard her step-father's voice in the kitchen below,
loud as usual and as full of protest, but she had a matter of more moment to
think of now—what to wear out of her scanty wardrobe.

The question was easily decided. After putting on white rubber shoes
and white stockings, she drew aside a sheet on the wall that ran on a string
and took down a white woollen skirt and a new cream-coloured blouse cut
low at the neck like Susie's.

But the anchor of her hope was her hat, which she was to wear for the
first time, having bought it the day before in Ramsey. It was shaped like a
shell, with a round lip in front, and to find the proper angle for it on her
head was a perplexing problem. So she stood long and twisted about before
an unframed sheet of silvered glass which hung by a nail on the wall, with a
lash comb in her hand, a number of hat-pins across her mouth, while the
floor creaked under her, and the conversation went on below.

She got it right at last, just tilted a little aside, to look pert and saucy,
with her black hair, which was long and wavy, creeping up to it like a
cushion. And then, standing off from her glass to look at it again over her
shoulder, with eyes that danced with delight, she turned to the door and
walked with a buoyant step downstairs.
 III

Dan Baldromma also had made an engagement for that day, handbills
having been distributed in Ramsey during the morning saying that "Mr.
Daniel Collister of Baldromma" would deliver an address in the market-
place at seven o'clock in the evening.

At five Dan had strapped down the lever which stopped the flow of
water on to his overshot wheel and stepped into the dwelling-house, where
Liza, his wife, had laid tea for two and was blowing up a fire of dry gorse to
boil the kettle.

"Tell your girl to put a lil rub on my Sunday boots," he said.

"But she's upstairs dressing for Douglas," said Mrs. Collister.

"You don't say?" said Dan. "So that's the way she's earning her living?"

"Chut, man," said Mrs. Collister. "If a girl's in life she wants aisement
sometimes, doesn't she? And her ragging and tearing to keep the farm
going, and a big wash coming on next week, too."

"Well, that's good! That's rich! I thought it was myself that was keeping
the farm going. Douglas, you say? Well, well! I wonder at you, encouraging
your girl to go to such places, and you a bound Methodist. Tell her to put a
rub on my boots, ma'am."

"I'll do it myself, Dan," said Mrs. Collister. "It's little enough time the
girl will have to catch the train, and her fixing on her new hat, too."

"New hat, eh?"

"Aw, yes, man, the one she bought at Miss Corkill's yesterday."

"What a woman! And you telling me, when you got five goolden
sovereigns out of me on Monday that she was for wearing it at the Sulby
Anniversary. I wonder you are not afraid for your quarterly ticket."
 "But it was only the girl's half year's wages, and the labourer is worthy
of his hire. Thou art always saying so at the Cross anyway."

"Hould thy tongue, woman, and don't be milking that ould cow any more
—it's dry, I tell thee."

It was at this moment that Bessie came downstairs, and Dan, who was on
the three-legged stool before the fire, making wry faces as he dragged off
his mill-boots with a boot-jack, fell on her at first with his favourite
weapon, irony.

"Aw, the smart you are in your new hat, girl—smart tremenjous!"

"I didn't think you'd have the taste to like it," said Bessie, sitting at the
table.

"Taste, is it?" said Dan. "Aw, the grand we are! The pride that's in some
ones is extraordinary though. There'll be no holding you! You'll be going up
and up! Your mother has always been used of a poor man's house and the
wind above the thatch. But you'll be wanting feather beds and marble halls,
I'm thinking."

"They won't be yours to find then, so you needn't worry," said Bessie.

"You think not? I'm not so sure of that. Man is born to trouble as the
sparks fly upwards .... So you're for Douglas, are you?"

"Yes, I am, if you'll let me take my tea in time for the train."

"Aisy, bogh, aisy!" said Mrs. Collister.

"Well, you're your own woman now, so I suppose you've got lave to go,"
said Dan.

And then rising to his stockinged feet, his face hard and all his irony
gone, he added, "But I'm my own man, too, and this is my own house, I'm
thinking, and if you're not home for eleven o'clock to-night, my door will be
shut on you."
 Bessie leapt up from the table.

"Shut your door if you like. There'll be lots of ones to open theirs," she
cried, and swept out of the house.

"There you are, woman!" said Dan. "What did I say? Imperent
uncommon and dirty with the tongue! She'll have to clane it this time
though. If she's not back for eleven she'll take the road and no more two
words about it."

Mrs. Collister struggled to her feet and followed Bessie, pretending she
had forgotten something.

"Bessie! Bessie!"

Bessie stopped at the end of the "street" and her mother hobbled up to
her.

"Be home for eleven, bogh," she whispered. "It's freckened mortal I am
that himself has some bad schame on."

"What schame?" asked Bessie.

"I don't know what, but something, so give him no chance."

"What do I care about his chance?"

"Aw, bolla veen, bolla veen, haven't I enough to bear with thy father and
thee? Catch the ten train back—promise me, promise me."

"Very well, I promise," said Bessie, and at the next moment she was
gone.

Five minutes later, arm-in-arm with Susie, she was swinging down the
road to the railway station for Douglas.

The little gay town, when they reached it, was at full tide, with pianos
banging in the open-windowed houses, guitars twanging in the streets, and
lines of young men marching along the pavements and singing in chorus.
The girls, fresh from their twinkling village by the lonely hills, with the
river burrowing under the darkness of the bridge, were almost dizzy with
the sights and sounds.

When they came skipping down the steep streets to the front, and
plunged into the electric light which illuminated the bay, they could
scarcely restrain themselves from running. And when, bubbling with the
animal life which had been suppressed, famished and starved in them, they
passed through the turn-stile to the dancing-palace and hurried down the
tunnel of trees, lit by coloured lamps, and saw the stream of white light
which came from the open door, and heard the crash of the band and the
drumming of the dancers within, their feet were scarcely touching the
ground and they felt as if they wanted to fly. And when at last, having
entered the hall, the whole blazing scene burst on them in a blinding flash,
they drew up with a breathless gasp.

"Oh! Oh!"

One moment they stood by the door with blinking and sparkling eyes,
their linked arms quivering in close grip. Then Bessie, who was the first to
recover from the intoxicating shock, looked up and around, and saw Stowell
and Gell sitting in the gallery.

"Good sakes alive," she whispered, "they're there!"

"Who? The gentlemen?"

"Yes, in the front row. Be quiet, girl. They see us. Don't look up. They
might come down."

And then the girls laughed with glee at their conscious make-believe,
and their arms quivered again to the rush of their warm blood.

IV
 "Alick, isn't that our young friend of the glen?"

"Bessie Collister? Where?"

"Down there, standing with the fair girl, just inside the door."

"Well, yes, upon my word, I think it is!"

"I've a great mind to go down to them. Let us go."

"No? Really? In a place like this?"

"Why not, man?"

"Well, if you don't mind, I don't."

A few minutes later, in an interval between the dances, Victor, coming

behind Bessie, touched her on the shoulder.

"How are those sweet-smelling heifers——still grazing on the

mountains?"

Bessie, who had watched the young men coming downstairs, and felt
them at her back, turned with a look of surprise, then laughed merrily and
introduced Susie. For a few nervous moments there were the light nothings
which at such times are the only wisdom. Then the violins began to flourish
for another dance, and the two couples paired off—Victor with Bessie and
Susie with Gell.

Victor took Bessie's hand with a certain delicacy to which she was quite
unaccustomed and which flattered her greatly. The dance was a waltz, and
she had never waltzed before, so they had to go carefully at first, but when
the dance was coming to an end she was swinging to the rhythm of the
orchestra as if she had waltzed a hundred times.

In the interval the two couples came together again, and there was much
general chatter and laughter. Gell joined freely in both, and if at first he had
had any backward thoughts of the promise he had given to his father they
were gone by this time.
 Another dance began and without changing partners they set off afresh,
Stowell taking Bessie's hand with a firmer grasp and Bessie holding to his
shoulder with a stronger sense of possession. His nerves were tingling.
Turning round and round among women's smiling faces, and with Bessie's
smiling face by his side, he had the sense of sweeping his partner along
with an energy of physical power he had never felt before.

When the orchestra stopped the second time and they went in search of
their companions, they discovered Susie on a seat, panting and perspiring,
and Gell fanning her with the brim of his straw hat.

Victor's excitement was becoming feverish. He wanted Bessie to

himself, and during the third dance he felt himself dragging her to the
opposite side of the hall. She knew what he was doing, and found it
enchanting to be carried off by sheer force.

When the dance came to an end Victor put Bessie's moist hand through
his arm and walked up and down with her. Her throat was throbbing and her
breast rising and falling under her low-cut blouse. They spoke little, but
sometimes he turned his head to look at her, and then she turned her eyes to
his. He thought her black eyes were looking blacker than ever.

The evening was now at its zenith, and the orchestra was tuning up for
the "shadow-dance." The white lights on the walls went out, and over the
arc lamps in the glass roof a number of coloured disks were passed, to
throw shadows over the dancers, as of the sunrise, the sunset, the moon and
the night with its stars. The dance itself was of a nondescript kind in which
at intervals, the man, with a whoop, lifted his partner off her feet and swung
her round him in his arms—a sort of symbol of marriage by capture.
 When the shadow-dance ended there was much hand-clapping among
the dancers. It had to be repeated, this time with a more rapid movement
and to the accompaniment of a song, which, being sung by the men in
chorus, made the hall throb like the inside of a drum. Many of the dancers
fell out exhausted, but Victor and Bessie kept up to the last.

Then the big side doors were thrown open, and amid a babel of noise,
cries and laughter, nearly all the dancers trooped out of the hall into the
garden to cool. Victor gave his arm to Bessie and they went out also.

Lights gleamed here and there in the darkness of the trees, throwing
shadows full of mystery and charm. After a while the orchestra within was
heard beginning again, and most of the dancers hastened back to the hall,
but Victor said,

"Let us stay out a little longer."

Bessie agreed and for some minutes more they wandered through the
garden, in and out of the electric light, with the low murmur of the sea
coming to them from the shore and the muffled music from the hall.

She was breathing deeply, and he was feeling a little dizzy. They found
themselves talking in whispers, both in the Anglo-Manx, and then laughing
nervously.

"Did you raelly, raelly see the young colts racing on the tops, though?"

"'Deed no, not I, woman. But I belave in my heart I know who did."

"Who?"

"Why you!"

At that word, and the touch of his hand about her waist, she made a
nervous laugh, and turned to him, her eyes closed, her lips parted and her
white teeth showing, and they drew together in a long kiss.
 At the next moment a clock struck coldly through the still air from the
tower of a neighboring church and Bessie broke away.

"Gracious me, that must be ten o'clock. I have to catch the ten train
home."

"You can't now. It's impossible," he said, and he tried to hold her.

"I must—I promised," she cried, and she bounded off. He called and
followed a few steps, but she was gone.

Feeling like a torn wound he returned to the dancing-hall. The scene was
the same as before but it seemed crude and tame and even dead to him now.
Where was Gell? He must have gone to see the fair girl off by the ten train.
He would come back presently.

Victor returned to the hotel. To compose his nerves while he waited he

called for another half bottle of wine, and drank it, iced. The music was still
murmuring in his ears. After a while it stopped; there were a few bars of the
National Anthem, and then the pattering like rain of innumerable feet on the
paved way from the dancing-hall to the promenade. It was now a few
minutes to eleven, and remembering that that was the hour of the last train
to the north he walked up to the station.

A noisy throng was on the platform, chiefly young Manx farming people
of both sexes, returning to their homes in the country. The open third-class
carriages were full of them, all talking and laughing together.

Victor walked down the line of the train and looked into each of the dim-
lit carriages for Bessie, thinking it impossible that she could have caught the
earlier one. Not finding her, he inquired if the ten train had left promptly
and was told it had been half-an-hour late. She must have gone.

He got into an empty first-class compartment, folded his arms and closed
his eyes and the train started. While it ran into the dark country the farming
people, being unable to talk with comfort, sang. Over the rolling of the
wheels their singing came in a dull roar, and when the train stopped at the
wayside stations it went up in the sudden silence in a wild discord of male
and female voices.

Victor was beginning to feel cold. He put up the window. His brain
which had been blurred was becoming lucid. He recalled the scenes he had
taken part in and some of them seemed to him now to have been crude and
common and even a little vulgar. He thought of Bessie and felt ashamed.

When the train drew up at the station for the glen he turned his face from
the direction of the mill, and to defeat a desire to look at it he opened the
window at the other side of the carriage and put out his head.

The free air was refreshing to body and brain, but when his eyes had
become accustomed to the darkness he saw the broad belt of the trees of
Ballamoar. That brought a stabbing memory of Janet and the promise he
had given her, and then of the Deemster and his conversation with the
Governor.

He began to shiver, and to feel as if he were awakening from a fit of

moral intoxication. To-morrow he would go home, and since he could not
trust himself any longer, he would put himself out of the reach of
temptation by living at Ballamoar in future.

When the train drew up at Ramsey it was half-past twelve. As he walked

out of the quiet station into the echoing streets of the sleeping town he was
drawing a deep breath and saying to himself:

"Thank God!"

It was all over.

CHAPTER NINE
THE MASTER OF MAN
 Dan Baldromma's meeting in the market-place had not been the success
he had expected. Standing on the steps of the town lamp, between the
Saddle Inn and the Ship Store, he had discoursed on the rights of the
labourer to the land he cultivated.

The Earth was the Lord's, and the fulness thereof. Therefore it could not
belong to the big ones who were adding field to field—least of all to their
wastrels of sons who were doing nothing but hang about the roads and the
glens to ruin the daughters of decent men. The moral of this was that the
land belonged to the people and the time was coming when they would pay
no rent for it.

Dan's audience of Manx farmers had listened to this new gospel with
Manx stolidity, but a group of young English visitors, clerks from the cotton
factories, looking down from the balcony of the Saddle Inn, had received it
with open derision.

Dan had ignored their opposition as long as possible, merely saying,

when his audience laughed at their sallies,

"We must make allowance for some ones, comrades—children still,

they've not been rocked enough."

But when at length they had called him Bradlaugh Junior and Ingersoll
the Second and told him to keep his tongue off better men, Dan had looked
up at the balcony and cried,

"If you're calling me by them honoured names I'm taking my hat off to
you" (suiting the action to the word), "but if you're saying you are better
men we'll be going into a back coort somewheres and taking off our jackets
and westcots."

To preserve the peace the police had had to put an end to the meeting,
whereupon Dan, spitting contemptuously and snorting about "The
Cottonies" and "the Cotton balls," had harnessed his horse at the Plough Inn
and driven home in a dull rage.
 It had been ten o'clock when he got back to Baldromma, and after
unharnessing his horse in his undrained stable, and wiping his best boots
with a wisp of straw, he had stepped round to the kitchen.

His wife was there, beating time on the hearthstone to a long-drawn

Methodist hymn while she stirred the porridge in a pot that hung over a
slow peat fire.

"Tell me the old, old story, ....

Of Jesus and His love."

"Your daughter isn't back then?" said Dan with a growl.

"Be raisonable, man," said Mrs. Collister. "Eleven o'clock thou said, and
it's only a piece after ten yet."

She poured out the porridge and hobbled to the dairy for a basin of milk,
and then Dan, after a sour silence, sat down to his supper.

"They were telling me in Ramsey," he said, making noises with his

spoon, "that the Spaker's son went up to Douglas to-day."

"Like enough!" said Mrs. Collister.

"I'll go bail your girl went up to meet him."

"Sakes alive, man veen, what for should thou be saying that?"

"She's fit enough for it anyway."

"But what has the girl done? Twenty-four years for Spring and not a man
at her yet."

"Chut! Once they cut the cables that sort is the worst that's going. She'd
be an angel itself though to stand up against a waistrel like yander."

"Bessie will be home for eleven," said Mrs. Collister.

"She'd better, or she'll find Dan Baldromma a man of his word, ma'am."