“Gentlemen of the Council and of the Keys,” continued Philip, “you will think you have assembled to see a man take a leap into an abyss more dark than death. That is as it may be. You have a right to an explanation, and I am here to make it. What I have done has been at the compulsion of conscience. I am not worthy of the office I hold, still less of the office that is offered me.”
There was a half-articulate interruption from behind Philip's chair.
“Ah! do not think, old friend, that I am dealing in vague self depreciation. I should have preferred not to speak more exactly, but what must be, must be. Your Excellency has spoken of my honour as spotless. Would to God it were so; but it is deeply stained with sin.”
He stopped, made an effort to begin afresh, and stopped again. Then, in a low tone, with measured utterance, amid breathless silence, he said— “I have lived a double life. Beneath the life that you have seen there has been another—God only knows how full of wrongdoing and disgrace and shame. It is no part of my duty to involve others in this confession. Let it be enough that my career has been built on falsehood and robbery, that I have deceived the woman who loved me with her heart of hearts, and robbed the man who would have trusted me with his soul.”
The people began to breathe audibly. There was the scraping of a chair behind the speaker. The Clerk of the Rolls had risen. His florid face was violently agitated.
“May it please your Excellency,” he began, faltering and stammering, in a husky voice, “it will be within your Excellency's knowledge, and the knowledge of every one on the island, that his Honour has only just risen from a long and serious illness, brought on by overwork, by too zealous attention to his duties, and that—in fact, that—well, not to blink the plain truth, that——”
A sigh of immense relief had passed over the court, and the Governor, grown very pale, was nodding in assent. But Philip only smiled sadly and shook his head.
“I have been ill indeed,” he said, “but not from the cause you speak of. The just judgment of God has overtaken me.”
The Clerk of the Rolls sank back into his seat.
“The moment came when I had to sit in judgment on my own sin, the moment when she who had lost her honour in trusting to mine stood in the dock before me. I, who had been the first cause of her misfortunes, sat on the bench as her judge. She is now in prison and I am here. The same law which has punished her failing with infamy has advanced me to power.”