Bessie dropped back to the partial cover of the fence. Only her fear of attracting attention restrained her from flying off altogether. Alick had not yet seen her. It tore her terribly to see how ill he looked. He was only three or four yards away from her. His head was down. At one moment he took off his cap and ran his fingers through his fair hair as if his head were aching. She could scarcely resist an impulse to pass through the turnstile and hurry up to him. One look, one smile, one word, and she would have thrown everything to the winds even yet.
But no, the guard waved his flag, the engine whistled, the train jerked backward, then forward, and at the next instant it had slid out of the station. Alick had not seen her. He was gone. It had been like a stab at her heart to see him go.
II
Half an hour later she was on the rugged mountain road that led to her mother's house in the north of the island. Her first fear was the fear of being overtaken and carried back. At Silverburn, where a deep river gurgles under the shadow of a dark bridge, she heard the crack of whips, the clatter of horses' hoofs and the whoop of loud voices.
It was nothing. Only two farm shandries, the first containing a couple of full-blooded farm girls, and the second a couple of lusty farm lads, racing home after market, laughing wildly and shouting to each in the free language of the countryside. It was like something out of her former life—one of the outbreaks of animal instinct that had brought her to where she was.
But no matter! She would be a proud and happy woman yet—the Sheean ny Feaynid had said so.
After the fear of being pursued came the fear of being lost—becoming an outcast and a wanderer. She had toiled up to the Black Fort on the breast of the hill. The morning haze had vanished by this time, the sun had come out, the larks were singing in the cloudless sky, the smell of spring was rising from the young grass in the fields, the roadsides were yellow with primroses and daffodils, and the whole world was looking glad with the promise of the beautiful new year that was already on the wing. It was heart-breaking.
Feeling hot and tired after her climb, she sat on a stone. The sea was open from that point, and on the farthest rim of it she could see a red-funnelled steamer and two black shafts of smoke. Stowell! Never before had she thought bitterly of him. But he was there, going up to London in comfort, in luxury, while she....
It was cruel. But crueller than her bitter thoughts of Stowell were her tender thoughts of Gell. He would be at Derby Haven now, reading (with that twitching of the lower lip which she knew so well) the letter she had left behind for him, while she was here, running away from the arms of the man who loved her. But no matter about that, either! One day, two days, three days, a week perhaps, and she would return to him. She was to be a proud and happy woman yet—the Sheean ny Feaynid had said so.
Hours passed. The road stretched out and out, became steeper and steeper. Bessie felt more and more tired. She was often compelled to sit by the wayside, and sometimes, being worn out by the want of sleep, she fell into a doze. The sky darkened and dropped; the sun went down behind the mountains to the west with a straight black bar across its face that was like a heavy lid over a sullen eye. Would she be able to reach home that night? She would! She must! Alick was waiting for her to come back. She dare not keep him long.
Evening had closed in before she reached the top of the hill. It was a long waste of bracken and black rock, with no farms anywhere, and only a few thatched cottages that crouched in the sheltered places like frightened cattle in a storm. Feeling weak and faint from long climbing and want of food, she was about to sit down again and cry, having lost hope of reaching her mother's house that night, when she came upon a little lamb, scarcely a month old, which had strayed away from the flock and was too tired to go farther.
The poor creature bleated piteously into her face, and she lifted it up in her arms and carried it a long half mile (the lost carrying the lost, the desolate comforting the desolate) until she came to a high gate at which a mother sheep was plunging furiously in her efforts to get out to them. Bessie put the lamb to its feet, and it clambered through the bars, plucked at the teat, and then there was peace and silence.
This strengthened her and she went on for some time longer with a cheerful heart. Yes, she must reach home that night. And if it was as late as midnight before she got there, so much the better! Nobody must see her come, and then her mother would be able to conceal everything.
Night fell. It began to rain and the wind to rise. She had never been afraid of darkness or bad weather, but now she took a wild delight in them. Remembering what other women had done, she took off her shoes and walked on the wet roads in her stockings. It was risky but she cared nothing about that. It might bring on a fever, but she was strong—she would soon get over it.
Farmers returning empty from market offered her a lift, but she declined and toiled on. The lighted windows of the farmhouses, gleaming through the darkness, called her into warmth and shelter, but she struggled along. The soles of her stockings were soon worn to shreds and the stones of the roads were beginning to cut her feet, but she would not put on her shoes. In her frenzy she hardly felt the pain. And besides, what she was suffering for Alick was as nothing compared to what Alick had suffered for her. Only one night! It would soon be over.
She had walked at her slow pace down a deep descent and through a long valley when she came upon an inn and a big barn that was a scene of great festivity. She knew what it was. It was one of the "Bachelors' Balls" which, beginning with Oiel Thomase Dhoo (the Eve of Black Thomas) and going on through the spring of the year, the unmarried men in remote places gave to the unmarried girls of the parish.
The rain was now falling in torrents and the wind had risen to the strength of a gale, but it must have been close and hot inside the barn, for as Bessie passed on the other side of the way, the doors were thrown open. The rude place was densely crowded. Stable lamps hung from the rough-hewn rafters. At one end the musicians sat on a platform raised on barrels; at the other end girls in white blouses were serving tea from a long plank covered with a table-cloth and resting on trestles. In the space between, a dense group of young men and women were dancing with furious energy.
This, too, was like something out of her own life. Ah, if somebody had only told her ....
But what matter! She would be a proud and happy woman yet—the Sheean ny Feaynid had said so.
It was now midnight by the wrist-watch that Alick had given her, and she had still another hill to climb, steeper than the last if shorter. While she was going up the rain flogged her face as with whipcord, and, when she reached the top, the wind, sweeping across the low-lying lands from the sea, tore at her skirts as if it were trying to strip her naked. At one moment it brought her to her knees, and she thought she would never be able to rise to her feet again. It was very dark. She was feeling weak and helpless.
Once more she remembered Stowell. He would be on his way to London now. She could see him (Alick had often painted such pictures) sitting in a brightly-lit first-class railway carriage, smoking cigarettes and sipping coffee.
At this thought her whole soul rose in revolt. Why was he there while she was here? She had never loved him; he had never loved her; they had both done wrong. But why for the same fault should there be such different punishment?
People who went to churches and chapels talked of nature and God. They said God was good and He was the God of nature. It was a lie—a deception! If God was good He was not the God of nature. If He was the God of nature He was not good. Nature was cruel and pitiless. Only to a man was it kind. If you were a woman it had no mercy on you. It never forgot you; it never forgave you. Therefore a woman had a right to fight it, and when it threatened to destroy her happiness, and the happiness of those who loved her, she had a right to kill it.
That was what she was doing now. Perhaps she had done it already. The heavy burden that had been lying so long under her heart had given no sign of life for hours. So much the better! That passage in her life must be dead and buried. Victor Stowell must be wiped out for ever. Then she could marry Alick Gell with a clean heart and conscience.
Therefore, courage, courage! She would be a proud and happy woman yet—the Sheean ny Feaynid had said so.
Only the great thing was to get home before daybreak, so that nobody might see her until all was over.
Somewhere in the dead and vacant dawn a pale, forlorn-looking woman, whom nobody could have known for Bessie Collister, was approaching the village of the glen. She had been eighteen hours on her journey, most of the time on her feet. Her fur-lined cloak was sodden and heavy. Her black hair had been torn from its knot and was hanging dank over her neck and shoulders. Her feet, in her dry boots, were cold and bleeding. A silk scarf which had been tied over her closely-fitting fur cap was dripping, and a little bag on her arms was wet through with all that was contained in it.
She had expected to arrive before break of day, but nobody in the village was yet stirring. In the long street of whitewashed houses all the window blinds were still down and looking like closed eye-lids.
She tied up her hair, removed the scarf and put on a veil from her handbag, drew it closely over her face, and then walked with head down and a step as light as she could make it, through the sleeping village.
She met nobody. Not a door was opened; not a blind was drawn aside; she had not been seen. She drew a long breath of relief. But suddenly, with the first sight of the mill, came a stab of memory,
Dan Baldromma!
Since the witch-doctor had told her that though Dan might rage and tear he could do no harm to her or to Alick she had ceased to think of him. But why had she not thought of the harm he might do to her mother? All the way up since she was a child she had seen the tyrannies he had inflicted upon her mother through her. What fresh tyranny would he inflict on her now?—now that she was coming home like this to be a burden to....
For a moment Bessie told herself she must go back even yet. But she was too weak and too ill to go one step farther. All the same she could not face her step-father in her present condition. If she could only get upstairs to her bedroom and sleep—sleep, sleep!
She listened for the mill-wheel—it was not working. She looked at the mill-door—it had not yet been opened. It was impossible that Dan could be in bed—he was such an early riser. He must have gone up the brews to look at the heifers in the top fields.
With a slow step she went over to the dwelling-house. The door was shut, but she could hear sounds from the kitchen. There was the shuffling of slow feet, accompanied by the tap of a walking-stick; then the blowing and coughing of bellows and the crackling of burning gorse; and then the measured beating of a foot on the hearthstone, keeping time to a husky and tremulous voice that was singing—
"Safe in the arms of Jesus,
Safe in His tender care."
With a palpitating heart Bessie lifted the latch, pushed the door open and took one step into the kitchen. Her mother, who was still wearing her night-cap, was sitting on the three-legged stool in the choillagh, stirring porridge in the oven-pot that hung from the slowrie. She had heard the click of the latch and was looking round.
There was silence for a moment. Bessie tried to speak and could not. The old woman rose on rigid limbs and her hand on the handle of her stick was trembling. It was just as if the spirit of someone she had been thinking about had suddenly appeared before her.
"Is it thyself, girl?" she said, in a breathless whisper.
"Mother!" cried Bessie, and she took another step forward.
Again there was a moment of silence. With her heart at her lips Bessie saw that her mother's eyes were wandering over her figure. Then the stick dropped from the old woman's hand to the floor and she stretched out her arms, and her thin hands shook like withered leaves.
"Bolla veen! bolla veen!" she cried, in a low voice that was a sob. "It's my own case over again."
And then the girl fell into her mother's arms and buried her head in her breast and cried, as only a suffering child can cry, helplessly, piteously.
A moment later, there was a heavy footstep outside, and the ring of an iron tool thrown down on the "street." The old woman raised her face with a look of fear.
"It's thy father," she whispered.
III
Dan Baldromma had risen earlier than usual that morning. For more than a week there had not been water enough to his mill-wheel for his liking, and suspecting the cause of the shortage he had put a pick over his shoulder and walked up the glen.
There was a little croft on the top of the brews half a mile nearer to the mountain. It was called Baldromma-beg (the little Baldromma) and its occupants (sub-tenants of Dan Baldromma) were a quaint old couple—Will Skillicorne, a long, slow-eyed, slow-legged person who was a class-leader among the "Primitives," and his wife, Bridget, a typical little Manxwoman of her class, keen-eyed, quick-tongued, illiterate and superstitious.
Their croft was thirsty land, though water in abundance was so near, and to every request that it should be laid on in pipes from the glen, Dan had said, "Let your wife carry it—-what else is the woman there for?"
Bridget had carried it for ten years. Then her anger getting the better of her, she put on a pair of her husband's big boots and rolled two great boulders into a neck of the river, with the result that a deep stream of sweet water came flowing down to her house and fields.
This was just what Dan had suspected, and coming upon the new-made dam, he stretched his legs across it, swung his pick and sent the boulders tumbling down the glen, with a torrent of water from Baldromma-beg at the back of them.
But Bridget, also, had risen earlier than usual that morning, and, hearing the sound of Dan's pick, she went out to him at his bad work and fell on him with hot reproaches.
"Was there nothing doing down at the mill, Dan Collister," she cried, "that thou must be coming up here to put thy evil eye on other people's places?"
"Get thee indoors, woman," growled Dan, "and put thy house in order."
"My house in order? Mine? And what about thine? Thine that is a disgrace to the parish and the talk of the island."
"Keep a civil tongue in thy head, Mrs. Skillicorne, or maybe I'll be showing thee the road at Hollantide."
"Turn me out of the croft, will thou? Do it and welcome! I give thee lave. It would be middling aisy to find a better farm, and Satan himself couldn't find a worse landlord. But set thou one foot on this land until my year is over and if there's a bucket of dirty water on the cowhouse floor I'll throw it over thee. Put my house in order indeed! Where's thy daughter, eh? Where's thy daughter, I say?"
"I've got no daughter, woman, and well thou knows it," said Dan.
"'Deed I do. No wonder the Lord wouldn't trust thee with a daughter of thy own, the way thou's brought up this one. The slut! The strumpet! Away with thee and look for her—it will become thee better."
But Dan having finished his work was now plunging down the glen and old Will Skillicorne had come out of his house half dressed, with his braces hanging behind him.
"Come in, woman—lave the man to God," said Will.
"God indeed! The dirt! The ugly black toad! God wouldn't bemane Himself talking to the like."
"Thou's done it this time, though, I'm thinking. Thou heard what he said about Hollantide?"
"Chut! Get thee back to bed. What's thou putting thy mouth in for? Who knows where the man himself will be by that time?"
With a face like a black cloud after this encounter, Dan threw down his pick on the cobbles of the street and went into the kitchen to work off his anger on his wife.
"That's what thou's done for me, ma'am! There's not a trollop in the parish that isn't throwing thy daughter's bad doings in my face."
The kitchen was full of smoke, for the porridge in the oven-pot had been allowed to burn, and it was not until he was standing back to the fire, putting his pipe in the pocket of his open waistcoat, that Dan saw Bessie where she had seated herself, after breaking out of her mother's arms, by the table and in the darkest corner.
He took in the girl's situation at a glance, but after the manner of the man he pretended not to do so.
"God bless my soul," he cried. "Back, is she? Well, well! But what did I say, mother? 'No need to send the Cross Vustha (the fiery cross) after her, she'll come home.' And my goodness the grand woman's she's grown! Fur caps and fur-lined cloaks and I don't know the what! Just come to put a sight on the mother and the ould man, I suppose. No pride at all at all! I wouldn't trust but there's a grand carriage waiting for her at the corner of the road."
"Aisy, man, aisy," said Mrs. Collister, picking up her stick, "don't thou see the girl has walked?"
"Walked, has she?" said Dan, raising his thick eyebrows in pretended astonishment. "You don't say! All the way from Castletown? Well, well! So that's how it is, is it? The young waistrel has thrown her over, has he?"
Bessie had to put her hand to her throat to keep back the cry that was bubbling up.
"Aisy, man, aisy with the like," said the old woman. But Dan was for showing no mercy.
"Goodness me, the airs she gave herself going away! I might shut my door on her, but there would be others to open theirs. And now they have opened them, and shut them too, I'm thinking."
Bessie, crushed and silent, was clutching the end of the table. Dan stepped over to her, laid hold of her left hand, lifted it up, as if looking for her wedding ring, and then flung it away.
"Nothing!" he said. "She's got nothing for it neither. I might have followed her to Castletown, but I didn't. 'I'll lave her to it,' I thought. 'Maybe the girl's cleverer than we thought, and will come home mistress of Baldromma and a thousand good acres besides.' But no, not a ha'porth! And now she has come back to ate us up for the rest of our lives! The toot! The boght! The booby!"
"Dan Collister," said the old woman, "don't thou see the girl is ill?"
"Ill, is she?" said Dan. "I wouldn't trust but she is, ma'am. So it's worse than I thought, and maybe before long there'll be another mouth to feed."
Bessie dropped her head on the table.
"But not in this house, if you plaze, miss. It happened here once before, and the island would be having a fine laugh at me if it happened again."
Once more Dan stepped over to Bessie and touched her arm.
"You're like a dead letter, you've come to the wrong address, mistress. It wasn't Dan Baldromma's thatched cottage you were wanting, but the big slate house down the road where the paycocks are scraming. I'll trouble you to go there."
"Sakes alive, man," cried the old woman, "thou'rt not for turning the girl out of doors?"
"I am that, ma'am," said Dan, going over to the door. "No trollop shall be telling me again that my house is the disgrace of the parish and the talk of the island."
Then throwing the door wide and rattling the catch of it, he said,
"Out of my house, miss! Out of it! Out of it!"
Bessie, who had been sitting motionless, raised her head and rose to go, although scarcely able to take a step forward, when she felt a hand that was trembling like a leaf laid on her shoulder.
"Stay thou there, and leave this to me."
It was the old woman who had been crouching over the fire on the three-legged stool and had now risen, thrown her stick away as if she had no longer any need of it, and was facing her husband with blazing eyes.
"Thou talks and talks of this house as thine and thine," she said. "What made it thine?"
"The law, if thou wants to know, woman," said Dan.
"Then the law is a robber and a thief."
Dan looked at his wife in astonishment, and then burst into a fit of forced laughter.
"Well, that's good! That's rich! That's wonderful! What next, I wonder?"
"Do you want me to tell thee the truth, Dan Collister? Before the girl, too? Then there's not a stick or a stone in the place that in the eyes of heaven does not belong to me."
"What?"
"Not a stick or a stone, except the landlord's, that wasn't bought with my father's money—John Corteen, a man of God, if ever there was one."
"Pity his daughter didn't take after him, then."
"Pity enough, Dan Collister. But when I brought shame into his house he forgave me. And when the finger of death was on the man the only trouble he had in life was what was to become of his girl when he was gone."
"Truth enough, ma'am, he had to find thee a husband, hadn't he?"
"He hadn't far to look, though. And if thou had nothing in thy pocket and not much on thy back thou had plenty in thy mouth to make up for it. Thou were not afraid of scandal! Thou didn't mind marrying a girl who had been talked of with another man!"
"And I did, didn't I?"
"Thou did, God forgive thee! But not till the man's trembling hand had reached up to the hole in the thatch over his bed for his stocking purse and counted the money out to thee. Three hundred good Manx pounds he had worked thirty years for and saved up for his daughter. And then thou swore on the Holy Book to be good to his girl and her baby, and the man's dying eyes on thee. And now—now thou talks of turning my girl out of the house—this house that would have been her house some day if thou had not come between us. But no! Thou shan't do that."
"Shan't I?"
"'Deed thou shan't! She may have done wrong, but if she has it's no more than her mother did before her, and if I daren't turn her out for it thou shalt not."
"We'll see, ma'am, we'll see," said Dan. He was buttoning up his waistcoat and putting on his coat.
"It's no use talking to a woman. There's not much sense to be got out of the like anyway. But when a man marries, the property of the wife becomes the property of the husband—that's Dempster's law, isn't it? And standing up for your legal rights, and not being forced by your wife, or anybody else, to find maintenance for another man's offspring when it comes—that's Dempster's law too, I belave."
"Yes," said the old woman, "and standing up for your own flesh and blood when she's sick and weak and the world is going cold on her and she has nowhere else to lay her head in her trouble—that's Mother's law, Dan Collister, and it's older than the Dempster's, I'm thinking."
"Do as you plaze, ma'am," said Dan. "If you want more noising about the bad doings of your daughter it's all as one to me."
He took his billycock hat down from the "lath" under the ceiling and continued,
"I'll hear what the Speaker has to say about this, though. His wife wasn't for doing much for thee when the honour of this house was in question, but maybe she'll alter her tune now that it's the honour of her own."
He drew his whip from its nail over the fireplace and stepped to the door.
"And if this matter ends as I expect I'll be hearing what the Coorts have to say about it, too. Young Mr. Sto'll is to be made Dempster they're telling me. They're putting him in for it, anyway, and he is bosom friend to the Spaker's son. But friend or no friend," he said, with his hand on the hasp, and ready to go, "maybe his first job when he comes back to the island will be to send his Coroner to this house to turn the man's mistress and her by-child into the road."
"Tell him to send her coffin at the same time, then," cried the old woman, almost screaming. "Mine too, Dan Collister. That's the only way he'll turn my daughter out of this house, I promise thee."
But the old woman collapsed the moment her husband had gone, and staggering to the rocking-chair she dropped into it and cried. Then Bessie, who had not yet spoken, rose and said, crying herself,
"Don't cry, I'll go away myself, mother."
But the old woman was up again in a moment.
"No, thou'll not," she said. "Thou'll go up to thy bedroom in the dairy loft—the one thou had in the innocent old times gone by. Come, take my arm—my good arm, girl. Lean on me, woman-bogh."
Two hours had passed. Bessie was in her bedroom—the little one-eyed chamber (entered from the first landing on the stairs) in which she had dressed for Douglas. But the sheet of silvered glass on the whitewashed wall which had shone then with the light of her beaming eyes was now reflecting her broken, tear-stained, woebegone face.
She knew that her journey had been in vain, that her sufferings had been wasted. Her child was not to be stillborn. Through the closed door she heard Dan Baldromma going off in the stiff cart. He was going to the Speaker, to threaten him with the shame of her unborn child, and to call upon him to compel his son to marry her.
Wild, blind error! But what would be the result? Alick would hear of her whereabouts and learn of her condition and that would be the end of everything between them. All her secret scheme to wipe out her fault, to keep her name clean for Alick, to preserve his beautiful faith in her, would be destroyed, and he would be dead to her for ever.
But no, come what would that should not be! And if the only way to prevent it was to make away with her child when it came she must do so. Only nobody must know—not even her mother.
Time and again the old woman came hobbling upstairs, bringing food and trying to comfort her.
"Will I send for Doctor Clucas, Bessie?"
"No, no. I shall be better in the morning."
The day passed heavily. She could not lie down. Sometimes she sat on the edge of the bed; sometimes stood and held on to the end of it; and sometimes walked to and fro in the narrow space of her bedroom floor. Having no window in her room her only sight of the world without was through the skylight in the thatch, which showed nothing but the sky. The only sound that reached her was the squealing of a pig that was being killed at a neighbouring farm.
At length darkness fell. Hitherto she had been thinking of her unborn child with a certain tenderness, even a certain pity. But now, in the wild disorder of her senses, she began to hate it. It seemed to be some evil spirit that was coming into the world to destroy everybody. Why shouldn't she kill it? She would! Only she must be alone—quite alone.
Shivering, perspiring, weak, dizzy, she was sitting in the darkness when her mother came to say good-night.
"Here are a few broth. Take them. They'll warm thee."
"No, no."
"Come, let me coax thee, bogh."
Bessie refused again, and the old woman's eyes began to fill.
"Will I stay up the night with thee, Bessie?"
"Oh, no, no!"
"I'll leave my door open then, and if thou art wanting anything thou'll call."
"Yes, yes."
"Thy father isn't home yet, and if thou'rt no better when he goes by thy door thou must tell him and he'll let me know."
Bessie raised her eyes in astonishment, and the old woman, with a shamefaced look, began to apologize for her husband. He was not so bad after all, and when a woman had taken a man for better or worse....
"Do you say that, mother?"
Something quivered in the old woman's wrinkled throat.
"Well, we women are all alike, thou knows."
"Good-night and go to sleep, mother."
Bessie hustled her mother out of the room, but hardly had she gone than she wanted to call her back.
"Mother! Mother!" she cried in the sudden access of her pain, but though her door was ajar her mother, who was going deaf, did not hear her.
At the next moment she was glad. Her mother believed in God and religion. To burden her conscience with any knowledge of what she meant to do would be too cruel.
But Bessie's terror increased at every moment. The night outside was quiet, yet the air seemed to be full of fearful cries. At the bidding of some instinctive impulse she blew out the candle, and then, in the darkness and solitude, a great terror took hold of her.
"Alick! Alick!" she cried, but only the deep night heard her. At last, in the paroxysm of her pain, she fell back on the bed—she was unconscious.
When she came to herself again she had a sense of blessed ease, like that of sailing into a quiet harbour out of a tempestuous sea. Before she opened her eyes she heard a faint cry. She thought at first it was only a memory of the bleating of the lost lamb on the mountains. But the cry came again and then she knew what had happened—her child had been born!
Time passed—how long or what she did in it, she never afterwards knew. Her weakness seemed to have gone and she had a feeling of surprising strength. The bitterness of her heart had gone too, and a flood of happiness was sweeping over her.
It was motherhood! To Bessie too, in her misery and shame, the merciful angel of mother-love had come. Her child! Hers! Hers! Make away with it? Kill it? No, not for worlds of worlds!
It was a boy too! Thank God it was a boy! A woman was so weak; she had so much to suffer, so many things to think about. But a man was strong and free. He could fight his own way in life. And her boy would fight for her also, and make amends for all she had gone through.
It was the middle of the night. The glimmering and guttering candle on the wash-table (she had been up and had lit it afresh) was casting dark shadows in the room. Only a little dairy loft with the turfy thatch overhead, and the sheepskin rugs underfoot, but oh, how it shone with glory!
Bessie was singing to her baby (words and tune springing to her mind in a moment) when suddenly she heard sounds from outside. They were the rattle of cart wheels and the clatter of horse's hoofs on the cobbles of the "street."
Dan Baldromma had come home!
Her heart seemed to stop its beating. She blew out her candle and listened, scarcely drawing breath. She heard her step-father tipping up his stiff-cart and then shouting at his horse as he dragged off its harness in the stable. After that she heard him coming into the house and throwing his heavy boots on to the hearthstone. Then she heard the thud, thud, thud of the old man's stockinged feet on the kitchen floor—he was about to come upstairs.
At that moment the child, who had been asleep on her arm, awoke and cried. Only a feeble cry, half-smothered by the closeness of the little mouth to her breast, but in Bessie's ears it sounded like thunder. If her step-father heard it, what would he do? Involuntarily, and before she knew what she was doing, she put her hand over the child's mouth.
Then thud, thud, thud! Dan Baldromma was coming upstairs. Bessie could hear his thick breathing. He had reached the landing. He seemed to stop for a moment outside her door. But he passed on, went up the second short flight, pushed open the door of her mother's room and clashed it noisily behind him.
Then Bessie drew breath and turned back to her child. She was shocked to find that in her terror she had been holding her trembling hand tightly down on the child's mouth. It had only been for a moment (what had seemed like a moment), but when she took her hand away and listened, in the throbbing darkness, for the child's soft breathing, no sound seemed to come.
With shaking fingers she lit her candle again, and then held the light to the baby's face.
The little, helpless, innocent face lay still.
"Can it be possible .... no, no, God forbid it!"
But at length the awful truth came surging down on her. She had killed her child.
II
When Bessie awoke the next day the sun was shining on her eye-lids from the skylight in the thatch. She had some difficulty in realising where she was. Before opening her eyes she heard the muffled lowing of the cows in the closed-up cow-house, and had an impulse to do as she had done in earlier days—get up and milk them. At the next moment she heard her mother's shuffling step on the kitchen floor, and then the tide of memory swept back on her.
But she was a different woman this morning. She had no remorse now, no qualm, no compunction. What she had done, she had done, and after all it was the best thing that could have happened—best for her, best for Alick, best for everybody.
Her child being dead she no longer loved it. All she had to do was to bury it away somewhere, and then everything would go on as she had intended. Meantime (before going to sleep) she had taken her precautions. Nobody must know. If there had been reasons why she should not take her mother into her confidence last night they were now increased tenfold.
After a while her mother came up with her breakfast. A veil seemed to dim the old woman's eyes—she looked as if she had been crying.
"How are thou now, bogh?"
"Better! Much better! I told you I should be better in the morning."
The old woman was silent for a moment and then said,
"Thou were not up and downstairs in the night, Bessie?"
"'Deed no! Why should you think so?"
"Because I shut the wash-house door when I went to bed and it was open when I came down in the morning."
Bessie's lips trembled, but she made no answer.
A little later she heard her step-father talking loudly in the kitchen. He had seen the Speaker, having waited all day for him. There had been a stormy scene. The big man had foamed at the mouth, talked about blackmail, threatened to turn him out of the farm at Hollantide, and finally shouted for Tom Kertnode, his steward, to fling him into the road.
"I lave it with you, Sir," Dan had answered. "If you prefer the new Dempster, when he comes, to see justice done to the girl, it's all as one to me."
Bessie could have laughed. Wicked, selfish, scheming—how she was going to defeat it!
All morning she lay quiet, thinking out her plans. Half a mile up the glen there was a large stone of irregular shape, surrounded by a wild tangle of briar and gorse. The Manx called it the Claghny-Dooiney-marroo—the dead man's stone, the body of a murdered man having been found on it. By reason of this gruesome association of the bloody hand upon it, few approached the stone by day and the bravest man (unless he were in drink) would hesitate to go near it by night.
Bessie decided to bury her child under the Clagh-ny-Dooiney. It would lie hidden for ever there; nobody would find it.
The day was long in passing, for Bessie was waiting for the night. She heard the young lambs bleating in the fields and the cocks crowing in the haggard. A linnet perched on the ledge of her skylight (her mother had opened it) and looked in on her and sang.
At length the sky darkened and night fell. The moon (it was in its first quarter) sailed across her patch of sky and disappeared. Once or twice the skylight was aglow with a palpitating red light—someone was burning gorse on the mountains. But the fires died down and then there was nothing save the sky with its stars.
Her mother came again to say good-night. She had the pitiful look of a woman who was struggling to keep back her tears.
"Wilt thou not sit up, Bessie, while I make thy bed for thee?"
Bessie started and then stammered: "Oh, no! I mean .... it will do in the morning."
The old woman looked down at her with eyes which seemed to say, "Can thou not trust thy mother, girl?" But she only sighed and went off to bed.
Somewhere in the early morning (Dan having gone to bed also) Bessie got up to make ready. She found herself very weak, and it took her a long time to dress. When she was about to put on her shoes she remembered that they were new and told herself they would creak as she went downstairs, so she decided to go barefoot again.
Having finished her dressing she took from under the bed-clothes what she had hidden there, and began to wrap it in a large silk scarf. It was the scarf she had worn in the storm—a present from Alick; with "Bessie" stamped on one corner.
Seeing her name at the last moment, she tore a strip of the scarf away, and threw it aside (intending to destroy it in the morning), opened her door, listened for an instant and then crept downstairs and out of the house.
The night was chill and the ground struck cold into her body. It was very dark, for the moon and stars had gone out, and there was no light anywhere except the dull red of the gorse fires on the mountains, which had sunk so low as to look like a dying eye. But Bessie could have found her way blindfolded.
Carrying her burden she crossed the wooden bridge and reached the path that went up the glen. Just as she did so she heard the sound of singing, of laughter and of carriage-wheels on the high road. A company of jolly girls and boys were driving home after one of their Bachelor Balls in a neighbouring parish. That cut deep, but Bessie thought of Alick and the wound passed away. She would return to him in a few days; they would be married soon, and then she, too, would be glad and happy.
How dark it was under the trees, though! She had left it late. The dawn was near, for the first birds were beginning to call.
"It must be here," she thought, and she slipped down from the path to the bed of the glen.
But the trees were thicker there, and, being already in early leaf, they obscured the little light that was left in the sky. Where could the stone be? The briars were tearing at her dress and the tall nettles were stinging her hands. She was feeling weak and lost and had begun to cry. How the dogs howled at her stepfather's farm!
Suddenly a breeze rose and fanned the gorse fires on the mountains to a crackling glow. And then a red flame rent the darkness and lighted up the valley from end to end, making it for a few moments almost as clear as day.
Bessie was terrified. Here was the Clagh-ny-Dooiney almost at her feet, but this bright light was like an accusing eye from heaven looking down on her and pointing her out.
For a moment she wanted to drop down among the briars and hide herself. But making a call on her resolution she crept up to the big stone, stooped, pushed her burden under the overlapping lip of it, and then rose, turned about and ran.
Trembling and weeping she stumbled her way home. It was lighter now. The day was coming rapidly and the small spring leaves were shivering in the cold wind that runs over the earth before the dawn. The lambs were bleating in the unseen fields, and the newly-born ones were making their first pitiful cry. It sounded like the cry of her child as she had heard it last night, and it tore her terribly.
The little face, the little hands, the little feet she had left behind—why had she not been brave and strong and faced the world with them?
Should she stop and go back! She tried to do so but could not. The more she wanted to return the faster she ran away.
Her strength was failing her, and she was scarcely able to put one foot before another. Often she stumbled and fell and got up again. Was she going the right way home?
"Alick! Alick!" she cried, and the hot tears fell over her cold cheeks.
At last she saw the dark roof of the mill-house against the leaden grey of the sky. She had reached the bridge over the millrace when she felt a light on her face and saw a figure approaching her. Somebody was coming up the glen and the lantern he carried was swinging by his side as he walked.
Then the instinct of self-preservation took possession of her. Dizzy, dazed, breathing rapidly and trembling in every limb, she crossed the bridge quickly, crept up to the door of the dwelling house, stumbled upstairs to her room, tore off her outer garments, dropped back on to her bed, and then fell (almost in a moment) into the sleep of utter exhaustion.
III
Bridget Skillicorne had had a cow sick that night. It had been suffering from a colic, probably due to grazing among the rank grass which had been lying under the water that had been drained away. But Bridget was sure that "that dirt Baldromma" had "wutched" it (bewitched it) just to spite her for what she had said.
She had tried a hot bran mash in vain. The cow still writhed and roared, so nothing remained, if they were not to lose their creature, but that Will should go to the Ballawhaine (a witch-doctor who lived nine or ten miles away on the seaward side of the Curragh) and get a charm to take off the witching.
Old Will, being a class-leader, was well aware that such sorcery was the arts of Satan. But if the cow died it would make a big hole in their stocking-purse to buy another, so his conscience compounded with his pocket, and he agreed to go.
"Aw well, a few good words will do no harm at all," he said, and carrying his stable lantern he set out towards nine o'clock on his long journey.
Then Bridget, taking another lantern, a half-knitted stocking and a three-legged stool, went into the cow-house to sit up with her cow and watch the progress of its malady.
Towards midnight the creature became easier, and, gathering her legs under her, lay down to sleep. But Bridget remained three hours longer in the close atmosphere of the cow-house, waiting for old Will but thinking of Dan, and making her needles go with a furious click at the thought of his threat to evict her.
The upper half of the cow-house door stood open, and somewhere in the dark hours towards dawn she was startled by a bright light and the hissing and crackling of a sudden fire outside. She knew what it was (such fires on the mountains were not uncommon), but nevertheless she stepped out to see.
She saw more than she had expected. In the glen below her brew, where every bush and tree stood out for a moment in the flare of the burning gorse, she saw the figure of a woman. The woman was standing by the Clagh-ny-Dooiney. She had something white under her arm. After a moment she knelt, put her parcel under the lip of the stone and then hurried away.
Who was she? In her present mood, with her mind running on one subject, Bridget could have no uncertainty. It was the Collister girl! It must be! What had she been doing down there? In her own walk through life Bridget had never stepped aside, therefore she was severe on those who had. There was only one thing that could bring a girl out of bed in the middle of the night to a place like that. The slut! The strumpet!
When Will Skillicorne reached home half-an-hour afterwards he was carrying a wisp of straw. With this he was to make the sign of the cross on the back of the sick cow, and say some good words about St. Patrick and St. Bridget, giving it at the same time a hot drink of meal and water.
"But the craythur is better these three hours," said Bridget.
"Praise the Lord!" said Will. "That must have been the very minute the good man came down from his bed to me in his flannel drawers!"
"But did thou meet anybody as thou was coming up the glen?"
"Maybe I did."
"Was it a woman?"
"It's like it was, now."
"Did she go into the mill-house?"
"I believe in my heart she did, though."
Bridget was triumphant.
It was the Collister girl! There could not be a doubt about it. And at break of day she would go down to the glen and see what she had left under the Clagh-ny-Dooiney.
"Show me the road at Hollantide, will he? The dirt! The dirty black toad! We'll see! We'll see!"
IV
Bessie's sleep of exhaustion deepened to delirium and for a long day she lay in the grip of it. When she floated out of her unconsciousness, she had a sense of confusion. A babel of meaningless voices, like the many sounds of a wild night, were clashing in her brain. A man and a woman were in her bedroom, talking like somnambulists.
"Her feet have been bleeding. Where has she been, think you?"
The man's voice must be that of Doctor Clucas, and then came some vague answer in the woman's voice, with a thick snuffle and a suppressed sob—her mother's.
Bessie heard no more. A cloud passed over her brain that was like the rolling mist that alternately reveals and conceals a bell-buoy at sea. When it cleared she heard a strange woman's voice outside the house—her bedroom door had been left open that her mother might hear her if she called.
"I didn't know thy daughter had come home, Liza Collister."
"And how dost thou know now, Bridget Skillicorne?"
"How? There's someones coming will tell thee how, woman."
Bessie felt as if somebody had struck her in the face. Had anything become known? Later she heard her step-father speaking in the kitchen.
"Is she herself yet."
"Not yet."
"Better she never should be."
"Sakes alive, man, what art thou saying?"
"I'm saying that old trollop on the brews is after finding something under the Clagh-ny-Dooiney and sending her man to the police to fetch it."
"Fetch what?"
"Just a parcel in a silk scarf with a lil arm sticking out—that's all, ma'am."
The doctor at the hospital had been holding a post-mortem, and now Cain, the constable, was to make a house to house visitation of the parish to find the mother of the child.
Bessie covered her mouth to suppress a scream. But something whispered, "Hush! Keep still! They know nothing!"
Early next day she was awakened by the sound of many men's voices downstairs, and her mother's voice in angry protestation.
"I tell thee, I know nothing about it. The girl came home to me three days ago, and I put her to bed, and she has never since been out of it."
"They all say that, ma'am," said one of the men. It was Cain, the constable.
A little later, while Bessie lay with closed eyes and her face to the wall, she became aware of several persons in her bedroom, and one of them leaning over her. She knew it was Cain—she could hear his asthmatical breathing.
"Is she really unconscious, doctor?"
"Undoubtedly she is. You can leave her for a few days anyway. She'll not run away, you see."
After that, listening intently, Bessie heard the constable ranging the room as if examining everything.
"What's this?" he asked.
Bessie drew a quick breath, but dared not look around.
"Only a remnant seemingly," said the doctor.
"We'll be taking it with us, though," said the constable, and then the rolling mist of unconsciousness covered everything again.
When it passed Bessie knew that the police were suspecting her. They thought they had found her out, and they were going to bring the whole machinery of the law to punish her. What a wicked thing the law was! She had injured nobody—nobody that anybody had ever seen in this world. She had only tried to save somebody she loved from shame and pain. And yet the constables, the courts and the coroners were all in a conspiracy to crush one poor girl! No matter! She would deny everything.
Next day was Sunday. Bessie heard the church bells ringing across the Curragh, and, before they stopped, the singing of a hymn. The Primitives were holding a service at the corner of the high road before going into their chapel. After the hymn somebody prayed. It was Will Skillicorne. Bessie (listening through her open skylight) recognised the high pitch of his preaching voice. He would be standing on the chapel steps.
There was a great deal about "carnal transgression," about "brands plucked from the burning," about "the judgments of the Lord," and finally about the "conscious sinner," throwing herself upon her Saviour and repenting of "the sin she had committed against God." At the close of his prayer Will gave out the first two lines of another hymn—
"I was a wandering sheep,
I did not love the fold."
Bessie knew whom all this was meant for. The Primitives were torturing her. But they were torturing somebody else as well. Through the singing and praying she heard her mother's sighs downstairs, and the beating of her foot on the hearthstone, as she sat by the fire and listened to the service for her guilty child.
What a cowardly thing religion was! Sin? What sin had she committed? She had never intended to do wrong, and only those who had gone through it could know what she had suffered. Anyway, such as she was God had made her. She would admit nothing. Nothing whatever.
Two days passed. Bessie's heart softened and became calm. The police were leaving her alone—they must have given up that nonsense about punishing her. Everything was going to turn out as she had expected.
On the third day, her mother, coming into her bedroom, found her with widely-opened eyes and all her face a smile. Yes, she was herself once more. In fact there had not been much amiss with her. Only, never having been ill before, she had been frightened and had come home to be nursed by her mother. But now she was better and must soon go back .... back to where she came from.
She told her mother about Alick and how fond he was of her—parting from his father and sisters and even his mother for her sake. It was quite a mistake to suppose that Alick had refused to marry her. He would have married her long ago, and it was she who had been holding back. Why? She wished to be strong and well first. It wasn't fair to a man to let him marry a sick wife—was it?
The old woman, with a broken face, looking sadly down at the girl, said, "Yes, bogh! It's like it isn't, bogh," and turned her eyes away.
On the fourth day Bessie got out of bed and moved about the room just to show how strong she was.
"See what a step I have now. I could walk miles and miles, mother."
The moral of that was that she must go back to Derby Haven without more delay. Alick was waiting for her and he would be growing anxious. She must take the first train in the morning.
"It's rather early, but never mind about breakfast. A cup of tea and a piece of barley bonnag—that will do."
Late that night, when Mrs. Collister, going to bed with a heavy heart, looked in to say good-night, Bessie asked to be called in good time in the morning.
"Don't forget to waken me. I used to be the first up, you know, but now I'm a sleepy-head."
And then she kissed her mother (never having kissed her since she was a child) and the old woman's eyes overflowed.
Left alone, in the dark, she began to think how good God had been to her after all. Only those who had sinned and suffered knew how good He could be. She remembered the text about the friend who, when all earthly friends forsake you, sticketh closer than a brother. Also, with a certain shame, she recalled the hymn the Primitives had sung on Sunday morning, and, covering her head in the bedclothes, she sang two lines of it—
"But now I love my Father's voice,
I love my Father's home."
How happy she was! At that time to-morrow she would be in bed at Derby Haven, having seen Alick and arranged everything.
Next morning, when she awoke, she was startled to find the sun pouring into the room. She knew by the line it made on the wall that the first train must have gone. The chickens, too, were clucking at the kitchen door, and they never came round before breakfast.
She had risen on her elbow intending to call, when she heard the roll of a van-like vehicle drawing up in front of the house, and immediately afterwards, a man's husky, asthmatical voice in the kitchen, mingling with her mother's shrill treble.
"Go upstairs and tell her to make ready, ma'am."
"No, no; the girl's not fit for it, I tell thee."
"She's fit enough for the prison hospital, anyway."
"She has never been out of my door since she came into it."
"We'll lave that to the High Bailiff and the Dempster, if you plaze."
Bessie, supporting herself on her trembling arm, could scarcely restrain herself from screaming. One moment she sat and gasped, and then, grasping her head with both hands, she turned about and fell forward and buried her face in her pillow.
At the next moment she was conscious of somebody coming into her room, and at the next, from somewhere at the foot of the bed, she heard her mother say, in a strange voice she had never known before—throbbing, choking, scarcely audible—
"They have come for thee, Bessie."
Victor Stowell had been more than a week in London. Fortune had favoured him from the first. The Home Secretary (a tall, spare, elderly man, with a clean-shaven face of rather severe expression) rose when Stowell entered his room as if a spirit had appeared before him. "My youth again," the young man thought, but it was a different matter this time.
"Has anybody ever told you that you resemble your father, Mr. Stowell?"
It turned out that the old Deemster and the Home Secretary (a barrister before he became a statesman) had been in chambers together in the Middle Temple while reading for the bar, and that the politician had never lost respect for the man who, in spite of brilliant promise of success in England (he might have become an English High Court Judge with six times his Manx salary), had returned to the obscurity of his little island and the service of his own people.
"You have high traditions to live up to, young man. Sit down."
Then came the subject of the interview. The authorities had satisfied themselves that on the score of legal capacity the Governor's recommendation was not unjustified. The only serious difficulty was Stowell's youth. The principles on which the Crown selected elderly and even old (sometimes very old) men for the positions of Judges were simple and sound. First, seniority of service, and next, maturity of character, so as to avoid the dangers that come from the temptations, the trials, even the turbulent emotions of early life, which might easily conflict with the calm of the judicial office. Still, these principles could be too rigidly followed—particularly in remote colonies and small dependencies where the range of suitable selection was limited.
After this came a personal catechism, the old man looking at the young one over the rims of his tortoise-shell spectacles. Married? Not yet. Expect to be? Yes, Sir. Soon? Not, not for a long time. How long? Six weeks at least, Sir.
The ends of the severe mouth rose perceptibly, and in any other face they might have broken into a smile.
Daughter of the Governor, isn't she? Yes, but that isn't her chief characteristic, Sir. What is? That she is the loveliest and noblest woman in the world.
"Oh!"
Again the severe mouth relaxed, and the Home Secretary asked Stowell where he was staying. Stowell told him (the Inns of Court Hotel, Holborn) and he made a note of it.
"Remain there until you hear from me again, Mr. Stowell, and meantime say nothing about this interview to anybody."
"Not anybody whatever, Sir?"
The Home Secretary's stern old face became genial and charming as he rose and held out his hand.
"Well, that supreme being, perhaps .... Good day!"
"So here I am, my dear Fenella," wrote Stowell, "back in the bedroom of my hotel, telling you all about it. How long I may have to remain in London, goodness knows, therefore I propose to tell you something about my ways of life while I wait.
"Such a change in me! When I was in London last (with Alick Gell, you remember) I spent my days and nights in the hotels, restaurants, theatres and music-halls that are the lovely and beloved world of woman. It is the world of woman still, but quite another realm of it.
"Two nights ago I strolled westward along Oxford Street, and thought (with a lump in my throat) about De Quincey and his Ann. Then, cutting through Clare Market to the Temple and finding the gate closed, I tipped the porter to let me walk through the Brick Court, and stood a long half hour before a house in the silent little square, thinking of the day when the women of the town sat on the stairs while poor Noll (Oliver Goldsmith) lay dead in his rooms above. And then, coming out into Fleet-street (midnight now) where the big printing presses were throbbing behind dark buildings, I tried to think I saw the great old Johnson, God bless him, picking up the prostitute from the pavement, carrying her home on his back and laying her on his bed.
"Last night I strolled eastward to look at the outside of the Settlement in which you used to be Lady Warden (in the unbelievable days before you came back to Man), and returning by a dark side street, I came upon a queue of women crouching in the cold before the doors of a Salvation Shelter. They were waiting for four in the morning when they would have a fighting chance of one of the beds (i.e., boxes like open coffins lying cheek by jowl on the floor of a big hall) after the washerwomen who were then asleep in them would get up and go to work.
"But the climax came this morning (Sunday morning) when I went to service at the Foundling Hospital. Such a sweet scene—at first sight at all events. The little women, like little nuns, in their linen caps and aprons, singing like little angels in their sweet young voices. But my God, what tragedy lurked behind that picture also!
"I did not hear much of the sermon for thinking of the mothers of these 'children of shame' and the conditions under which they must have given birth to them—sometimes in a garret, in secret, alone, driven to dementia by a sense of impending shame. How often a poor miserable girl in the degradation of childbirth (which should be the crown of a woman's glory) must have been tempted to kill her child in fear of the fate that awaited both it and her! And to think of the giant arm of the mighty law coming down on a creature like that to punish her! Lord, what crimes are committed in the name of Justice!
"There you are now! That's what you've done for me. 'Deed you have though. It's truth enough, girl. You've opened my ears to the cry of the voice of suffering woman, and that is the saddest sound, perhaps, that breaks on the shores of life. And the moral of it all is that if I do become a Judge (God knows I'm almost afraid to hope for it) you must be my helper, my inspirer, the tower of my strength.
"Oh, my darling, how much I love you! It seems to me that I lost all my life until I came to love you. How well I recall the blessed day when I loved you first! It was the first time I saw you—the first time really. Don't you remember? In the glen, that glorious autumn afternoon. The vision has followed me ever since and I wish I could blot out every day of my life when I have not thought of you.
"There you are again! You see what you've done, ma'am. But I'm not always on the heights. What do you think? I've bought a motor car, and every morning I go up to Hampstead with a teacher to learn to drive.
"It is for our honeymoon. You called me a Viking once, and I'm not going to be a Viking for nothing. As soon as you are mine, mine wholly, I am going to pick you up and carry you off to all the inaccessible places in the island—the bent-strewn plains of Ayre, where a lighthouse-man lives alone with his wife and nothing else save the sea for company; the shepherd's hut on Snaefell, where there is nothing but the sky, and the sandy headlands of the Calf with the mists of the Atlantic sweeping over them.
"Meantime, think of me in a box of a bedroom five storeys up, with the roaring tide of London traffic running, like a Canadian river, sixty feet below, and write—write, write! Tell me what is happening in the 'lil islan'' which is lying asleep to-night in the Irish Sea. God bless it, and all the kind and cheery souls in it! God bless it for evermore!
"STOWELL."
II
"MY DEAR VICTOR,—You cannot imagine what a joy your letter was. Do you know it was my first love-letter? Of course I behaved like a dairymaid—took it up to bed, put it on my pillow and said, 'You are Victor, you know,' and laid my cheek on it.
"Whatever have you done to make me so foolish? Was it only half of you (the physical half) that went away, leaving the spirit half with me? I want the other half, though, the substantial half, so tell your Home Secretary (I like him) to hurry up and send you home.
"You do wrong not to see the beautiful women, dear. The woman who is afraid of her husband looking at other women is building her house on the sand. I should like to say to myself, 'He has seen the loveliest women in the world, yet he comes back to me.'
"All the same I love you for looking at the darker side of woman's life. It is more apparent in the greater communities, but it is here, too, and that is why I am looking eagerly forward to your appointment as Deemster, which will make you a creator of the law as well as an administrator of it. You must have no misgivings, though. Why should you? A man who has a stainless scutcheon is just what women want for their champion. And if I may help you how happy I shall be!
"You ask what is happening in the island. Well, apart from politics (of which I know nothing except that they seem to be always the same story) the only thing of consequence is the case of a young woman charged with the murder of her illegitimate child.
"She is a country girl who, having run away from home some months ago, returned recently very ill and was put to bed, and remained there until arrested. But in the meantime the body of a new-born infant was found under a large stone half a mile away, and it is said to have been hers.
"She denies all knowledge of the child, but the medical testimony seems to be sadly against her, and there is some direct evidence also, though it is not above the suspicion of being tainted by malice.
"She has been up before the High Bailiff and committed to the next sitting of the General Gaol Delivery, so you are likely to hear more of the case. Poor thing, whatever her sin, she has already had a fearful punishment, for she is very ill, having apparently exposed herself to dreadful sufferings in the hope of preventing her baby from being born alive.
"She is now in the prison hospital, and this morning I drove over to see her. A good-looking girl, almost beautiful (with the sort of beauty which attracts the less worthy side of a certain type of man), but her cheeks are now terribly thin and pale, and her big black eyes (her finest feature) have that wild look which one sees in a captured animal that gazes and gazes.
"I liked the girl, but she did not seem to like me. In fact she shrank from me (the only girl who ever did so) and when I tried to be nice to her, and asked her to trust me, and to tell me who was responsible for her condition, so that I might find him and fetch him to her, she broke into a flood of fierce denial.
"Either the girl is a great story-teller or she is a great heroine, and I am half inclined to think she may be both. My guess would be that she is trying to shield the guilty man. The clothes she had worn were better than a farm girl could afford to buy, and that suggests that her fellow-sinner belongs to a class above her.
"Isn't it shocking that the law provides no punishment for the man who ruins a girl's life—ruining her soul at the same time, for that is what it often comes to. But, please God, you will be on the bench, so she is sure to have justice.
"Our Society has decided to undertake her defence, but we are at a loss whom to employ. We cannot afford a high fee either—ten or fifteen guineas at the outside. Can you suggest anybody?
"I intend to be present at the trial, and to stand by the girl's side, for she will have nobody else, poor creature. But oh, how I wish I might plead for her! Although her fellow-sinner will not stand for judgment, how I should like to tear the mask from his face and cry in open court, 'Thou art the man!'
"Good-night, dear! It's 10 p.m., and such delicious dreams are waiting for me upstairs. Bring your motor-car back, and when the time comes (I shall not keep you long) you may carry me off to wherever you please.
"Listen, I am going to say something. There is not much in the heart of a woman that you don't know already, but I am about to let you into a secret. The woman who does not want her husband (if only he loves her) to control her, command her, and do anything and everything he likes with her, isn't really a woman at all—she's only a mistake for a man!
"Victor, after that burst of nonsense I cannot conclude without telling you again how much I love you. I love you for yourself, just yourself alone, quite apart from anything you may do or have done, whether good or bad, right or wrong, and I shall go on loving you whatever may happen to you in the future, whether you become Deemster or not, go up or go down.
"But when I think of the life that is so surely before you, and that I shall walk through it by your side, perfectly united with you, sharing the same hopes and aims and desires, enjoying the same sunshine and weathering the same storms, I have a vision of happiness that makes me cry for joy.
"Come back to me soon, dearest. The spring is here in all her youthful beauty; the daffodils are nodding; the gorse on the hedges is a blaze of gold; the sky is blue; the sea is lying asleep under a divine shimmer of sunshine, and your island—your island that is going to be so proud of you—is waiting to clasp you to her heart.
"And so am I, my Victor!
"FENELLA."