Chapter TWENTY-FOUR: Alick Gell

For ten days Alick Gell had been searching for Bessie Collister. When he first read her letter on reaching Derby Haven (he read it a hundred times afterwards) he remembered something his father had said in taunting him--"You'll not be the first by a long way!" Then he recalled the case of the Peel fisherman and a black thought came hurtling down on him. At the next moment he hated himself for it.

"What devil out of hell made me think of that?" he asked himself.

But why had Bessie run away from him? The only explanation he could find was the one Stowell had given on the steamboat--women had illnesses which men knew nothing about, and in the throes of their mania they sometimes hid themselves, like sick animals, from their friends--most of all from those they loved. Were not the newspapers full of such cases?

"That's it! That's it! My poor girl!"

Having arrived at this explanation of Bessie's flight, he had no compunction about going in search of her. Her malady might be only temporary, but, while it lasted, Heaven alone knew what dangers she might expose herself to.

At first it occurred to him to call in the assistance of the police. But no, that would lead to publicity, and publicity to misunderstanding. Bessie would get better; he must keep her name clear of scandal. His voice shook and his lip trembled as he told the Misses Brown to say nothing to anybody. His warning was unnecessary. The terrified old maids, who had at length begun to scent the truth, had decided to keep their own counsel.

Within half an hour Alick was on the road. He had no doubt of overtaking Bessie--she was only half an hour gone. But which way would she go? It was easier to say which way she would not go. She would not go to the north of the island where she would be known to nearly everybody. Above all, she would not go home--the home of Dan Baldromma.

All that day he wandered through Castletown--every street and alley. At nightfall he was back at Derby Haven. Had Bessie returned? No! Had anything been heard of her? Nothing!

Next day he set out on a wider journey--all the towns and villages of the south, Port St. Mary, Port Erin, Fleswick, Ballasalla, Colby, Ballabeg and Cregneash. He walked from daylight to dark, and asked no questions, but at every open door he paused and listened. When he saw a farm-house that stood back from the high road he made excuse to go up to it--a drink of milk or water.

Day followed day without result. His heart was sinking. More than once he met somebody whom he knew and had to make excuse for his rambling. Wonderful what a walking tour did to blow the cobwebs from a fellow's brain after he had been shut up too long in an office! His friends looked after him with a strange expression. He had been something of a dandy, but his hair was uncombed and his linen was becoming soiled and even dirty.

At length he became a prey to illusions. He always slept in the last house he came to, and one night, in a fisherman's cottage near Fleswick, he was awakened by the wind blowing over the thatch. He thought it sounded like the voice of Bessie, and that she was wandering over the highway in the darkness, alone and distraught.

Next day he began to inquire if anything had been seen of such a person. He was told of a young woman who, found walking barefoot on the lonely road to Dreamlang, had been taken to the asylum, and he hurried there to inquire. No, it was not Bessie. Some poor young wife who (only six months married and beginning to be happy in the prospect of a child) had lost her husband in an accident at the mines at Foxdale.

The dread of suicide took hold of him. One day a fish-cadger on the road told him that a young woman's body had been washed ashore at Peel. Again it was nothing--nothing to him. The wife of the captain of a Norwegian schooner which had been wrecked off Contrary--with her eyes open and her baby locked in her rigid arms.

Alick's heart was failing him. Do what he would to keep down evil thoughts they were getting the better of him. Sometimes he rested on the seat that usually stands outside the whitewashed porch of a Manx cottage, and although he thought he said so little he found that the women (especially such of them as were mothers of grown-up girls) seemed to divine the object of his journey.

"Aw, yes, that's the way with them, the boghs, especially when there's a man bothering them. Was there any man, now...."

But Alick was up and gone before they could finish their question.

Thus ten days passed. Absorbed in his search, perplexed and tortured, he had seen no newspaper and heard nothing of what was happening in the island. Suddenly it occurred to him that Bessie could not have left him so long without news of her. She could not be so cruel; she must have written, and her letter must be lying at his office.

People who knew him, and saw him return to Douglas, could scarcely recognise him in the pale, unwashed, unshaven man who climbed the steps from the station, looking like a drunkard who had been sleeping out in the fields.

His chambers, when he turned the key (he had no clerk now), were stuffy and cheerless. The ashes of his last fire were on the hearth, and his desk was covered with dust. Behind the door (he had no letter-box) a number of circulars and bills lay on the ground, but, running his trembling fingers through them, he found no letter from Bessie.

There was a large and bulky envelope, though, with the seal of Government House, and marked "Immediate." What could it be? On the top of a thick body of folio paper he found a letter. It was from Fenella Stanley.

"DEAR MR. GELL,--At the suggestion of Mr. Stowell, who is still
in London, I am writing on behalf of the Women's Protection
League, to ask you if you can undertake the defence of the young
woman in the north of the island who is to be charged with the
murder of her new-born child."

Alick paused a moment to draw breath.

"You will see by the report of the High Bailiff's inquiry and the
copy of the Depositions which I enclose that the girl denies
everything, and that her mother supports her, but the evidence is
only too sadly against her--particularly that of the doctors and
of two neighbours who live higher up the glen."

Alick felt his heart stop and his whole body grew cold.

"Her step-father...."

The letter almost dropped from his fingers.

"Her step-father has not been asked by the prosecution to depose,
and it is doubtful if the defence ought to call him."

He was becoming dizzy. The lines of the letter were running into each other.

"Innocent or guilty, the girl has suffered terribly. She has
been several days in hospital at Ramsey, but she was to be
removed to Castle Rushen this morning. Her case is to come on
next week at the Court of General Gaol Delivery, so perhaps you
will send me a telegram immediately saying if you can take up the
defence.

"As you see the poor creature is herself an illegitimate
child--the name by which she is commonly known being Bessie
Collister."

Alick shrieked. He had seen the blow coming, but when it came it fell on him like a thunderbolt.

It was all a lie--a damned lie! Nobody would make him believe it. Bessie arrested for the murder of her child! She had never had a child.

He leapt to his feet and tramped the room on stiffened limbs and with a heart throbbing with anger. Then, half afraid, but doing his best to compose himself, he took the report and the Depositions out of the big envelope, and, sitting before the dead hearth with his shaking feet on the fender, and holding the folio pages in his dead-cold hands, he read the evidence.

As he did so he shrieked again, but this time with laughter. What a tissue of manifest lies! The Skillicornes and their quarrel with Dan Baldromma--what a malicious conspiracy! Lord, what blind fools the police could be! And the Attorney, had he come to his second childhood?

Again and again Alick thumped the desk with his fist and filled the air of the room with the dust that rose in the sunshine which was now pouring through the windows.

There was a photograph of Bessie on the mantelpiece--a copy of the same that she had sent to Stowell. He snatched it up and kissed it. Never had Bessie been so dear to him as now--now when she was in prison under a false accusation. And the best of it was that he was to get her off. He must see her at once, though.

"My poor girl! In Castle Rushen!"

The first thing to do was to wash and change (he cut himself badly in shaving), but in less than half-an-hour he was at the Post-office telegraphing to Fenella.

"Gladly."

Brief as the message was, the clerk at the counter could hardly decipher the agitated handwriting.

A few minutes later he was at the Police-office, asking the Chief Constable for an order to allow him, as Bessie's advocate, to see her alone in her cell.

At two o'clock he was back at the railway-station, taking the train for Castletown. As he stepped into his carriage the newsboys were calling the contents of the evening paper:

_Victor Stowell appointed Deemster._

Glorious! Bessie would have a human being on the bench. Thank God for that anyway!

II

"I don't know what you are talking about--I really don't. You make me laugh. Whatever will you say next! I was ill and I came home to have my mother nurse me, and that was all I knew until Cain, the constable, came to bring me here."

It was Bessie before the High Bailiff. Her face was thin and pale, and she was clutching the rail of the dock in an effort to keep herself erect, while her shrill voice echoed to the roof.

The magistrate was about to commit her to prison when Dr. Clucas rose in the body of the Court-house.

"Your worship," he said (his voice was husky and his eyes had a look of tears), "the defendant is suffering from the temporary mania which is not unusual in such cases. I suggest that she should be sent to the hospital."

Bessie fainted. The next thing she knew was that she was in bed in a hospital ward, and that another doctor (a younger man with thin hair and a large pugnacious mouth) was leaning over her, and laying his hand on her breast. She pushed it off, and then he said, in an authoritative tone,

"My good woman, if you are innocent, as you say, the best proof you can give is that of a medical examination."

At this Bessie broke into fierce wrath.

"If you touch me again," she cried, "I'll tear your eyes out!"

Then she fainted once more, and for two days lay in a strong delirium. When she came to herself a nurse with a kind face was by her side, saying "Hush!" and doing something at her breast with a glass instrument.

She knew she had been delirious (having a vague memory of crying "Alick! Alick!" as she returned to consciousness) and was in fear of what she might have said.

"Is it morning?" she asked.

"Yes, dear."

"Then it's the next day?"

"The next but one."

"Have I been wandering?"

"A little."

"Did I call for anybody?"

"Yes."

She dare not ask whom, but lay wondering if Alick knew where she was and what had happened to her. After a while she said,

"Is it in the papers?"

The nurse nodded, and after a moment, with her eyes down, Bessie said,

"Has anybody been here to ask for me?"

"Yes, your mother--she comes night and morning."

"Nobody else?"

"Nobody."

Bessie broke into sobs and turned her face to the wall. Alick knew! He had given her up! She had lost him!

When she recovered from an agony of tears her eyes were glittering and her heart was bitter. What did she care what became of her now? They might do what they liked with her. Deny? What was the good? She would deny no longer. She would tell the truth about everything.

Then Fenella Stanley came. Bessie thought she liked Miss Stanley better than any woman, except her mother, she had ever known. But that only made it the harder to hold to her resolution, for if she told the truth she would surely hurt Fenella. "Oh, why do you come to torture me?" she cried, when Fenella asked who was her "friend." And not another word would she say.

Two days later, before breakfast, Cain, the constable, came with a sergeant of police to take her to Castle Rushen. She did not care! Why should she? But as she was leaving the hospital the nurse with the kind face whispered,

"Good-bye, dear. You're all right now. I'm going away and will say nothing."

It was a cruelly beautiful morning, with a golden shimmer from the rising sun upon a tranquil sea. The railway station was full of townspeople going up to Douglas (it was market day there), so Bessie was hurried into the last compartment.

When the train ran into the country a flood of memories swept over her and she found it hard to keep back her tears. The young lambs were skipping on the hill-sides; the sheep were bleating; girls in sun bonnets were coming from the whitewashed outhouses to drive the cattle into the fields.

When they drew up at the station for the glen the shingly platform was crowded with passengers waiting for the train--rosy-faced women with broad open baskets of butter and eggs, and elderly farmers smoking their strong thick twist and surrounded by their panting dogs. Bessie knew them all. At the last moment a young woman in a low cut blouse ran up--it was Susie Stephen.

Bessie crept into a corner of the carriage and closed her eyes. But she could not shut out everything. Over the rumble of the wheels, when the train started again, she heard shrieks of laughter from the compartment in front. The elderly men were jesting in their free way with the girls, and the girls, nothing loth, were answering them back.

At the junction of St. John's, the train had to stop for carriages from Peel to be linked on to it, and while the coupling was going on one of the passengers strolled along the platform. It was Willie Teare, who had wanted to marry Bessie, and he saw her behind the constables. At the next moment a throng of girls gathered outside her window, but the constables pulled down the blinds.

"Take your seats! Take your seats!"

The train went on. There was no more laughter from the passengers in the compartment in front. Bessie understood--they were whispering about her.

Her heart was becoming hard. Sitting in the darkened carriage, with spears of sunlight flashing from the flapping blinds, she heard the constables talking about Mr. Stowell. It was reported that he had been made Deemster. He would make a good Deemster, too.

"A taste young, maybe, but clever--clever uncommon."

On reaching Douglas, where they had to change into the train for Castletown, Bessie was being hustled across the platform, between the constables, when she became aware of a crowd of women and girls who were crushing up to stare at her. There was a whispering and muttering.

"There she is!" "Serve her right, _I_ say!"

Half-an-hour later she was in Castle Rushen. The darkness within was blinding after the sunshine without. A woman with short and difficult breathing was moving about her. It was Mrs. Mylrea, the female warder. She took off Bessie's cloak and hat, and, leaving her a brown blanket and a hard pillow, went away without speaking a word.

But then came Vondy, the head jailer, with words enough for both of them. Bessie did not know she was crying until the old man, in his blundering way, began to comfort her.

"Tut, tut, gel! They're not for hanging you yet at all. While there's life there's hope!"

Left alone at last, and her eyes accustomed to the darkness, she saw where she was--in a stone vault that had a small grill in the door (behind which a candle was burning) and a barred and deeply-recessed window, near the ceiling, through which a dull ray of borrowed light was coming, for the prison overlooked the harbour on the west of the Castle.

By this time her tears were turned to gall. A frightful revulsion had come over her soul. What had she done to deserve all this? The injustice of it, the cruelty, the barbarity, the hypocrisy!

Men were all alike. Go on, she knew what men were! A man only wanted one thing of a girl, and when he got that he forgot all about her. Alick Gell was the best of them, yet even he had forsaken her now that she was in trouble.

She had never intended to do harm to anybody, and yet there she was, and would remain, until they came to take her to the Court-house on the other side of the Castle-yard. Then hundreds of eyes would be on her (women's eyes too) and when she raised her own she would see Mr. Stowell on the bench.

What a mockery! Mr. Stowell her judge! What would he do? His "duty" of course. All right, let him do it! Only she, too, would do something. After he had tried her and sentenced her and finished with her, she would tell him something. Why shouldn't she? And what did she care what happened to anybody else? Fenella Stanley was nothing to her.

Suddenly she thought again about Alick Gell. If she did what she intended to do (tell everything) Alick also would be disgraced. The shame of her misfortune would follow him to the last day of his life. Even his own father would cast it up to him. Hadn't she done enough harm to Alick already? If he had deserted her, she had deceived him. And yet she had deceived him only because she loved him.

"Alick! Alick! Alick!"

Her heart was crying. She was wishing she were dead.

She had flung herself down on her plank bed, with her face to the blank wall, when she heard the dead beating of footsteps in the corridor outside. At the next moment the door of her cell was opened and Tommy Vondy, the jailer, was saying,

"Mr. Alexander Gell, the advocate, to see you alone."

III

"Bessie!"

The jailer had gone. Alick was breathing quickly in the darkness by the door, and Bessie was huddled up on the bed, with the dull ray of reflected light upon her from the wall above.

"Bessie!"

His voice was low and full of tears. At first she did not answer.

"It's Alick. Won't you speak to me?"

"Go away!"

He could hear that she was crying.

"You won't send me away, Bessie. I have been looking for you all over the island. It was only to-day I heard where you were and what had happened. I have come to help you--to save you."

He saw the dark form rising on the bed.

"Do you know what they say I did?"

"Yes, I know everything."

"And you don't believe it?"

"Not one word of it."

"You think I am innocent?"

"I am sure you are."

"Alick!"

With a great sob that shook her whole body she rose to her feet and flung herself upon him. For a long time they stood clasped in each other's arms, and crying like children. Then they sat down side by side on the plank bed. His arm was about her, and her head was on his shoulder.

He was trying to make his voice cheerful, though it cracked sorely, while he reproved her for her tears. She would soon be free to leave that place. There was really nothing against her. Never had there been such a trumped-up case. The police must be crazy.

She clung to him with a frightened tenderness while he told her of the letter from Fenella Stanley asking him to take up the defence on behalf of the Society.

"Of course I should have taken it up in any case, you know. And now you must authorise me to defend you."

She was startled. In the half darkness he saw her pale face (so pale and so thin) raised to his with a frightened look.

"You?"

"Why not, dear? I'm an advocate. You don't suppose I'm going to leave your defence to anybody else, do you?"

"No, no! You must not!"

"But why? Can't you trust me, Bess?"

"It isn't that."

"What then?"

Bessie did not answer him, and he went on talking, though his voice was breaking again. He knew he was not a born lawyer and a great speaker like Stowell, but the facts were so clear that he had only to state them and they would speak for themselves.

A fierce struggle was going on in Bessie's soul. He whom she had wronged (never having wronged anybody else), he for whom she had committed her crime, wanted her to authorise him to stand up in Court and say she had not committed it. She had deceived him once--could she deceive him again?

"No, no, no! I cannot!"

Alick was puzzled. "What do you mean, Bessie? Why shouldn't I be your advocate?"

"I don't want any advocate."

"But you must have one. It isn't enough to be not guilty--we must prove you're not. Why shouldn't I do so?"

At length she was forced to make some explanation. The police were determined to have her condemned; therefore he would lose his case and that would go against him.

"Good gracious, girl, what nonsense! Anybody may lose a case. The greatest lawyers have lost cases. But it's impossible that I should lose this one. And even if I lose it--do you know what I shall do?"

"What?"

"Wait outside the prison door until you come out and marry you the same day to show that I believe in you still."

At that Bessie was in floods of tears again. And again they cried in each other's arms like children.

Then Alick, after drying his eyes in the darkness, put on a brave air, and told her what she had to do.

"Listen to me now. This is a low conspiracy, but if we are to defeat it, you must stick to your story. I shall have to put you in the box, for you must leave the Court without a stain on your character. First of all you must say...."

And then sitting by Bessie's side in the dark cell, with only the candle looking in on them from the outside ledge of the grill, he rehearsed the facts as they were to be given in Court--how by the cruelty of her step-father she had been shut out of the house late at night and had had to go elsewhere; how she had returned, being unwell, and wishing her mother to nurse her, and how she had been put to bed and had never left it until the constables came to take her away.

Bessie listened in silence, gazing before her like a captured sheep, and answering only by a nodding of her head.

"If the Attorney asks you anything else--no matter what--you must say you know nothing about it---do you understand?"

"Yes."

"Say it after me then--'I know nothing about it.'"

Bessie repeated the words like a woman talking in her sleep---"'I know nothing about it.'"

"That's all right. Leave the rest to me."

"You think I shall get off?"

"I'm sure of it. If the General Gaol is held next week, we'll be married the week after."

"But, Alick?"

"Yes."

"Your father and sisters, will they not always cast it up at you that your wife has been tried for...."

"Let them! If they do the Isle of Man will be dead to me for ever. We'll go abroad--to America perhaps--and leave everything and everybody behind us."

Bessie was crying once more, and Alick, to conceal his own tears, was going off with great bustle.

"Good-bye! I'll be here again to-morrow. And oh, what do you think, Bess? Great news! Stowell has been made Deemster. So if the good Lord in Heaven will only keep that damned old Taubman in bed a little longer with his rheumatism, Stowell will be on the bench and you'll have a fair trial at all events. Good-bye!"

For the next half-hour Bessie sobbed with joy. Tell the truth and destroy Alick's faith in her? Never! Never in this world!