Chapter THIRTY-ONE: "victor! Victor! My Victor!"

"Good heavens, how was I to know that things would turn out so badly?"

It was the Governor, alone with Stowell in the Deemster's room, at the end of the second day of the Court of General Gaol Delivery.

"As for you, what have you to reproach yourself with? So far as this case is concerned you have done nothing that is wrong or irregular. The girl was guilty. You gave her a fair trial. The law required that she should be condemned. You had to condemn her. Then why take things so tragically?"

"But Fenella?"

"She will get over it. Of course she will. What sensible woman is going to throw away the happiness of a life-time because of something that happened before she came on to the scene?"

"You heard what she said, Sir?"

"I did, and thought it nonsense. I heard what you said also, and thought it madness. What a providential escape! Thank God it is all over! The miserable case is at an end. Let us think no more about it."

An Inspector of Police cams into the room to say that Miss Stanley had left the Castle at the close of the murder trial and asked him to tell her father that she was going home by train. The Governor, with knitted eyebrows and a frown, dismissed the Inspector, and then said to Stowell, as he turned to go,

"All the same I am bound to say the whole thing has been unfortunate--damnably unfortunate!"

Stowell continued to sit for some minutes in his robes after the Governor had left him. Joshua Scarff came with a glass of brandy.

"Take this, your Honour. It will strengthen your nerves for your drive home. I could see you were not well when you arrived this morning."

Stowell had drunk the brandy and was setting down the tumbler when the Inspector came back to say that after the murder trial he had liberated Dan Baldromma, but had just been compelled to arrest somebody else.

"Who else?"

"Mr. Gell. The gentleman seems to have gone clean off it, Sir. It's the loss of his case, I suppose."

Ever since the Court had risen he had been demanding to be allowed to see the Deemster and threatening what he would do to him. So to prevent the Advocate from doing a mischief the police had put him in the cells.

"Set him at liberty at once," said Stowell.

"Before your Honour leaves the Castle?"

"Instantly."

The Inspector being gone (with the intention of disobeying the Deemster's command in order to ensure his safety), Joshua Scarff proceeded to read Gell's conduct by quite a different light. It was easy to see now that Mr. Gell had been the girl's fellow-sinner and therefore the cause of her crime.

"Pity! Great pity!" said Joshua, as he helped Stowell to unrobe. "But such connections always begin to end badly."

There were still a few of the spectators at the gate, waiting to see the Deemster away, and when he came out, with his white face, another wave of sympathy went out to him.

"They've been putting the young colt into the shafts too soon--that's what it is, I tell thee."

Driving over the harbour bridge in his automobile Stowell began to feel better. The fresh air from the sea, after the close atmosphere of the Court-house, brought the blood back to his brain, and he thought he saw things more clearly.

The Governor had been right. He could not have acted otherwise without being false to his oath as a Judge. And if the miserable fact remained that he should never have been the Judge in this case at all, it was Fenella herself, above everybody else, who had thrust him into the furnace of that position. Surely she would remember this, and it would plead in her heart for him?

Half-a-mile beyond the town he passed the Governor's big blue landau, and realised that by some half-conscious impulse he was taking the road to Government House instead of the direct way home. So much the better! He must see Fenella at the first possible moment, and find out what his fate was to be.

His spirits rose as he bounded along. Granted he had done wrong in the first instance, terribly and cruelly wrong, hadn't he had many excuses? If Bessie Collister had told her everything, surely Fenella would see this, too, and seeing it, would understand?

But the great fact of all was that (except for the first catastrophe) his love of Fenella had been the root cause of all that had happened. If he had not loved Fenella with that deep, unconquerable, unquenchable love which had swept everything else away (all qualms and perhaps all conscience), nothing worse could have occurred. He would have married that poor girl now lying in prison. Yes, whatever the consequences to himself, he would have married her before Gell came back into her life, and further complications ensued. But after Fenella returned to the island no other woman had been possible to him. Surely she would see this also? And, if she did, nothing else would matter to either of them--nothing in this world.

Presently, driving at high speed, he realised that the half-conscious impulse which had carried him on to the road to Government House was sweeping him on to the rocky shelf on the coast along which he had driven with Fenella on the day he took his oath.

How fortunate! What was that she had said, then, as they sang together in the fulness of their joy over the hum of the engine and the boom of the sea?--that love, what she called love, never died and never changed, and if she loved anybody, and anything happened to him, she would fight the world for him, even though he were in the wrong!

Even though he were in the wrong!

She would do it now! He was sure she would! Yes, the first shock of the wretched revelation being over, she would see how he had suffered, and how he had striven to do the right, and then--then everything would be well.

Thus, as he flew over the roads, he built himself up in the hope of Fenella's forgiveness. But as he approached Government House his heart failed him again. Something whispered that the excuses he had been making for himself were no better than a pretence--that Fenella would see him now for the first time as the man he really was, not the man she had imagined him to be.

And then--what would happen then?

II

As soon as the trial was over and Bessie, weeping bitterly, was taken back to the cells, Fenella had left Castle Rushen. She was ashamed. Remembering her wild outburst under the Attorney-General's examination, she was reproaching herself bitterly.

Whatever Victor Stowell had done, what right had she to denounce him? She of all others! In open Court too!

And then Gell! Although nobody else had understood her, he had done so. He might have been living in a fool's paradise, but was it for her her to reveal the awful truth to him? In public, too, and at that harrowing moment?

To escape from the pain of self-reproach she kept on telling herself, as she went back in the train, that Stowell had deceived her. Oh, if he had only confessed, at any rate to her, she thought she could have forgiven him in spite of all. But no, he had hidden everything down to the last moment, and left her to find him out.

On reaching home she excused herself to old Miss Green and hurried up to her bedroom. Her head ached and her heart was sore--the young woman she had been working for had been found guilty and condemned. She told her maid she was tired, and if anybody asked for her she was not to be disturbed.

Two hours passed. Her heart was going through a wild riot of mingled anger and love. It was like madness. She loved Stowell; she hated him; she worshipped him; she despised him. At one moment she recalled with a bitter laugh the mockery of his questioning of Bessie Collister in the dock; at the next she remembered with scorching tears the pathos of his sentencing her.

Obscure motives were operating in her soul to intensify her pain. Jealous? She, jealous of that illiterate country girl who had murdered her illegitimate child--what nonsense! No, her idol was broken. She had set it so high and now it was in the dust.

She expected Stowell to come to her as soon as his Court was over. Again and again she raised her head from her wet pillow to listen for the sound of his car on the drive. Yet when a knock came at her door and her maid announced the arrival of the Deemster (never dreaming that the injunction against callers had been intended to apply to him) her first impulse was to send him away.

"Say I'm unwell and can't see him," she cried from her bed.

But at the next moment she was up and whispering at the door,

"Show Mr. Stowell into the library and tell him I shall be down presently."

Her voice was hoarse; her face was aflame; her eyes were red from persistent weeping. No water could sponge away those marks of her emotion. Never mind! He should see how he had made her suffer. She would go downstairs and charge him, face to face, with his deceit and hypocrisy, and then--then fling herself into his arms.

But when she opened the library door and saw him standing on the hearthrug, with head down and a look of utter abasement, her courage failed her. She dare not look twice at his ravaged face, so she sank on to the sofa and covered her eyes with her hands.

Several minutes passed in which neither of them spoke. There was no sound except that of his laboured breathing and of the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece. "If he does not speak soon," she thought, "I shall break into tears and fly out of the room."

But she did not move, and at last came his voice, humble and broken, and thrilling through and through her:

"Fenella!"

She did not answer; she could not; and again, after another moment of silence, he said,

"Fenella, I have come to ask you to forgive me."

She wanted to burst out crying, and to prevent herself from doing so she broke into a flood of wrath.

"Forgive you?" she said. "Ask that poor creature in Castle Rushen to forgive you--that poor girl whom you have just condemned for a crime that is the consequence of your own sin."

He did not reply for a moment, and then came the same humble, unsteady voice, saying,

"No doubt you are quite right, quite justified, but if you knew everything--that I could not help myself--that it was the law...."

"Oh, I know nothing about your laws," she cried, leaping up and crossing the room, "but they are unjust and barbarous and against reason and humanity if they allow a girl to be condemned to death for a crime like that while the Judge who was the first cause of it sits in judgment on his own victim."

"You are right there too," said Stowell, "but if you knew how I tried to avoid sitting on the case, and only allowed myself to do so at last in the hope of seeing justice done and thereby making some sort of amends....

"Amends!" cried Fenella. "What amends can there be for a wrong like that? Oh, I hate people who think they can make amends for one fault by committing another."

There was silence again for a moment and then Stowell said,

"You are right there also. There is a kind of wrongdoing that cannot be atoned for. I see that now. But if you knew how I have suffered for it and still suffer....

"Suffer? Why shouldn't you suffer? Isn't that poor girl suffering? Hasn't she suffered all along? And whatever you do for her now, won't she go on suffering to the last day and hour of her life?"

He dropped his head still lower under the lash of Fenella's scorn.

"That is not all either," she said in a broken voice, sitting on the sofa again and brushing her handkerchief over her eyes. "Perhaps that girl is not the only one who is suffering. I wanted to think so well of you, to be so proud of you. You were to be the defender of women, fighting their battle for them when they were wronged and helpless. And when you became a Judge .... Oh, I cannot bear to think of it. You have disappointed and deceived me. You are not the man I took you to be."

Outside the sun was setting. A dull ray from it was falling on his haggard face and brushing her bronze-brown hair.

"I thought you loved me too. It was so sweet to think you loved me--me only--never having loved anybody else. Every woman has felt like that, hasn't she? I have anyway. Other men might be faithless, but not you, not Victor Stowell. And yet, for the sake of your poor fancy for this country girl...."

"Fenella!"

"Oh, what a fool I've been," she cried, leaping up again and dashing the tears from her eyes. "Forgive you? Never while that girl lies in prison as the consequence of your sin."

Stowell could bear no more. Stepping forward, he laid hold of Fenella by the shoulders, and approaching his face to her face he said,

"Listen to me, Fenella. I have done wrong--I know that. I am not here to excuse or defend myself, and if your heart does not plead for me I have nothing to say. But I swear before God that I have loved you with all my soul and strength, and if it hadn't been for that...."

"Loved me!" cried Fenella, between a laugh and a sob. And then in the wild delirium of the sheer woman, she said,

"What proof of your love have you given to me compared to the proof you have given to that girl? Oh, when I think of it I could almost find it in my heart to envy her. I do envy her. Yes, degraded and shamed and condemned and in prison as she is, I envy her, and could change places with her this very minute. I would have given you anything in the world rather than this should be--anything, my honour, myself...."

"Fenella!"

"Let me go! You are driving me mad. Leave me. I hate you. I despise you. You have broken my heart. I thought you were brave and true, but what are you but a common...."

"Fenella!"

"Coward! Hypocrite! Let me go!"

But she had no need to wrench herself away from him. His hands fell from her shoulders like lead, and at the next moment she was gone from the room.

He stood for a while where she had left him with the echo of her stinging words ringing in his ears. Bitter, unjust and cruel as they had been, he was struggling to excuse her. She did not understand. Bessie had not told her all. Presently she would come back and ask his pardon.

But she did not come, and after a while (it seemed like an eternity), feeling crushed, degraded, trampled upon, dragged in the dust and wounded in his tenderest affections, he left the room and the house.

Outside, where his automobile was standing, he still lingered, expecting to be called back. It was impossible that Fenella would let him part from her like this. He knew where she was--in the Governor's smoking-room which overlooked the drive. At the last moment she would knock at the window and cry, "Stay!"

Slowly he moved around his car, opening the bonnet, touching the engine, starting it, pulling on his long driving gloves. But still she gave no sign, and at length he prepared to step into his seat. Was this to be the end--the end of everything?

Meantime, Fenella, alone in her father's room and recovering from the storm of her anger, was beginning to be afraid. She wanted to go back to Stowell and say, "I was mad. I didn't know what I was saying. I love you so much."

But her pride would not permit her to do that, and she waited for Stowell to do something. Why didn't he burst through the door, throw his arms about her, and compel her to forgive him?

She listened intently for a long time, but there came no sound from the adjoining room. What was he doing? Presently she heard him coming out of the library, walking with a firm step down the corridor to the porch, opening the front door and closing it behind him.

Was he leaving her? Like this? Then he would never come back. She heard his footstep on the gravel and looking through the window she saw him, with his white face, raising his soft hat to wipe his perspiring forehead, and then climbing into the car. Could it be possible that he was going away without another word?

In spite of her jealousy and rage, she felt an immense admiration for the man who, loving her as she was sure he did, was yet so strong that he could leave her after she had insulted and humiliated him. She wanted to throw up the window and cry, "Wait! I am coming out to you."

But no, her pride would not permit her to do that either, and at the next instant the car was moving away.

She watched it until it had disappeared behind the trees. Then she turned to go back to her bedroom. At the foot of the stairs she met Miss Green who, shocked at the sight of her disordered face, said,

"My goodness, Fenella! What has happened?"

In the plaintive voice of a crying child, Fenella answered,

"He has gone. I have driven him away."

Then she stumbled upstairs, locked the door of her room on the inside, threw herself face down on the bed, burst into a flood of tempestuous tears, and cried aloud to Stowell, now that he could no longer hear her--

"Victor! Victor! My Victor!"