Chapter THIRTY-THREE: The Heart of a Woman

Meanwhile Fenella had been going through her own temptation. On the night after the trial, having bathed her swollen eyes, she went down to dinner. Her father looked searchingly at her for a moment, and, as soon as they were alone, he said,

"Was it Stowell I saw driving towards the mountain road as I came up?"

"Perhaps it was," said Fenella.

"Then why didn't he stay to dinner?"

"Because .... I told him to go."

"Why?"

Fenella gulped down the lump that was rising in her throat and said,

"I have been deceived in him. He is not the man I supposed him to be."

"Don't be a fool, my dear. I understand what you mean. It is his conduct as a man, not as a Judge you are thinking of. But if every woman in the world thought she had a right to make a scrutiny into her husband's life before she married him there would be a fine lot of marriages, wouldn't there?"

Crude and even coarse as Fenella thought her father's moral philosophy, she found her self-righteousness shaken by it. Perhaps she had been unfair to Stowell. But why didn't he come and plead his own cause? She couldn't talk to her father, but if Victor came and told his own story....

Victor did not come. For two days her pride fought with her love and she thought herself the unhappiest woman in the world. Then to escape from the pains of self-reproach she conceived the idea of a fierce revenge upon Stowell. She would devote herself to his victim! Yes, she would make it her duty to lighten the lot of the poor creature he had ruined and deserted.

After a struggle, and many shameful tears, she went back to Castle Rushen, little knowing what a scorching flame she was to pass through.

By this time Bessie was feeling no bitterness against Stowell. The jailer had told her that the Deemster could not have acted otherwise. The law compelled him to condemn her. But he had told the Jury to recommend her to mercy, and now he would be writing to the King to ask him to let her off.

"Aw, he's good, miss--he's real good for all."

"Do you say that, Bessie? After he has betrayed you?" said Fenella,

"Betrayed? I wouldn't say that, miss."

"But he .... he took you to his rooms?"

"What else could he do, miss? All the inns were shut and it was raining, and I had nothing in my pocket."

"But .... having taken advantage of your homelessness and poverty, he afterwards cast you off?"

A mysterious wave of injured vanity struggled with Bessie's shame and she said,

"'Deed he didn't, then. He wanted to marry me."

"Marry you .... did you say marry...."

"Yes, he did, and that was why he sent me to school."

"But afterwards .... afterwards he changed his mind and turned you off .... I mean turned you over to somebody else?"

"'Deed no," said Bessie, with her chin raised. "It was me that gave him up after I found I was fonder of Alick."

Breathing hard, scarcely able to speak, with the hot blood rushing to her cheeks, Fenella compelled herself to go on.

"Did he know then that you...."

"No, miss, and neither did I, nor Alick, nor anybody."

"And when .... when was it that you went...."

"To his rooms in Ramsey? The first Saturday in August, miss."

Fenella went home, happy, miserable, tingling with shame and yet thrilling with love also. Stowell's victim had brought her heart back to him.

It was just because he had loved her more than he had loved that girl in prison that the worst had happened. It was just because she herself had persuaded, constrained and almost compelled him that he had sat on the case, not fully knowing what was to be revealed by it.

This lasted her half-way home in the train, and then her wounded pride rose again. After all Victor had been faithless to the love with which she had inspired him. If a man loved a woman it was his duty to keep himself pure for her. Victor had not done so, therefore she would never forgive him--never!

The Governor's carriage met her at the Douglas station, and when (wiping the scorching tears from her eyes) she reached Government House, she found another carriage standing by the porch.

"Miss Janet Curphey is here to see you, miss," said the maid.

II

From the day of the trial, when Victor had returned home with a white face and said, "It doesn't matter now," Janet had known what had occurred.

That Collister girl had corrupted Victor. She had always feared it would be so since "Auntie Kitty" had whispered over her counter that that "forward thing" of Liza Corteen's was boasting that Mr. Stowell had been "sooreying" with her in the glen. And now she had brought him under the very shadow of shame itself, just when life looked so bright and joyful.

Then came the insular newspaper with an account of Fenella's outburst at the trial. That was the cruellest blow of all. She had loved Fenella, and had always thought there would be nothing so sweet as to spread her wedding-bed for her, but now that she had taken sides against Victor and publicly denounced him, Janet's blood boiled. She would go up to Government House and give Fenella a piece of her mind. Why shouldn't she?

It was a dull afternoon when she set off for Douglas, and as she drove along the coast road she rehearsed to herself the sharp things she was going to say.

But when Fenella came into the drawing-room, looking so pale as to be scarcely recognisable as the radiant girl she used to be, and kissed her and sat by her side, Janet could scarcely say anything.

At length (Miss Green, who had been sitting at tea with her, having gone) Janet braced herself, and said, not without a tremor,

"I've come about Victor."

"Then he has told you?" said Fenella.

"'Deed he hasn't, and you needn't either, because I know."

Fenella drew her hand away and dropped her head.

"I don't say he hasn't done wrong," said Janet, "but you seem to think he's the only one who is to blame."

"Oh no! I see now that the girl in Castle Rushen...."

"The girl? I'm not thinking about the girl. Of course she is to blame. But is there nobody else to blame also?"

"Who else?"

"Yourself."

"Janet!"

"Oh, I'm telling you the truth, dear. That's what I've come for."

"But it all happened before I returned to the Island."

"That's why. If you hadn't stayed away so long it wouldn't have happened at all."

Then up from the sweet and sorrowful places of Janet's memory came the story of Stowell's love for Fenella--how he had worked for her and waited for her through all his long years as a student-at-law.

"It's me to know, my dear. He used to come home every week-end, and his poor father thought it was to see him, but I knew better. 'Any fresh news?' he would say, and I knew what news he wanted. When your photo came he held it under the lamp and said, 'Don't you think she's like my mother, Janet--just a little like?' And I told him yes, and that was to say you were like the loveliest woman that ever walked the world--in this island anyway."

Fenella was struggling to control herself.

"Poor boy, how he worked and worked for you! Jacob never worked harder or waited longer for Rachel. And what was his reward? You signed on at your ridiculous Settlement for seven years and sent word you would never marry. I had it from Catharine Green and it was a sorrowful woman I was to break the news to him. He looked at me with his mother's eyes, and it was fit enough to break my heart to see how he cried with his face on the pillow. But it was with his father's eyes he rose and said, 'It shall never happen again, mother.' He called me mother too, God bless him!"

Fenella was smothering her mouth in her handkerchief.

"If he went wrong after that, was it any wonder? Young men are young men, and the Lord won't be too hard on them for being what He has made them. Some people seem to think when trouble comes between a young man and a young woman that the young woman is the only one to be pitied. Well, I'm a woman and I don't. And when a young man has been cut off from the love that would have kept him right and the heavens have gone dark on him...."

"But I loved him all the time, Janet."

"Then why didn't you come back, instead of leaving him to the mercy of these good-looking young vixens who will run any risks with a young man if they can only get him to marry them?"

Fenella's eyes were down again.

"But that's not all. Not content with deserting him for so many years, you must try to disgrace him also."

"Janet!"

"Oh, I saw what you said at the trial."

"But nobody knows whom I...."

"Don't they indeed! The men may not--most of them are so stupid. They may even think you meant somebody else. But you can't deceive the women like that. And then he knew that you intended it for him. Just when you were about to become his wife, too, and you were the only woman in the world to him!"

"I was so shocked. I thought he wasn't the man I had taken him for."

"Perhaps he wasn't, perhaps he was, but thousands of women have lost faith in their men and clung to them for all that, and they're the salt of the earth, I say. I'm only an old maid myself, but to stand up for your husband, right or wrong, that's what _I_ call being a wife, if you ask me."

Fenella could bear up no longer. She flung her arms about Janet's neck and buried her face in her breast.

The darkness was gathering before they broke from their embrace and then it was time for Janet to smooth out her silvery hair and go. Fenella saw her to the carriage and whispered as she kissed her,

"Tell him to come back to me."

And then Janet went home with shining eyes.

III

Day after day Fenella waited at home for Victor, denying herself to everybody else. Every afternoon she dressed herself in some gown he had said he liked her in. She dressed her hair, too, in the way he liked best. But still he did not come.

At length she determined to write to him. Writing was a terrible ordeal. Her pride fought with her love and she could never satisfy herself with her letters. First it was--

"DEAR VICTOR,--Don't you really think you've stayed away long
enough? Remember your 'Manx ones'--especially your lovely and
beloved Manx women--won't they be talking?"

But no, that was too much like threatening him, so she began again--

"DARLING,--Did you really think I meant all I said that day?
Don't you know a woman better than that? I suppose you think I
am very hard-hearted and can never forgive, but...."

No, that was wrong, too.

"VICTOR,--Don't you think I have been punished enough? It has
been very hard for me, yet I love you still...."

But the trembling of her handwriting betrayed the emotion she wished to conceal. At last, after a long day of solitude and abandonment, two little lines--

"Vic,--I am so lonely. Come to me. Your
broken-hearted--FENELLA."

But all her letters, with their cries and supplications, were torn up and thrown into the fire.

Why did he stay away? Did he expect her to bridge all the gulf between them? At length she thought he must be ill. The idea that he could be suffering (for her sake perhaps) swept down all her pride, and she determined to go to him.

But just as she was setting out for Ballamoar somebody brought word that Stowell was staying at Fort Anne. That quenched her humility. So near, yet never coming to see her! Oh, very well! Very well!

For two days she felt crushed and abased. Then she heard that Stowell was constantly to be seen at the Law Library, and that brought a memory and an explanation. She remembered that she had said (in that wild moment when she didn't know what she was saying) that she would never forgive him while the girl Bessie lay in prison.

That was it! He was finding a solid legal ground on which the prisoner could be liberated, and when he had convinced the law officers of the Crown that this was a proper case for the exercise of mercy, he would come up to her and say, "Bessie Collister is free!--the barrier between us is broken down."

For a full day after that her heart was at ease. Nay more, she was almost happy, for hidden away in some secret place of semi-consciousness was the thought that the measure of Stowell's efforts for Bessie Collister was the meter of his love for herself.

At length her impatience got the better of her tranquillity and she became eager to know what was going on. There was only one person who could tell her that--her father.

Coming down to breakfast on the sunny morning after the storm, she saw, among the letters by the Governor's plate, a large envelope superscribed, "_HOME SECRETARY_." When her father had opened it she said, as if casually,

"Any news yet about that poor thing in Castle Rushen?"

"Yes, there's something here."

"Of course she's pardoned?"

"On the contrary, her death-sentence has been confirmed."

"Confirmed?"

"Yes, she's to die, and it only remains for me to fix the date of the execution."

The sun went out as before a thunderstorm, and, rising from her unfinished breakfast, Fenella fled from the room. A great wave of pity seemed to sweep down every other feeling. She determined to go to Castle Rushen again and break the news tenderly to the unhappy woman.

On her way to the railway station her mind swung back to Stowell. After all he could have done nothing to save the girl's life. It was inconceivable that the authorities in London could have been indifferent to the opinion of the Judge who had tried the case.

"No, he can have done nothing--nothing whatever."

Then came a shock to her also.

As her carriage dipped into the hill going down to the station she saw Stowell coming up from the bridge with rapid strides. Something told her that, having heard the news, he was going to Government House to protest. But what was the good of going now? Useless! Worse than useless!

One glance she got of his face before she dropped her own. It was whiter and thinner than before, as if from sleepless nights and suffering. She wanted to stop; she wanted to go on; she did not know what she wanted.

At the next moment her coachman, who had seen nothing of Stowell, being occupied with the difficulties of the hill, had swept into the station-yard.

When she got out of the carriage her heart was burning with the pangs of mingled love and rage.

"If that girl dies in prison there shall never be anything between us--never," she thought.

But deep in her heart, almost unknown to herself, there was a still more poignant cry,

"He does not care for me--he cannot."