Fenella Stanley had been two and a half years at the head of the
Women's Settlement. Her work as Lady Warden had been successful. It
had been a great, human, palpitating experience. There were days,
and even weeks, when she felt that it had brought her a little nearer
to the soul of the universe and helped her to touch hands across the
ages with the great women who had walked through Gethsemane for the
poor, despoiled and despairing victims of their own sex.
But nevertheless it had left her with a certain restlessness which at
first she found it hard to understand. Only little by little did she
come to realise that nature, with its almighty voice, was calling to
her, and that under all the thrill of self-sacrifice she was
suffering from the gnawing hunger of an underfed heart.
The seven years that had passed since her last visit to the island
had produced their physical effects. From a slim and beautiful
school-girl she had developed into a full and splendid woman. When
the ladies of her Committee (matrons chiefly) saw the swing of her
free step and the untamed glance of her eye they would say,
"She's a fine worker, but we shall never be able to keep her--you'll
see we shall not."
And as often as the men of the Committee (clergymen generally, but
manly persons, for the most part, not too remote from the facts of
life) came within range of the glow and flame of her womanhood, they
would think,
"That splendid girl ought to become the mother of children."
During the first year of her wardenship her chief touch with home
(her father being estranged) had been through correspondence with his
housekeeper. Miss Green's letters were principally about the
Governor, but they contained a good deal about Victor Stowell also.
Victor had been called to the Bar, but for some reason which nobody
could fathom he seemed to have lost heart and hope and the Deemster
had sent him round the world.
Fenella found herself tingling with a kind of secret joy at this
news. She was utterly ashamed of the impulse to smile at the thought
of Victor's sufferings, yet do what she would she could not conquer
it.
Her tours abroad with her father had ceased by this time, but in her
second year at the Settlement she took holiday with a girl friend,
going through Switzerland and Italy and as far afield as Egypt.
During that journey fate played some tantalizing pranks with her.
The first of them was at Cairo, where, going into Cook's, to enter
her name for a passage to Italy, her breath was almost smitten out of
her body by the sight of Victor's name, in his own bold handwriting,
in the book above her own--he had that day sailed for Naples.
The second was at Naples itself (she would have died rather than
admit to herself that she was following him), where she saw his name
again, with Alick Gell's, in the Visitors' List, and being a young
woman of independent character, marched up to his hotel to ask for
him--he had gone on to Rome.
The third, and most trying, was in the railway station at Zurich,
where stepping out of the train from Florence she collided on the
crowded platform with the Attorney-General and his comfortable old
wife from the Isle of Man, and was told that young Stowell and young
Gell had that moment left by train for Paris.
But back in London she found her correspondence with Miss Green even
more intoxicating than before, and every new letter seemed like a
hawser drawing her home. Victor Stowell had returned to the island,
but he was not showing much sign of settling to work. He seemed to
have no aim, no object, no ambition. In fact it was the common
opinion that the young man was going steadily to the dogs.
"So if you ever had any thoughts in that direction, dear," said Miss
Green, "what a lucky escape you had (though we didn't think so at the
time) when you signed on at the Settlement!"
But the conquering pull of the hawser that was dragging her home came
in the letters of Isabella Gell, with whom she had always kept up a
desultory correspondence.
The Deemster was failing fast ("and no wonder!"); and Janet Curphey,
who had been such a bustling body, was always falling asleep over her
needles; and the Speaker (after a violent altercation in the Keys)
had had a profuse bleeding at the nose, which Dr. Clucas said was to
be taken as a warning.
But the only exciting news in the island just now was about Victor
Stowell. Really, he was becoming impossible! Not content with
making her brother Alick the scapegoat of his own misdoings in a
disgraceful affair of some sort (her father had forbidden Alick the
house ever since, and her mother was always moping with her feet
inside the fender), he was behaving scandalously. A good-looking
woman couldn't pass him on the road without his eyes following her!
Any common thing out of a thatched cottage, if she only had a pretty
face, was good enough for him now!! The simpletons!! Perhaps they
expected him to marry them, and give them his name and position? But
not he!! Indeed no!! And heaven pity the poor girl of a better
class who ever took him for a husband!!!
Fenella laughed--seeing through the feminine spitefulness of these
letters as the sun sees through glass. So mistress Isabella herself
had been casting eyes in that direction! What fun! She had visions
of the Gell girls having differences among themselves about Victor
Stowell. The idea of his marrying any of them, and keeping step for
the rest of his life with the conventions of the Gell family, was too
funny for anything.
But those Manx country girls, with their black eyes and eager mouths,
were quite a different proposition. Fenella had visions of them
also, fresh as milk and warm as young heifers, watching for Victor at
their dairy doors or from the shade of the apple trees in their
orchards, and before she was aware of what was happening to her she
was aflame with jealousy.
That Isabella Gell was a dunce! It was nonsense to say that the Manx
country girls out of the thatched cottages expected Victor to marry
them. Of course they didn't, and neither did they want his name or
his position. What they really wanted was Victor himself, to flirt
with and flatter them and make love to them, perhaps. But good
gracious, what a shocking thing! That should never happen--never
while she was about!
Of course this meant that she must go back to save Victor. Naturally
she could not expect to do so over a blind distance of three hundred
miles, while those Manx country girls in their new Whitsuntide hats
were shooting glances at him every Sunday in Church, or perhaps
hanging about for him on week-evenings, in their wicked sun-bonnets,
and even putting up their chins to be kissed in those shady lanes at
the back of Ballamoar, when the sun would be softening, and the
wood-pigeons would be cooing, and things would be coming together for
the night.
That settled matters! Her womanhood was awake by this time. Seven
years of self-sacrifice had not been sufficient to quell it. After a
certain struggle, and perhaps a certain shame, she put in her
resignation.
Her Committee did not express as much surprise as she had expected.
The ladies hoped her native island would provide a little world, a
little microcosm, in which she could still carry on her work for
women, (she had given that as one of her excuses), and the gentlemen
had no doubt her father, "and others," would receive her back "with
open arms."
She was to leave the Settlement at the close of the half year, that
is to say at the end of July, but she decided to say nothing, either
to her father or to Miss Green, about her return to the island until
the time came for it at the beginning of August.
She was thinking of Victor again, and cherishing a secret hope of
taking him unawares somewhere--of giving him another surprise, such
as she gave him that day in the glen, when he came down bareheaded,
with the sea wind in his dark hair, and then stopped suddenly at the
sight of her, with that entrancing look of surprise and wonder.
And if any of those Manx country girls were about him when that
happened .... Well, they would disappear like a shot. Of course they
would!