Bessie had run all the way to the station and then found that the
train had nearly half-an-hour to wait for the passengers by the last
of the day's steamers. The carriages were full of English visitors,
but there were very few Manx people and she could not see Susie
anywhere. This vexed her with the thought of having to tear herself
away a good hour earlier than anybody else. It was all her mother's
fault--getting her to make that ridiculous promise.
From such thoughts, as the train ran into the country, her mind swung
back to the memory of Stowell. She recalled his looks, his smile,
his whole person, and every word he had said to her down to the
moment of that burning kiss.
What pleased her most was the certainty that he had never kissed a
girl before. The trembling of his lips, when they were lip to lip,
told her that. And in spite of all that had been said of him she was
sure he had never had a woman in his arms until to-night--never!
And she? Well, she had never before been kissed by a man. Alick
Gell? She was only a child then. Kiss-in-the-ring at Michael Fair?
Chut! A girl felt that no more than the wind blowing over her bare
cheek.
By the clocks at the wayside stations she saw she was going to be
late getting home, but she didn't care. Dan Baldromma wasn't fool
enough to shut her out. But let him if he liked to! Where would he
go to get another girl to work for her wages--summer and winter, as
if the creatures had been her own, up all hours calving, and out
before the dawn in the lambing season, when the hoar-frost was on the
fields?
It was twenty minutes past eleven when she got down at the glen
station, and there was Susie getting down also! Susie was in the
sulks. Not only had Bessie deliberately lost her in the
dancing-hall, but after she had hurried away to catch the ten train,
knowing Bessie had promised to return by it, she had had to come back
alone!
This added to Bessie's vexation, and when she reached the house, and
found the door locked on her, it expressed itself in her hand when
she rattled the kitchen latch.
Then came the scene with Dan Baldromma who shouted down at her from
the upper window as if she had been a thief--it was suffocating! And
when he said, "Find your bed where you've found your company," and
banged down the sash on her, she flung away, crying, as well as she
could for the anger that was choking her,
"So I will, and you'll be sorry for it some day."
At that moment she meant to sleep with Susie at the Ginger Hall Inn,
and offer herself next day to one or other of the farmers who had so
often asked for her. But she had not gone many steps before she
reflected that all the farmers' houses would be full now and nobody
could take her in until Michaelmas.
No matter! She might have been no better off. Those old farmers
were all the same. If it wasn't the bullying of brutes like Dan
Baldromma it was the meanness of old hypocrites like Teare of
Lezayre, who laid foundation stones, and put purses of money on top
of them, and then went home and gave his girls cold potatoes and salt
herrings for supper!
That made her think of young Willie Teare. She had met him in Ramsey
the day before, when he had said he was tired of slaving for his
father, and meant to set up in a farm for himself as soon as he could
find the right wife. But no thank you, no marrying with a farmer for
her! After a woman had worn herself to the bone, keeping things
together and gathering the stock, and she was doubled up with
sciatica, and ought to be in bed, with somebody to wait on her, the
husband was nagging and ragging her from morning to night. That was
marriage! Hadn't she seen enough of it?
Bessie had reached the Ginger Hall by this time, and, seeing a light
in Susie's window, she was about to call up when (with Dan's insult
'Find your bed, etc.' still rankling in her mind) a startling thought
seized her and made her heart leap and the hot blood to rush through
and through her. There was one way to escape from Dan Baldromma and
his tyrannies--Mr. Stowell!
Mr. Stowell would return by the last train to Ramsey, having bachelor
rooms there, in which he lived alone--so people were saying. If she
were to meet him on his arrival and tell him what had happened he
would find some way out for her. Of course he would! She was sure
he would!
Ashamed? Why should she be? People had said all they could say
about a girl like her while she was a baby in arms, and who was there
to say anything now?
And then Mr. Stowell wouldn't care either. He was rich, therefore he
had no need to be afraid of anybody. And if he were fond of a girl
he would stand up for her and defy the whole island--that was the
sort of young man he was!
The last train could not reach Ramsey before midnight, and it might
be later. It was only half-past eleven yet. There was still time.
Why shouldn't she?
"'Find your bed,' indeed! We'll see! We'll see!"
Three-quarters of an hour later she was approaching Ramsey. The
stars had gone out; the night was becoming gloomy; she was tired and
her spirit of defiance was breaking down under a chilling thought.
What if Mr. Stowell did not want her? It was one thing for a young
man to amuse himself with a girl in the glen or in a dancing-hall,
but to become responsible for her....
"If he felt like that and found me in Ramsey what would he think?"
Afraid and ashamed she was slowing down with the thought of returning
to the Ginger Hall when she heard the train whistle behind her, and
looking back, saw its fiery head forging through the darkness. That
sent the hot blood bounding to her heart again, and within a few
minutes she was walking slowly down the main street of the town,
which was all shut up and silent.
She knew where Mr. Stowell's rooms were--in Old Post Office
Place--and that he would have to come this way to get to them. She
heard the train drawing up in the station, the passengers trooping
out, parting in the square and shouting their good-nights as they
went off by the streets to the north and south. One group was coming
behind, on the other side of the way, laughing over something they
had seen at a place of entertainment. They passed and turned down a
side street and the echo of their voices died away at the back of the
houses.
Then came a few moments of sickening silence. Bessie, as she walked
on, could hear nothing more, and another chilling thought came to
her. What if Mr. Stowell had not returned by the train and were
sleeping the night in Douglas?
All her courage and defiance ebbed away, and she saw herself for the
first time as she was--a miserable girl, cast out of her
step-father's house, in which she had worked so hard but in which
nothing belonged to her, homeless, penniless (for she had spent her
half-year's wages on her clothes) without a shelter, in the middle of
the night, alone!
It was beginning to rain and Bessie was crying. All at once she
heard a firm step behind her. It was he! She was sure of it! Her
heart again beat high and all her nerves began to tingle. He was
overtaking her. She turned her head aside and wiped her eyes. He
was walking beside her. She could hear his breathing.
"Bessie!"
"Mr. Stowell!"
"Good gracious, girl, what are you doing here?"
And then she told him.