"Fate has played me a scurvy trick," thought Stowell. "No matter!
I'll go on."
Within an hour he settled Bessie Collister temporarily with Mrs.
Quayle. He told her they were to be married ultimately, but meantime
(that she might feel more comfortable in her new condition) he
intended to find some suitable place in which she would complete her
education.
He tried to say this tenderly so as not to hurt the girl's pride, and
even affectionately, so as to convey the idea that it was she who
would be doing the favour. But a certain shallowness in Bessie's
nature disappointed him. While he unfolded his plans she said "Yes"
and "yes," looking alternately surprised and startled, but it was
with a troubled face, rather than a glad one, that she went off with
Mrs. Quayle, whose own face was grave also.
Two days later Stowell went up to see Gell. He had determined to say
nothing about his intimate relations with Bessie. Why should he? If
it was his duty to marry the girl, it was equally his duty to protect
her honour--the honour of the woman who was to become his wife.
Gell was astounded. He listened, with a twinkling eye, to Stowell's
story of how he had come upon Bessie in the street, after midnight,
friendless and homeless, being shut out by her abominable father, and
how he had taken her to Mrs. Quayle's. But when Stowell went on to
say that, feeling a certain responsibility for the girl's misfortune,
having been a principal cause of it (by keeping her out too late at
night) and having seen something of her since, he had come to like
and even to love her, and had made up his mind to marry her, Gell
broke into exclamations of astonishment which cut Stowell to the
quick.
"But Bessie? Bessie Collister? Do you really mean it?"
"Why not?"
"Well .... it is not for me to say why not. She was a sort of old
flame of my own, you know."
Stowell flinched at this, but went on with his story. For Bessie's
sake he had decided to put back the marriage until she could be
educated a little. And if Gell knew of any school, not too well
known, and far enough away....
"Why, yes, of course I do," said Gell.
It was that of the Misses Brown at Derby Haven--a remote village at
the south of the island. Two old maids who had formerly been
governesses to his sisters. Only yesterday the elder of them had
written asking if there was anything he could put in her way. It
looked like the very thing. At all events he would go down and see.
And if Stowell wished to keep things quiet for a while, as of course
he would, if it was only for the sake of the Deemster, he was ready
to act as go-between.
"What a good fellow you are, Alick!"
"Not a bit! It's no more than you would have done for me--less than
you've done already."
Next day Stowell had a letter from Gell saying he had arranged
everything. The Misses Brown, who had no other pupil at present,
would be only too delighted. Bessie might be sent up at any time and
he would see her to her destination.
Within a week the girl was despatched to Douglas, with such
belongings as Mrs. Quayle had bought for her, and in due course
Stowell had a second letter from Gell, saying,
"It's all right. I've delivered the goods! Of course I made no
unnecessary explanations, and old Miss Brown, smelling a secret,
thinks I am to be the happy man. What larks! But I don't mind if
you don't. Bessie looked a little wistful when I came away, so I had
to promise to run down and see her sometimes. That's all right, I
suppose?"
Then Stowell set to work. Letting it be known that he was willing to
accept cases of all kinds it was not long before he was fully
occupied. Common assault, drunkenness, petty larceny--he took
anything and everything that came his way. He did his work well. In
a little while people began to whisper that he was a chip of the old
block and to employ the Deemster's son was to ensure success.
Meantime he saw nothing of Fenella. Having made up his mind to do
the right thing he tried his best to banish all thought of her. But
everybody was talking of the Governor's daughter. She was beautiful;
she was charming; she was wonderful! Oh, the joy of it all! But the
pain and the misery of it, also!
One day he met Janet driving in the street, and after she had asked
if he had received her letter, and he had answered no, it had arrived
too late, she said,
"But of course you'll call, dear. I'm sure she'll expect it."
The Governor sent out invitations to a garden-party in honour of his
daughter's return home, but Stowell excused himself on the ground of
urgent work. A little later Fenella herself issued invitations to a
meeting towards the establishment of a League for the Protection of
Women, but again Stowell excused himself--a case in the Courts.
Still later he went out to Ballamoar to see his father, whom he had
neglected of late, and the Deemster (who looked older and feebler and
had a duller light in his great but melancholy eyes) flamed up with a
kind of youth when he talked of Fenella.
"It's extraordinary," he said. "Do you know, Victor, she is the only
woman I have ever met who has reminded me of your mother? And if I
close my eyes when she is speaking, I can almost persuade myself it
is the same."
Stowell began to think he hated the very name of Fenella. But there
were moments when he felt that he could have given the whole world,
if he had possessed it, just to look upon her face.
One day Gell came to "report progress" about Bessie. She was getting
on all right, but "longing" a little in those unaccustomed
surroundings, so he had to go down in the evenings sometimes to take
her out for walks.
"We'll have to be careful about that, though," he said, "for what do
you think?"
"What?"
"Dan Baldromma suspects _me_, and is having me watched."
Stowell was startled and ashamed. Where had his head been that he
had not thought of this before? He had got up from his desk and was
looking vacantly out of the window when he became aware that the
Governor's big blue landau was drawing up in the street below.
At the next moment there was a light step on the stairs, and at the
next the door of his room was opened by his young clerk, and through
the doorway came someone who was like a vision from a thousand of his
dreams, but now grown in her stately height out of the beauty of a
bewitching girl into the full bloom of womanly loveliness.
It was Fenella Stanley.