When Stowell awoke next morning at Ballamoar a flock of sheep,
liberated from a barn, were bleating before a barking dog. He had
passed a restless night. All his soul revolted against the
renunciation he had imposed upon himself. It was like life-long
imprisonment. Yet what was he to do? He must decide and decide
quickly.
Suddenly he thought of the Governor. The strong sense and practical
wisdom of the Governor might help him to a decision. But Fenella's
father! How could he tell his story to Fenella's father?
At last an idea came to him whereby he could obtain the Governor's
counsel without betraying his secret. He was at the crisis. On what
he did now the future of his life depended. And not his own life,
only, but Fenella's also, perhaps, and .... Bessie Collister's.
At three o'clock he was at the Government offices in Douglas. Police
inspectors were at the door and moving about in the corridors. One
of them took him up to the Governor's room--a large chamber
overlooking the street and noisy from the tram-cars that ran under
the windows. The Governor's iron-grey head was bent over a
desk-table.
"Sit down--I shall not be long."
Stowell felt his heart sink in advance. Never would he be able to
say what he had come to say.
"Well, you gave us the slip nicely, didn't you?" said the Governor,
raising his head from his papers.
"I'm sorry, Sir," said Stowell (he felt his lip trembling). "It was
an important matter, and I've come to town to-day to ask your advice
on it."
"Something you've been consulted about?"
"Well .... yes."
"I'm no authority on law, you know."
"It's not so much a matter of law, Sir, as of morality--what an
honourable man ought to do under difficult circumstances."
The Governor looked up sharply. Stowell struggled on.
"A client .... I should say a friend .... engaged himself to a young
woman awhile ago, and now, owing to circumstances which have arisen
since, he finds it difficult to decide whether it is his duty to
marry her."
"Manxman?"
"Yes."
"What class?"
Stowell felt his voice as well as his lips trembling. "Oh, good
enough class, I think."
The Governor picked up his pipe from the table, charged it, lighted
it, turned his chair towards the fireplace, threw his leg over the
rail-fender and said:
"Fire away."
Then trembling and ashamed, but making a strong call on his
resolution, Stowell told his own story--as if it had been that of
another man.
When he had come to an end there was a long silence. The Governor
pulled hard at his pipe and there was no other sound in the room
except the rattle of the tram-cars in the street.
Stowell felt hot, his lips felt dry, and pushing back his black hair,
he found sweat on his forehead.
"It was a shocking blunder, of course," he said. "My man doesn't
defend himself. Still he thinks the circumstances...."
"You mean it wasn't deliberate?"
"Good Lord, no!"
"In fact a kind of accident?"
"One might say so."
"Any harm done?"
"Harm?" Stowell turned white and began to stammer. "I .... no, that
is to say .... no, I've never heard...."
"And yet he promised to marry the girl?"
"He felt responsible for her. He couldn't be a scoundrel."
"Did he care for her--love her?"
"I can't say that, Sir. He might have thought he did."
"And now he loves another woman?"
"With all his heart and soul, Sir."
"But" (the Governor was puffing placidly) "he has promised to marry
the little farm girl, and she's away somewhere educating herself to
become his wife?"
"That's it, Sir," said Stowell (his head was down), "and now he is
asking himself what it is his duty to do. I have told him it is his
duty as a man of honour to carry out his promise--to marry the girl,
whatever the consequences to himself. Am I right, Sir?"
There was another moment of silence, and then the Governor, taking
his pipe out of his mouth, and bringing his open palm down on the
table, said:
"No!"
"No?"
"It would be marrying the wrong woman, wouldn't it?"
"Well .... yes, one might say that, Sir."
"Then it would be a crime."
"A crime?"
"A three-fold crime."
The Governor rose, crossed the floor, then drew up in front of
Stowell and spoke with sudden energy.
"First, against the girl herself. She's an attractive young person,
I suppose, eh?"
Stowell nodded.
"But uneducated, illiterate, out of another world, as they say?"
Stowell nodded again.
"Then does your man suppose that by sending her to school for a few
months he will bridge the gulf between them? Is that how he expects
to make her happy? Ten to one the girl will be a miserable outsider
in her husband's house to the last day of her life. But that's not
the worst, by a long way."
"No?"
"If he marries her it will out of a sense of duty will it not?"
"Ye-es."
"Well, what woman on God's earth wants to be married out of a sense
of duty? And if he loves another woman do you think his wife will
not find it out some day? Of course she will! And when she does
what do you think will happen? I'll tell you what will happen. If
she's one of the sensitive kind she'll feel herself crushed,
superfluous, and pine away and die of grief and shame, or perhaps
take a dose of something .... we've heard of such happenings, haven't
we? And if she's a woman of the other sort she'll go farther."
"You mean...."
"Suspicion, jealousy, envy! She may not care a brass farthing about
her husband, but her pride as a wife will be wounded. She won't give
him a day's peace, or herself either. He'll never be an hour out of
her sight but she'll think he's with the other woman. And
then--what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander! If he has
another woman as likely as not she'll have another man--we've heard
of that, too, haven't we?"
Stowell dropped his head. His heart was beating high, and he was
afraid his face was betraying it. The Governor touched him on the
shoulder, and continued,
"In the next place, it would be a crime against the man himself.
He's a young fellow of some prospects, I suppose?"
"I .... I think so."
"And the girl has some family, hasn't she?"
"Yes."
"They may be good and worthy folk of whom he would have no reason to
be ashamed. But isn't it just as likely that they are people of
quite another kidney? Sisters and brothers and cousins to the tenth
degree? Some vulgar and rapacious old father, perhaps, who hasn't
taken too much trouble to keep the girl out of temptation while she
has been at home, but freezes on to her fast enough after she has
made a good marriage. Possible, isn't it?"
"Quite possible, sir."
"Well, what are your man's own friends going to do with him with a
menagerie like that at his heels? No, he has fettered himself for
life to failure as well as misery, and while his wife is railing at
him about the other woman he is reproaching her with standing in his
light. So the end of his noble endeavour is that he has set up a
little private hell for himself in the house he calls his home."
Stowell was wincing at every word, but all the same he knew that his
eyes were shining. The Governor looked sharply up at him for a
moment, lit his pipe afresh and said,
"Then there's the other woman. I suppose her case is worthy of some
consideration?"
"Indeed, yes."
"If she cares for the man...."
"I can't say that, Sir."
"Well, if she does, she too will suffer, will she not? And what has
she done to deserve suffering? Nothing at all! She's the innocent
scapegoat, isn't she?"
"That's true."
"Fine woman, I suppose?"
"The finest woman in the world, Sir."
"Just so! But your man would doom her to renunciation--a solitary
life of sorrow and regret. And so the only result of his
praiseworthy principles, his sense of duty, as you say, and all the
rest of it, is that he will have ruined three lives--the life of the
woman he marries and does not love, the life of the woman he loves
and does not marry, and his own life also."
"Then you think, Sir .... you think he should stop even yet?"
"Even at the church door, at the altar-steps--if there's no harm
done, and he is sure she is the wrong woman."
Stowell felt as if the vapours which had clouded his brain so long
had been swept away as by a mountain breeze, but he thought it
necessary to keep up the disguise.
"I feel you must be right, sir," rising to go. "At all events I
cannot argue against you. But I think you'll agree that .... that if
my man can wipe out this bad passage in his life without injury to
anybody and without scandal .... I think you will agree that his
first duty is to tell the woman he loves...."
"Eh? What the deuce .... Good heavens, no!"
"But surely he couldn't ask a pure-minded girl...."
"To take the other woman's leavings? Certainly he couldn't if she
knew anything about it. But why should she? Why should a
pure-minded girl, as you say, be told about something that happened
before she came on to the scene?"
Stowell's scruples were overcome. He had argued against himself, but
he knew well that he had wished to be beaten. He was going off when
the Governor, following him to the door, laid a hand on his shoulder
and said,
"When a man has done wrong the thing he has got to do next is to say
nothing about it. That's what your man has got to do now. It's the
woman secret, isn't it? Very well, he must never reveal it to
anybody--never, under any circumstances--never in this world!"