Two months passed. Bessie's time was fast approaching, and the
nearer it came the more she was terrified by the signs of it. The
symptoms of coming maternity which are a joy and a pride to married
mothers were a dread and a terror to her. Had she brought herself so
low that she could not live through the time that was before her? At
one moment she thought of going to Fenella. Everybody said how good
Miss Stanley was to girls in trouble. But when she remembered
Fenella's relation to Stowell, and Stowell's to Gell, and her own to
all three, she told herself that Fenella Stanley was the one woman in
the world whom she must never come face to face with.
At length, thinking death was certain, she saw only one thing left to
do--to go back to her mother. It was not thus that she had expected
to return, but nothing else was possible now. In her helplessness
and ignorance, having no one to reassure her, the high-spirited girl
became a child again. Twenty years of her life slipped back at a
stride, and she felt as she used to do when she ran bare-foot on the
roads and fell and bruised her knees, or tore her little hairy legs
in the gorse and then went home to lie on her mother's lap and be
rocked before the fire and comforted.
But going home had its terrors also. There was Dan Baldromma! What
could she do? Was there no way out for her?
One day the elder of the Miss Browns (she gave music lessons to old
pupils at their own homes) came back from Castletown with a "shocking
story." It was about a witch-doctor at Cregnaish--a remote village
at the southernmost extremity of the island, where the inhabitants
were supposed to be descended from a crew of Spanish sailors who had
been wrecked on the rocky coast below.
The witch-doctor was a woman, seventy years of age, and commonly
called Nan. Hitherto she had lived by curing ringworms on children
and blood-letting in strong men by means of charms that were half in
Latin and half in Manx. But now young wives were going to her to be
cured of barrenness, or for mixtures to make their husbands love
them; and worst of all, the young girls from all parts of the island
were flocking to her to be told their fortunes--whether their boys at
the mackerel fishing were true to them, or going astray with the
Irish girls of Kinsale and Cork.
"It's shocking, this witchcraft," said old Miss Brown. "In my young
days it was given for law that the women who practised such arts
should stand in a white sheet on a platform in the marketplace with
the words _For Charming_ and _Sorcery_ in capital letters on their
breasts."
Bessie said nothing, but next day, after breakfast, making excuse of
her need of a walk, she hurried out, took train to Port Erin, and
climbed, with many pauses, the zigzag path up the Mull Hills to where
a Druids' circle sits on the brow, and Cregnaish (like a gipsy
encampment of mud huts thatched with straw) sprawls over the breast
of them.
It was a fine spring morning, with the sea lying still on either side
of the uplands, and the sun, through clouds of broken crimson,
peering over the shoulder of the Calf like a blood-shot eye.
Bessie had no need to ask her way to the witch-doctor's house, for
troops of young girls were coming down from it, generally in pairs,
whispering and laughing merrily. At length she came upon it--a
one-storey thatched cottage with a queue of girls outside.
When the last of the girls had gone, and Bessie still stood waiting
on the opposite side of the rutted space which served for a road, a
wisp of a woman, with hair and eyebrows as black as a shoe, but a
face as wrinkled as the trunk of the trammon tree, came to the door
and said,
"Come in, my fine young woman. There's nothing to be freckened of."
It was Nan, the witch-doctor, and Bessie followed her into the house.
The inside was a single room with a fire at one end and a bed at the
other. The floor was of hardened clay and the scraas of the roof
were so low overhead that a tall man could scarcely have stood erect
under them. Bundles of herbs hung from nails in the sooty rafters
and when the old woman closed the door, Bessie saw that the _Crosh
cuirn_ (the cross of mountain ash) was standing at the back of it.
"I'm in trouble, ma'am," said Bessie, who was on the verge of tears,
"and I'm wanting to know what to do and what is to happen to me."
The witch-doctor, whose quick eyes had taken in the situation at a
glance, said,
"Aw yes, bogh, trouble enough. But knock that cat off the cheer in
the choillagh and sit down and make yourself comfortable."
Bessie loosened her fur-lined cloak and sat in the ingle, with the
fire at her feet and a peep of the blue sky coming down on her from
the wide chimney.
"They were telling me a fine young woman was coming," said the
witch-doctor (she meant the invisible powers), "and it was wondering
and wondering I was would she have strength to climb the brews. But
here you are, my chree, and now a cup o' tay will do no harm at all."
Bessie tried to refuse, but the old woman said,
"Chut! A cup o' tay is nothing and here's my taypot on the warm turf
and the tay at the best, too."
While Bessie sipped at her cup the witch-doctor went on talking, but
she took quick glances at the girl from time to time and sometimes
asked a question.
At length she bolted the door, drew a thick blind over the window,
knelt before the hearth, and called on Bessie to do the same, so that
they were kneeling side by side, with no light in the darkened room
except the red glow from the fire on their faces and the blue streak
from the sky behind the smoke from the chimney.
After that the witch-doctor mumbled some rhymes about St. Patrick and
the blessed St. Bridget, then put her ear to the ground, saying she
was listening to the _Sheean ny Feaynid_, the invisible beings who
were always wandering over the world. And then she began on the
fortune, which Bessie, who was trembling, interrupted with
involuntary cries.
"There's a fair young man in your life, my chree (_Yes_) and if
you're not his equal you're the apple of his eye. There's a poor
ould woman, too, and she praying and praying for her bogh-millish to
come home to her (_Oh!_) and the longing that's taking the woman at
times is pitiful to see. 'Where is my wandering girl to-night,'
she's singing when she's sitting by her fireside; and when she's
going to bed she's saying, 'In Jesu's keeping nought can harm my
erring child.'"
At this Bessie broke down utterly, and the witch-doctor had to stop
for a moment. Then she began again in a different strain,
"There's an ould man too .... yes .... no .... (_Yes, yes!_) as
imperent as sin and as bould as a white stone, and with a vice at him
as loud as a trambone. Aw, yes, woman-bogh, yes, there's trouble
coming on you, but take heart, gel, for things will come out right
before long and it's a proud woman you're going to be some day. But
you must go home to the mother, my chree, and never take rest till
you're laying your head under the same roof with her."
"And will the young man be true to me whatever happens?"
"True as true, my chree, and his heart that warm to you at last that
it will be like gorse and ling burning on the mountains."
"And will the old man be able to do him any injury?"
"Lough bless me, no! Neither to him nor you, gel. Roaring and
tearing and mad as a wasp, maybe, but nothing to do no harm at all."
Bessie had crossed the old woman's palm with sixpence as she came
into the house, but she emptied her purse into it going out, and then
went down the hill with a light step and a lighter heart.
Alick Gell was at Derby Haven when she got back, having been waiting
for more than an hour. Seeing her coming down the road with her face
aglow, he dashed off to meet her, and broke into a flood of joyous
words.
"Helloa! Here you are at last! Looking as fresh as a flower, too?
What did I say? Didn't I tell you that you had only to get about and
take exercise and you would be as right as rain in no time? But,
look here, Bess" (he had drawn her arm through his), "you've kept me
waiting all winter and now that you're getting better I'm going to
stand no more nonsense."
Bessie was laughing.
"I'm not! Upon my soul, I'm not! You wouldn't let me put up the
banns at Malew, thinking Dan Baldromma would hear of them through
Cæsar Qualtrough, and come here making a noise at Miss Brown's,
though he has no more right over you than the Coroner, and no more
power over me than a tomtit. But there are other ways of marrying
besides being called in church, and one of them is by Bishop's
licence."
"Bishop's licence?"
"Certainly! You just go up to the Registrar's in Douglas, sign your
names in a book, pay a few pounds, get the Bishop's certificate, and
then you can be married wherever you like and as quietly as you
please. And that's what we're going to do now."
"Now? You mean to-day?"
"Well, no, not to-day. I have to go to the Castle this afternoon.
They're unveiling a portrait of the old Deemster. And what do you
think, Bess?"
"What?"
"There's a whisper that Stowell is to be made Deemster in succession
to his father. Glorious, isn't it? Splendid chap! Straight as a
die! Rather young, certainly, but there's not one of the old gang
fit to hold a candle to him. He's to go up to London to-morrow, so I
want to see the last of him. But I'll be down by the first train
after the boat sails in the morning, and then we'll go back to
Douglas together."
They had reached the gate of the old maid's house by this time and
Gell was looking at his watch.
"Pshew! I must be off! Ceremony begins at three and it's that
already. Wouldn't miss it for worlds. By-bye! ... Another one! ....
Oh, but you must, though."
Bessie looked after him as he hurried down the road, swinging his
arms and pitching his shoulders, as he always did when his heart was
glad. Then she went indoors, ran upstairs and set herself to think
things out.
She must go before Alick could get back. When he arrived to-morrow
she must be on her way to her mother's. It was earlier than she had
intended, but there was no help for that now. And then it would be
all right in the end--the _Sheean ny Feaynid_ (the Voices of
Infinity) had said so.
After her child had been born her mother would take it and bring it
up as her own--she had heard of such things happening in Manx houses,
hadn't she? And when all was over and everything was covered up, she
would come back, and then .... then Alick and she would be married.
In the light of what the witch-doctor had said it seemed to her so
natural, so simple, so sure. But later in the evening, it tore her
heart woefully to think of Alick coming from Douglas on the following
day and finding her gone. So she wrote this note and stole out and
posted it:
"Don't come to-morrow. I'll be writing again in the morning,
telling you the reason why."