For ten days Alick Gell had been searching for Bessie Collister.
When he first read her letter on reaching Derby Haven (he read it a
hundred times afterwards) he remembered something his father had said
in taunting him--"You'll not be the first by a long way!" Then he
recalled the case of the Peel fisherman and a black thought came
hurtling down on him. At the next moment he hated himself for it.
"What devil out of hell made me think of that?" he asked himself.
But why had Bessie run away from him? The only explanation he could
find was the one Stowell had given on the steamboat--women had
illnesses which men knew nothing about, and in the throes of their
mania they sometimes hid themselves, like sick animals, from their
friends--most of all from those they loved. Were not the newspapers
full of such cases?
"That's it! That's it! My poor girl!"
Having arrived at this explanation of Bessie's flight, he had no
compunction about going in search of her. Her malady might be only
temporary, but, while it lasted, Heaven alone knew what dangers she
might expose herself to.
At first it occurred to him to call in the assistance of the police.
But no, that would lead to publicity, and publicity to
misunderstanding. Bessie would get better; he must keep her name
clear of scandal. His voice shook and his lip trembled as he told
the Misses Brown to say nothing to anybody. His warning was
unnecessary. The terrified old maids, who had at length begun to
scent the truth, had decided to keep their own counsel.
Within half an hour Alick was on the road. He had no doubt of
overtaking Bessie--she was only half an hour gone. But which way
would she go? It was easier to say which way she would not go. She
would not go to the north of the island where she would be known to
nearly everybody. Above all, she would not go home--the home of Dan
Baldromma.
All that day he wandered through Castletown--every street and alley.
At nightfall he was back at Derby Haven. Had Bessie returned? No!
Had anything been heard of her? Nothing!
Next day he set out on a wider journey--all the towns and villages of
the south, Port St. Mary, Port Erin, Fleswick, Ballasalla, Colby,
Ballabeg and Cregneash. He walked from daylight to dark, and asked
no questions, but at every open door he paused and listened. When he
saw a farm-house that stood back from the high road he made excuse to
go up to it--a drink of milk or water.
Day followed day without result. His heart was sinking. More than
once he met somebody whom he knew and had to make excuse for his
rambling. Wonderful what a walking tour did to blow the cobwebs from
a fellow's brain after he had been shut up too long in an office!
His friends looked after him with a strange expression. He had been
something of a dandy, but his hair was uncombed and his linen was
becoming soiled and even dirty.
At length he became a prey to illusions. He always slept in the last
house he came to, and one night, in a fisherman's cottage near
Fleswick, he was awakened by the wind blowing over the thatch. He
thought it sounded like the voice of Bessie, and that she was
wandering over the highway in the darkness, alone and distraught.
Next day he began to inquire if anything had been seen of such a
person. He was told of a young woman who, found walking barefoot on
the lonely road to Dreamlang, had been taken to the asylum, and he
hurried there to inquire. No, it was not Bessie. Some poor young
wife who (only six months married and beginning to be happy in the
prospect of a child) had lost her husband in an accident at the mines
at Foxdale.
The dread of suicide took hold of him. One day a fish-cadger on the
road told him that a young woman's body had been washed ashore at
Peel. Again it was nothing--nothing to him. The wife of the captain
of a Norwegian schooner which had been wrecked off Contrary--with her
eyes open and her baby locked in her rigid arms.
Alick's heart was failing him. Do what he would to keep down evil
thoughts they were getting the better of him. Sometimes he rested on
the seat that usually stands outside the whitewashed porch of a Manx
cottage, and although he thought he said so little he found that the
women (especially such of them as were mothers of grown-up girls)
seemed to divine the object of his journey.
"Aw, yes, that's the way with them, the boghs, especially when
there's a man bothering them. Was there any man, now...."
But Alick was up and gone before they could finish their question.
Thus ten days passed. Absorbed in his search, perplexed and
tortured, he had seen no newspaper and heard nothing of what was
happening in the island. Suddenly it occurred to him that Bessie
could not have left him so long without news of her. She could not
be so cruel; she must have written, and her letter must be lying at
his office.
People who knew him, and saw him return to Douglas, could scarcely
recognise him in the pale, unwashed, unshaven man who climbed the
steps from the station, looking like a drunkard who had been sleeping
out in the fields.
His chambers, when he turned the key (he had no clerk now), were
stuffy and cheerless. The ashes of his last fire were on the hearth,
and his desk was covered with dust. Behind the door (he had no
letter-box) a number of circulars and bills lay on the ground, but,
running his trembling fingers through them, he found no letter from
Bessie.
There was a large and bulky envelope, though, with the seal of
Government House, and marked "Immediate." What could it be? On the
top of a thick body of folio paper he found a letter. It was from
Fenella Stanley.
"DEAR MR. GELL,--At the suggestion of Mr. Stowell, who is still
in London, I am writing on behalf of the Women's Protection
League, to ask you if you can undertake the defence of the young
woman in the north of the island who is to be charged with the
murder of her new-born child."
Alick paused a moment to draw breath.
"You will see by the report of the High Bailiff's inquiry and the
copy of the Depositions which I enclose that the girl denies
everything, and that her mother supports her, but the evidence is
only too sadly against her--particularly that of the doctors and
of two neighbours who live higher up the glen."
Alick felt his heart stop and his whole body grew cold.
"Her step-father...."
The letter almost dropped from his fingers.
"Her step-father has not been asked by the prosecution to depose,
and it is doubtful if the defence ought to call him."
He was becoming dizzy. The lines of the letter were running into
each other.
"Innocent or guilty, the girl has suffered terribly. She has
been several days in hospital at Ramsey, but she was to be
removed to Castle Rushen this morning. Her case is to come on
next week at the Court of General Gaol Delivery, so perhaps you
will send me a telegram immediately saying if you can take up the
defence.
"As you see the poor creature is herself an illegitimate
child--the name by which she is commonly known being Bessie
Collister."
Alick shrieked. He had seen the blow coming, but when it came it
fell on him like a thunderbolt.
It was all a lie--a damned lie! Nobody would make him believe it.
Bessie arrested for the murder of her child! She had never had a
child.
He leapt to his feet and tramped the room on stiffened limbs and with
a heart throbbing with anger. Then, half afraid, but doing his best
to compose himself, he took the report and the Depositions out of the
big envelope, and, sitting before the dead hearth with his shaking
feet on the fender, and holding the folio pages in his dead-cold
hands, he read the evidence.
As he did so he shrieked again, but this time with laughter. What a
tissue of manifest lies! The Skillicornes and their quarrel with Dan
Baldromma--what a malicious conspiracy! Lord, what blind fools the
police could be! And the Attorney, had he come to his second
childhood?
Again and again Alick thumped the desk with his fist and filled the
air of the room with the dust that rose in the sunshine which was now
pouring through the windows.
There was a photograph of Bessie on the mantelpiece--a copy of the
same that she had sent to Stowell. He snatched it up and kissed it.
Never had Bessie been so dear to him as now--now when she was in
prison under a false accusation. And the best of it was that he was
to get her off. He must see her at once, though.
"My poor girl! In Castle Rushen!"
The first thing to do was to wash and change (he cut himself badly in
shaving), but in less than half-an-hour he was at the Post-office
telegraphing to Fenella.
"Gladly."
Brief as the message was, the clerk at the counter could hardly
decipher the agitated handwriting.
A few minutes later he was at the Police-office, asking the Chief
Constable for an order to allow him, as Bessie's advocate, to see her
alone in her cell.
At two o'clock he was back at the railway-station, taking the train
for Castletown. As he stepped into his carriage the newsboys were
calling the contents of the evening paper:
_Victor Stowell appointed Deemster._
Glorious! Bessie would have a human being on the bench. Thank God
for that anyway!