"I don't know what you are talking about--I really don't. You make
me laugh. Whatever will you say next! I was ill and I came home to
have my mother nurse me, and that was all I knew until Cain, the
constable, came to bring me here."
It was Bessie before the High Bailiff. Her face was thin and pale,
and she was clutching the rail of the dock in an effort to keep
herself erect, while her shrill voice echoed to the roof.
The magistrate was about to commit her to prison when Dr. Clucas rose
in the body of the Court-house.
"Your worship," he said (his voice was husky and his eyes had a look
of tears), "the defendant is suffering from the temporary mania which
is not unusual in such cases. I suggest that she should be sent to
the hospital."
Bessie fainted. The next thing she knew was that she was in bed in a
hospital ward, and that another doctor (a younger man with thin hair
and a large pugnacious mouth) was leaning over her, and laying his
hand on her breast. She pushed it off, and then he said, in an
authoritative tone,
"My good woman, if you are innocent, as you say, the best proof you
can give is that of a medical examination."
At this Bessie broke into fierce wrath.
"If you touch me again," she cried, "I'll tear your eyes out!"
Then she fainted once more, and for two days lay in a strong
delirium. When she came to herself a nurse with a kind face was by
her side, saying "Hush!" and doing something at her breast with a
glass instrument.
She knew she had been delirious (having a vague memory of crying
"Alick! Alick!" as she returned to consciousness) and was in fear of
what she might have said.
"Is it morning?" she asked.
"Yes, dear."
"Then it's the next day?"
"The next but one."
"Have I been wandering?"
"A little."
"Did I call for anybody?"
"Yes."
She dare not ask whom, but lay wondering if Alick knew where she was
and what had happened to her. After a while she said,
"Is it in the papers?"
The nurse nodded, and after a moment, with her eyes down, Bessie said,
"Has anybody been here to ask for me?"
"Yes, your mother--she comes night and morning."
"Nobody else?"
"Nobody."
Bessie broke into sobs and turned her face to the wall. Alick knew!
He had given her up! She had lost him!
When she recovered from an agony of tears her eyes were glittering
and her heart was bitter. What did she care what became of her now?
They might do what they liked with her. Deny? What was the good?
She would deny no longer. She would tell the truth about everything.
Then Fenella Stanley came. Bessie thought she liked Miss Stanley
better than any woman, except her mother, she had ever known. But
that only made it the harder to hold to her resolution, for if she
told the truth she would surely hurt Fenella. "Oh, why do you come
to torture me?" she cried, when Fenella asked who was her "friend."
And not another word would she say.
Two days later, before breakfast, Cain, the constable, came with a
sergeant of police to take her to Castle Rushen. She did not care!
Why should she? But as she was leaving the hospital the nurse with
the kind face whispered,
"Good-bye, dear. You're all right now. I'm going away and will say
nothing."
It was a cruelly beautiful morning, with a golden shimmer from the
rising sun upon a tranquil sea. The railway station was full of
townspeople going up to Douglas (it was market day there), so Bessie
was hurried into the last compartment.
When the train ran into the country a flood of memories swept over
her and she found it hard to keep back her tears. The young lambs
were skipping on the hill-sides; the sheep were bleating; girls in
sun bonnets were coming from the whitewashed outhouses to drive the
cattle into the fields.
When they drew up at the station for the glen the shingly platform
was crowded with passengers waiting for the train--rosy-faced women
with broad open baskets of butter and eggs, and elderly farmers
smoking their strong thick twist and surrounded by their panting
dogs. Bessie knew them all. At the last moment a young woman in a
low cut blouse ran up--it was Susie Stephen.
Bessie crept into a corner of the carriage and closed her eyes. But
she could not shut out everything. Over the rumble of the wheels,
when the train started again, she heard shrieks of laughter from the
compartment in front. The elderly men were jesting in their free way
with the girls, and the girls, nothing loth, were answering them back.
At the junction of St. John's, the train had to stop for carriages
from Peel to be linked on to it, and while the coupling was going on
one of the passengers strolled along the platform. It was Willie
Teare, who had wanted to marry Bessie, and he saw her behind the
constables. At the next moment a throng of girls gathered outside
her window, but the constables pulled down the blinds.
"Take your seats! Take your seats!"
The train went on. There was no more laughter from the passengers in
the compartment in front. Bessie understood--they were whispering
about her.
Her heart was becoming hard. Sitting in the darkened carriage, with
spears of sunlight flashing from the flapping blinds, she heard the
constables talking about Mr. Stowell. It was reported that he had
been made Deemster. He would make a good Deemster, too.
"A taste young, maybe, but clever--clever uncommon."
On reaching Douglas, where they had to change into the train for
Castletown, Bessie was being hustled across the platform, between the
constables, when she became aware of a crowd of women and girls who
were crushing up to stare at her. There was a whispering and
muttering.
"There she is!" "Serve her right, _I_ say!"
Half-an-hour later she was in Castle Rushen. The darkness within was
blinding after the sunshine without. A woman with short and
difficult breathing was moving about her. It was Mrs. Mylrea, the
female warder. She took off Bessie's cloak and hat, and, leaving her
a brown blanket and a hard pillow, went away without speaking a word.
But then came Vondy, the head jailer, with words enough for both of
them. Bessie did not know she was crying until the old man, in his
blundering way, began to comfort her.
"Tut, tut, gel! They're not for hanging you yet at all. While
there's life there's hope!"
Left alone at last, and her eyes accustomed to the darkness, she saw
where she was--in a stone vault that had a small grill in the door
(behind which a candle was burning) and a barred and deeply-recessed
window, near the ceiling, through which a dull ray of borrowed light
was coming, for the prison overlooked the harbour on the west of the
Castle.
By this time her tears were turned to gall. A frightful revulsion
had come over her soul. What had she done to deserve all this? The
injustice of it, the cruelty, the barbarity, the hypocrisy!
Men were all alike. Go on, she knew what men were! A man only
wanted one thing of a girl, and when he got that he forgot all about
her. Alick Gell was the best of them, yet even he had forsaken her
now that she was in trouble.
She had never intended to do harm to anybody, and yet there she was,
and would remain, until they came to take her to the Court-house on
the other side of the Castle-yard. Then hundreds of eyes would be on
her (women's eyes too) and when she raised her own she would see Mr.
Stowell on the bench.
What a mockery! Mr. Stowell her judge! What would he do? His
"duty" of course. All right, let him do it! Only she, too, would do
something. After he had tried her and sentenced her and finished
with her, she would tell him something. Why shouldn't she? And what
did she care what happened to anybody else? Fenella Stanley was
nothing to her.
Suddenly she thought again about Alick Gell. If she did what she
intended to do (tell everything) Alick also would be disgraced. The
shame of her misfortune would follow him to the last day of his life.
Even his own father would cast it up to him. Hadn't she done enough
harm to Alick already? If he had deserted her, she had deceived him.
And yet she had deceived him only because she loved him.
"Alick! Alick! Alick!"
Her heart was crying. She was wishing she were dead.
She had flung herself down on her plank bed, with her face to the
blank wall, when she heard the dead beating of footsteps in the
corridor outside. At the next moment the door of her cell was opened
and Tommy Vondy, the jailer, was saying,
"Mr. Alexander Gell, the advocate, to see you alone."