"Don't be afraid," said Fenella. "The Deemster is not like some
other judges. He has such pity for a girl in your position that he
will do what is right by her whoever the man may be."
"Oh, why do you torture me?" cried Bessie.
"I don't mean to do that," said Fenella. "But a girl has to think of
her own position in the long run, and it's only right she should know
what it is. If she is charged with a terrible crime, and there is
evidence against her which she cannot gainsay, the law has the power
to punish her--to inflict the most terrible punishment, perhaps.
Have you thought of that, Bessie?"
Bessie shuddered and laid hold of Fenella by both hands.
"On the other hand if she can explain .... if she can say that her
child was born dead and that she merely concealed the birth of it, or
that she killed it by accident, perhaps, when she was alone and
didn't know what she was doing...."
Bessie was breathing rapidly, and Fenella (still unconscious of the
fearful game the unseen powers were playing with her) followed up her
advantage.
"You can trust the Deemster, Bessie. He will be merciful to a girl
who has stood silent in her shame to save the honour of the man she
loves--I'm sure he will. And the Jury too, when they see that you
did not intend to kill your child, they may .... who knows? .... they
may even acquit you altogether."
Bessie was silent now, and Fenella could see, in the half darkness of
the cell, that the girl's big pathetic eyes were gazing up at her.
"And then the people who have been thinking hard of you, because you
have deceived them, will soften to you when they see that what you
did, however wrong it was and even criminal, was done perhaps for
somebody you loved better than yourself."
Suddenly Bessie dropped to her knees at Fenella's feet and cried,
"Very well, I will confess. Yes, it's true. I had a child, and I
.... I killed it. But I didn't mean to--God knows I didn't."
"Tell me everything," said Fenella. And then, burying her face in
Fenella's lap and clinging to her, Bessie told her story, mentioning
no names, but concealing and excusing nothing.
Before she had come to an end, Fenella, who had been saying "Yes" and
"Yes," and asking short and eager questions (the two women speaking
in whispers as if afraid that the dark walls would hear), felt
herself seized by a great terror.
"Then it was not Mr. Gell who took you into his rooms when your
father shut you out?"
"No, no! Would to God it had been!"
"Then who was it?"
"Don't ask me that. I cannot answer you."
"Who was it? Tell me, tell me."
"I can't! I can't!"
"Was it in Ramsey--his chambers?"
"Yes."
"Is he? .... is he anything to me?"
Bessie dropped her head still deeper into Fenella's lap and made no
answer.
"Is he?" said Fenella, and in her gathering terror, getting no reply,
she lifted Bessie's head and looked searchingly into her face, as if
to probe her soul.
At the next moment the dreadful truth had fallen on her. The girl's
fellow-sinner, the man she had been hunting down to punish him, to
shame him, to expose him to public obloquy, was Victor Stowell
himself!
At the first shock of the revelation the woman in Fenella asserted
itself--the simple, natural, deceived and outraged woman. This girl
had gone before her! This common, uneducated creature of the fields
and the farmyard! For one cruel moment she had a vision of Bessie in
Stowell's arms. This was the face he had loved! These were the lips
he had kissed! And she had thought he had loved her only--never
having loved anybody else!
A feeling of disgust came over her. The girl had not even had the
excuse of caring for Stowell. She had been thinking merely of a way
of escape from the tyrannies of her step-father. Or perhaps an
admixture of sheer animal instinct had impelled her. How degrading
it all was!
Bessie, who had begun to realise what she had done, tried to take her
hand, but Fenella drew back and cried,
"Don't touch me!"
All the thoughts of years about woman as the victim seemed to be
burnt up in an instant in the furnace of her outraged feelings. An
almost unconquerable impulse came to leave Bessie to her fate. Let
her pay the penalty of her crime! Why shouldn't she?
But after a while a great pity for the girl came over her. If she
had sinned she had also suffered. If she was there, in prison, it
was only because she had been trying in her ignorant way to wipe out
her fault.
But she herself .... her hopes gone, her love wasted....
Fenella bursted into a flood of tears. And then Bessie (the two
women had changed places now) began to comfort her.
"I'm sorry. I didn't think what I was doing. Don't cry."
At the next moment they were in each other's arms, crying like
children--two poor ship-broken women on the everlasting ocean of
man's changeless lust.
Bessie was the first to recover. She was full of hope and
expectation, and visions of the future. Now that she had confessed
everything the Deemster would tell the Jury to let her off, and then
Alick would forgive her also.
"He _will_ forgive me, will he not?"
She was like a child again, and Fenella found a cruel relief in
humouring her.
"Yes, yes," she answered.
"When I leave this place I'm going to be so good," said Bessie. "I
will make him such a happy life. We'll be married immediately--by
Bishop's licence, you know--and then leave the Isle of Man and go to
America. He often spoke of that, and it will be best .... After all
this trouble it will be best, don't you think so?"
"No doubt, no doubt," said Fenella.
At length she remembered that Gell would be waiting for her. She
must go to him. When she reached the corridor she paused, wondering
what she was to say and how she was to say it. While she stood there
she heard sounds from the cell behind her. Bessie was singing.
Meantime Gell had been fighting his own battle. The black thought
which had come hurtling down on him at Derby Haven, when he first
read the letter which Bessie had left behind her, was torturing him
again. It was about Stowell, and to crush it he had to call up the
memory of the long line of good and generous things that Stowell had
done for him all the way up since he was a boy.
When at last he saw Fenella approaching he searched her face for a
ray of hope, but his heart sank at the sight of it.
"Well?"
"She has confessed."
"She had a child?"
"Yes."
"It was born dead?"
"No, she killed it."
"God in heaven!" said Gell, and it seemed to Fenella that at that
moment the man's heart had broken.
She knew she ought to say more, but she could not do so--nothing
being of consequence except the one terrible fact of the man's
betrayal.
"God in heaven!" said Gell again, and he turned to leave her.
"What are you going to do in the morning?"
"I don't know .... yet."
"Where are you going to now?"
"To .... Ballamoar."
Again she knew that she ought to say more, but again she could not.
Gell was making for the gate, and Fenella, bankrupt in heart herself,
wanted to comfort him.
"Mr. Gell," she said, "I have been doing you a great injustice. I
ask you to forgive me."
With his hand on the bolt he turned his broken face to her.
"That's nothing--nothing now," he said.
And again she heard "God in heaven!" as the gate closed behind him.