Fenella found that the tragic news had reached Castle Rushen before
her.
Bessie had received it at first with incredulity. Her expectation of
pardon had reached the point of conviction, and every morning as she
rose from her plank bed, she had said to herself, "It will came
to-day."
When Tommy Vondy went into the condemned cell, blowing his nose
repeatedly and talking about death, how it came to everybody sooner
or later, Bessie looked at him with terror and screamed, "Oh, God
help me! God help me!"
For a while she raved like a madwoman. Everybody had lied to her and
deceived her, and the Deemster had done nothing to save her, because
he wanted her out of the way.
But after a while an idea occurred to her and she became calm. Alick
Gell! If Alick would go up to London and see the King and tell him
that she had never intended to kill her baby he would forgive her.
And then Alick would come galloping back, at the last moment perhaps,
waving a paper over his head and crying, "Stop!"
She had seen such things in her illustrated Weekly Budget--the story
paper she used to read on Sunday mornings at home, while the dinner
was cooking in the oven-pot and her mother was singing hymns in the
Primitive chapel and her father was poring over the "Mistakes of
Moses."
But would he do it? She had deceived him twice. And then his
sisters had always been trying to drag him away from her.
All at once, like the echo of a bell through a thick mist over the
sea, came the memory of his cry as she was being carried out of
Court: "Never mind, Bessie, I would rather be you than your Judge!"
Yes, he loved her still, and (out of the cunning which the air of a
prison breeds) a scheme flashed upon her. She would write a letter
to Alick Gell, not telling him what she wanted him to do, but plainly
pointing to it.
Fenella was amazed to find Bessie apparently reconciled to her end.
She had expected torrents of tears and even the coarse language of
the farmyard.
"The suspense was the worst. I shall be glad when it's all over,"
said Bessie.
The only thing that troubled her was to die while Alick was thinking
so hard of her, and if her hand did not shake so much she would write
to ask for his forgiveness.
"I'll write for you," said Fenella.
"And will you give the letter into his own hands, miss, so that his
sisters may not see it?"
"I'll try, dear."
Sitting by the door of the cell, under the light from the grill,
Fenella wrote with the prison paper on her lap, while Bessie, without
a vestige of colour in her forlorn face, dictated from the bed:
"DEAR ALICK,--You will have heard what they are going to do to
me. It is dreadful, isn't it? I thought perhaps you would have
written me a few lines, though I know it is too much to expect
after all the sorrow and shame I have brought on you.
"Oh, if I could only have lived to make it up to you! We could
have gone away, as you always said, to America or somewhere. I
should have been so good, and we should have been so happy and
nobody to cast all this up to us.
"What I did was very wrong, but I don't see what good it will do
to the King to take my life, and me a poor girl he never saw in
the world. I still think if there were anybody to speak for me
he would forgive me even yet and everything would be all right.
But that's more than anybody would do for me now, I suppose--even
you, though I have always loved you so dear."
Bessie paused.
"Is that all?" asked Fenella, in a husky whisper.
"Not quite," said Bessie, and she began again.
"Mother was here last week and brought me your photo. It got wet
in my bag on the way from Derby Haven, and it is cracked and
smudged. But I kiss it constant and it is such company.
"Good-bye, Alick! My last thoughts will be of you and my last
prayer that God will bless you. If I could only see you for a
minute I think I should be satisfied. But if you can't come,
write and say you forgive me. It has been all through my love
for you that I am here, so think the best of me."
Bessie signed the letter, filling up the remaining space with
crosses, and then wrote with her own hand--
"P.S.--It's a weak to-day, so if anything is to be done there's
no time to lose."
Fenella saw through the girl's pitiful subterfuge, but knew well that
Gell could do nothing. There was only one man in the island who
could have saved Bessie, and that was the Judge who had tried her.
Why hadn't he?
All the way home in the train Fenella asked herself this question.
The only answer she could find was that Stowell was afraid of
offending the Governor, owing so much to him. But oh, if he had only
resisted her father in this case--standing up against him and fearing
no one--how she would have loved him!
She found Government House shuddering with awe, as if a tornado had
swept through it and gone. At length Miss Green explained what had
happened. Mr. Stowell had called to see the Governor and been turned
out of the house!
Hardly had she reached her room when her father followed her into it.
"I suppose you know that Stowell has been here?" he said.
"Yes. What did he come for?"
"To threaten me--that's what he came for. To threaten me that if I
attempted to carry out the sentence of the law on that girl in Castle
Rushen he would prevent it."
Fenella tried to conceal the joy that was rising within her.
"What do you think he intends to do?" she asked.
"Appeal to the Home Secretary against me, I suppose. I shouldn't
wonder if he leaves the island in the morning. And if he does, and
brings back a pardon, it will be a vote of censure upon me--nothing
short of it."
The Governor strode across the room in his wrath, and then suddenly
drew up on seeing that Fenella was smiling.
"But I see who is the cause of the man's insane conduct," he said.
"Who?"
"You! You've broken with him, haven't you? Because he had the
misfortune to encounter that woman long ago you hold him responsible
for everything she has done since. So to satisfy your ridiculous
qualms he falls back upon me. The fool! The damned fool! And you
are no better! I don't know what's taking possession of women in
these days. I'm sick to death of their feminist imbecilities and the
braying of their male asses!"
"But father...."
"Don't talk to me," said the Governor, and with blazing eyes he swept
out of the room.
Then Victor _had_ done something! He _did_ care for her! And now he
was going to take some great risk to save the life of the girl in
prison.
A momentary qualm about her duty to her father was swept down by the
tide of her love for Stowell. After all, he was the man she had
thought him to be! God bless and speed him!