Frightened by what his father had said about the intention of the
Chief Constable to have him arrested as insane, Gell stayed indoors
altogether.
This meant days without food. At first he drank a great deal of
water, being very thirsty. Then his thirst abated and his head began
to feel light. After a while he became dizzy, and even in the
darkness everything seemed to float about him.
On the morning after his father's visit he heard a woman's step on
the stairs, followed by her knock at his door. He thought it was his
sister Isabella and that she had come, with her sharp tongue, to
remonstrate, so he made no answer.
On the day following he heard the same light step. Isabella again!
But no, she had always railed against Bessie, and he was not going to
give her another opportunity of doing so.
Meantime, without food or drink, he was travelling fast towards the
borderland of the desert realm of Insanity, with its
cruelly-beautiful mirages.
Lying on his sofa with eyes closed he was picturing to himself the
day of Bessie's release, when he would go to Castletown to bring her
away, and then the day after, when he would marry her, and then the
day after that when they would leave the island for America--Bessie
walking along the pier with head down, but himself with head up, as
if saying, "There you are--I told you so!"
The knock came again, and again he did not answer it. "No, no,
Mistress Isabella! You shan't speak ill to me of the woman who cared
so much for me that she went to prison for my sake."
He had still travelled farther by this time. He was out in the
middle-west, on one of the high plains of that free continent. He
was working at his profession. He was not a great lawyer, but he
could speak out of his heart, and when he defended injured women
juries heard him and judges listened.
He saw them coming to him from far and near--that long trail of the
broken followers after the merciless army of civilisation. They were
nearly always poor and could pay him nothing. But what matter about
that? At home, at night, wet or cold, there was a bowl of soup, a
cheerful fire and .... Bessie!
On the Saturday morning he awoke from a dizzy sleep, with the sun
shining into his room and the sea outside the breakwater singing
softly. He was in his shirt sleeves, for he had thrown himself on
the bed in his clothes; his boots were unbuttoned; his fair hair was
tangled; he had not shaved for many days.
Again he heard the light step on the stairs. But something in the
rustle of the dress seemed to say that after all it was not his
sister. He listened. There were two knocks, louder and more
insistent than before; then the rattle of the brass lid of his
letter-box, and then something falling on the floor.
A letter! After the light footsteps had gone downstairs he crept
over the carpet on tiptoe, picked up the letter and looked at it.
There were two lines at the top, partly printed, and partly written--
"_Castle Rushen Prison--Number 7._"
Gell stared at the blue envelope, and then with trembling fingers
tore it open. It was the letter which Bessie had dictated to Fenella
Stanley. She was to die, and was calling on him to save her.
Through her heart-breaking words he could hear her cries and
supplications. The letter had been written five days ago, and in two
days more she was to be executed!
Whatever he had been before, Gell was no longer a sane man now. He
was thinking of Stowell and cursing him. Oh, that God would only put
it in his power to punish him!
Then he remembered that this was the Deemster's fortnightly
Court-day. The Court began to sit at eleven, and it was now
half-past ten.
He would go across to the Court-house. Why not? He was an
advocate--nobody dare refuse him admission to a Court of Law. And as
soon as Stowell stepped on to the bench he would rise in his place
and cry, "You scoundrel! Come down from the Judgment seat! Because
you were rich you thought you could buy a man's soul and a woman's
body. But take that, and that!" and then he would fling his father's
money into Stowell's face.
At that moment, having parted from the Chief Constable, Stowell was
driving down the street.
Gell dragged his black bag from the corner into which he had thrown
it on returning from Castletown, and put on his gown without
remembering that he was in his shirt-sleeves, and then his wig,
without knowing that his hair was dishevelled.
He was staggering from weakness and the pictures on the walls were
going round him with an increasing vertigo, but he was struggling to
regain his strength.
He heard a step on the stair (a man's step this time) and then a firm
knock at his door.
"Farrell!" he thought. The Chief Constable was coming to arrest him.
But nobody should do that yet--not until he had come face to face
with Stowell.
The knock was repeated.
"Go away!" he cried.
Then he pulled open the door, and found Stowell himself standing on
the threshold. He fell back breathless. Stowell entered the room
and closed the door behind him.