During the remainder of that day and the whole of the following one
Fenella was a prey to the cruellest perplexity. Would Victor Stowell
issue that warrant for the arrest of the innocent man, being himself
the guilty one?
How could he refuse? It would be his duty to issue the warrant--what
excuse could he make for not doing so? And then what a temptation to
let things go on as usual! Although he had broken prison, and
therefore his oath as a Judge, how easily he might persuade himself
that it had only been to snatch that poor girl from a wicked Statute!
Yet if Victor issued that warrant for the arrest of Gell he would be
a lost man for ever after. No matter how high he might rise he would
go down, down, down until his very soul would perish.
"It cannot be! It must not be! It shall not!"
She wanted to run to Ballamoar and say, "Don't do it. If you have
done wrong confess and take the consequences."
Oh, what did she care about their quarrel now? It was no longer
Bessie Collister's life, but Victor Stowell's soul that was in peril.
But no, she could not ask him to act under compulsion. He must act
of his own free will. In the valley of the shadow of sin the guilty
soul must walk alone.
"But is there nothing I can do for him?" she asked herself.
Yes, there was one thing--one thing only. She could pray. For long
hours on the night before Stowell was to come to Government House
Fenella knelt in her bed and prayed for him.
"O God help him! God help him! Help him to resist this great
temptation."
At length peace came to her. Somewhere in the dead waste of the
night she seemed to receive an answer to her prayers.
"He'll do the right, whatever it may cost him," she thought, and as
the day was dawning she fell asleep.
But when she awoke in the morning she felt as if her heart would
break. If Stowell confessed and took the consequences (as she had
prayed he might do) he would be lost to her for ever. He would have
to give up his Judgeship, be banished from the island, and become an
outcast and a wanderer.
"Is that to be the end of everything between us? After all this
waiting?"
Her eyes were full of tears when she looked at herself in the glass,
but they were shining like stars for all that. An immense pity for
Stowell had taken possession of her. An immense faith in him also.
He must be the most unhappy man alive, but he was her man now; and
nothing on earth should part them.
Going down to breakfast she met Miss Green on the stairs. The old
lady was full of some breathless story of rioting in Douglas the
evening before. How remote it all sounded! She hardly heard what
was being said to her.
Coming upon the maid in the corridor she said,
"The Deemster is to call to-day, Catherine. Tell him I wish to see
him before he sees the Governor."
In the breakfast-room her father was looking over a printer's proof
on a sheet of foolscap paper. It was headed with the Manx
coat-of-arms and the words "ISLE OF MAN CONSTABULARY," and had an
empty space near the top for a block to be made from a photograph.
"But that is of no consequence now," thought Fenella, "no consequence
whatever."