Anna Wetherell—Crosbie Wells

Anna Wetherell’s connection to Crosbie Wells is defined by a disputed account of intimacy, pregnancy, and separation. Anna tells Lydia Wells and Reverend Devlin that she slept with Lydia’s husband, Crosbie, and that Lydia sent her to Hokitika while she was carrying Crosbie’s child. But Anna had also identified Francis Carver as the father of the baby that never came to term. The two accounts make her relationship with Crosbie consequential without making its full history certain: the testimony establishes a sexual encounter and a pregnancy claim, while leaving paternity contested.

The affair and separation

In her conversation with Lydia and Devlin, Anna describes herself as having played the serpent in Lydia’s household. When pressed to explain, she says that she lay with Lydia’s husband. Lydia recasts this as Anna having seduced Crosbie, making the relationship a source of injury within the household rather than simply an encounter between Anna and Crosbie. The exchange makes clear that Lydia regards Crosbie as her husband and Anna’s involvement with him as a betrayal.

Lydia then asks what she did in retaliation. Anna says Lydia sent her away to Hokitika, and, when asked about her condition, answers that she was with child. She identifies the unborn baby as Crosbie’s. Lydia confirms that she sent Anna away, but asks whether her reaction was still the right one. The question leaves the separation charged with competing positions: Anna connects her removal to her pregnancy by Crosbie, while Lydia acknowledges the action without resolving the moral dispute between them.

The scene presents the pregnancy through Anna’s testimony rather than independent confirmation. Devlin’s astonishment marks the disclosure as new information to him, and Lydia’s questions elicit the details in stages: first the sexual relationship, then the pregnancy, then the claimed father. The sequence gives the revelation dramatic force, but does not by itself settle whether Anna’s account of paternity is true.

A conflicting account of the child’s father

A later conversation between Benjamin Löwenthal and Edgar Clinch brings the uncertainty into sharper focus. Löwenthal asks Clinch about Anna’s baby, which did not come to term, and recalls the night he found her after the altercation with Carver. Clinch confirms that this was when Anna confessed that Carver was the child’s father. After a long silence, he says she had never spoken of the matter before that night. Thus the claim that the baby was Crosbie’s is not the only account in circulation: Anna herself had previously named Carver.

Clinch says his earlier understanding was that the father was a man from Anna’s Dunedin days, not someone from Hokitika, because the months did not fit. He does not say that he knew the man was Crosbie. When Löwenthal points out that Carver knew Anna in Dunedin, the fact makes Carver a possible candidate, but Clinch says he cannot supply further information. Anna’s arrival on the Godspeed is also mentioned, yet that detail does not establish who fathered the child.

The contrast between the accounts is sharpened by their circumstances. Anna identifies Crosbie as the father while speaking to Lydia, in a conversation about the affair and Lydia’s decision to send her away. Her later confession naming Carver is recalled in the context of the altercation between Anna and Carver. The evidence gives each statement a different immediate setting, but does not establish why Anna’s account changed or which claim, if either, is accurate.

Testimony, denial, and uncertainty

Löwenthal explains that a discussion at the West Coast Times Office has prompted him to reconsider Anna’s confession. He suggests that Anna might have been telling the truth or might have been spinning a line, and acknowledges that there had previously been no reason to doubt her. His uncertainty is not proof against Anna; it reflects the new complication raised by Carver’s denial and the conflicting claims about the child.

Clinch resists allowing Carver’s word to outweigh Anna’s. He argues that the question is Carver’s word against hers and that denial costs a man nothing. His response underscores an imbalance in the exchange: a denial can be made without consequence, while Anna’s account is scrutinized for its timing and consistency. Löwenthal, by contrast, declines to take either person’s side, though he considers the timing of Anna’s confession potentially significant. Neither man supplies evidence that resolves the dispute.

Significance of the relationship

The relationship between Anna and Crosbie is therefore disclosed through testimony that also exposes the limits of what the characters know. Anna’s claim connects her pregnancy and removal to Crosbie, while her earlier identification of Carver prevents that claim from functioning as an uncontested fact. The difference matters because the question is not merely whether Anna and Crosbie were intimate; it is whether Crosbie was the father of the child she says she carried away to Hokitika.

The surviving exchange preserves that uncertainty rather than closing it. Lydia acknowledges sending Anna away but does not confirm the paternity claim, and Clinch can only report what Anna said on a later night. Löwenthal recognizes that timing may matter, yet stops short of a verdict. The result is a relationship marked by intimacy, household rupture, and an unresolved account of parentage: Crosbie’s place in Anna’s history is significant, but the evidence presented here does not establish him as the child’s father.