Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 592
“Even if she is guilty?”
“Chut! Who’s to know that if the Coorts acquit her? They are wayses and wayses. Lawyers are mortal clever at twisting the law when they’re wanting to. You’re Dempster now; and the bosom friend of the man that got my girl into this trouble has got to get her out of it.”
“So,” said Stowell, breathing hard, “you have come to ask me to degrade Justice” (Dan made a grunt of contempt), “not to save the girl but to protect you you and your rag of a character?”
Dan drew himself up with a short laugh, half bitter and half triumphant.
“Rag, is it? Take care what you’re saying, Mr. Sto’ll, Sir. You may be a big man in the island now, but there’s them that’s bigger and that’s the people.”
Stowell pointed with a quivering hand to the clock on the landing, and said, “Look at that clock. If you’re not out of this house in one minute...”
Dan’s laugh rose to a cry of derision.
“So that’s it, is it? That’s what the first Justice of the Peace in the Isle of Man is, eh? Son of the ould Dempster too! The grand ould holy saint as they’re...”
But before he could finish, Stowell, with a shout that drowned Dan’s laugh as if it had been the whimper of a baby girl, laid hold of the man by the collar of his coat and the slack of his trousers and flung him out of the open door and clashed it after him.
Dan, who had rolled and tossed and bumped on the path like a fat hogshead kecked from the tail of a cart, picked himself up and went staggering down the drive, shaking his fist at the house and pouring his maledictions upon it in a voice that was like the broken howl of a limping dog.
Janet came running from her room, and seeing Stowell with his eyes aflame and panting for breath, said, “Oh dear! Oh dear! Now you’ll be worse.”
“On the contrary, I’ll be better better in every way,” he said.
His resolution was taken. Never would he sit on Bessie’s case. Nothing should tempt him to do so.
But Fate had not yet done with him.
V
On the afternoon of the following day Stowell walked for a long hour on the shore, trying to deaden the tumult in his brain in the loud surge of the sea. Returning to Ballamoar he found the Governor’s carriage outside the house. Had the Governor come to see him? It was Fenella. She was at tea with Janet in the library.
Although she rose to greet him with all the sunshine of her smile he could see that her face was feverish.
“I’ve come to the north on three errands,” she said.
“So?”
“First to see yourself, of course, and I find that, in spite of doctor’s orders, you have already resumed your gypsy habits.”
“He would go out, dear,” said Janet.
“Next, to deliver a message from the Governor.”
“Yes?”
“He has postponed the Court for three days in the hope that you may be able to sit then.”
“Ah!”
“My last errand was to see the mother of that poor girl who is to be charged with the murder of her child.”
“The mother?”
“Yes, I’ve just left her. She still says she knows nothing. It’s pitiful! A simple, sincere, religious old soul, who has seen trouble of her own apparently. I don’t think for a moment she would tell an untruth, yet it is easy to see that in her heart she believes her daughter to be guilty.”
“Guilty?”
“Yes, but there’s somebody guiltier than the girl the man.”
Stowell was silent; but he felt his face twitching.
“That’s why I am so anxious that you should sit on this case if you can, Victor, not leave it to Deemster Taubman. Old Judges often refuse to investigate collateral facts, and so the woman is punished and the man goes free.”
“They can’t do otherwise, dear. They can’t try the man.”
“Not if he has been a party to the crime?”
“A party...”
“Yes! I’m satisfied that in this case he is, too.”
The girl might be guilty, but she could not have done all she was charged with. It was physically impossible. Somebody must have helped her. And that somebody (the old mother having to be ruled out) must be the man who had it to his interest to save his miserable character by concealing the fact that the girl had given, birth to a child at all.
Stowell had as much as he could do to cover his embarrassment. He lowered his voice and said, “That’s a blind alley. I’ve read the Depositions. I’m sure it is, dear.”
“Perhaps it is, perhaps it isn’t,” said Fenella.” I intend to follow it up anyway.”
“How?” said Stowell, but rather with his mouth than his voice.
“I’m already on the track of something.”
“On the track...”
“Yes. It seems that somebody has been telling the mother that on the night when the girl left home (shut out by her abominable step-father, you know) she went to the house of a Mrs. Quayle, living on the south shore in Ramsey.”
Stowell’s heart thumped and his lips quivered.
“Mrs. Quayle?”
“Why, that must be the housekeeper at your chambers, dear,” said Janet, busy with her teacups.
“You know her?... But then everybody knows everybody in the Isle of Man,” said Fenella.
With a sense of duplicity, Stowell found himself saying,” Well?”
“Well, I’m going to see this Mrs. Quayle on my way home to Government House. She’ll be able to tell me how long the girl stayed with her, who took her away, and where she went to.”
Stowell dropped his head, feeling that he wanted to escape from the room, and Fenella (indignantly, passionately, vehemently) went on to denounce the guilty man.
“Of course the girl is shielding him. A woman always does that. I should do it myself if I were in the same position. But oh, how I should like to find him out! Even if he has taken no part in the actual crime, how I should like to punish him to expose him! You must sit on this case you really must, dear.”
When the time came for Fenella to go Janet took her upstairs to look at some new decorations that had been made in the room that was to be her boudoir. Stowell remained in the library, and the sound of Fenella’s step on the floor above beat on his stunned brain with the drumming noise of a train in a tunnel.
He had a sense of cowardice which he had never felt before. At one moment he wanted to tell Fenella everything, thinking that would be the end of his tortures. But at the next he reflected that it would be the beginning of hers inflicting an incurable wound upon her affection. And then if Bessie were going to be acquitted, as seemed possible (the evidence being so unconvincing), why should he enlarge the area of the shameful secret?
When Fenella returned (saying, as she came downstairs, how beautiful her room was and how proud she would be of it) he took her out to the carriage.
“Do you remember,” she whispered (she had recovered her gay spirits, the coachman was on the box), “do you remember the first tune you saw me off from here?”
He nodded and tried to smile.
“I was too bashful to shake hands and you were too shy to look at me.”
And being seated in the carriage and the door closed on her, she said, “By the way, wouldn’t you like to drive over with me to Mrs. Quayle if I brought you home again?”
“No, no. … I mean...”
She laughed merrily. “Oh, very well! You’ve refused me again! I’ll remember it, Sir.”
After the carriage had disappeared at the turn of the drive, Stowell went up to his room, shut the door behind him and covered his face in his hands.
Fenella hunting him down! Blindly, unconsciously, innocently s while urging him, entreating him, almost compelling him to sit on the case. The woman he loved and who loved him was trying to destroy him. Was this to be his punishment?
Mrs. Quayle? No, she would say nothing. If she thought it would injure his mother’s son no power on earth would prevail upon her to speak. But sooner or later, by one means or other, Fenella would find out, and then...
“God be merciful to me, a sinner!” he moaned, smothering the sound of the words behind his hands.
Could he sit in judgment on Bessie Collister’s case with all the forces of the defence (inspired by Fenella) directed towards branding the Judge as the real criminal? Impossible! Yet what could he do?
At length an idea occurred to him. He would go up to Government House, tell the whole truth to the Governor and ask to be relieved of his duty. It would be a terrible ordeal, but there was no escape from it.
“Yes, I will go up to the Governor in the morning.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
THE JUDGE AND THE MAN
“HELLOA! Glad to see you about again. Fenella has gone off to the south of the island somewhere, but she’ll be home for luncheon. Take a cigar? No? Not smoking yet? I must anyway.”
“I’ve come to see you on a serious matter, Sir,” said Stowell he felt his lips trembling.
“So?”
The Governor glanced up quickly, charged his pipe and then settled himself to listen.
“You will remember the story I told you about the man who had promised to marry a girl and then fallen in love with somebody else?”
“Perfectly.”
Stowell paused a moment. His lips became pale and his hands contracted.
“Well?”
“That was my own story, Sir.”
There was another moment of silence. Stowell had expected an exclamation of surprise, a clang of astonishment, but the Governor’s face was still to the fire and the only sound he made was the swivelling of the pipe between his teeth.
“You advised me to break off the engagement and I did so.”
“What was the result?”
“The girl was relieved.”
“Relieved?”
“Yes, because she, too, had in the meantime fallen in love with somebody else my friend Gell.”
“How fortunate!”
“It seemed so at first. I thought Providence had stepped in to help me out. But Fate has kept a terrible reckoning, Sir.”
“What has happened?”
“The girl has committed a crime. She is in Castle Rushen awaiting her trial for the murder of her new-born child.”
“The woman Collister?”
“Yes. And now I’m a Judge and in ordinary course it is my duty to try her.”
There was another period of silence, broken only by the rapid puffing of the Governor’s pipe.
“But that’s not all, Sir. Being in this frightful position everything is tempting me to corrupt Justice. First, my natural desire to influence the trial in favour of the girl perhaps to get her off altogether. Next, pity for her poor mother who has been pleading for mercy. Then, friendship for Gell who has been begging me to try the case because the old Statute is severe and my colleague cruel. And last of all the step -father of the girl who has been trying to intimidate me.”
“Well?”
“I think you will see it is impossible for me to sit on a case in which my private interest and my public duty conflict utterly impossible. It would be against all usage, all justice.”
The Governor removed his pipe. His face had become cold and hard. “You speak of your colleague have you done anything with him?”
“Yes. I’ve asked him to sit instead of me.”
“What if he cannot?”
“Then I will ask you, Sir, to send for another Judge from across the water.”
Stowell had struggled through to the end, although perspiration had been breaking out on his forehead. When he had finished the Governor sat for some time without speaking.
Obscure motives were operating within him. In the depths of his mind (scarcely known to himself) he was asking himself, “How will all this, if I allow it to go farther, affect Fenella? Will it stop her marriage, disturb her happiness, destroy her life?” But on the surface of his mind he was only aware of considerations of public welfare. He was irritated by what had occurred. It was an impediment in his path which he wished to kick out of the way.
He rose, laid his pipe on the mantelpiece, and standing with his back to the fire and his hands behind him, his chin firm and his mouth set hard, he said, with sudden energy, “Now listen to me. I always knew that was your own story.”
“Yes?”
“What I did not know was that any harm had been done. Did you?”
“Indeed no.”
“Did the girl?”
“It is incredible.”
“Do you know that she has killed her child?”
“Not certainly. She denies it, and the evidence is not too convincing.”
“Do you know that she ever had a child?”
“No … I can’t say.... She denies that also, and the medical testimony is far from conclusive.”
“Do you know are you satisfied that if she had a child, and killed it, the child was yours?”
Stowell, with a gulp, stammered something about Bessie having been a good girl before he met her.
“But do you know anything?”
“Well, no … I can’t say....”
“Then, good heavens, what are you thinking about? Knowing nothing, nothing really, you are acting, and asking me to act, on a cloud of conjectures. I’ll not do it.”
Stowell drew his breath with a gasp of relief. It was just as if he had been living for days in the stuffy atmosphere of a sealed room and somebody had broken open a window. His head was down; the Governor touched his shoulder.
“My friend, you are doing that poor girl a cruel injustice.”
Stowell was startled and looked up.
“In your own mind you are finding her guilty before she has been tried.”
“Ah!”
“You are doing yourself an injustice, too. Even if the girl committed this crime I say if you are not responsible for it.”
Stowell began to stammer again. “I … I did wrong in the first instance, Sir, and nothing but wrong...”
But the Governor said sharply, “Of course you did wrong in the first instance. But that has nothing to do with the wrong which she (if she is guilty) has done since. It can’t be supposed that you had any sympathy with her act, can it?”
“God forbid!”
“Did you desert her? Did you leave her to the mercy of the world? Has she ever been in want? Was she in any danger of being unable to provide for her offspring when it came?”
“No … I cannot say....”
“Then what folly to think you are responsible for what she did in taking the life of her child if she did take it. No, other facts and motives operated with the girl. And whatever those facts and motives were, you, so far as I can see, had nothing to do with them nothing whatever.”
Stowell’s pulse was beating high. He tried to say something about his moral responsibility, but again the Governor cut him short.
“Your moral responsibility!” he said, with a ring of sarcasm.
“I’m sick of this sentimental talk about moral responsibility man’s responsibility for the conduct of woman, and all the rest of it. The person who commits the crime is the criminal that’s the only foundation of law and order.”
“Then you think, Sir,” said Stowell, “that since I …”
“I think,” said the Governor, “that the whole thing is unfortunate, damnably unfortunate, but since you are not responsible for the girl’s crime, if she committed a crime at all, and knew nothing about it, and have no sympathy with it, you ought to go on doing your duty. Why shouldn’t you?... Interested? Of course you are interested. In a little community like this a Judge is nearly always interested. Isn’t that what your Deemster’s oath is intended to provide for?”
Stowell muttered something about being afraid, and again the Governor caught him up.
“Afraid? What are you afraid of? The public? Doesn’t it occur to you that the only risk you run in that direction is not the risk of sitting on this case but of not sitting on it? There must be people who have seen you coming here this morning, and if you are not in Court on the appointed day, aren’t they likely to ask why?”
“There’s Gell...”
“Certainly there’s Gell.... When the marriage was broken off you didn’t tell him anything, did you?”
Stowell shook his head. “How could I?”
“Yes, how could you? And now he wishes you to sit, and, if you don’t, isn’t he likely to suspect the reason?”
“There’s... there’s Baldromma.”
“That wind-bag! Likely to make a cry against the administration of justice, is he? Well, the surest way to squelch such people is to walk over them.”
“There’s the girl herself.”
“Of course, there’s the girl herself. But if she is guilty and has held her tongue thus far, she’ll probably continue to do so.”
The Governor made a turn across the room and then drew up sharply.
“There’s myself, too. I suppose I deserve some consideration?”
“Indeed yes.”
“Then go on with your duty that’s all I ask of you.”
With a thrill of relief Stowell rose to go. But oh, misery of the heart, he had kept his most searching objection to the last.
“There is somebody else, your Excellency.”
“Who else?” asked the Governor, laying down the pipe he had taken up.
“I hate to mention her in this connection Fenella.”
“Fenella? Why, what on earth has Fenella...”
And then Stowell told him.
Having interested herself in this case, Fenella was hunting down the guilty man that he might be exposed and punished punished by public obloquy if he could not be punished by law.
“If she finds him before the trial how can I possibly sit? Whatever happens it will be coloured by her knowledge of the truth. If the girl is acquitted she will think I have helped her to escape punishment in order to salve my conscience or cover my share in her crime. And if she is condemned what happiness can there be for either of us after that?”
He had spoken with emotion, but the Governor, who had recovered from his surprise, replied impatiently, “Aren’t you crossing the bridge before you come to the river?”
Stowell made no answer, and at the next moment there was the sound of carriage wheels coming up the drive.
