Complete works of hall c.., p.575
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 575
And then Janet, who had smuggled a brandy-flask into the luncheon basket at the back of the dog-cart, stood with a swollen heart and watched the old man as he went off in the morning mist, with the awakened rooks cawing over the unseen tops of the trees.
Three hours later, the Deemster arrived at Castletown. The sun was up, and there was a crowd at the castle gate. All hats were off as he passed through the Judge’s private passage-way to the dark robing-room with its deeply recessed window. The Governor, in General’s uniform, was there already, for he sat also in the high court of the island.
A few minutes later they were in the Court-house. It was densely crowded, and all rose as they entered. But at that moment the Deemster was conscious of one presence only his own youth in wig and gown (himself as he used to be forty years before) in the curved benches for the advocates immediately below. It was Victor.
Then the prisoner was brought in a forlorn-looking creature of three or four-and-twenty, not without traces of former comeliness, but now a rag of a woman, ill-clad and slatternly.
When asked to plead she said nothing, therefore the customary plea of Not Guilty was made for her, and without more ado the Attorney- General embarked on the history of her crime.
It was not a case for refinement; the crime was palpable; it bad no redeeming feature, and for the protection of life in the island it called for the extreme penalty of the law.
Then, with the usual long pauses, the woman’s story was raked out of the witnesses her neighbours in the low streets that crept under the Castle walls, the police and the doctor. She had been an orphan from her birth, brought up at the expense of the parish by a woman who had ill-treated her. As a young servant-girl she had been “taken advantage of” in the big house she lived in, perhaps by the footman, more probably by an officer of the regiment then garrisoned in the town. Finally she had married the dead man, lived a cat-and-dog life with him (there was a dark record of drink and assaults) and at last stabbed him to the heart in a fatal quarrel and been found standing over his body with a table-knife in her hand.
Stowell’s cross-examination consisted of three questions only. When the dead man was found had he anything in his hand? “Yes, a poker,” said the policeman. When the prisoner was arrested were there any wounds on her? “Yes, three on the head,” said the doctor. Were there any wounds on the dead man’s body except the heart-stab from which he died? “None whatever.”
“Ah!” said the Deemster, and he reached forward to make a note.
When the Court adjourned for luncheon, the case for the Crown was over, and it almost seemed as if the rope of the hangman were already about the prisoner’s neck.
Stowell did not leave the Court-house. He sat in his place with folded arms and closed eyes. Tommy Vondy, the jailer, looked in on him sitting alone, and presently returned (from the direction of the Deemster’s room) with a plate of sandwiches and something in a glass, but he sent back both untouched.
When the Court resumed it appeared to be still more crowded and excited than before. As the Deemster took his seat, he saw that his son’s face was strongly illumined by the sun (which was now streaming from a lantern light in the roof) and that it was pale and drawn. Immediately behind Victor a lady was sitting it was Fenella Stanley.
Then Stowell rose for the defence. There was a hush, and the Deemster found himself breathing audibly and wishing that he could pour something of himself into his son himself as he used to be in the old days when God had given him strength.
But that was only for a moment. Stowell began slowly, almost nervously, but was soon speaking with complete command, and the Deemster, who had been bending forward, leaned back.
He did not intend to call witnesses. Neither would he put the prisoner into the box. He would content himself with the evidence for the Crown. He knew no more about the crime than the jury did. The accused had told him nothing, and degraded as they might think her, he had not thought it right to invade the sanctity of a woman’s soul. That she had killed her husband was clear. If killing him was a crime she was guilty. But was it a crime? To answer that let the jury follow him while he did his best to piece together, from the evidence before them, the torn manuscript of this poor creature’s story.
Then followed such speaking as none could remember to have heard ‘in that court before. Flash after flash of spiritual light seemed to recreate the stages of the prisoner’s life. First, as the child, who should have been happy as the birds and bright as the flowers, but had never known one hour of the love and guidance of her natural protectors. Next, as the young girl, pretty perhaps, with the light of love dawning on her, but betrayed and abandoned. Next, as the deserted creature, braving out her disgrace with “Wait! only wait! My gentleman will come back and marry me yet!” Next, as the badgered and shame-ridden woman, with all hope gone, saying to her despairing heart, “What do I care what happens to me now? Not a toss!” and then marrying (as the last cover for a hunted dog) the brute who afterwards had beaten her, brutalized her, cursed her, taught her to drink, and brought her down, down, down to … what they saw.
Kill him? Yes, she had killed him there couldn’t be a doubt about that. But if she had three wounds on her body, and he had only the wound from which he died, was it not clear as noonday that she had been the victim of a murderous assault, and had struck back to save her life? If so her act was not murder and the only righteous verdict would be Not Guilty.
For the last passage of his defence Stowell faced full upon the jury, and spoke in a ringing and searching voice:
“Long ago, in Galilee, out of the supreme compassion which covered with forgiveness the transgressions of one who had sinned much but loved much, it was said, ‘Let him that is without sin among you cast the first stone.’ We have all done something we would fain forget, and when we lay our heads on our pillow we pray that the darkness may hide it. But does anybody doubt that if the all-seeing justice could enter this Court this day another figure would be standing there in the dock by the side of that unhappy woman a man in scarlet uniform perhaps, with decorations on his breast, and that the Deemster would have to say to him, ‘You did this, for you were the first.’ Mercy, then mercy for the beaten, the broken, the scapegoat, the sinner.”
People said afterwards that Stowell was a full half minute in his seat before anybody seemed to be aware that he was no longer speaking.
The spectators had listened without making a sound; the jury (a panel of stolid Manx farmers) had sat without moving a muscle; the prisoner had raised her head for the first time during the trial and then dropped it lower than before and her shoulders had shaken as if from inaudible sobs; the Governor, who had all day been drawing geometrical patterns on the sheet of foolscap in front of him, had let his pencil fall and stared down at the paper, and the Deemster had looked up at the lantern light from which the sunlight (it had moved on) was now streaming upon his face, showing at last a solitary tear that was rolling slowly down his cheek to the end of his firm-set mouth.
Then there w r as a rustle, as if the windows of a room on the edge of the sea had suddenly been thrown open. The Attorney General was speaking again. After the defence they had just listened to (there being no evidence to rebut) he would waive his right of reply the Crown desired justice, not revenge.
The Deemster’s summing-up was the shortest that had ever been heard from him. There were legal reasons which justified the taking of human life, but the cases to which they applied were few. If the jury thought the prisoner had wilfully killed her husband they would find her Guilty. If they were satisfied from what they had heard that she had reasonable grounds for thinking that a felony was being committed upon her which endangered her own life they would find her Not Guilty.
Without leaving their box the jury promptly gave a verdict of Not Guilty; and then the Deemster in a loud, clear, almost triumphant voice said:
“Let the prisoner be discharged.”
A few minutes later there was a scene of excitement on the green within the Castle walls. The spectators, being turned out of the Court-house with difficulty, were waiting for the chief actors in the life-drama to come down the stone steps, and from the private door to the Deemster’s room.
“Wonderful! He snatched the woman out of the jaws of death, Sir!”
“The Deemster’s a grand man, but he’ll have to be looking to his laurels!”
“Man alive, that was a speech that must have been dear to a father’s heart, though!”
Stowell was one of the first to appear. He looked pale, almost ill, and was carrying his soft felt hat in his hand, for the Court-house had been close and there was perspiration on his forehead still. A way was made for him and he passed through the courtyard without speaking or making sign, until he came under the arch of the Portcullis and there he was stopped by someone. It was Fenella. She was waiting for the Governor and hoping she might come upon Stowell also. Her eyes were red and swollen.
“How magnificent you were!” she said. And then with a half-tremulous laugh: “But how could you see into a woman’s heart like that? I shall always be afraid of you in future, Sir!”
The Deemster came next. He was muffled in his great-coat and scarf, and was walking heavily on his stick, but there was a proud look in his uplifted face. With his left hand he grasped Victor’s right, but he did not look at him, and he passed on without a word. Fenella followed, offering her arm, but he insisted on giving his the grand old gentleman to the last.
But this time the Attorney- General had taken possession of Stowell. He had lost his case, but one of his “boys” had won it. “I’ve just been telling your father I always knew the root of the matter was in you,” he said, and then others gathered around.
The Governor came last, having had documents to sign, and taking Stowell’s arm, he carried him away, saying,” Come along they’ll kill you.”
The Deemster’s dog-cart had now gone, but the Governor’s carriage was at the gate, with Fenella inside.
“Don’t forget your promise about Ballamoar,” she said.
“I’m going to-morrow,” said Stowell.
Just then there was a commotion among the crowd. The liberated woman was coming out of the Castle, surrounded by a tumultuous company of her friends from the back streets. She saw Stowell by the carriage door, and breaking away from her companions she rushed up to him, threw herself at his feet, laid hold of his hand and covered it with kisses.
“That settles it,” said Fenella, in a thick voice, after the woman had been carried off. “Now you know what the future of your life is to be that of the champion of wronged and helpless women.”
At the railway station, and in the railway carriage, Stowell’s fellow advocates overwhelmed him with congratulations, but he hardly heard them. At last he folded his arms and closed his eyes, and, thinking he was tired, they left off troubling him.
On arriving at Ramsey his pulses were beating fast, and on going down the High Street past the Old Plough Inn, he hardly felt the ground under his feet.
Clashing his door behind him he went into his bedroom and threw himself down on his bed. An immense joy had taken possession of him. Ambition, dead so long, had been restored to vivid life under Fenella’s last words.
And then came a shock. Turning to the table by his bedside, his eyes fell on the photograph that stood upon it.
Bessie Collister!
II
The Deemster had a cheerful homegoing. Young Robbie Creer said afterwards that he had never seen the old man so strong and hearty. Driving himself, he saluted everybody on the roads, always by name and generally in the Anglo-Manx. All the way back it was “How do, John?” or “Grand day done, Mr. Killip.”
Janet was waiting for him at the porch of Ballamoar.
“You must be tired after your long day, your Honour?”
“Not at all!”
“And Victor how did he get on, Sir?”
“Wonderfully! Won his case and covered himself with honour.”
At dinner (he insisted on Janet dining with him) he talked of nothing but Victor and the trial.
“He has got his foot on the ladder now, Miss Curphey, and there is no height to which he may not ascend.”
Janet could do nothing but wipe her shining eyes and say, “Aw, well now! Think of that now!” And then, with a wise shake of her old head, “But nobody can say I didn’t know he would make us proud of him some day.”
Night fell. Janet began to be afraid of the Deemster’s excitement. She remembered Doctor Clucas’s order (privately given to her) to knock at the Deemster’s door between six and seven every morning, and, if she got no answer, to go into the room. She would do so to-morrow.
After Janet had gone to bed the Deemster sat at his desk in the Library and wrote for a long time in his leather-bound book. When he rose the clock on the landing was striking twelve.
He closed the book, but instead of putting it under lock and key, as he had always done before, he left it open on the desk, merely shutting the lid on it. Then with a long look round the room he put out the lamps and turned to go upstairs.
The reaction had begun by this time, and he staggered a little and laid hold of the handrail. He paused three times on the stairs, but his weakness did not frighten him. Lighting his candle on the landing, he wound the clock, extinguished the lamp that stood by it and faced the last flight with a smile. All was silent in the house now.
On reaching his own bedroom he paused again, and then stepped down the corridor to Victor’s. The door was ajar. He pushed it open, took a step into the empty room and looked round at the cocoanut matting, the rugs, the bed in the shadow, the discoloured school trunk in the corner. And then he smiled again. But he was breathing deeply at intervals and had the look of a man who knew that he was doing familiar things for the last time.
The window in his own room was open, and the smell of tropical plants (especially the magnolia, with its sleep-inducing odour) was coming up from, the garden. He remembered that his own father had brought them from the East long ago, when he was himself a boy. The sky was dark, but the hidden moon broke through silvery clouds for a moment, and, looking through the surrounding blackness, he saw the bald crown of Snaefell, far beyond the trees and above the glen. He remembered that he had seen it so all the way up since he was a child.
He closed the curtains slowly and taking his candle again he walked around the room and looked long at the pictures on the walls. They were chiefly portraits or miniatures of Victor, at various periods of childhood and youth the latest being a photograph sent home to him from abroad.
That was the last oscillation of the pendulum. When he was about to prepare for bed he found his strength exhausted, and he was compelled to sit several times while he undressed. But he continued to smile, and when he lay down at length and put his head on the pillow he did it with a will.
Then he closed his eyes, and drew a deep breath, as one who has gone through a long day’s labour but has seen it finish up well at the end. And then he closed his eyes and the surge of sleep passed over him.
Outside the house everything seemed to slumber. It was a night strangely calm and dark. The tall elms stood like soundless sentinels in the darkness. Not a leaf stirred. The rivers flowed without noise, as if a supernatural hand had been laid on them to silence them. The only sound was the slow boom of the sea, which seemed to come up out of the ground and to be the pulse of the earth itself. The deep mystery of night was over all.
Towards morning there was a faint waft of wind in the trees and along the grass. Was it the movement in the earth’s bosom of the new day about to be ‘born? Or some invisible presence striding along with noiseless footsteps?
Within the house everything seemed to sleep. But the Deemster lay dead.
III
“Mr. Victor, Sir! Mr. Victor!”
It was Robbie Creer, who, after knocking in vain at Stowell’s door in the grey hours of morning, was shouting up at his window. He had driven into town in the dog-cart and the little mare was steaming with perspiration.
Stowell threw up the window and heard the dread news. After a moment he answered, in a voice that sounded strange in Bobbie’s ears:
“Wait for me. I will go back with you.”
When he was ready to go he wrote a message to Fenella, and left it for Mrs. Quayle to send off as soon as the telegraph office opened:
“He has gone, heaven forgive me. I am going home now.”
It was Sunday morning, and the sleeping streets echoed to the rattle of the flying wheels. When they got into the country (they were taking the shortest cuts) the farms were lying idle and quiet. Stowell sat with folded arms while they raced past the whitewashed cottages with thatched roofs, and scattered flocks of geese that went off with screams and stretched necks.
On arriving at Ballamoar he paused before entering the house. The pastoral tranquillity of the place was heart-breaking. The sun had risen, the rooks were cawing, the linnets were twittering in the eaves, a kitten was playing with a butterfly in the porch it was just as if nothing had happened during the night.
Janet was in his father’s room, with red eyes and a handkerchief in her hand. She did not speak, but her silence seemed to say, “Why didn’t you come before?”
Stowell advanced to the side of the bed. The august face on the pillow, in the majesty and tranquillity of death, had never before looked so calm and noble, but that also seemed to say: “Why didn’t you come before?” He reached over and put his lips to the cold forehead. And then, with head down, he hurried from the room.
He could never afterwards remember what he did during the rest of that day only that to escape from the vague cheerfulness, the hushed bustle, the half-smothered hysteria, which come to a house after a death, he had strolled along the shore and past the ruined church in which he had walked with Fenella.
At length Janet came to him in the library to say “Good-night” and to sob out something about not grieving too much. And then he was left alone.
