Complete works of hall c.., p.589
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 589
Brief as the message was, the clerk at the counter could hardly decipher the agitated handwriting.
A few minutes later he was at the Police office, asking the Chief Constable for an order to allow him, as Bessie’s advocate, to see her alone in her cell.
At two o’clock he was back at the railway-station, taking the train for Castletown. As he stepped into his carriage the newsboys were calling the contents of the evening paper:
Victor Stowell appointed Deemster.
Glorious! Bessie would have a human being on the bench. Thank God for that anyway!
II
“I don’t know what you are talking about I really don’t. You make me laugh. Whatever will you say next! I was ill and I came home to have my mother nurse me, and that was all I knew until Cain, the constable, came to bring me here.”
It was Bessie before the High Bailiff. Her face was thin and pale, and she was clutching the rail of the dock in an effort to keep herself erect, while her shrill voice echoed to the roof.
The magistrate was about to commit her to prison when Dr. Clucas rose in the body of the Court-house.
“Your worship,” he said (his voice was husky and his eyes had a look of tears), “the defendant is suffering from the temporary mania which is not unusual in such cases. I suggest that she should be sent to the hospital.”
Bessie fainted. The next thing she knew was that she was in bed in a hospital ward, and that another doctor (a younger man with thin hair and a large pugnacious mouth) was leaning over her, and laying his hand on her breast. She pushed it off, and then he said, in an authoritative tone, “My good woman, if you are innocent, as you say, the best proof you can give is that of a medical examination.”
At this Bessie broke into fierce wrath.
“If you touch me again,” she cried, “I’ll tear your eyes out!”
Then she fainted once more, and for two days lay in a strong delirium. When she came to herself a nurse with a kind face was by her side, saying “Hush!” and doing something at her breast with a glass instrument.
She knew she had been delirious (having a vague memory of crying “Alick! Alick!” as she returned to consciousness) and was in fear of what she might have said.
“Is it morning?” she asked.
“Yes, dear.”
“Then it’s the next day?”
“The next but one.”
“Have I been wandering?”
“A little.”
“Did I call for anybody?”
“Yes.”
She dare not ask whom, but lay wondering if Alick knew where she was and what had happened to her. After a while she said, “Is it in the papers?”
The nurse nodded, and after a moment, with her eyes down, Bessie said, “Has anybody been here to ask for me?”
“Yes, your mother she comes night and morning.”
“Nobody else?”
“Nobody.”
Bessie broke into sobs and turned her face to the wall. Alick knew! He had given her up! She had lost him!
When she recovered from an agony of tears her eyes were glittering and her heart was bitter. What did she care what became of her now? They might do what they liked with her. Deny?
What was the good? She would deny no longer. She would tell the truth about everything.
Then Fenella Stanley came. Bessie thought she liked Miss Stanley better than any woman, except her mother, she had ever known. But that only made it the harder to hold to her resolution, for if she told the truth she would surely hurt Fenella. “Oh, why do you come to torture me?” she cried, when Fenella asked who was her “friend.” And not another word would she say.
Two days later, before breakfast, Cain, the constable, came with a sergeant of police to take her to Castle Rushen. She did not care! Why should she? But as she was leaving the hospital the nurse with the kind face whispered, “Good-bye, dear. You’re all right now. I’m going away and will say nothing.”
It was a cruelly beautiful morning, with a golden shimmer from the rising sun upon a tranquil sea. The railway station was full of townspeople going up to Douglas (it was market day there), so Bessie was hurried into the last compartment.
When the train ran into the country a flood of memories swept over her and she found it hard to keep back her tears. The young lambs were skipping on the hill-sides; the sheep were bleating; girls in sun bonnets were coming from the whitewashed outhouses to drive the cattle into the fields.
When they drew up at the station for the glen the shingly platform was crowded with passengers waiting for the train rosy-faced women with broad open baskets of butter and eggs, and elderly farmers smoking their strong thick twist and surrounded by their panting dogs. Bessie knew them all. At the last moment a young woman in a low cut blouse ran up it was Susie Stephen.
Bessie crept into a corner of the carriage and closed her eyes. But she could not shut out everything. Over the rumble of the wheels, when the train started again, she heard shrieks of laughter from the compartment in front. The elderly men were jesting in their free way with the girls, and the girls, nothing loth, were answering them back.
At the junction of St. John’s, the train had to stop for carriages from Peel to be linked on to it, and while the coupling was going on one of the passengers strolled along the platform. It was Willie Teare, who had wanted to marry Bessie, and he saw her behind the constables. At the next moment a throng of girls gathered outside her window, but the constables pulled down the blinds.
“Take your seats! Take your seats!”
The train went on. There was no more laughter from the passengers in the compartment in front. Bessie understood they were whispering about her.
Her heart was becoming hard. Sitting in the darkened carriage, with spears of sunlight flashing from the flapping blinds, she heard the constables talking about Mr. Stowell. It was reported that he had been made Deemster. He would make a good Deemster, too.
“A taste young, maybe, but clever clever uncommon.”
On reaching Douglas, where they had to change into the train for Castletown, Bessie was being hustled across the platform, between the constables, when she became aware of a crowd of women and girls who were crushing up to stare at her. There was a whispering and muttering.
“There she is!”
“Serve her right, I say!”
Half-an-hour later she was in Castle Rushen. The darkness within was blinding after the sunshine without. A woman with short and difficult breathing was moving about her. It was Mrs. Mylrea, the female warder. She took off Bessie’s cloak and hat, and, leaving her a brown blanket and a hard pillow, went away without speaking a word.
But then came Vondy, the head jailer, with words enough for both of them. Bessie did not know she was crying until the old man, in his blundering way, began to comfort her.
“Tut, tut, gel! They’re not for hanging you yet at all. While there’s life there’s hope!”
Left alone at last, and her eyes accustomed to the darkness, she saw where she was in a stone vault that had a small grill in the door (behind which a candle was burning) and a barred and deeply-recessed window, near the ceiling, through which a dull ray of borrowed light was coming, for the castle overlooked the harbour on the west of the Castle.
By this time her tears were turned to gall. A frightful revulsion had come over her soul. What had she done to deserve all this? The injustice of it, the cruelty, the barbarity, the hypocrisy!
Men were all alike. Go on, she knew what men were! A man only wanted one thing of a girl, and when he got that he forgot all about her. Alick Cell was the best of them, yet even he had forsaken her now that she was in trouble.
She had never intended to do harm to anybody, and yet there she was, and would remain, until they came to take her to the Court-house on the other side of the Castle-yard. Then hundreds of eyes would be on her (women’s eyes too) and when she raised her own she would see Mr. Stowell on the bench.
What a mockery! Mr. Stowell her judge! What would he do? His “duty” of course. All right, let’ him do it! Only she, too, would do something. After he had tried her and sentenced her and finished with her, she would tell him something. Why shouldn’t she? And what did she care what happened to anybody else? Fenella Stanley was nothing to her.
Suddenly she thought again about Alick Gell. If she did what she intended to do (tell everything) Alick also would be disgraced – The shame of her misfortune would follow him to the last day of his life. Even his own father would cast it up to him. Hadn’t she done enough harm to Alick already? If he had deserted her, she had deceived him. And yet she had deceived him only because she loved him.
“Alick! Alick! Alick!”
Her heart was crying. She was wishing she were dead.
She had flung herself down on her plank bed, with her face to the blank wall, when she heard the dead beating of footsteps in the corridor outside. At the next moment the door of her cell was opened and Tommy Vondy, the jailer, was saying, “Mr. Alexander Gell, the advocate, to see you alone.”
“Bessie!”
The jailer had gone. Alick was breathing quickly in the darkness by the door, and Bessie was huddled up on the bed, with the dull ray of reflected light upon her from the wall above.
“Bessie!”
His voice was low and full of tears. At first she did not answer.
“It’s Alick. Won’t you speak to me?”
“Go away!”
He could hear that she was crying.
“You won’t send me away, Bessie. I have been looking for you all over the island. It was only to-day I heard where you were and what had happened. I have come to help you to save you.”
He saw the dark form rising on the bed.
“Do you know what they say I did?”
“Yes, I know everything.”
“And you don’t believe it?”
“Not one word of it.”
“You think I am innocent?”
“I am sure you are.”
“Alick!”
With a great sob that shook her whole body she rose to her feet and flung herself upon him. For a long time they stood clasped in each other’s arms, and crying like children. Then they sat down side by side on the plank bed. His arm was about her, and her head was on his shoulder.
He was trying to make his voice cheerful, though it cracked sorely, while he reproved her for her tears. She would soon be free to leave that place. There was really nothing against her. Never had there been such a trumped-up case. The police must be crazy.
She clung to him with a frightened tenderness while he told her of the letter from Fenella Stanley asking him to take up the defence on behalf of the Society.
“Of course I should have taken it up in any case, you know. And now you must authorise me to defend you.”
She was startled. In the half darkness he saw her pale face (so pale and so thin) raised to his with a frightened look.
“You?”
“Why not, dear? I’m an advocate. You don’t suppose I’m going to leave your defence to anybody else, do you?”
“No, no! You must not!”
“But why? Can’t you trust me, Bess?”
“It isn’t that.”
“What then?”
Bessie did not answer him, and he went on talking, though his voice was breaking again. He knew he was not a born lawyer and a great speaker like Stowell, but the facts were so clear that he had only to state them and they would speak for themselves.
A fierce struggle was going on in Bessie’s soul. He whom she had wronged (never having wronged anybody else), he for whom she had committed her crime, wanted her to authorise him to stand up in Court and say she had not committed it. She had deceived him once could she deceive him again?
“No, no, no! I cannot!”
Alick was puzzled. “What do you mean, Bessie? Why shouldn’t I be your advocate?”
“I don’t want any advocate.”
“But you must have one. It isn’t enough to be not guilty we must prove you’re not. Why shouldn’t I do so?”
At length she was forced to make some explanation. The police were determined to have her condemned; therefore he would lose his case and that would go against him.
“Good gracious, girl, what nonsense! Anybody may lose a case. The greatest lawyers have lost cases. But it’s impossible that I should lose this one. And even if I lose it do you know what I shall do?”
“What?”
“Wait outside the prison door until you come out and marry you the same day to show that I believe in you still.”
At that Bessie was in floods of tears again. And again they cried in each other’s arms like children.
Then Alick, after drying his eyes in the darkness, put on a brave air, and told her what she had to do.
“Listen to me now. This is a low conspiracy, but if we are to defeat it, you must stick to your story. I shall have to put you in the box, for you must leave the Court without a stain on your character. First of all you must say …”
And then sitting by Bessie’s side in the dark cell, with only the candle looking in on them from the outside ledge of the grill, he rehearsed the facts as they were to be given in Court how by the cruelty of her step-father she had been shut out of the house late at night and had had to go elsewhere; how she had returned, being unwell, and wishing her mother to nurse her, and how she had been put to bed and had never left it until the constables came to take her away.
Bessie listened in silence, gazing before her like a captured sheep, and answering only by a nodding of her head.
“If the Attorney asks you anything else no matter what you must say you know nothing about it do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Say it after me then ‘I know nothing about it.’”
Bessie repeated the words like a woman talking in her sleep – “‘I know nothing about it.’”
“That’s all right. Leave the rest to me.”
“You think I shall get off?”
“I’m sure of it. If the General Gaol is held next week, we’ll be married the week after.”
“But, Alick?”
“Yes.”
“Your father and sisters, will they not always cast it up at you that your wife has been tried for …”
“Let them! If they do the Isle of Man will be dead to me for ever. We’ll go abroad to America perhaps and leave everything and everybody behind us.”
Bessie was crying once more, and Alick, to conceal his own tears, was going off with great bustle.
“Good-bye! I’ll be here again to-morrow. And oh, what do you think, Bess? Great news! Stowell has been made Deemster. So if the good Lord in Heaven will only keep that damned old Taubman in bed a little longer with his rheumatism, Stowell will be on the bench and you’ll have a fair trial at all events. Good-bye!”
For the next half-hour Bessie sobbed with joy. Tell the truth and destroy Alick’s faith in her? Never! Never in this world!
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
THE DEEMSTER’S OATH
IT was the morning of the day of the swearing-in of the new Deemster at Castle Rushen. The Bishop had asked permission to solemnise the ceremony with a religious service a custom long unobserved.
The service was held in a groined chamber of moderate size within walls thirty feet thick, once the banqueting-hall of the Kings of Man, now the jail chapel, with an atmosphere that seemed to be compounded equally of the intoxicated laughter of the old revellers and the moans of the condemned prisoners.
For the event of the day the chill place had been suitably decorated. Flags hung on the tarred walls, red cushions from the neighbouring church had been laid on the bare benches; a carpet had been stretched down the aisle of the flagged floor; a white embroidered altar-cloth covered the plain communion table, from which the light of four candles in silver candlesticks flickered on the faces of the small congregation chiefly officials, with their wives and daughters.
Shortly before eleven, the hour fixed for the service, Stowell entered, wearing for the first time the wig and gown of a judge, and he was led to one of three arm-chairs at the front. A little later there came through the thick walls the sound of soldiery clashing arms outside the Castle, and at the next moment the Governor arrived in General’s uniform of red and gold, with Fenella behind him in a large spring hat (her face glowing with animation), and they took the two remaining chairs. Then the Bishop in his scarlet robes came in, preceded by his crozier, and the service began.
It was short but solemn. First a psalm of David (“He shall judge thy people with righteousness and thy poor with judgment “); then an epistle to the Romans (“Owe no man anything”); and then an improvised prayer by the Bishop, asking the Almighty to grant His strength and wisdom to His servant who was shortly to take the solemn oath of his great office, that he might deliver the poor and needy, deal faithfully with all men, and show mercy to such as had erred and sinned. Then came the hymn “Thou Judge of quick and dead,” and finally the Benediction.
Stowell was strongly affected. He knelt at the prayer, and when the service was at an end and it was time to go, Fenella had to touch his shoulder.
The sun was bright outside, and they blinked their eyes as they crossed the courtyard to the Court-house.
The stately little chamber was full, save for the seats that had been reserved for the officials. There was a flash of faces, a waft of perfume, a flutter of handkerchiefs and a hum of whispering as the Governor stepped up to the scarlet dais, with Stowell following him and taking for the first time the seat of the Judge.
People who had been talking of the youth of the new Deemster were heard to say that in his judge’s wig he seemed older than they had expected and so like the portrait on the wall that one could almost fancy that his father was looking through the windows of his eyes.
The proceedings began with the Governor calling upon Stowell for his Warrant, and then reading it aloud “Our trusty and well-beloved Victor Stowell to be Deemster of our isle.”
After that everybody stood while the new Judge took the oath of fealty to the King. Then the Deemster’s clerk, Joshua Scarff, in his coloured spectacles, handed up a quarto copy of the Bible and a deep hush fell on the assembly, for the time had come for the Deemster’s oath.
