Complete works of hall c.., p.598
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 598
Fenella’s humiliation was abject. “When we go back to Court,” she said, “you must be brave, whatever happens.”
“Will you let me hold your hand?” said Bessie.
And Fenella, scarcely able to speak, answered, “Yes.”
In the Deemster’s room there was a painful silence. The Clerk of the Rolls was under the deeply-recessed window, turning over the crinkling folios of the Depositions in the case to be taken next. The Governor, stretched out in the leathern bound armchair before the empty fireplace, was smoking hard and trying to justify himself to his own conscience. Stowell was sitting at the end of the long table, with his head in his hands, gazing down at the red blotting-pad in front of him.
No one spoke. Occasionally there came from without the mournful cry of the gulls flying over the harbour, and, at one moment, the ululation of a crew of Irish sailors who were weighing anchor on a schooner in the bay.
The profound silence around only made louder the thunder in Stowell’s soul. He knew he was at the crisis of his life. On what he did now the future of his life depended.
The address to the Jury had been a fearful ordeal, but the sentence would be terrible. To sentence Bessie Collister, having been the first cause of her crime could he do it? It might only be a formal sentence (the Crown being certain to commute the punishment), but the awful words prescribed by the Statute would they not choke in his very throat?
And then Fenella! Her voice was ringing in his ears still: “Shame on him! Let no good man own him for a friend! Let no good woman take him for a husband!”
“And what will be the end?” he asked himself.
He heard the door open behind him. A low hum of voices came down the staircase from the Court-house. There was a footstep on the carpeted floor. Somebody by his side was speaking. It was Joshua Scarff.
“The Jury are ready to return to Court, your Honour.”
IV
When Stowell resumed his seat on the bench, and the buzz of conversation had subsided, he was conscious of the presence of only three persons besides himself Bessie in the dock with Fenella by her side, and Alick Gell, with distorted face and wig a little awrv, in the bench in front of them.
The Jurymen filed back. The Clerk of the Bolls read out their names and then asked for their formal verdict.
“You find the prisoner Guilty, according to the instructions of the Court?”
“Aw, yes, guilty enough, poor soul,” said the foreman (it was the northside farmer),; ‘but lave her to the Lord, we say.”
There was a titter at this quaint finding, but it was quickly suppressed. Then the Clerk of the Rolls said, “I assume that means that you recommend her to mercy?”
“Aw, yes, mercy enough too,” said the foreman, “for when the sacrets of all hearts are revealed it’s mercy we’ll all be wanting.”
After that Stowell was conscious of a still deeper hush in Court. He saw Bessie, in the full glare of her shame, standing in the dock, holding the rail with one hand and clinging to Fenella with the other.
He heard himself asking her if she had anything to say why judgment should not be pronounced upon her. She made no answer, but there was a strange expression of frightened hope in her face. He understood she was expecting that he would save her even at the last moment.
At that sight there came to him one of those frightful impulses which tempt people on dizzy heights, from sheer fear of danger, to fling themselves into the abyss below.
“Prisoner at the bar,” he said, “it has been said on your behalf that you were first led to do what you did by the act of one who remains unpunished while you have to bear the full weight of your fall. If you think it will lessen the burden of your crime to plead this as an extenuating circumstance speak it is not too late to do so.”
Bessie made no reply, and Stowell, who felt Fenella’s eyes fixed on him, continued, “Don’t be afraid. If you think it will lighten your guilt in the eyes of the Court to mention that man’s name, mention it.”
Bessie swayed a little, as if dizzy, looked round at Fenella, and then turned back to the bench and shook her head.
The hush in Court was broken by a rustle of astonishment. Had the Deemster lost himself? Stowell was conscious of a movement by his side and of the Governor saying, in an angry whisper, “Go on, for God’s sake!”
At length, in a voice so low as to be only just heard even in the breathless silence, he said, “Elizabeth Corteen, you have pleaded guilty to the charge of taking the life of your innocent child, the little helpless babe who had no other natural protector than the r mother who bore it on her bosom. By this act you have brought yourself under the condemnation of the law, and it is for the law to punish you. But out of regard to your sufferings and the uncertainty as to your motives, the Jury have recommended you to mercy, and it will be my duty to see that their prayer is sent, through His Excellency the Governor, to the high and proper authority, in the hope that the measure of pardon which, in all but exceptional cases, is granted to persons in your position, may be extended to you also.”
The tears were rolling down Bessie’s cheeks, but Stowell saw that she was still looking up at him with the same expression.
“Meantime,” he continued, “and however that may be, the Court has no choice but to condemn you to the punishment prescribed by law. We who sit here must act according to our oath and our duty. Justice” (he was pointing with a trembling hand to the motto under his father’s picture) “is the most sacred thing on earth, and even... even if your fellow-sinner himself sat on this bench, his first duty would be to Justice, for Justice is above all.”
Then lowering his head and speaking rapidly, in a muffled and indistinguishable whisper, Stowell pronounced the sentence of death. None of it seemed to be clearly heard until he reached the last words (“and may God have mercy on your soul”), and then there came a loud scream from the dock.
Bessie, who had been leaning forward and listening intently (the look of hope and expectation on her face darkening to dismay and terror), had dropped back, and would have fallen but for Fenella, who had leapt up and caught her.
“Remove the prisoner,” said the Governor sharply, and at the next moment the constables were carrying the girl out of Court screaming and sobbing.
But before she had gone there was a movement in the benches of the advocates. Alick Gell had risen again, with wild eyes, and he was shouting after her:
“Never mind, Bessie! I would rather be you than your Judge.”
There was consternation in Court. Everybody was on his feet to look after the prisoner, and at Gell, who was being hustled out after her. But hardly had the door closed behind them, when there was another cry in Court:
“The Deemster!”
Stowell had risen also. He had stood looking after the prisoner until her last cry had died away in the corridor. Then he had turned about, as if intending to leave the bench, taken a step forward, stumbled, and dropped to one knee.
The Governor rose and reached forward to help him. But he recovered himself immediately. His face was very pale, but he smiled, a pitiful smile, as if saying, “A little dizziness, nothing more,” and waved off assistance.
Bracing himself up, he stood aside for the Governor to go before him, and then walked out of Court with a firm step. The ring of his tread was plainly heard as he passed through the green baize door that led to the Deemster’s room.
The spectators looked into each other’s faces as if bewildered by what they had seen and heard. Although the business of the day was not yet over most of them trooped out, feeling that they had been witnessing a drama whereof only a part had been revealed to them- as by dark shadows on a white blind.
Fifth Book: The Reparation
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“VICTOR! VICTOR! MY VICTOR!”
“GOOD heavens, how was I to know that things would turn out so badly?”
It was the Governor, alone with Stowell in the Deemster’s room, at the end of the second day of the Court of General Gaol Delivery.
“As for you, what have you to reproach yourself with? So far as this case is concerned you have done nothing that is wrong or irregular. The girl was guilty. You gave her a fair trial. The law required that she should be condemned. You had to condemn her. Then why take things so tragically?”
“But Fenella?”
“She will get over it. Of course she will. What sensible woman is going to throw away the happiness of a life-time because of something that happened before she came on to the scene?”
“You heard what she said, Sir?”
“I did, and thought it nonsense. I heard what you said also, and thought it madness. What a providential escape! Thank God it is all over! The miserable case is at an end. Let us think no more about it.”
An Inspector of Police came into the room to say that Miss Stanley had left the Castle at the close of the murder trial and asked him to tell her father that she was going home by train. The Governor, with knitted eyebrows and a frown, dismissed the Inspector, and then said to Stowell, as he turned to go, “All the same I am bound to say the whole thing has been unfortunate damnably unfortunate!”
Stowell continued to sit for some minutes in his robes after the Governor had left him. Joshua Scarff came with a glass of brandy.
“Take this, your Honour. It will strengthen your nerves for your drive home. I could see you were not well when you arrived this morning.”
Stowell had drunk the brandy and was setting down the tumbler when the Inspector came back to say that after the murder trial he had liberated Dan Baldroma, but had just been compelled to arrest somebody else..
“Who else?”
“Mr. Gell. The gentleman seems to have gone clean off it, Sir. It’s the loss of his case, I suppose.”
Ever since the Court had risen he had been demanding to be allowed to see the Deemster and threatening what he would do to him. So to prevent the Advocate from doing a mischief the police had put him in the cells.
“Set him at liberty at once,” said Stowell.
“Before your Honour leaves the Castle?”
“Instantly.”
The Inspector being gone (with the intention of disobeying the Deemster’s command in order to ensure his safety), Joshua Scarff proceeded to read Gell’s conduct by quite a different light. It was easy to see now that Mr. Gell had been the girl’s fellow-sinner and therefore the cause of her crime.
“Pity! Great pity!” said Joshua, as he helped Stowell to unrobe. “But such connections always begin to end badly.”
There were still a few of the spectators at the gate, waiting to see the Deemster away, and when he came out, with his white face, another wave of sympathy went out to him.
“They’ve been putting the young colt into the shafts too soon that’s what it is, I tell thee.”
Driving over the harbour bridge in his automobile Stowell began to feel better. The fresh air from the sea, after the close atmosphere of the Court-house, brought the blood back to his brain, and he thought he saw things more clearly.
The Governor had been right. He could not have acted otherwise without being false to his oath as a Judge. And if the miserable fact remained that he should never have been the Judge in this case at all, it was Fenella herself, above everybody else, who had thrust him into the furnace of that position. Surely she would remember this, and it would plead in her heart for him?
Half -a -mile beyond the town he passed the Governor’s big blue landau, and realised that by some half-conscious impulse he was taking the road to Government House instead of the direct way home! So much the better! He must see Fenella at the first possible moment, and find out what his fate was to be.
His spirits rose as he bounded along. Granted he had done wrong in the first instance, terribly and cruelly wrong, hadn’t he had many excuses? If Bessie Collister had told her everything, surely Fenella would see this, too, and seeing it, would understand?
But the great fact of all was that (except for the first catastrophe) his love of Fenella had been the root cause of all that had happened. If he had not loved Fenella with that deep, unconquerable, unquenchable love which had swept everything else away (all qualms and perhaps all conscience), nothing worse could have occurred. He would have married that poor girl now lying in prison. Yes, whatever the consequences to himself, he would have married her before Cell came back into her life, and further complications ensued. But after Fenella returned to the island no other woman had been possible to him. Surely she would see this also? And, if she did, nothing else would matter to either of them nothing in this world.
Presently, driving at high speed, he realised that the half -conscious impulse which had carried him on to the road to Government House was sweeping him on to the rocky shelf on the coast along which he had driven with Fenella on the day he took his oath.
How fortunate! What was that she had said, then, as they sang together in the fulness of their joy over the hum of the engine and the boom of the sea? that love, what she called love, never died and never changed, and if she loved anybody, and anything happened to him, she would fight the world for him, even though he were in the wrong!
Even though he were in the wrong!
She would do it now! He was sure she would! Yes, the first shock of the wretched revelation being over, she would see how he had suffered, and how he had striven to do the right, and then then everything would be well.
Thus, as he flew over the roads, he built himself up in the hope of Fenella’s forgiveness. But as he approached Government House his heart failed him again. Something whispered that the excuses he had been making for himself were no better than a pretence that Fenella would see him now for the first time as the man he really was, not the man she had imagined him to be.
And then what would happen then?
II
As soon as the trial was over and Bessie, weeping bitterly, was taken back to the cells, Fenella had left Castle Rushen. She was ashamed. Remembering her wild outburst under the Attorney-General’s examination, she was reproaching herself bitterly. Whatever Victor Stowell had done, what right had she to denounce him? She of all others! In open Court too!
And then Gell! Although nobody else had understood her, he had done so. He might have been living in a fool’s paradise, but was it for her to reveal the awful truth to him? In public, too, and at that harrowing moment?
To escape from the pain of self-reproach she kept on telling herself, as she went back in the train, that Stowell had deceived her. Oh, if he had only confessed, at any rate to her, she thought she could have forgiven him in spite of all. But no, he had hidden everything down to the last moment, and left her to find him out.
On reaching home she excused herself to old Miss Green and hurried up to her bedroom. Her head ached and her heart was sore the young woman she had been working for had been found guilty and condemned. She told her maid she was tired, and if anybody asked for her she was not to be disturbed.
Two hours passed. Her heart was going through a wild riot of mingled anger and love. It was like madness. She loved Stowell; she hated him; she worshipped him; she despised him. At one moment she recalled with a bitter laugh the mockery of his questioning of Bessie Collister in the dock; at the next she remembered with scorching tears the pathos of his sentencing her.
Obscure motives were operating in her soul to intensify her pain. Jealous? She, jealous of that illiterate country girl who had murdered her illegitimate child what nonsense! No, her idol was broken. She had set it so high and now it was in the dust.
She expected Stowell to come to her as soon as his Court was over. Again and again she raised her head from her wet pillow to listen for the sound of his car on the drive. Yet when a knock came at her door and her maid announced the arrival of the Deemster (never dreaming that the injunction against callers had been intended to apply to him) her first impulse was to send him away.
“Say I’m unwell and can’t see him,” she cried from her bed.
But at the next moment she was up and whispering at the door, “Show Mr. Stowell into the library and tell him I shall be down presently.”
Her voice was hoarse; her face was aflame; her eyes were red from persistent weeping. No water could sponge away those marks of her emotion. Never mind! He should see how he had made her suffer. She would go downstairs and charge him, face to face, with his deceit and hypocrisy, and then then fling herself into his arms.
But when she opened the library door and saw him standing on the hearthrug, with head down and a look of utter abasement, her courage failed her. She dare not look twice at his ravaged face, so she sank on to the sofa and covered her eyes with her hands.
Several minutes passed in which neither of them spoke. There was no sound except that of his laboured breathing and of the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece. “If he does not speak soon,” she thought, “I shall break into tears and fly out of the room.”
But she did not move, and at last came his voice, humble and broken, and thrilling through and through her:
“Fenella!”
She did not answer; she could not; and again, after another moment of silence, he said, “Fenella, I have come to ask you to forgive me.”
She wanted to burst out crying, and to prevent herself from doing so she broke into a flood of wrath.
“Forgive you?” she said. “Ask that poor creature in Castle Rushen to forgive you that poor girl whom you have just condemned for a crime that is the consequence of your own sin.”
He did not reply for a moment, and then came the same humble, unsteady voice, saying, “No doubt you are quite right, quite justified, but if you knew everything that I could not help myself that it was the law...”
“Oh, I know nothing about your laws,” she cried, leaping up and crossing the room,” but they are unjust and barbarous and against reason and humanity if they allow a girl to be condemned to death for a crime like that while the Judge who was the first cause of it sits in judgment on his own victim.”
