Complete works of hall c.., p.601
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 601
One glance she got of his face before she dropped her own. It was whiter and thinner than before, as if from sleepless nights and suffering. She wanted to stop; she wanted to go on; she did not know what she wanted.
At the next moment her coachman, who had seen nothing of Stowell, being occupied with the difficulties of the hill, had swept into the station-yard.
When she got out of the carriage her heart was burning with the pangs of mingled love and rage.
“If that girl dies in prison there shall never be anything between us never,” she thought.
But deep in her heart, almost unknown to herself, there was a still more poignant cry, “He does not care for me he cannot.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
THE MAN AND THE LAW
WHEN Stowell reached Government House he found the Governor in the garden, bareheaded and smoking a cigar of which he was obviously trying to preserve the ash, while he watched his gardener at his work of repairing the ravages of last night’s storm among the flower-beds.
“Ah, you’ve come at last! But you have just missed Fenella. She has gone to Castletown that girl again, I suppose.”
“I know. I saw her. That’s the matter I’ve come to speak about.”
“So? Oblige me then by walking here so that I may keep an eye on the gardener.”
Stowell winced, but stepped to and fro on the path by the Governor’s side while in a low tone he broached his business.
“Deemster Taubman told me at Tynwald that you had reported against the Jury’s recommendation.”
“Well?”
“I thought perhaps you would permit me to explain the exact legal position.”
“Yes?”
“It is fifty years at least since the prisoner has been executed on this island for that crime.”
“Fifty, is it?”
The Governor blew his light blue smoke into the lighter blue air and watched it rising.
“Deemster Taubman seems to think that a prisoner who has wilfully taken life is necessarily a murderer. That is wrong, Sir.”
“Wrong?”
“Quite wrong. It is established by the laws of this and every civilised country that it is the reason of man which makes him accountable for his action and the absence of reason acquits him of the crime.”
“And is there any ground for thinking that this girl was not responsible?” said the Governor.
“Every ground, Sir. No woman in her position ever was or can be responsible.”
“No?... Gardener, don’t you think those tulips...”
“That’s why the law of England,” continued Stowell, “has ceased to look upon infanticide as a crime punishable by death. In some foreign countries it is not looked upon as a crime at all. The woman who kills her child within five days after its birth is thought to be suffering from temporary mania and therefore not guilty of murder. Besides...”
“Besides what?”
Stowell breathed heavily and then said, “There are exceptional circumstances in this case which call for merciful treatment.”
“You mean...”
“I mean,” said Stowell, speaking rapidly and in a vibrating voice, “that the girl had no bad motives such as usually inspire murder no greed, no lust, no desire for revenge. In fact, she meant no harm to anybody. On the contrary it is conceivable that she meant good good even to her child to save it from a life of suffering in a world in which it would have no father, no family, and nobody to care for it but its shamed and outcast mother.”
The Governor looked at Stowell for a moment and thought, “He’s ill, and he’s trying to unload his conscience.”
Then he said aloud, “So you’ve come to ask me to...”
“I’ve come to ask you, Sir, to withdraw your objection to the recommendation to mercy, so that the death sentence may be commuted to imprisonment.”
Again the Governor looked at Stowell’s heated face and thought, “Yes, he’s ill, and doesn’t see that I am fighting his own battle.”
“Do it, Sir,” said Stowell. “Do it, for God’s sake, before it is too late, and there is such an outcry throughout the kingdom as will shake the very foundations of justice in the island.”
The Governor was still smoking leisurely and keeping his eye on his flower-beds.
“Gardener, don’t you think that bed of geraniums...” he began, but Stowell could bear no more.
“Good God, Sir, isn’t this matter of sufficient importance to merit your attention?”
The Governor turned sharply upon him, threw away his half-smoked cigar and said, “Come this way.”
Not another word was spoken until, returning to the house with a certain pomp of stride, with Stowell behind him, the Governor reached his room and closed the door behind him. Then, unlocking his desk, he took out a large envelope (the same that Fenella had seen at breakfast) and handed the contents of it to Stowell, saying, “Look at that.”
Stowell saw at a glance what it was and uttered a cry of astonishment.
“Then it’s done.”
“Yes, it’s done. And now sit down and listen to me.”
But Stowell continued to stand with the paper crinkling in his trembling fingers.
“You say Taubman told you I reported against the Jury’s recommendation. Quite true! As President of the Court and head of the Manx judiciary, I told the Home Secretary I saw no justification for it no justification whatever.”
Stowell was silent.
“You say it is fifty years since such a crime has been punished by death. Perhaps it is, but the fact that the Statute remains is proof enough that the law contemplates cases in which it may properly be exercised. This in my view was such a case and I had every right to say so.”
Still Stowell remained silent.
“You say the prisoner may have acted from a good motive. I see no good motive in a mother who takes the life of her child. You speak of her shame, but shame is no excuse for crime. Why shouldn’t such women suffer shame? Shame is the just consequence of their evil conduct, and to try to escape from it by making away with their misbegotten children is crime.”
Stowell was trembling but still silent.
“Pity for women of that sort is sentimental weakness. Worse, it is a danger to public safety. The sooner such people are put out of the world the better for the public good.”
There was a palpable silence on both sides for some moments. The Governor glanced at Stowell’s twitching face and began to be sorry for him. “Good Lord!” he thought, “why can’t the man see that it’s best for himself that the girl should die? As long as she lives the wretched scandal may break out again and his own share in it may come to light. And then Fenella! How could I allow her to marry him with that danger hanging over his head?”
Stowell’s fingers were contracting over the paper that crinkled in his hand. At length he threw it on the desk and said, “Your Excellency, if you carry out that sentence you will be committing a crime a monstrous judicial crime.”
The Governor returned the paper to his desk, and then rose and said, with a ring of sarcasm in his voice, “So I am the criminal, am I? Well, I am responsible for public security in this island, and as long as I am here I am going to see that it is preserved. Offences of this kind have been too frequent of late and they can only be put down by law. The prisoner in the present case has been justly tried and rightly condemned, and it shall be my business to see that she pays the penalty of her crime.”
Stowell’s pale face had become scarlet, his lower lip was trembling. Outside the sea was sparkling in the sunlight; a band was playing far off on the promenade.
“Your Excellency,” said Stowell, quivering all over,” it will be a life-long grief to me to resist your authority, but I must tell you at once that if you order that girl’s execution it shall never be carried out.”
“What do you say?”
“I say it shall never be carried out.”
“Why not?”
“Because I shall prevent it.”
The Governor rose. His face was red, his throat had swelled; his lips were compressed.
“Do you mean that you will go over my head...”
“I do....”
The Governor brushed Stowell aside in making for the bell.
“There’s no need for that. I’m going, Sir,” said Stowell, and at the next moment the Governor was alone in his room, speechless with astonishment and wrath.
Going down the corridor Stowell passed the open door of the library the room in which he had parted from Fenella. In quarrelling with her father had he burnt the last bridge by which Fenella and he could come together?
“But, God forgive me, I could do nothing else nothing whatever.”
II
Fenella found that the tragic news had reached Castle Rushen before her.
Bessie had received it at first with incredulity. Her expectation of pardon had reached the point of conviction, and every morning as she rose from her plank bed, she had said to herself, “It will come to-day.”
When Tommy Vondy went into the condemned cell, blowing his nose repeatedly and talking about death, how it came to everybody sooner or later, Bessie looked at him with terror and screamed, “Oh God help me! God help me!”
For a while she raved like a madwoman. Everybody had lied to her and deceived her, and the Deemster had done nothing to save her, because he wanted her out of the way.
But after a while an idea occurred to her and she became calm. Alick Gell! If Alick would go up to London and see the King and tell him that she had never intended to kill her baby he would forgive her. And then Alick would come galloping back, at the last moment perhaps, waving a paper over his head and crying, “Stop!”
She had seen such things in her illustrated Weekly Budget the story paper she used to read on Sunday mornings at home, while the dinner was cooking in the oven-pot and her mother was singing hymns in the Primitive chapel and her father was poring over the “Mistakes of Moses.”
But would he do it? She had deceived him twice. And then his sisters had always been trying to drag him away from her.
All at once, like the echo of a bell through a thick mist over the sea, came the memory of his cry as she was being carried out of Court: “Never mind, Bessie, I would rather be you than your Judge!”
Yes, he loved ‘her still, and (out of the cunning which the air of a prison breeds) a scheme flashed upon her. She would write a letter to Alick Gell, not telling him what she wanted him to do, but plainly pointing to it.
Fenella was amazed to find Bessie apparently reconciled to her end. She had expected torrents of tears and even the coarse language of the farmyard.
“The suspense was the worst. I shall be glad when it’s all over,” said Bessie.
The only thing that troubled her was to die while Alick was thinking so hard of her, and if her hand did not shake so much she would write to ask for his forgiveness.
“I’ll write for you,” said Fenella.
“And will you give the letter into his own hands, miss, so that his sisters may not see it?”
“I’ll try, dear.”
Sitting by the door of the cell, under the light from the grill, Fenella wrote with the prison paper on her lap, while Bessie, without a vestige of colour in her forlorn face, dictated from the bed:
“DEAR ALICK, You will have heard what they are going to do to me. It is dreadful, isn’t it? I thought perhaps you would have written me a few lines, though I know it is too much to expect after all the sorrow and shame I have brought on you.
“Oh, if I could only have lived to make it up to you! We could have gone away, as you always said, to America or somewhere. I should have been so good, and we should have been so happy and nobody to cast all this up to us.
“What I did was very wrong, but I don’t see what good it will do to the King to take my life, and me a poor girl he never saw in the world. I still think if there were anybody to speak for me he would forgive me even yet and everything would be all right. But that’s more than anybody would do for me now, I suppose even you, though I have always loved you so dear.”
Bessie paused.
“Is that all?” asked Fenella, in a husky whisper.
“Not quite,” said Bessie, and she began again.
“Mother was here last week and brought me your photo. It got wet in my bag on the way from Derby Haven, and it is cracked and smudged. But I kiss it constant and it is such company.
“Good-bye, Alick! My last thoughts will be of you and my last prayer that God will bless you. If I could only see you for a minute I think I should be satisfied. But if you can’t come, write and say you forgive me. It has been all through my love for you that I am here, so think the best of me.”
Bessie signed the letter, filling up the remaining space with crosses, and then wrote with her own hand “P.S. It’s a weak to-day, so if anything is to be done there’s no time to lose.”
Fenella saw through the girl’s pitiful subterfuge, but knew well that Gell could do nothing. There was only one man in the island who could have saved Bessie, and that was the Judge who had tried her.
Why hadn’t he?
All the way home in the train Fenella asked herself this question. The only answer she could find was that Stowell was afraid of offending the Governor, owing so much to him. But oh, if he had only resisted her father in this case standing up against him and fearing no one how she would have loved him!
She found Government House shuddering with awe, as if a tornado had swept through it and gone. At length Miss Green explained what had happened. Mr. Stowell had called to see the Governor and been turned out of the house!
Hardly had she reached her room when her father followed her into it.
“I suppose you know that Stowell has been here?” he said.
“Yes. What did he come for?”
“To threaten me that’s what he came for. To threaten me that if I attempted to carry out the sentence of the law on that girl in Castle Rushen he would prevent it.”
Fenella tried to conceal the joy that was rising within her.
“What do you think he intends to do?” she asked.
“Appeal to the Home Secretary against me, I suppose. I shouldn’t wonder if he leaves the island in the morning. And if he does, and brings back a pardon, it will be a vote of censure upon me nothing short of it.”
The Governor strode across the room in his wrath, and then suddenly drew up on seeing that Fenella was smiling.
“But I see who is the cause of the man’s insane conduct,” he said.
“Who?”
“You! You’ve broken with him, haven’t you? Because he had the misfortune to encounter that woman long ago you hold him responsible for everything she has done since. So to satisfy your ridiculous qualms he falls back upon me. The fool! The damned fool! And you are no better! I don’t know what’s taking possession of women in these days. I’m sick to death of their feminist imbecilities and the braying of their male asses!”
“But father...”
“Don’t talk to me,” said the Governor, and with blazing eyes he swept out of the room.
Then Victor had done something! He did care for her! And now he was going to take some great risk to save the life of the girl in prison.
A momentary qualm about her duty to her father was swept down by the tide of her love for Stowell. After all, he was the man she had thought him to be! God bless and speed him!
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
“AND GOD MADE MAN OF THE DUST OF THE GROUND”
STOWELL had travelled far by this time.
When he left Government House in the heat and flame of his anger he was at war with God and man. There was a kind of self-defence in thinking that, however deep his own wrong-doing, the whole world was full of infamy.
He found that news of the forthcoming execution had reached Fort Anne before he returned to it. To avoid the whispering groups in the public rooms he packed his bag and took the afternoon train to Ballamoar.
Alone in the railway carriage he had time to review the situation. His visit to the Governor had been a wretched failure. But even if it had been a success what would have been the result to Bessie Collister? Substitution of the jail for the gallows. Instead of death, three years, five years, perhaps ten years’ imprisonment. Thank God he had not succeeded!
“But what am I to do now?” he asked himself.
Appeal to London? Useless! The Home officials would support the resident authority, and, having made a hideous error, they would be reluctant to correct it.
“Then what can I do?” he thought.
Suddenly he saw that every argument he had used with the Governor against putting Bessie to death applied equally to keeping her in prison. This was not a question of degrees of guilt of murder or manslaughter. Either Bessie was guilty of murder and ought to be executed or she was not guilty (not being responsible) and ought to be set at liberty.
“Then the law under which she has been condemned is a crime,” he thought.
This terrified him. All his inherited instinct of reverence for the justice and majesty of the law revolted.
“The law a crime! Good heavens, what am I thinking about?”
And yet why not? Why had there been so much misery in the world? Was it because of the crimes committed against the law? No, but chiefly because of the crimes committed by the law. Yes, that was the real key to the long martyrdom of man throughout the ages.
“If a law is a crime it ought to be broken,” he told himself.
But how? There was only one proper way in a free country through Parliament and by the slow uprising of the human conscience. But that was a long process, and meantime what would happen in this case? Bessie would be dead and buried! That must not be! No, the law that had condemned Bessie Collister must be broken at once now!
“But who is to break it?”
He trembled at that question, but found only one answer. It shivered at the back of his mind like the white water over a reef at the neck of a narrow sea, and it was not at first that he dared to think of it. But at length he saw that since he had been the instrument of the law in dooming Bessie to death it was he who must set her free.
