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 her 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 .... 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.

"It's Fenella," said the Governor, looking out of the window. "I'll ask you to say nothing to her about the subject of our conversation. And listen" (he was re-lighting his pipe and puffing at it with lips that smacked angrily; Stowell's hand was on the door), "don't let my girl make a damned fool of you."

II

"Victor, I have something to tell you," said Fenella.

"Yes?"

They were in the library. She was looking feverish; he was feeling ashamed, embarrassed and afraid.

"I have found out who was the friend of that poor girl."

He gazed at her without speaking.

"It will be a great shock to you--it was Alick Gell."

"No, no!"

"I'm sorry, dear. I knew you would be unable to believe it. But it's true--terribly true."

Mrs. Quayle, the evening before, had said very little. Nobody had called to see the girl while she stayed at her house, and nobody had come to take her away. She, herself, had seen her off by the train, and all the girl had told her was that she was going to a school at Derby-Haven.

"But that was enough for me," said Fenella. "This morning I went down to Derby-Haven and found there was only one school there. It is kept by two maiden ladies named Brown. Simple old things, very timid and old-fashioned. They were thrown into terrible commotion by my call, and having read the reports in the newspapers they were at first afraid to say anything. But after I had promised that they should not be mixed up in the matter in any way, I got them to speak. Mr. Alick Gell had brought the girl to their house. He had paid for her, and they had always looked upon him as her intended husband. So it's a certainty, you see--a shocking certainty."

Stowell was breathless.

"But my dear Fenella," he said, "this is a mistake. You are drawing a false inference...."

But Fenella only shook her head.

"Yes. I knew your loyalty to your friend would compel you to say so. But what do you think? I have since found that the fact is common knowledge."

Returning in the train she had occupied a compartment with two men--the strangest looking creatures she had ever seen in a first-class carriage. One of them turned out to be the girl's stepfather and the other a member of the House of Keys.

"Cæsar Qualtrough?"

"Cæsar? Yes, that was the name. They talked about the forthcoming trial and didn't seem to mind my hearing them--perhaps wished me to. The step-father (he spoke as if the whole case had been got up to disgrace him) was complaining that he had not been called by either side. But no matter, he would force himself upon the Court and expose the real criminal--the Speaker's son. It was all a trick. But it should not succeed. He would put the saddle on the right horse, he would. And then they talked about you."

"What .... what about me?"

"That the report of your being too ill to sit was a lie. You were not ill at all and never had been--the step-father knew better. You were merely shirking your duty to save your friend in some way. But that trick shouldn't succeed either, or the people should know what Judges in the Isle of Man were. So you see you must sit on this case, dear--if you are fit for it. You can't afford to have it said that you have sacrificed your duty as a Judge to your personal interests. At your first Court, too."

Stowell was in torture. In spite of the Governor's warning, an almost overpowering impulse came to him to confess, to make a clean breast of everything, there and then, and once for all.

"Fenella," he began (his breath was coming and going in gusts), "who knows if the guilty man is Gell? It may be somebody else."

"Who else can it be?"

He tried to say "It is I," but hesitated--he could not shatter in a word the whole world he lived in. At the next moment she was praising his fidelity, which would not allow him to think ill of his life-long friend.

"But he has no such delicacy," she said. "Knowing what he knows he is still going to defend the girl, and that's equal to defending himself, isn't it? How shocking!"

Stowell's shame at his moral cowardice reached the point of abasement, and he dropped his head. Then, carried away by her own pleading, Fenella put her arms about his neck, tenderly and caressingly, and told him she knew well what a hard thing she was asking him to do--to sit in judgment on his friend also, for that was what it would come to. But she would love him for ever if he would do it. It would be like the crown of all her hopes, the fulfilment of all she had worked for, if in some way (he would know best how) a poor girl who had sinned and suffered should have mercy shown to her, and not be left alone in her shame, but have the partner of her sin (no matter who he was or how near he came) standing side by side with her.

There was a moment of silence. Stowell was like a man groping in the dark of a black midnight. At length a light seemed to dawn on him. If he sat on this case he could save an innocent man at all events.

"You _will_ sit, will you not?"

"Yes."

And then she kissed him.

III

Back at Ballamoar, Stowell found the Deemster's clerk waiting for him.

It had taken Joshua three days to see Deemster Taubman, and when at length he was admitted to the big man's presence he had found him in bed, with his shaggy head and unshaven face on the pillow and his lower extremities through the legs of a cane-bottomed chair which supported his bed-clothes.

"What? What's that?" he had roared. "Sit at the General Gaol? Go back to your master and tell him I'm lying here in the tortures of the damned, not able to put a foot to the ground."

Stowell drew a long breath. Fate had spoken its last word! It was now certain that he must sit on the case of Bessie Collister.

His spirits rose and he began to see things more clearly. Had he not exaggerated his own importance in this affair? He had been thinking of his part in the forthcoming trial as if the issue of Bessie's fate depended upon him. But not so. It depended upon the Jury. Guilty or not Guilty,--he had nothing to do with that. Therefore, in the deeper sense, Bessie would not be tried by him at all. Why had he been frightening himself?

Had a Judge, then, no power, no voice, no influence? Thank God, yes! It was for the Judge to direct the jury on questions of law, to see that they had a right understanding of it and that their verdict corresponded with the evidence. What an important function--especially in a case like this! What a mercy old Taubman was unable to sit on it!

He thought again of Bessie's position. Pitiful, most pitiful! But the law was no Juggernaut, intended to crush the life out of a poor unfortunate girl. Mercifully administered it was rather her Sanctuary to which she might fly for refuge. And it should be mercifully administered.

Why not? Good heavens, why not? What wrong would it be to temper Justice with mercy--even to strain the law a little in the prisoner's favour? No one but himself would know. And if it were suspected that he was showing favour to the prisoner, people would consider him deserving of praise rather than censure for trying to snatch a young and helpless creature from the clutches of a cruel old Statute.

Besides, was it not one of the higher traditions of the bench that the Judge was first Counsel for the accused? Judges had not always acted on that principle. Some of them, in times past, had hunted their wretched prisoners gallowswards with gibes. Taubman was still like that. He thought sympathy with such women as Bessie Collister was sentimental weakness, that to deal mercifully with them was to encourage them, and thereby do a wrong to public morality.

"God bless me, yes! _I_ know Taubman," he told himself.

Then he thought of Gell. Whatever Bessie might be, Gell was innocent, and after the girl herself the greatest sufferer. Should he suffer further from an unfounded suspicion? God forbid! It would be his duty as Judge to see that no blustering person in Court bellowed accusations which, once out, might stick to an innocent man for the rest of his natural life.

After that he thought of himself. The only risk he ran was from Bessie's despair. If Gell were falsely accused she might break silence and tell the truth to save him. What a vista! Bessie, Gell, himself, Fenella! But no, that should not be! The law was no thumb-screw; a law-court was no torture-chamber. It would be his duty as Judge to protect the girl against any form of legal provocation.

Last of all, with a thrill of the heart, he thought of Fenella. She had drawn him on, constrained and compelled him to promise to sit on Bessie's case. But she had only wished, out of the greatness of her pity, to see that the poor girl should have a just trial. She should too! It would be his duty as Judge to see to that.

"Good Lord, yes! And what a mercy the case is not coming before Taubman."

Thus in the scorching fire of his temptation he tried to stand erect in the belief that he had sunk himself in his high office--that he was about to become the champion and first servant of Justice. But well he knew in his secret heart that in the fierce struggle which had been going on within him between the Judge and the Man, the Man had conquered.

During the next two days he worked day and night in the library, looking up authorities and verifying references. On the third day he set out in his car for Castletown. Janet saw him off in the mist of early morning. He was very pale; he had eaten scarcely any breakfast. She looked anxiously after him until he disappeared behind the trees. There was the odour of fresh earth in the air and the rooks were calling. It was like an echo from the past.

When he arrived at Castle Rushen there was a crowd at the gate, and all hats were off to him, as they had been to his father, when he passed through the Judge's private entrance.

Inside the courtyard, where the steps go up to the public part of the Court-house, there was another crowd and a certain commotion. The police were pushing back a tumultuous person who in a raucous voice was demanding to be admitted although the place was full.

It was Dan Baldromma.