Chapter THIRTY: The Verdict

When the Court resumed Gell rose, with a haggard face, to make an announcement.

In accordance with the suggestion of his Excellency, the accused had been seen during the adjournment (though not by him), with the result that she had confessed to having given birth to a child and being the cause of its death.

"In these circumstances," he said, speaking in a husky voice, "I have taken the only course open to me--that of advising her to revise her plea, and with the permission of the Court she will now do so."

There was a moment of agitation in which the Court was understood to assent, and then Bessie was called upon to plead again. But hardly had she risen at the call of the Deemster when she broke down utterly and sob followed sob at every question that was put to her. At length she bowed her head and that was accepted as her plea of guilty.

Then Gell rose again and said,

"Although the prisoner pleads guilty to causing the death of her child, she says she did not so wilfully. Therefore I propose to put her back in the box to prove extenuating circumstances."

Once more the Court agreed, but when Bessie was removed from the dock to the witness-box she broke down again and not a word could be got out of her.

"It is only natural," said Gell, "that she should feel shame at having to take back what she said yesterday."

The Deemster bowed, and speaking with an obvious effort he appealed to the girl to answer the questions of her advocate. But still Bessie sobbed and made no answer.

"The Court has nothing left to it but to go on to judgment," said the Attorney-General.

At that moment, when the trial seemed to be brought to a standstill, Fenella (sitting near to the witness-box) was seen to lean over and whisper to Gell, who rose and asked to be allowed to make a suggestion--that inasmuch as the accused was unable to answer for herself, somebody else, who knew what she wished to say, should be empowered to answer for her.

The Deemster, seeing what was coming, seemed to catch his breath, but after a moment he agreed. The course proposed, although unusual, was not contrary to the interests of justice or altogether without precedent--a deaf and dumb witness always giving evidence by a speaking proxy. Therefore if the Attorney-General did not object....

"Not at all," said the Attorney.

"In that case," said Gell, "I will ask the lady who received the prisoner's confession to speak on her behalf--Miss Stanley."

It was said afterwards, when the events of that day had a fierce light cast back upon them, that when Fenella stepped up to the witness-box, and stood side by side with the prisoner, ready to take her oath, the Deemster seemed scarcely able to recite the familiar words to her.

"Please tell the Court, as nearly as possible in her own words, what the prisoner told you," said Gell.

There was a deep and concentrated silence. Never before had anybody witnessed so strange a scene. Speaking calmly and firmly, Fenella told Bessie's story as Bessie herself had told it--her journey from the south of the island, the birth and death of her child, and the burying of it under the _Clagh-ny-Dooiney_.

When she had finished, and Bessie, who was stifling her sobs, had bowed her head in reply to a question from Gell that she assented to what had been said on her behalf, the Attorney-General rose to cross-examine.

"Does the prisoner deny," he said, "that when she returned home she told her mother of her condition?"

"Yes, her mother knew nothing about it."

"Does she deny that by keeping her condition secret from the person most proper to know of it, she deliberately intended to put her child away by violence?"

"No, she does not deny that, but says that when her baby came the instinct of motherhood came too, and from that moment onward the idea of taking its life was far from her heart."

"Does the prisoner wish the Court to believe that--in spite of her subsequent conduct in concealing the birth and death of her child and in secretly burying it?"

"Yes, she does, and if a court of men cannot believe it, a court of women would, because...."

But the Attorney-General, with a look of triumph, sat down quickly, and Fenella, flushing up to her flaming eyes, stopped suddenly.

There was another moment of deep silence in Court, and then Gell, who had to struggle with his emotion, rose to re-examine.

"Does the prisoner say that when she killed her child she did so unconsciously and under the influence of fear?"

"Yes, under the influence of fear--fear of her step-father who had behaved like a brute to her."

"Does she think that, however lamentable her act, she was moved to it by pardonable motives?"

"Not pardonable motives merely," said Fenella, flaming up again, "but nobly unselfish ones."

"Nobly unselfish motives!" said the Attorney-General, rising again. "Will the witness please tell the Court what she means by nobly unselfish motives in a case like this?"

"I mean," said Fenella, hesitating for a moment, looking up at the Deemster and then (before she could be stopped) speaking with passion and rapidly, "I mean that this girl was betrayed at the time of her sorest need by one who should have protected her, not taken advantage of her. I mean that, falling in love afterwards with another man--a good man who was willing to make her his wife--she committed the crime solely and only in an effort to cover up her fault and to save her honour in the eyes of the man who loved her. I mean, too, that the real guilt lies not so much with this poor creature who sits here in her shame, as with the man who used her, caring nothing for her, and then left her to bear the consequences of their sin alone. Shame on him! Shame on him! May no good man own him for a friend! May no good woman take him for a husband! May he live to...."

The irregular outburst was interrupted by a cry from the advocates' benches. Gell had risen with wild eyes. He seemed to be trying to speak. His mouth opened but he said nothing, and after looking first at Fenella and then at the Deemster he sank back to his seat. And then Fenella, as if realising what she had done, sat also.

There were some moments of uneasy silence, and then the Attorney-General rose for the last time.

"It is impossible," he said, "not to be moved by what we have just heard, however improper on legal grounds it may have been. But the Court will not allow themselves to be carried away by their feelings. It is the natural consequence of great crimes that they should bring great suffering. The prisoner has confessed to a great crime. She has failed to establish proof of extenuating circumstances. Therefore, for the protection of human life, as well as the good name of this island, I ask for the utmost penalty of the law."

After that there was a long pause, broken only by some whispering on the bench. It was observed that the Deemster took no part in it, except to bend his head when the Governor and the Clerk of the Rolls leaned across and spoke to him. At length, with a manifest effort, and in a low voice (so low that the people in Court had to lean forward to hear him) he began to address the Jury.

II

"When a prisoner pleads Guilty," he said, "it is usual for the Court to proceed at once to the sentence. But in the present unhappy case it has been thought right that the Judge, in directing the Jury to find a formal verdict, should indicate the grounds on which the Court has based its judgment.

"The prisoner has pleaded guilty to taking the life of her new-born child. She has confessed that down to the hour of its birth she had the deliberate intention of making away with it, and the Court is unhappily compelled to find in her conduct only too many evidences of that design.

"But she has also said that after her child's birth, under the divine love and compassion of awakened motherhood, she repented of her intention of killing it, and that it came to its death by accident--the accident of semi-consciousness and the consequences of her fear. The Court would gladly accept this explanation if it could be corroborated by the evidence. Unfortunately it cannot. On the contrary the prisoner's subsequent behaviour points to an entirely different conclusion. Therefore the Court has nothing before it but the prisoner's confession that she intended to take the life of her child, and the fact that she did indeed take it."

The Deemster paused (Gell had risen and was seen crushing his way out of Court); then he continued,

"How her child came by its death is between God and her conscience. It is not for me, or perhaps for any man, to read the secret of a woman's heart in the dark hour of the birth of her misbegotten child. Into the cloud of that mystery only the eye of Heaven can follow her. But I should fail in my duty as a Judge if I did not try to show that the Court is fully conscious of the physical weaknesses and spiritual temptations which lie in the way of a woman who is in the position of the accused."

Then followed, during some breathless moments, such speaking as nobody present had ever heard before except from Stowell himself, and only from him on the day when he snatched from the gallows the rag of a woman who had killed her husband.

It was a contrast of the conditions attending the birth of a child born in wedlock, and of a child born illegitimate. They all knew the first. The beloved young wife watching with a thrilling heart for the signs of that coming event which was to complete her joy; the happy months in which she is shielded from all harm; the tender solicitude of her husband; her own sweet and secret preparations for the little stranger who is to come; the guesses as to its sex; the discussions as to its name--until at length, in the fulness of its appointed time, the child born in wedlock comes, like an angel floating out of the sunrise, into a world that is waiting for it to take it into its arms.

But the child born out of wedlock--what of that? The poor mother, betrayed perhaps, abandoned perhaps, bereft of the love she counted upon, living for months in fear of every accusing eye, in dread of the being under her heart who is coming to shame her, to drive her from her home, to make her an outcast and a byword among women--until at last she creeps away to hide herself in some secret place, where, alone, in the darkness of night, distraught, amid the groans as of a thunderstorm, she faces death to bring her fatherless babe into a world that wants it not.

"What wonder if sometimes," said the Deemster, "in the pain of her body and the disorder of her soul, a woman (all the more if she has hitherto borne a good character) should be tempted to escape from her threatening disgrace by killing the child who is the innocent cause of it?"

But rightly or wrongly, the law could take no account of such temptations. In the great eye of Justice the issues of life and death were in God's hands only. Life was sacred, and not more sacred was the life that came in the palace, with statesmen waiting in the antechamber, the life of the heir to a throne, than the life that came in the hovel and under the thatch, the life of the bastard who was to run barefoot on the roads.

"It may be thought to be a hard law which takes no account of temptations to which women are exposed when nature demands that penalty from them which it never demands from men. But we who sit here have nothing to do with that. Judges are sworn to administer the law as they find it, whatever their own feelings may be. Therefore the Court has now no choice but to direct the Jury to find a verdict of guilty against the prisoner."

There was a deep drawing of breath in Court, and everybody thought the Deemster had finished, but after another short pause, in a tremulous voice which vibrated through all hearts, he continued,

"But the Jury has a right which the Judges cannot exercise--they can go beyond the law. And if, having heard the evidence in this case, and having God and a good conscience before them, the Jury, in finding their formal verdict, can come to a conclusion favourable to the prisoner's story, they may recommend her to the mercy of the Crown, and thereby lead, perhaps, to the lessening of her punishment, and even to the wiping of it out altogether. If not, the law must take its course, at the discretion of the Governor as the representative of the King."

When the Deemster's tremulous voice had ceased the jurymen put their heads together for a moment. Then one of them rose to ask if they might retire to their own room to consider the point left to them by His Honour.

"The Court agrees," said the Governor, and the jurymen trooped out.

The Judges and the advocates went out also, and the prisoner (who had been clinging to Fenella's hand) was removed. Only die spectators remained in their places. They were afraid to lose them for the concluding scene.

III

In a small unventilated room overlooking the Keep the Jury considered their share of the verdict.

"Gentlemen," said one (he was an auctioneer and a Town Commissioner), "you heard what the Deemster said. We can't let her off but we can recommend her to mercy."

"Why should we?" said another, a tall landowner with a bad reputation about women. "She killed her child. Let her swing, I say."

"But she said she didn't intend to and that she was out of herself and frightened by her step-father," said a third--a fat butcher who was sitting astride on a chair and making it creak under him.

"Chut! That was only an after-thought," said a fourth--a little bald-headed English grocer.

"Still and for all we know what Dan Baldromma is," said the butcher, "an infidel who believes neither in God nor the devil."

"He's devil enough himself," said the grocer. "His father was the 'angman."

"That was his uncle," said the butcher.

"No, but his father. They called him Dan the Black, and after the 'anging of Patrick Kelly of Kentraugh...."

"Question! Question!" cried the Town Commissioner. "Let's keep to the point, gentlemen."

"Let's get finished and away," said the grocer. "I've 'ad an addition to my family, I may tell you. A son at last after four daughters. My wife's getting up to-day and we're to 'ave a turkey for dinner. Let the woman off, I say."

"But we can't, man. Didn't you hear what the Deemster said?"

"Then let the 'uzzy 'ang."

"Are we to recommend the girl to mercy--that's the question," said the Town Commissioner.

"Why shouldn't we?" said the butcher. "Hundreds and tons of girls have done as bad before now, and nobody a penny the wiser. Why make flesh of one and fowl of another?"

"If we show mercy to women of this sort we'll only encourage them in their bad conduct," said the landowner.

This led to a random discussion on the question of Women or Men, which were the worst? The landlord was loud in denunciation of women, the butcher was more indulgent.

"Look here," said the butcher, "this isn't a game a woman can go into a corner and play all by herself, you know. For every bad woman there's a bad man knocking about somewhere."

"A man isn't always filling his house with by-children anyway," said the landowner.

"No," said the butcher, "but he is sometimes filling other people's though."

"That's personal, and I won't stand it," cried the landowner, and then there were loud shouts with much smiting of the table.

In the midst of the tumult a quiet voice was heard to say,

"Hadn't we better lay this matter before the Lord, brothers?"

It was a northside farmer and local preacher, who (not always to his financial advantage) had made it the rule of his life, whether in the reaping of his corn or the sowing of his turnips, to wait for Divine guidance. In another moment he was on his knees, and one by one his fellow-jurymen, including the long landowner, had slithered down after him.

When they rose they were apparently of one opinion--that inasmuch as nobody except God knew why Bessie had killed her child (being alone and under the cloud of night) the only thing to do was to leave her to the Lord.

Meantime Gell, with restless and irregular footsteps, was striding about in the court-yard. Fenella's outburst had fallen on him like a flash of lightning in the darkness. Everything had suddenly become clear--all the vague fears that had haunted him so long, the suspicions he had thrust behind his back, the facts he had been unable to understand. What a blind fool he had been!

Stowell! His life-long friend, on whose word he would have staked his soul! There must have been a conspiracy to deceive him. Both Stowell and Bessie had been in it--Stowell to get rid of the girl he no longer wanted, and Bessie to cover up her disgrace by marrying him. What a plot! The woman he had loved and the man he had worshipped! He saw himself hoodwinked by both of them, lied to, perhaps laughed at. His life, his faith, his love had crashed down in a moment. It was too cruel, too damnable!

The air was chill, though the sun was shining, but Gell took off his wig and carried it in his hand, for his head seemed to be afire.

After a time the hatred he had felt for Bessie became centred, with a hundredfold intensity, upon Stowell. Even if Bessie had begun with an intention of betraying him, she must have repented of it afterwards, and committed her crime, poor girl, because (as Fenella had said) she had come to love him. But Stowell had carried on his deception to the last moment. He was carrying it on now, when he was sitting in judgment on his own victim. He meant to sentence her to death, too. Yes, under all his fine phrases it was easy to see that he meant to sentence her. But if he did so Gell would murder him.

"Yes, by God, I'll murder him," he thought.

In the darkness of her cell, with no light on her tortured face except that of the candle behind the grill, Bessie, breaking into another fit of hysteria, was reproaching Fenella with deceiving her.

"You told me that if I confessed the Deemster would let me off. But he is going to condemn me. Why couldn't you let me be? What for did you come here at all? I didn't ask you, did I?"

"Be calm," said Fenella, "and I will explain everything."

After awhile Bessie regained her composure and then she asked for forgiveness.

"I beg your pardon. Sometimes I don't know what I am saying. It has been like that all through the time of my trouble. It was very wrong to forget how you spoke up for me in Court. You'll forgive me, won't you?"

And then Fenella, though sorely in need of comfort herself, comforted the girl and reassured her. The Court might be compelled to sentence her, as it had sentenced other girls for similar crimes, but the sentence would not be carried out. It never was in these days.

"Besides," she said, "the jury will recommend you to mercy, and then the Judges will exercise their discretionary power to reduce your punishment."

Bessie's eyes began to shine.

"You must really forgive me .... And Alick--do you think Alick will forgive me too?"

"Yes, when he sees that what you did was done out of your love for him."

"How good you are! .... And shall we be able to leave the Isle of Man and go away somewhere?"

"Perhaps .... some day."

"Oh, how good you are! I don't know what I've done for you to be so good to me. I didn't think anybody except a girl's mother could be so good to her."

She was like a child again. Her face, though still wet, was beaming. In the selfishness of her suffering it had not occurred to her before that her comforter had been suffering also, but now, in some vague way, she became aware of it.

"If they ask me who he was," she said, in a whisper (meaning who had been her fellow-sinner), "I'll never tell them--never!"

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 awry, in the bench in front of them.

The Jurymen filed back. The Clerk of the Rolls 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 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.

END OF FOURTH BOOK

_FIFTH BOOK_

THE REPARATION