Later in the day Stowell was alone in the library reading the
Depositions. In his secret heart he knew that a wicked temptation
had come to him--the temptation to get Bessie off, and to stop the
flood of evil which would surely follow if Deemster Taubman tried her
and she were condemned. But all the same he was struggling to drown
his qualms in contempt of the case against her.
How little there was to it! The direct evidence was almost childish.
The medical testimony was the only thing of consequence, but how
sloppy, how inconclusive! Was there anything against Bessie which
he, if he had been the advocate for the defence, could not have
riddled with as many holes as there were in a cullender? Then why
shouldn't he sit on her case?
Guilty? Perhaps she was; but, even so, was it not the theory of the
law that she had to be proved guilty--that a prisoner should have a
fair legal trial and be convicted or acquitted according to the
evidence before the Court? Why shouldn't he?
Suddenly he became aware of a tumult at the front door. Somebody was
bawling in a loud voice,
"I'll see the Dempster if I have to shout the house down."
It was Dan Baldromma. Stowell stepped into the hall and said to the
housemaid, who was barring the door against the intruder,
"Let him come in, Jane."
Dan, with his short, gross figure, rolled into the house without
remembering to take his hat off.
"Well, what do you want?" said Stowell--he was quivering with anger.
"I want to know what is to be done for me?" said Dan.
"For you?"
"For my daughter then--my step-daughter, I mane."
When he had seen Mr. Sto'll last--it was at his office in Ramsey--he
had warned him that the man who had got his daughter into disgrace
had got to marry her. But had he? No! He had refused--he must have
done. And that was the reason why she did what they say. But,
behold you, who was being blamed for it? Himself! Yes, people were
looking black at him and saying he had thrown the girl into the way
of temptation.
That was not the worst of it either. He had expected dacent
tratement about the farm when he became father-in-law to the man who
would come into it by heirship. But now the girl was in Castle
Rushen, and if they sent her over the water the Spaker would be
turning him out of house and home.
"He's after threatening it already--to show me the road at Hollantide
.... What's that you say, Sir? Thinking of myself, am I? Maybe I
am, then, and what for shouldn't I? Near is my shirt but nearer is
my skin, they're saying."
Stowell, swept by gusts of passion, was doing his best to control
himself.
"Well, what have you come to me for?" he asked.
Dan thrust forward his thick neck with his bull-like gesture, and
said,
"To tell you to get her off."
"Even if she is guilty?"
"Chut! Who's to know that if the Coorts acquit her? They are wayses
and wayses. Lawyers are mortal clever at twisting the law when
they're wanting to. You're Dempster now; and the bosom friend of the
man that got my girl into this trouble has got to get her out of it."
"So," said Stowell, breathing hard, "you have come to ask me to
degrade Justice" (Dan made a grunt of contempt), "not to save the
girl but to protect you--you and your rag of a character?"
Dan drew himself up with a short laugh, half bitter and half
triumphant.
"Rag, is it? Take care what you're saying, Mr. Sto'll, Sir. You may
be a big man in the island now, but there's them that's bigger and
that's the people."
Stowell pointed with a quivering hand to the clock on the landing,
and said,
"Look at that clock. If you're not out of this house in one
minute...."
Dan's laugh rose to a cry of derision.
"So that's it, is it? That's what the first Justice of the Peace in
the Isle of Man is, eh? Son of the ould Dempster too! The grand
ould holy saint as they're...."
But before he could finish, Stowell, with a shout that drowned Dan's
laugh as if it had been the whimper of a baby girl, laid hold of the
man by the collar of his coat and the slack of his trousers and flung
him out of the open door and clashed it after him.
Dan, who had rolled and tossed and bumped on the path like a fat
hogshead kecked from the tail of a cart, picked himself up and went
staggering down the drive, shaking his fist at the house and pouring
his maledictions upon it in a voice that was like the broken howl of
a limping dog.
Janet came running from her room, and seeing Stowell with his eyes
aflame and panting for breath, said,
"Oh dear! Oh dear! Now you'll be worse."
"On the contrary, I'll be better--better in every way," he said.
His resolution was taken. Never would he sit on Bessie's case.
Nothing should tempt him to do so.
But Fate had not yet done with him.
V
On the afternoon of the following day Stowell walked for a long hour
on the shore, trying to deaden the tumult in his brain in the loud
surge of the sea. Returning to Ballamoar he found the Governor's
carriage outside the house. Had the Governor come to see him? It
was Fenella. She was at tea with Janet in the library.
Although she rose to greet him with all the sunshine of her smile he
could see that her face was feverish.
"I've come to the north on three errands," she said.
"So?"
"First to see yourself, of course, and I find that, in spite of
doctor's orders, you have already resumed your gypsy habits."
"He _would_ go out, dear," said Janet.
"Next, to deliver a message from the Governor."
"Yes?"
"He has postponed the Court for three days in the hope that you may
be able to sit then."
"Ah!"
"My last errand was to see the mother of that poor girl who is to be
charged with the murder of her child."
"The mother?"
"Yes, I've just left her. She still says she knows nothing. It's
pitiful! A simple, sincere, religious old soul, who has seen trouble
of her own apparently. I don't think for a moment she would tell an
untruth, yet it is easy to see that in her heart she believes her
daughter to be guilty."
"Guilty?"
"Yes, but there's somebody guiltier than the girl--the man."
Stowell was silent; but he felt his face twitching.
"That's why I am so anxious that you should sit on this case if you
can, Victor, not leave it to Deemster Taubman. Old Judges often
refuse to investigate collateral facts, and so the woman is punished
and the man goes free."
"They can't do otherwise, dear. They can't try the man."
"Not if he has been a party to the crime?"
"A party...."
"Yes! I'm satisfied that in this case he is, too."
The girl might be guilty, but she could not have done all she was
charged with. It was physically impossible. Somebody must have
helped her. And that somebody (the old mother having to be ruled
out) must be the man who had it to his interest to save his miserable
character by concealing the fact that the girl had given birth to a
child at all.
Stowell had as much as he could do to cover his embarrassment. He
lowered his voice and said,
"That's a blind alley. I've read the Depositions. I'm sure it is,
dear."
"Perhaps it is, perhaps it isn't," said Fenella. "I intend to follow
it up anyway."
"How?" said Stowell, but rather with his mouth than his voice.
"I'm already on the track of something."
"On the track...."
"Yes. It seems that somebody has been telling the mother that on the
night when the girl left home (shut out by her abominable
step-father, you know) she went to the house of a Mrs. Quayle, living
on the south shore in Ramsey."
Stowell's heart thumped and his lips quivered.
"Mrs. Quayle?"
"Why, that must be the housekeeper at your chambers, dear," said
Janet, busy with her teacups.
"You know her? .... But then everybody knows everybody in the Isle of
Man," said Fenella.