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.