"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.