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."