The Master of Man: The Story of a SinCaine, Hall, Sir
General
The Master of Man: The Story of a Sin
Caine, Hall, Sir
Infanticide -- Fiction; Isle of Man -- Fiction; Legal stories; Redemption -- Fiction
The business being over, the Bishop gave out the hymn that is sung at
the close of nearly all Manx festivals, "O God, our help," and all
rose and sang.
Stowell rose with the rest, but he did not sing. He was no longer
conscious of the eyes that were on him. The emotion which he had
been struggling to repress had at length conquered his self-control.
While the Court-house throbbed with the singing he was thinking of
the Judges who had stood in the same place and taken that oath before
him. There had been a thousand years of them.
He turned to the eastern wall and his father's melancholy eyes seemed
to look at him. "Yes, you too," they seemed to say, "must now do the
right, whatever it may cost you. You are no longer yourself only.
The souls of all your predecessors have this day entered into your
soul. You must consider yourself no more. You must be just--or
perish."
The hymn came to an end and there was a shuffling of feet like the
pattering of water in the harbour at the top of the tide. The next
thing Stowell knew was that he was unrobed and going down the
Deemster's private staircase to the Court-yard of the Castle.
A large company was there waiting to congratulate him. Janet (he had
ordered that a front seat should be reserved for her) was holding a
little court of elderly ladies, to whom she was relating wonderful
stories of his childhood. She broke away from them to kiss him. And
then she kissed Fenella also and whispered,
"Don't forget to send him home in time, dear."
"I'll not forget," said Fenella.
And then she, on her part, with a face aflame, whispered something to
the Governor, who, shaking hands all round, was making ready to go.
"What? You want to return in the automobile? Very well, off you go!
The Attorney will take pity on your forsaken father."
Outside the gate there was a great crowd, behind a regiment of
red-coated soldiers, and when the Governor and the Attorney-General
drove off they broke into a cheer which drowned the clash of steel
and the first bars of the National Anthem.
But that was as nothing compared with the demonstration when Stowell
went off in his car, sitting at the wheel, with Fenella beside him.
"Long live the new Deemster--hip, hip--hip!"
The great shout, the mighty roar of voices, brought a surging to
Stowell's throat and a tightening to his breast. It followed his
car, going off in the sunshine, until it shot over the bridge that
crossed the harbour, and there Fenella turned back her glistening wet
eyes and bowed.
* * * * * * *
Others heard it. The prisoners in their dark cells, rising from
their plank beds and hunching their shoulders in the chill air,
listened to the joyous sounds from without, which broke the usual
silence of their gloomy walls, and said to themselves,
"What are they doing now, I wonder?"
There were seven prisoners in the Castle that day. One of them was
Bessie Collister.
II
"Addio! See you at supper!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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