The Master of Man: The Story of a Sin

by Sir Hall Caine

But even this fierce gambling with her fate broke down at last with Bessie. The certainty had fallen on her. The natural strength of her constitution had withstood all the attacks she had made upon it. Whether she married Gell, or did not marry him, there was nothing before her except suffering and disgrace. How could she keep his love against the shame that was striding down on her?

Christmas had come. It was Christmas Eve. The Manx people call it Oie'l Verry (the Eve of Mary), and during the last hour before midnight they take possession of their parish churches, over the heads of their clergy, for the singing of their ancient Manx carvals (carols). The old Miss Browns were to keep Oie'l Verry at their church in Castletown. They had always done so, and this time Bessie was to go with them.

It was a clear cold winter's night with crisp snow underfoot, and overhead a world of piercing stars.

As the two old maids in their long black boas, and Bessie in a fur-lined coat which Gell had sent as a Christmas present, crossed the foot-bridge over the harbour and walked under the blind walls of the dark castle, the great clock in the square tower was striking eleven. But it was bright enough in the market place, with the light from the church windows on the white ground, and people hurrying to church at a quick trot and stamping the snow off their boots at the door.

It was brighter still inside, for the altar and pulpit had been decorated with ivy and holly, and, though the church was lit by gas, most of the worshippers, according to ancient custom, had brought candles also.

The church was very full, but the old Miss Browns, with Bessie behind them, walked up the aisle to the pew under the reading-desk which they had always rented. The congregation about them was a strangely mixed one, and the atmosphere was half solemn and half hilarious.

The gallery was occupied by farm lads and fisher-lads chiefly, and they were craning their necks to catch glimpses of the girls in the pews below, while the girls themselves (as often as they could do so without being observed by their elders) were glancing up with gleaming eyes. In the body of the church there were middle-aged folks with soberer faces, and in the front seats sat old people, with slower and duller eyes and cheeks scored deep with wrinkles—the mysterious hieroglyphics of life's troubled story, sickness and death, husbands lost at half-tide and children gone before them.

An opening hymn had just been sung, the last notes of the organ were dying down, the clergyman, in his surplice, was sitting by the side of the altar, and the first of the carol singers had risen in his pew, candle in hand, to sing his carval.

He was a rugged old man from the mountains of Rushen, half landsman and half seaman, and his carol (which he sang in the Manx, while the tallow guttered down on his discoloured fingers) was a catalogue of all the bad women mentioned in the Bible, from Eve, the mother of mankind, who brought evil into the world, to "that graceless wench, Salome."

After that came similar carols, sung by similar carol-singers and received by the boys in the gallery with gusts of laughter which the Clerk tried in vain to suppress. But at last there came a carval sung in chorus by twelve young girls with sweet young voices and faces that were chaste and pure and full of joy—all carrying their candles as they walked slowly up the aisle from the western end of the church to the altar steps.