The Master of Man: The Story of a Sin

by Sir Hall Caine

The good and the unco' good were scandalized, but the victims were scarified. And to put an end to their enemy, and terminate his hostilities, these latter, laying their heads together to tar him with his own brush, found a hopeful agency to their hand in the person of a good-looking young woman of doubtful reputation called Fanny, who kept a house of questionable fame in the unlit reaches of the harbour south of the bridge.

One early morning word went through the town like a searching wind that Fanny's house had been raided by the police, in the middle of the night, about the hour when the Clubmen usually clattered back to Douglas. The raid had been intended to capture Stowell, but had failed in its chief object—that young gentleman having gone on, when some of his comrades had stopped, put up his horse at his job-master's and proceeded to Gell's chambers where he slept on his nights in town. Others of his company had also escaped by means of a free fight, in which they had used their hunting crops and the police their truncheons. But Alick Gell, with his supernatural capacity for getting into a scrape, had been arrested and carried off, with Fanny herself, to the Douglas lock-up.

Next day these two were brought up in the Magistrate's Court, which was presided over by his Worship the Colonel of the "Nunnery," a worthy and dignified man, to whom the turn of recent events was shocking. The old Court-house was crowded with the excited townspeople, and as many of the Clubmen were present as dare show their bandaged heads out of their bedrooms.

When the case was called, and the two defendants entered the dock, they made a grotesque and rather pitiful contrast—Gell in his tall, slim, fair-haired gentlemanliness, and Fanny in her warm fat comeliness, decked out in some gaudy finery which she had sent home for, having been carried off in the night with streaming locks and naked bosom.

In the place of the Attorney-General, the prosecutor was a full-bodied, elderly advocate named Hudgeon, who had been the subject of one of the most withering of the lampoons. He opened with bitter severity, spoke of the case as the worst of the kind the island had known; referred to the "most unholy hour of the morning" which had lately been selected for scenes of unseemly riot; said his "righteous indignation" was roused at such disgraceful doings, and finally hoped the Court would, for the credit of lawyers "hereafter" make an example, "without respect of persons," of the representative of a group of young roysterers, who were a disgrace to the law, and had nothing better to do (so rumour and report were saying) than to traduce the good names of their elders and betters.

When he had examined the constables and closed his case it looked as if Gell were in danger of Castle Rushen, and the consequent wrecking of his career at the Bar, and that nothing was before Fanny but banishment from the island, with such solace as the bribe of her employers might bring her.

But then, to a rustle of whispering, Stowell, who was in wig and gown for the first time, got up for the defence. It had been expected that he would do so, and many old advocates who had heard much of him, had left their offices, and filled the advocates' box, to see for themselves what mettle he was made of.

They had not long to wait. In five minutes he had made such play with his "learned friend's" "unholy hour of the morning," "his righteous indignation" and his "hereafter" for lawyers (not without reference to a traditional personage with horns and a fork) that the merriment of the people in Court rose from a titter to a roar, which the ushers were powerless to suppress. Again and again the writhing prosecutor, with flaming face and foaming and spluttering mouth, appealed in vain to the Bench, until at length, getting no protection, and being lashed by a wit more cutting than a whip, he gathered up his papers and, leaving the case to his clerk, fled from the Court like an infuriated bat, saying he would never again set foot in it.

Then Stowell, calling back the constables, confused them, made them contradict themselves, and each other, and step down at last like men whose brains had fallen into their boots. After that he called Gell and caused him to look like a harmless innocent who had strayed out of a sheepfold into a shambles. And finally he called Fanny, and getting quickly on the woman's side of her, he so coaxed and cajoled and flattered and then frightened her, that she seemed to be on the point of blurting out the whole plot, and giving away the names of half the big men in the island.

His Worship of the Nunnery closed up the case quickly, saying "young men will be young men," but regretting that the eminent talents exhibited in the defence were not being employed in the service of the island.