The Silent Isle
THE SILENT ISLE BY ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge 1913 Nec prohibui cor meum. To PERCY LUBBOCK
"The Munns belong to what we call the Inalienables in Our Square," said
I, and told him of the high court decision which secured to the
descendants of the original "churchyard membership," and to them alone,
the inalienable right to lie in God's Acre, provided, as in the ancient
charter, they had "died in honorable estate." I added: "Bartholomew
Storrs, as sexton, has constituted himself watchdog of our graves and
censor of our dead. He carried one case to the Supreme Court in an
attempt to keep an unhappy woman from sleeping in that pious company."
"That sour-faced prohibitionist?" growled Mr. Hines, employing what I
suspect to be the blackest anathema in his lexicon. "Is he the sexton?"
"The same. Our mortuary genius," I confirmed.
"She was a good girl, Min was," said Mr. Hines firmly, though, it might
appear, a trifle inconsequentially: "I don't care what they say. Anyway,
after I met up with her"; in which qualifying afterthought lay a whole
sorrowful and veiled history.
I waited.
"What did they say about her, down here?" he asked jealously.
"Oh, there were rumors. They didn't reach her father."
THE SILENT ISLE BY ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge 1913 Nec prohibui cor meum. To PERCY LUBBOCK