Kitabı oku: «The Nebuly Coat», sayfa 9

“Tom,” she called, “shut the door, and come to thy victuals.”

“Ay,” he answered, “I’ll be with ’ee directly; but gi’e me a minute. I want to see who this is coming up the lane.”

Someone that the clerk knew at once for a stranger had entered the little street at the bottom. There was half a moon, and light enough to see that he was in search of some particular house; for he crossed from one side of the lane to the other, and peered at the numbers on the doors. As he came nearer, the clerk saw that he was of spare build, and wore a loose overcoat or cape, which fluttered in the breeze that blew at evening from the sea. A moment later Janaway knew that the stranger was Lord Blandamer, and stepped back instinctively to let him pass. But the open door had caught the attention of the passer-by; he stopped, and greeted the householder cheerily.

“A beautiful night, but with a cold touch in the air that makes your warm room look very cheerful.” He recognised the clerk’s face as he spoke, and went on: “Ah, ha! we are old friends already; we met in the minster a week ago, did we not?”

Mr Janaway was a little disconcerted at the unexpectedness of the meeting, and returned the salutation in a confused way. The attempt which he had made to prevent Lord Blandamer from entering the choir was fresh in his memory, and he stammered some unready excuses.

Lord Blandamer smiled with much courtesy.

“You were quite right to stop me; you would have been neglecting your duty if you had not done so. I had no idea that service was going on, or I should not have come in; you may make your mind quite easy on that score. I hope you will have many more opportunities of finding a place for me in Cullerne Church.”

“No need to find any place for you, my Lord. You have your own seat appointed and fixed, as sure as Canon Parkyn, and your own arms painted up clear on the back of it. Don’t you trouble for that. It is all laid down in the statutes, and I shall make the very same obeisance for your lordship when you take your seat as for my Lord Bishop. ‘Two inclinations of the body, the mace being held in the right hand, and supported on the left arm.’ I cannot say more fair than that, for only royalties have three inclinations, and none of them has ever been to church in my time—no, nor yet a Lord Blandamer neither, since the day that your dear father and mother, what you never knew, was buried.”

Mrs Janaway drummed with her knuckles on the supper-table, in amazement that her husband should dare to stand chattering at the door when she had told him that the meal was ready. But, as the conversation revealed by degrees the stranger’s identity, curiosity to see the man whose name was in all Cullerne mouths got the better of her, and she came curtseying to the door.

Lord Blandamer flung the flapping cape of his overcoat over the left shoulder in a way that made the clerk think of foreigners, and of woodcuts of Italian opera in a bound volume of the Illustrated London News which he studied on Sunday evenings.

“I must be moving on,” said the visitor, with a shiver. “I must not keep you standing here; there is a very chill air this evening.”

Then Mrs Janaway was seized with a sudden temerity.

“Will your lordship not step in and warm yourself for a moment?” she interposed. “We have a clear fire burning, if you will overlook the smell of cooking.”

The clerk trembled for a moment at his wife’s boldness, but Lord Blandamer accepted the invitation with alacrity.

“Thank you very much,” said he; “I should be very glad to rest a few minutes before my train leaves. Pray make no apology for the smell of cookery; it is very appetising, especially at supper-time.”

He spoke as if he took supper every evening, and had never heard of a late dinner in his life; and five minutes later he sat at table with Mr and Mrs Janaway. The cloth was of roughest homespun, but clean; the knives and forks handled in old green horn, and the piece-of-resistance tripe; but the guest made an excellent meal.

“Some folk think highly of squash tripe or ribband tripe,” the clerk said meditatively, looking at the empty dish; “but they don’t compare, according to my taste, with cushion tripe.” He was emboldened to make these culinary remarks by that moral elevation which comes to every properly-constituted host, when a guest has eaten heartily of the viands set before him.

“No,” Lord Blandamer said, “there can be no doubt that cushion tripe is the best.”

“Quite as much depends upon the cooking as upon the tripe itself,” remarked Mrs Janaway, bridling at the thought that her art had been left out of the reckoning; “a bad cook will spoil the best tripe. There are many ways of doing it, but a little milk and a leek is the best for me.”

“You cannot beat it,” Lord Blandamer assented—“you cannot beat it”—and then went on suggestively: “Have you ever tried a sprig of mace with it?”

No, Mrs Janaway had never heard of that; nor, indeed, had Lord Blandamer either, if the point had been pushed; but she promised to use it the very next time, and hoped that the august visitor would honour them again when it was to be tasted.

“’Tis only Saturday nights that we can get the cushion,” she went on; “and it’s well it don’t come oftener, for we couldn’t afford it. No woman ever had a call to have a better husband nor Thomas, who spends little enough on hisself. He don’t touch nothing but tea, sir, but Saturday nights we treat ourselves to a little tripe, which is all the more convenient in that it is very strengthening, and my husband’s duties on Sunday being that urgent-like. So, if your lordship is fond of tripe, and passing another Saturday night, and will do us the honour, you will always find something ready.”

“Thank you very much for your kind invitation,” Lord Blandamer said; “I shall certainly take you at your word, the more so that Saturday is the day on which I am oftenest in Cullerne, or, I should say, have happened to be lately.”

“There’s poor and poor,” said the clerk reflectively; “and we’re poor, but we’re happy; but there’s Mr Sharnall poor and unhappy. ‘Mr Sharnall,’ says I to him, ‘many a time have I heard my father say over a pot of tenpenny, “Here’s to poverty in a plug-hole, and a man with a wooden leg to trample it down;” but you never puts your poverty in a plug-hole, much less tramples it down. You always has it out and airs it, and makes yourself sad with thinking of it. ’Tisn’t because you’re poor that you’re sad; ’tis because you think you’re poor, and talk so much about it. You’re not so poor as we, only you have so many grievances.’”

“Ah, you are speaking of the organist?” Lord Blandamer asked. “I fancy it was he who was talking with you in the minster this afternoon, was it not?”

The clerk felt embarrassed once more, for he remembered Mr Sharnall’s violent talk, and how his anathema of all Blandamers had rang out in the church.

“Yes,” he said; “poor organist was talking a little wild; he gets took that way sometimes, what with his grievances, and a little drop of the swanky what he takes to drown them. Then he talks loud; but I hope your lordship didn’t hear all his foolishness.”

“Oh dear no; I was engaged at the time with the architect,” Lord Blandamer said; but his tone made Janaway think that Mr Sharnall’s voice had carried further than was convenient. “I did not hear what he said, but he seemed to be much put out. I chatted with him in the church some days ago; he did not know who I was, but I gathered that he bore no very good will to my family.”

Mrs Janaway saw it was a moment for prudent words. “Don’t pay no manner of attention to him, if I may make so bold as to advise your lordship,” she said; “he talks against my husband just as well. He is crazy about his organ, and thinks he ought to have a new one, or, at least, a waterworks to blow it, like what they have at Carisbury. Don’t pay no attention to him; no one minds what Sharnall says in Cullerne.”

The clerk was astonished at his wife’s wisdom, yet apprehensive as to how it might be taken. But Lord Blandamer bowed his head graciously by way of thanks for sage counsel, and went on:

“Was there not some queer man at Cullerne who thought he was kept out of his rights, and should be in my place—who thought, I mean, he ought to be Lord Blandamer?”

The question was full of indifference, and there was a little smile of pity on his face; but the clerk remembered how Mr Sharnall had said something about a strutting peacock, and that there were no real Blandamers left, and was particularly ill at ease.

“Oh yes,” he answered after a moment’s pause, “there was a poor doited body who, saving your presence, had some cranks of that kind; and, more by token, Mr Sharnall lived in the same house with him, and so I dare say he has got touched with the same craze.”

Lord Blandamer took out a cigar instinctively, and then, remembering that there was a lady present, put it back into his case and went on:

“Oh, he lived in the same house with Mr Sharnall, did he? I should like to hear more of this story; it naturally interests me. What was his name?”

“His name was Martin Joliffe,” said the clerk quickly, being surprised into eagerness by the chance of telling a story; and then the whole tale of Martin, and Martin’s father and mother and daughter, as he had told it to Westray, was repeated for Lord Blandamer.

The night was far advanced before the history came to an end, and the local policeman walked several times up and down Governour’s Lane, and made pauses before Mr Janaway’s house, being surprised to see a window lighted so late. Lord Blandamer must have changed his intention of going by train, for the gates of Cullerne station had been locked for hours, and the boiler of the decrepit branch-line engine was cooling in its shed.

“It is an interesting tale, and you tell tales well,” he said, as he got up and put on his coat. “All good things must have an end, but I hope to see you again ere long.” He shook hands with hostess and host, drained the pot of beer that had been fetched from a public-house, with a “Here’s to poverty in a plug-hole, and a man with a wooden leg to trample it down,” and was gone.

A minute later the policeman, coming back for yet another inspection of the lighted window, passed a man of middle height, who wore a loose overcoat, with the cape tossed lightly over the left shoulder. The stranger walked briskly, and hummed an air as he went, turning his face up to the stars and the wind-swept sky, as if entirely oblivious of all sublunary things. A midnight stranger in Governour’s Lane was even more surprising than a lighted window, and the policeman had it in his mind to stop him and ask his business. But before he could decide on so vigorous a course of action, the moment was past, and the footsteps were dying away in the distance.

The clerk was pleased with himself, and proud of his success as a story-teller.

“That’s a clever, understanding sort of chap,” he said to his wife, as they went to bed; “he knows a good tale when he hears one.”

“Don’t you be too proud of yourself, my man,” answered she; “there’s more in that tale than your telling, I warrant you, for my lord to think about.”

Chapter Ten

The extension of the scheme of restoration which Lord Blandamer’s liberality involved, made it necessary that Westray should more than once consult Sir George Farquhar in London. On coming back to Cullerne from one of these visits on a Saturday night, he found his meal laid in Mr Sharnall’s room.

“I thought you would not mind our having supper together,” Mr Sharnall said. “I don’t know how it is, I always feel gloomy just when the winter begins, and the dark sets in so soon. It is all right later on; I rather enjoy the long evenings and a good fire, when I can afford a good one, but at first it is a little gloomy. So come and have supper with me. There is a good fire to-night, and a bit of driftwood that I got specially for your benefit.”

They talked of indifferent subjects during the meal, though once or twice it seemed to Westray that the organist gave inconsequential replies, as though he were thinking of something else. This was no doubt the case, for, after they had settled before the fire, and the lambent blue flames of the driftwood had been properly admired, Mr Sharnall began with a hesitating cough:

“A rather curious thing happened this afternoon. When I got back here after evening-service, who should I find waiting in my room but that Blandamer fellow. There was no light and no fire, for I had thought if we lit the fire late we could afford a better one. He was sitting at one end of the window-seat, damn him!”—(the expletive was caused by Mr Sharnall remembering that this was Anastasia’s favourite seat, and his desire to reprobate the use of it by anyone else)—“but got up, of course, as I came in, and made a vast lot of soft speeches. He must really apologise for such an intrusion. He had come to see Mr Westray, but found that Mr Westray had unfortunately been called away. He had taken the liberty of waiting a few minutes in Mr Sharnall’s room. He was anxious to have a few moments’ conversation with Mr Sharnall, and so on, and so on. You know how I hate palaver, and how I disliked—how I dislike” (he corrected himself)—“the man; but he took me at a disadvantage, you see, for here he was actually in my room, and one cannot be so rude in one’s own room as one can in other people’s. I felt responsible, too, to some extent for his having had to wait without fire or light, though why he shouldn’t have lit the gas himself I’m sure I don’t know. So I talked more civilly than I meant to, and then, just at the moment that I was hoping to get rid of him, Anastasia, who it seems was the only person at home, must needs come in to ask if I was ready for my tea. You may imagine my disgust, but there was nothing for it but to ask him if he would like a cup of tea. I never dreamt of his taking it, but he did; and so, behold! there we were hobnobbing over the tea-table as if we were cronies.”

Westray was astonished. Mr Sharnall had rebuked him so short a time before for not having repulsed Lord Blandamer’s advances that he could scarcely understand such a serious falling away from all the higher principles of hatred and malice as were implied in this tea-drinking. His experience of life had been as yet too limited to convince him that most enmities and antipathies, being theoretical rather than actual, are apt to become mitigated, or to disappear altogether on personal contact—that it is, in fact, exceedingly hard to keep hatred at concert-pitch, or to be consistently rude to a person face to face who has a pleasant manner and a desire to conciliate.

Perhaps Mr Sharnall read Westray’s surprise in his face, for he went on with a still more apologetic manner:

“That is not the worst of it; he has put me in a most awkward position. I must admit that I found his conversation amusing enough. We spoke a good deal of music, and he showed a surprising knowledge of the subject, and a correct taste; I do not know where he has got it from.”

“I found exactly the same thing with his architecture,” Westray said. “We started to go round the minster as master and pupil, but before we finished I had an uncomfortable impression that he knew more about it than I did—at least, from the archaeologic point of view.”

“Ah!” said the organist, with that indifference with which a person who wishes to recount his own experiences listens to those of someone else, however thrilling they may be. “Well, his taste was singularly refined. He showed a good acquaintance with the contrapuntists of the last century, and knew several of my own works. A very curious thing this. He said he had been in some cathedral—I forget which—heard the service, and been so struck with it that he went afterwards to look it up on the bill, and found it was Sharnall in D flat. He hadn’t the least idea that it was mine till we began to talk. I haven’t had that service by me for years; I wrote it at Oxford for the Gibbons’ prize; it has a fugal movement in the Gloria, ending with a tonic pedal-point that you would like. I must look it up.”

“Yes, I should like to hear it,” Westray said, more to fill the interval while the speaker took breath than from any great interest in the matter.

“So you shall—so you shall,” went on the organist; “you will find the pedal-point adds immensely to the effect. Well, by degrees we came to talking of the organ. It so happens that we had spoken of it the very first day I met him in the church, though you know I never talk about my instrument, do I? At that time it didn’t strike me that he was so well up in the matter, but now he seemed to know all about it, and so I gave him my ideas as to what ought to be done. Then, before I knew where I was, he cut in with, ‘Mr Sharnall, what you say interests me immensely; you put things in such a lucid way that even an outsider like myself can understand them. It would be a thousand pities if neglect were permanently to injure this sweet-toned instrument that Father Smith made so long ago. It is no use restoring the church without the organ, so you must draw up a specification of the repairs and additions required, and understand that anything you suggest shall be done. In the meantime pray order at once the water-engine and new pedal-board of which you speak, and inform me as to the cost.’ He took me quite aback, and was gone before I had time to say anything. It puts me in a very equivocal position; I have such an antipathy to the man. I shall refuse his offer point-blank. I will not put myself under any obligation to such a man. You would refuse in my position? You would write a strong letter of refusal at once, would you not?”

Westray was of a guileless disposition, and apt to assume that people meant what they said. It seemed to him a matter for much regret that Mr Sharnall’s independence, however lofty, should stand in the way of so handsome a benefaction, and he was at pains to elaborate and press home all the arguments that he could muster to shake the organist’s resolve. The offer was kindly-meant; he was sure that Mr Sharnall took a wrong view of Lord Blandamer’s character—that Mr Sharnall was wrong in imputing motives to Lord Blandamer. What motives could he have except the best? and however much Mr Sharnall might personally refuse, how was a man to be stopped eventually from repairing an organ which stood so manifestly in need of repair?

Westray spoke earnestly, and was gratified to see the effect which his eloquence produced on Mr Sharnall. It is so rarely that argument prevails to change opinion that the young man was flattered to see that the considerations which he was able to marshal were strong enough, at any rate, to influence Mr Sharnall’s determination.

Well, perhaps there was something in what Mr Westray said. Mr Sharnall would think it over. He would not write the letter of refusal that night; he could write to refuse the next day quite as well. In the meantime he would see to the new pedal-board, and order the water-engine. Ever since he had seen the water-engine at Carisbury, he had been convinced that sooner or later they must have one at Cullerne. It must be ordered; they could decide later on whether it should be paid for by Lord Blandamer, or should be charged to the general restoration fund.

This conclusion, however inconclusive, was certainly a triumph for Westray’s persuasive oratory, but his satisfaction was chastened by some doubts as to how far he was justified in assailing the scrupulous independence which had originally prompted Mr Sharnall to refuse to have anything to do with Lord Blandamer’s offer. If Mr Sharnall had scruples in the matter, ought not he, Westray, to have respected those scruples? Was it not tampering with rectitude to have overcome them by a too persuasive rhetoric?

His doubts were not allayed by the observation that Mr Sharnall himself had severely felt the strain of this mental quandary, for the organist said that he was upset by so difficult a question, and filled himself a bumper of whisky to steady his nerves. At the same time he took down from a shelf two or three notebooks and a mass of loose papers, which he spread open upon the table before him. Westray looked at them with a glance of unconscious inquiry.

“I must really get to work at these things again,” said the organist; “I have been dreadfully negligent of late. They are a lot of papers and notes that Martin Joliffe left behind him. Poor Miss Euphemia never had the heart to go through them. She was going to burn them just as they were, but I said, ‘Oh, you mustn’t do that; turn them over to me. I will look into them, and see whether there is anything worth keeping.’ So I took them, but haven’t done nearly as much as I ought, what with one interruption and another. It’s always sad going through a dead man’s papers, but sadder when they’re all that’s left of a life’s labour—lost labour, so far as Martin was concerned, for he was taken away just when he began to see daylight. ‘We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain that we shall carry nothing out.’ When that comes into my mind, I think rather of the little things than of gold or lands. Intimate letters that a man treasured more than money; little tokens of which the clue has died with him; the unfinished work to which he was coming back, and never came; even the unpaid bills that worried him; for death transfigures all, and makes the commonplace pathetic.”

He stopped for a moment. Westray said nothing, being surprised at this momentary softening of the other’s mood.

“Yes, it’s sad enough,” the organist resumed; “all these papers are nebuly coat—the sea-green and silver.”

“He was quite mad, I suppose?” Westray said.

“Everyone except me will tell you so,” replied the organist; “but I’m not so very sure after all that there wasn’t a good deal more in it than madness. That’s all that I can say just now, but those of us who live will see. There is a queer tradition hereabout. I don’t know how long ago it started, but people say that there is some mystery about the Blandamer descent, and that those in possession have no right to what they hold. But there is something else. Many have tried to solve the riddle, and some, you may depend, have been very hot on the track. But just as they come to the touch, something takes them off; that’s what happened to Martin. I saw him the very day he died. ‘Sharnall,’ he said to me, ‘if I can last out forty-eight hours more, you may take off your hat to me, and say “My lord.”’

“But the nebuly coat was too much for him; he had to die. So don’t you be surprised if I pop off the hooks some of these fine days; if I don’t, I’m going to get to the bottom, and you will see some changes here before so very long.”

He sat down at the table, and made a show for a minute of looking at the papers.

“Poor Martin!” he said, and got up again, opened the cupboard, and took out the bottle. “You’ll have a drop,” he asked Westray, “won’t you?”

“No, thanks, not I,” Westray said, with something as near contempt as his thin voice was capable of expressing.

“Just a drop—do! I must have just a drop myself; I find it a great strain working at these papers; there may be more at stake in the reading than I care to think of.”

He poured out half a tumbler of spirit. Westray hesitated for a moment, and then his conscience and an early puritan training forced him to speak.

“Sharnall,” he said, “put it away. That bottle is your evil angel. Play the man, and put it away. You force me to speak. I cannot sit by with hands folded and see you going down the hill.”

The organist gave him a quick glance; then he filled up the tumbler to the brim with neat spirit.

“Look you,” he said: “I was going to drink half a glass; now I’m going to drink a whole one. That much for your advice! Going down the hill indeed! Go to the devil with your impertinence! If you can’t keep a civil tongue in your head, you had better get your supper in someone else’s room.”

A momentary irritation dragged Westray down from the high podium of judicial reproof into the arena of retort.

“Don’t worry yourself,” he said sharply; “you may rely on my not troubling you with my company again.” And he got up and opened the door. As he turned to go out, Anastasia Joliffe passed through the passage on her way to bed.

The glimpse of her as she went by seemed still further to aggravate Mr Sharnall. He signed to Westray to stay where he was, and to shut the door again.

“Damn you!” he said; “that’s what I called you back to say. Damn you! Damn Blandamer! Damn everybody! Damn poverty! Damn wealth! I will not touch a farthing of his money for the organ. Now you can go.”

Westray had been cleanly bred. He had been used neither to the vulgarity of ill-temper nor to the coarser insolence of personal abuse. He shrank by natural habit even from gross adjectives, from the “beastly” and the “filthy” which modern manners too often condone, and still more from the abomination of swearing. So Mr Sharnall’s obloquy wounded him to the quick. He went to bed in a flutter of agitation, and lay awake half the night mourning over a friendship so irreparably broken, bitter with the resentment of an unjustified attack, yet reproaching himself lest through his unwittingness he might have brought it all upon himself.

The morning found him unrefreshed and dejected, but, whilst he sat at breakfast, the sun came out brightly, and he began to take a less despondent view of the situation. It was possible that Mr Sharnall’s friendship might not after all be lost beyond repair; he would be sorry if it were, for he had grown fond of the old man, in spite of all his faults of life and manner. It was he, Westray, who had been entirely to blame. In another man’s room he had lectured the other man. He, a young man, had lectured the other, who was an old man. It was true that he had done so with the best motives; he had only spoken from a painful sense of duty. But he had shown no tact, he had spoken much too strongly; he had imperilled his own good cause by the injudicious manner in which he had put it forward. At the risk of all rebuffs, he would express his regret; he would go down and apologise to Mr Sharnall, and offer, if need be, the other cheek to the smiter.

Good resolves, if formed with the earnest intention of carrying them into effect, seldom fail to restore a measure of peace to the troubled mind. It is only when a regular and ghastly see-saw of wrong-doing and repentance has been established, and when the mind can no longer deceive even itself as to the possibility of permanent uprightness of life, that good resolves cease to tranquillise. Such a see-saw must gradually lose its regularity; the set towards evil grows more and more preponderant; the return to virtue rarer and more brief. Despair of any continuity of godliness follows, and then it is that good resolves, becoming a mere reflex action of the mind, fail in their gracious influence, and cease to bring quiet. These conditions can scarcely occur before middle age, and Westray, being young and eminently conscientious, was feeling the full peacefulness of his high-minded intention steal over him, when the door opened, and the organist entered.

An outbreak of temper and a night of hard drinking had left their tokens on Mr Sharnall’s face. He looked haggard, and the rings that a weak heart had drawn under his eyes were darker and more puffed. He came in awkwardly, and walked quickly to the architect, holding out his hand.

“Forgive me, Westray,” he said; “I behaved last night like a fool and a cad. You were quite right to speak to me as you did; I honour you for it. I wish to God there had been someone to speak to me like that years ago.”

His outstretched hand was not so white as it should have been, the nails were not so well trimmed as a more fastidious mood might have demanded; but Westray did not notice these things. He took the shaky old hand, and gripped it warmly, not saying anything, because he could not speak.

“We must be friends,” the organist went on, after a moment’s pause; “we must be friends, because I can’t afford to lose you. I haven’t known you long, but you are the only friend I have in the world. Is it not an awful thing to confess?” he said, with a tremulous little laugh. “I have no other friend in the world. Say those things you said last night whenever you like; the oftener you say them the better.”

He sat down, and, the situation being too strained to remain longer at so high a pitch, the conversation drifted, however awkwardly, to less personal topics.

“There is a thing I wanted to speak about last night,” the organist said. “Poor old Miss Joliffe is very hard up. She hasn’t said a word to me about it—she never would to anyone—but I happen to know it for a fact: she is hard up. She is in a chronic state of hard-up-ishness always, and that we all are; but this is an acute attack—she has her back against the wall. It is the fag-end of Martin’s debts that bother her; these blood-sucking tradesmen are dunning her, and she hasn’t the pluck to tell them go hang, though they know well enough she isn’t responsible for a farthing. She has got it into her head that she hasn’t a right to keep that flower-and-caterpillar picture so long as Martin’s debts are unpaid, because she could raise money on it. You remember those people, Baunton and Lutterworth, offered her fifty pounds for it.”

“Yes, I remember,” Westray said; “more fools they.”

“More fools, by all means,” rejoined the organist; “but still they offer it, and I believe our poor old landlady will come to selling it. ‘All the better for her,’ you will say, and anyone with an ounce of common-sense would have sold it long ago for fifty pounds or fifty pence. But, then, she has no common-sense, and I do believe it would break her pride and worry her into a fever to part with it. Well, I have been at the pains to find out what sum of money would pull her through, and I fancy something like twenty pounds would tide over the crisis.”