The Nebuly Coat Part 12

"Yes, it has a good many interesting features," Westray answered; "you know its history, of course--I mean that it was an old inn."

He had turned round as his companion turned, and for an instant thought he saw something moving behind the blind in Mr Sharnall's room. But he must have been mistaken; only Anastasia was in the house, and she was in the kitchen, for he had called to her as they went out to say that he might be late for tea.

Westray thoroughly enjoyed the hour and a half which the light allowed him for showing and explaining the church. Lord Blandamer exhibited what is called, so often by euphemism, an intelligent interest in all that he saw, and was at no pains either to conceal or display a very adequate architectural knowledge. Westray wondered where he had acquired it, though he asked no questions; but before the inspection was ended he found himself unconsciously talking to his companion of technical points, as to a professional equal and not to an amateur.

They stopped for a moment under the central tower.

"I feel especially grateful," Westray said, "for your generosity in giving us a free hand for all fabric work, because we shall now be able to tackle the tower. Nothing will ever induce me to believe that all is right up there. The arches are extraordinarily wide and thin for their date. You will laugh when I tell you that I sometimes think I hear them crying for repair, and especially that one on the south with the jagged crack in the wall above it. Now and then, when I am alone in the church or the tower, I seem to catch their very words. 'The arch never sleeps,' they say; 'we never sleep.'"

"It is a romantic idea," Lord Blandamer said. "Architecture is poetry turned into stone, according to the old aphorism, and you, no doubt, have something of the poet in you."

He glanced at the thin and rather bloodless face, and at the high cheekbones of the water-drinker as he spoke. Lord Blandamer never made jokes, and very seldom was known to laugh, yet if anyone but Westray had been with him, they might have fancied that there was a whimsical tone in his words, and a trace of amus.e.m.e.nt in the corners of his eyes. But the architect did not see it, and coloured slightly as he went on:

"Well, perhaps you are right; I suppose architecture does inspire one.

The first verses I ever wrote, or the first, at least, that I ever had printed, were on the Apse of Tewkesbury Abbey. They came out in the _Gloucester Herald_, and I dare say I shall scribble something about these arches some day."

"Do," said Lord Blandamer, "and send me a copy. This place ought to have its poet, and it is much safer to write verses to arches than to arched eyebrows."

Westray coloured again, and put his hand in his breast-pocket. Could he have been so foolish as to leave those half-finished lines on his desk for Lord Blandamer or anyone else to see? No, they were quite safe; he could feel the sharp edge of the paper folded lengthways, which differentiated them from ordinary letters.

"We shall just have time to go up to the roof-s.p.a.ce, if you care to do so," he suggested, changing the subject. "I should like to show you the top of the transept groining, and explain what we are busy with at present. It is always more or less dark up there, but we shall find lanterns."

"Certainly, with much pleasure." And they climbed the newel staircase that was carried in the north-east pier.

Clerk Janaway had been hovering within a safe distance of them as they went their round. He was nominally busy in "putting things straight"

for the Sunday, before the church was shut up; and had kept as much out of sight as was possible, remembering how he had withstood Lord Blandamer to the face a week before. Yet he was anxious to meet him, as it were, by accident, and explain that he had acted in ignorance of the real state of affairs; but no favourable opportunity for such an explanation presented itself. The pair had gone up to the roof, and the clerk was preparing to lock up--for Westray had a key of his own--when he heard someone coming up the nave.

It was Mr Sharnall, who carried a pile of music-books under his arm.

"Hallo!" he said to the clerk, "what makes _you_ so late? I expected to have to let myself in. I thought you would have been off an hour ago."

"Well, things took a bit longer to-night than usual to put away." He broke off, for there was a little noise somewhere above them in the scaffolding, and went on in what was meant for a whisper: "Mr Westray's taking his lordship round; they're up in the roof now. D'ye hear 'em?"

"Lordship! What lordship? D'you mean that fellow Blandamer?"

"Yes, that's just who I do mean. But I don't know as how he's a fellow, and he _is_ a lordship; so that's why I call him a lordship and not a fellow. And mid I ask what he's been doing to set _your_ back up? Why don't you wait here for him, and talk to him about the organ? Maybe, now he's in the giving mood, he'd set it right for 'ee, or anyways give 'ee that little blowin'-engine you talk so much about. Why do 'ee always go about showin' your teeth?--metaforally, I mean, for you haven't that many real ones left to make much show--why ain't you like other folk sometimes? Shall I tell 'ee? 'Cause you wants to be young when you be old, and rich when you be poor. That's why. That makes 'ee miserable, and then you drinks to drown it. Take my advice, and act like other folk. I'm nigh a score of years older than you, and take a vast more pleasure in my life than when I was twenty. The neighbours and their ways tickle me now, and my pipe's sweeter; and there's many a foolish thing a young man does that age don't give an old one the chanst to. You've spoke straight to me, and now I've spoke straight to you, 'cause I'm a straight-speaking man, and have no call to be afraid of anyone--lord or fellow or organist. So take an old man's word: cheer up, and wait on my lord, and get him to give 'ee a new organ."

"Bah!" said Mr Sharnall, who was far too used to Janaway's manner to take umbrage or pay attention to it. "Bah! I hate all Blandamers. I wish they were as dead and buried as dodos; and I'm not at all sure they aren't. I'm not at all sure, mind you, that this strutting peac.o.c.k has any more right to the name of Blandamer than you or I have. I'm sick of all this wealth. No one's thought anything of to-day, who can't build a church or a museum or a hospital. 'So long as thou doest well unto _thyself_, men will speak good of thee.' If you've got the money, you're everything that's wonderful, and if you haven't, you may go rot.

I wish all Blandamers were in their graves," he said, raising his thin and strident voice till it rang again in the vault above, "and wrapped up in their nebuly coat for a shroud. I should like to fling a stone through their d.a.m.ned badge." And he pointed to the sea-green and silver shield high up in the transept window. "Sunlight and moonlight, it is always there. I used to like to come down and play here to the bats of a full moon, till I saw _that_ would always look into the loft and haunt me."

He thumped his pile of books down on a seat, and flung out of the church. He had evidently been drinking, and the clerk made his escape at the same time, being anxious not to be identified with sentiments which had been so loudly enunciated that he feared those in the roof might have overheard them.

Lord Blandamer wished Westray good-night at the church-door, excusing himself from an invitation to tea on the ground of business which necessitated his return to Fording.

"We must spend another afternoon in the minster," he said. "I hope you will allow me to write to make an appointment. I am afraid that it may possibly be for a Sat.u.r.day again, for I am much occupied at present during the week."

Clerk Janaway lived not far from the church, in Governor's Lane. No one knew whence its name was derived, though Dr Ennefer thought that the Military Governour might have had his quarters thereabouts when Cullerne was held for the Parliament. Serving as a means of communication between two quiet back-streets, it was itself more quiet than either, and yet; for all this, had about it a certain air of comfort and well-being. The pa.s.sage of vehicles was barred at either end by old cannon. Their breeches were buried in the ground, and their muzzles stood up as st.u.r.dy iron posts, while the brown cobbles of the roadway sloped to a shallow stone gutter which ran down the middle of the lane.

Custom ordained that the houses should be coloured with a pink wash; and the shutters, which were a feature of the place, shone in such bright colours as to recall a Dutch town.

Shutter-painting was indeed an event of some importance in Governour's Lane. Not a few of its inhabitants had followed the sea as fishermen or smack-owners, and when fortune so smiled on them that they could retire, and there were no more boats to be painted, shutters and doors and window-frames came in to fill the gap. So, on a fine morning, when the turpentine oozing from cracks, and the warm smell of blistering varnish brought to Governour's Lane the first tokens of returning summer, might have been seen s.e.xagenarians and septuagenarians, and some so strong that they had come to fourscore years, standing paint-pot and paint-brush in hand, while they gave a new coat to the woodwork of their homes.

They were a kindly folk, open of face, and fresh-complexioned, broad in the beam, and vested as to their bodies in dark blue, bra.s.s-b.u.t.toned pilot coats. Insuperable smokers, inexhaustible yarn-spinners, they had long welcomed Janaway as a kindred spirit--the more so that in their view a clerk and grave-digger was in some measure an expert in things unseen, who might anon a.s.sist in piloting them on that last cruise for which some had already the Blue Peter at the fore.

A myrtle-bush which grew out of a hole in the cobbles was carefully trained against the front of a cottage in the middle of the row, and a bra.s.s plate on the door informed the wayfarer and ignorant man that "T.

Janaway, s.e.xton," dwelt within. About eight o'clock on the Sat.u.r.day evening, some two hours after Lord Blandamer and Westray had parted, the door of the myrtle-fronted cottage was open, and the clerk stood on the threshold smoking his pipe, while from within came a cheerful, ruddy light and a well-defined smell of cooking; for Mrs Janaway was preparing supper.

"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 pa.s.s. But the open door had caught the attention of the pa.s.ser-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 ident.i.ty, 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 _Ill.u.s.trated 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-const.i.tuted 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 a.s.sented--"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.