The Nebuly Coat Part 17

The Canon was much perturbed by the vision of discomfort which his wife had called up.

"The Bishop ought to be spared as much as _possible_," he said; "we ought to do all we _can_ to save him annoyance. What do you think?

Should we not put up with a little inconvenience, and ask Sharnall to bring the Bishop here, and lunch himself? He must know perfectly well that entertaining a Bishop in a lodging-house is an unheard-of thing, and he would do to make up the sixth instead of old Noot. We could easily tell Noot he was not wanted."

"Sharnall is such a disreputable creature," Mrs Parkyn answered; "he is quite as likely as not to come tipsy; and, if he does not, he has no _breeding_ or education, and would scarcely understand polite conversation."

"You forget, my dear, that the Bishop is already pledged to lunch with Mr Sharnall, so that we should not be held responsible for introducing him. And Sharnall has managed to pick up some sort of an education--I can't imagine where; but I found on one occasion that he could understand a little Latin. It was the Blandamer motto, '_Aut Fynes, aut finis_.' He may have been told what it meant, but he certainly seemed to know. Of course, no real knowledge of Latin can be obtained without a _University_ education"--and the Rector pulled up his tie and collar--"but still chemists and persons of that sort do manage to get a smattering of it."

"Well, well, I don't suppose we are going to talk Latin all through lunch," interrupted his wife. "You can do precisely as you please about asking him."

The Rector contented himself with the permission, however ungraciously accorded, and found himself a little later in Mr Sharnall's room.

"Mrs Parkyn was hoping that she might have prevailed on you to lunch with us on the day of the Confirmation. She was only waiting for the Bishop's acceptance to send you an invitation; but we hear now," he said in a dubitative and tentative way--"we hear now that it is possible that the Bishop may be lunching with you."

There was a twitch about the corners of Canon Parkyn's mouth. The position that a Bishop should be lunching with Mr Sharnall in a common lodging-house was so exquisitely funny that he could only restrain his laughter with difficulty.

Mr Sharnall gave an a.s.senting nod.

"Mrs Parkyn was not quite sure whether you might have in your lodgings exactly everything that might be necessary for entertaining his lordship."

"Oh dear, yes," Mr Sharnall said. "It looks a little dowdy just this minute, because the chairs are at the upholsterers to have the gilt touched up; we are putting up new curtains, of _course_, and the housekeeper has already begun to polish the best silver."

"It occurred to Mrs Parkyn," the Rector continued, being too bent on saying what he had to say to pay much attention to the organist's remarks--"it occurred to Mrs Parkyn that it might perhaps be more convenient to you to bring the Bishop to lunch at the Rectory. It would spare you all trouble in preparation, and you would of course lunch with us yourself. It would be putting us to no inconvenience; Mrs Parkyn would be glad that you should lunch with us yourself."

Mr Sharnall nodded, this time deprecatingly.

"You are very kind. Mrs Parkyn is very considerate, but the Bishop has signified his intention of lunching in _this_ house; I could scarcely venture to contravene his lordship's wishes."

"The Bishop is a friend of yours?" the Rector asked.

"You can scarcely say that; I do not think I have set eyes on the man for forty years."

The Rector was puzzled.

"Perhaps the Bishop is under some misconception; perhaps he thinks that this house is still an inn--the Hand of G.o.d, you know."

"Perhaps," said the organist; and there was a little pause.

"I hope you will consider the matter. May I not tell Mrs Parkyn that you will urge the Bishop to lunch at the Rectory--that you both"--and he brought out the word bravely, though it cost him a pang to yoke the Bishop with so unworthy a mate, and to fling the door of select hospitality open to Mr Sharnall--"that you both will lunch with us?"

"I fear not," the organist said; "I fear I must say no. I shall be very busy preparing for the extra service, and if I am to play 'See the Conquering Hero' as the Bishop enters the church, I shall need time for practice. A piece like that takes some playing, you know."

"I hope you will endeavour to render it in the very best manner," the Rector said, and withdrew his forces _re infecta_.

The story of Mr Sharnall's mental illusions, and particularly of the hallucination as to someone following him, had left an unpleasant impression on Westray's mind. He was anxious about his fellow-lodger, and endeavoured to keep a kindly supervision over him, as he felt it to be possible that a person in such a state might do himself a mischief.

On most evenings he either went down to Mr Sharnall's room, or asked the organist to come upstairs to his, considering that the solitude incident to bachelor life in advancing years was doubtless to blame to a large extent for these wandering fancies. Mr Sharnall occupied himself at night in sorting and reading the doc.u.ments which had once belonged to Martin Joliffe. There was a vast number of them, representing the acc.u.mulation of a lifetime, and consisting of loose memoranda, of extracts from registers, of ma.n.u.script-books full of pedigrees and similar material. When he had first begun to examine them, with a view to their cla.s.sification or destruction, he showed that the task was distinctly uncongenial to him; he was glad enough to make any excuse for interruption or for invoking Westray's aid. The architect, on the other hand, was by nature inclined to archaeologic and genealogic studies, and would not have been displeased if Mr Sharnall had handed over to him the perusal of these papers entirely. He was curious to trace the origin of that chimera which had wasted a whole life--to discover what had led Martin originally to believe that he had a claim to the Blandamer peerage. He found, perhaps, an additional incentive in an interest which he was beginning unconsciously to take in Anastasia Joliffe, whose fortunes might be supposed to be affected by these investigations.

But in a little while Westray noticed a change in the organist's att.i.tude as touching the papers. Mr Sharnall evinced a dislike to the architect examining them further; he began himself to devote a good deal more time and attention to their study, and he kept them jealously under lock and key. Westray's nature led him to resent anything that suggested suspicion; he at once ceased to concern himself with the matter, and took care to show Mr Sharnall that he had no wish whatever to see more of the doc.u.ments.

As for Anastasia, she laughed at the idea of there being any foundation underlying these fancies; she laughed at Mr Sharnall, and rallied Westray, saying she believed that they both were going to embark on the quest of the nebuly coat. To Miss Euphemia it was no laughing matter.

"I think, my dear," she said to her niece, "that all these searchings after wealth and fortune are not of G.o.d. I believe that trying to discover things"--and she used "things" with the majestic comprehensiveness of the female mind--"is generally bad for man. If it is good for us to be n.o.blemen and rich, then Providence will bring us to that station; but to try to prove one's self a n.o.bleman is like star-gazing and fortune-telling. Idolatry is as the sin of witchcraft.

There can be no _blessing_ on it, and I reproach myself for ever having given dear Martin's papers to Mr Sharnall at all. I only did so because I could not bear to go through them myself, and thought perhaps that there might be cheques or something valuable among them. I wish I had burnt everything at first, and now Mr Sharnall says he will not have the papers destroyed till he has been through them. I am sure they were no blessing at all to dear Martin. I hope they may not bewitch these two gentlemen as well."

CHAPTER TWELVE.

The scheme of restoration had been duly revised in the light of Lord Blandamer's generosity, and the work had now entered on such a methodical progress that Westray was able on occasion to relax something of that close personal supervision which had been at first so exacting.

Mr Sharnall often played for half an hour or more after the evening-service, and on such occasions Westray found time, now and then, to make his way to the organ-loft. The organist liked to have him there; he was grateful for the token of interest, however slight, that was implied in such visits; and Westray, though without technical knowledge, found much to interest him in the unfamiliar surroundings of the loft. It was a curious little kingdom of itself, situate over the great stone screen, which at Cullerne divides the choir from the nave, but as remote and cut off from the outside world as a desert island.

Access was gained to it by a narrow, round, stone staircase, which led up from the nave at the south end of the screen. After the bottom door of this windowless staircase was opened and shut, anyone ascending was left for a moment in bewildering darkness. He had to grope the way by his feet feeling the stairs, and by his hand laid on the central stone shaft which had been polished to the smoothness of marble by countless other hands of past times.

But, after half a dozen steps, the darkness resolved; there was first the dusk of dawn, and soon a burst of mellow light, when he reached the stairhead and stepped out into the loft. Then there were two things which he noticed before any other--the bow of that vast Norman arch which spanned the opening into the south transept, with its lofty and over-delicate roll and cavetto mouldings; and behind it the head of the Blandamer window, where in the centre of the infinite multiplication of the tracery shone the sea-green and silver of the nebuly coat.

Afterwards he might remark the long-drawn roof of the nave, and the chevroned ribs of the Norman vault, delimiting bay and bay with a saltire as they crossed; or his eyes might be led up to the lantern of the central tower, and follow the lighter ascending lines of Abbot Vinnicomb's Perpendicular panelling, till they vanished in the windows far above.

Inside the loft there was room and to spare. It was formed on ample lines, and had s.p.a.ce for a stool or two beside the performer's seat, while at the sides ran low bookcases which held the music library. In these shelves rested the great folios of Boyce, and Croft, and Arnold, Page and Greene, Battishill and Crotch--all those splendid and ungrudging tomes for which the "Rectors and Foundation of Cullerne" had subscribed in older and richer days. Yet these were but the children of a later birth. Round about them stood elder brethren, for Cullerne Minster was still left in possession of its seventeenth-century music-books. A famous set they were, a hundred or more bound in their old black polished calf, with a great gold medallion, and "Tenor: Decani," or "Contra-tenor: Cantoris", "Ba.s.so," or "Sopra," stamped in the middle of every cover. And inside was parchment with red-ruled margins, and on the parchment were inscribed services and "verse-anthems" and "ffull-anthems," all in engrossing hand and the most uncompromising of black ink. Therein was a generous table of contents-- Mr Batten and Mr Gibbons, Mr Mundy and Mr Tomkins, Doctor Bull and Doctor Giles, all neatly filed and paged; and Mr Bird would incite singers long since turned to churchyard mould to "bring forthe ye timbrell, ye pleasant harp and ye violl," and reinsist with six parts, and a red capital letter, "ye pleasant harp and ye violl."

It was a great place for dust, the organ-loft--dust that fell, and dust that rose; dust of wormy wood, dust of crumbling leather, dust of tattered mothy curtains that were dropping to pieces, dust of primeval green baize; but Mr Sharnall had breathed the dust for forty years, and felt more at home in that place than anywhere else. If it was Crusoe's island, he was Crusoe, monarch of all he surveyed.

"Here, you can take this key," he said one day to Westray; "it unlocks the staircase-door; but either tell me when to expect you, or make a noise as you come up the steps. I don't like being startled. Be sure you push the door to after you; it fastens itself. I am always particular about keeping the door locked, otherwise one doesn't know what stranger may take it into his head to walk up. I can't bear being startled." And he glanced behind him with a strange look in his eyes.

A few days before the Bishop's visit Westray was with Mr Sharnall in the organ-loft. He had been there through most of the service, and, as he sat on his stool in the corner, had watched the curious diamond pattern of light and dark that the clerestory windows made with the vaulting-ribs. Anyone outside would have seen islands of white cloud drifting across the blue sky, and each cloud as it pa.s.sed threw the heavy chevroned diagonals inside into bold relief, and picked out that rebus of a carding-comb encircled by a wreath of vine-leaves which Nicholas Vinnicomb had inserted for a vaulting-boss.

The architect had learned to regard the beetling roof with an almost superst.i.tious awe, and was this day so fascinated with the strange effect as to be scarcely aware that the service was over till Mr Sharnall spoke.

"You said you would like to hear my service in D flat--'Sharnall in D flat,' did you not? I will play it through to you now, if you care to listen. Of course, I can only give you the general effect, without voices, though, after all, I don't know that you won't get quite as good an idea of it as you could with any voices that we have here."

Westray woke up from his dreams and put himself into an att.i.tude of proper attention, while Mr Sharnall played the service from a faded ma.n.u.script.

"Now," he said, as he came towards the end--"now listen. This is the best part of it--a fugal _Gloria_, ending with a pedal-point. Here you are, you see--a tonic pedal-point, this D flat, the very last raised note in my new pedal-board, held down right through." And he set his left foot on the pedal. "What do you think of _that_ for a _Magnificat_?" he said, when it was finished; and Westray was ready with all the conventional expressions of admiration. "It is not bad, is it?"

Mr Sharnall asked; "but the gem of it is the _Gloria_--not real fugue, but fugal, with a pedal-point. Did you catch the effect of that point?

I will keep the note down by itself for a second, so that you may get thoroughly hold of it, and then play the _Gloria_ again."

He held down the D flat, and the open pipe went booming and throbbing through the long nave arcades, and in the dark recesses of the triforium, and under the beetling vaulting, and quavered away high up in the lantern, till it seemed like the death-groan of a giant.

"Take it up," Westray said; "I can't bear the throbbing."

"Very well; now listen while I give you the _Gloria_. No, I really think I had better go through the whole service again; you see, it leads up more naturally to the finale."

He began the service again, and played it with all the conscientious attention and sympathy that the creative artist must necessarily give to his own work. He enjoyed, too, that pleasurable surprise which awaits the discovery that a composition laid aside for many years and half forgotten is better and stronger than had been imagined, even as a disused dress brought out of the wardrobe sometimes astonishes us with its freshness and value.

Westray stood on a foot-pace at the end of the loft which allowed him to look over the curtain into the church. His eyes roamed through the building as he listened, but he did not appreciate the music the less.

Nay, rather, he appreciated it the more, as some writers find literary perception and power of expression quickened at the influence of music itself. The great church was empty. Janaway had left for his tea; the doors were locked, no strangers could intrude; there was no sound, no murmur, no voice, save only the voices of the organ-pipes. So Westray listened. Stay, were there no other voices? was there nothing he heard--nothing that spoke within him? At first he was only conscious of _something_--something that drew his attention away from the music, and then the disturbing influence was resolved into another voice, small, but rising very clear even above "Sharnall in D flat." "The arch never sleeps," said that still and ominous voice. "The arch never sleeps; they have bound on us a burden too heavy to be borne. We are shifting it; we never sleep." And his eyes turned to the cross arches under the tower. There, above the bow of the south transept, showed the great crack, black and writhen as a lightning-flash, just as it had showed any time for a century--just the same to the ordinary observer, but not to the architect. He looked at it fixedly for a moment, and then, forgetting Mr Sharnall and the music, left the loft, and made his way to the wooden platform that the masons had built up under the roof.

Mr Sharnall did not even perceive that he had gone down, and dashed _con furore_ into the _Gloria_. "Give me the full great," he called to the architect, who he thought was behind him; "give me the full great, all but the reed," and s.n.a.t.c.hed the stops out himself when there was no response. "It went better that time--distinctly better," he said, as the last note ceased to sound, and then turned round for Westray's comment; but the loft was empty--he was alone.

"Curse the fellow!" he said; "he might at least have let me know that he was going away. Ah, well, it's all poor stuff, no doubt." And he shut up the ma.n.u.script with a lingering and affectionate touch, that contrasted with so severe a criticism. "It's poor stuff; why should I expect anyone to listen to it?"