THE CHORISTER
1
On the Friday following the Mayor’s historic party, Oswald brought his
weekly rounds and obligations to an end and returned to the gleaming
kitchen with his plenished pork-basket a full hour in advance of custom.
Nor, with the vista of sixty golden minutes in front of him, could he be
persuaded to sit or rest, or do more than loosen the knot in his
muffler. Neither the Swiss timepiece on the kitchen mantelshelf nor the
Parish Church clock had yet declared the half hour before he tugged the
ends of his scarf again and protested that unless he set off instantly
for the Choir Practice he must be late, albeit--according to all canons
of gentility--it was yet a whole quarter of an hour too early for the
son of the best of fathers to be abroad; home being the proper place for
every true gentleman (as Oswald knew) which he would never consent to
exchange for the promiscuous openness of streets without good cause.
Streets, despite their superficial attractiveness, were tutors of
wickedness; preceptors of ill habits. They spat; they swore; they
fought; they whistled, smoke and drank. The life that flowed in them was
no more fit to be imbibed unfiltered than the turbid rain water straight
from heaven that ran down gutters. The spiritual function of streets was
to make home more precious; its dear ones dearer. Let them be walked
through, when alone, with an upright head and steadfast purpose. For
streets, like passages in scripture, are dark and difficult for the
lonely student to traverse, needing wise commentators to explain their
meaning, or render them suitably obscure. All of which Oswald knew (of
his own experience) as well as well. By their very fascination he was
aware of the deadliness of streets, that pulled at his companionship
with a score of intimate and too persuasive hands, begging him stay here
and play there; look at this and listen to that; to do, in a word, the
things that so many of his age and sex did systematically, and with such
obvious delight. For the avoidance of which dangers when attending choir
practice he was accustomed to leave home no earlier than was necessary
to bring him with punctuality to the vestry door--truth compelling the
melancholy admission that vocal service in the house of worship affords
no proof of gentility, and that many of those who lend their lips for
hire to the praise of holiness are not, as Mrs. Holmroyd was aware,
fitting companions for sons of the best of fathers.
Indeed, the proposal that her son should be reduced from the dignity of
worshipping his Maker from a cushioned pew to the status of a chorister,
cut straight through the tissue of her devoutest prejudices as deep as
her tears; and not the less so because the blow to her spiritual pride
was struck by the senior curate of St. Saviour’s.
Such a thing, her troubled pride reflected, would never have been hinted
in the best of fathers’ time. For at this period her pride had not yet
descended to the baking of pork pies. It was still very homeless and
susceptible, as the Curate must have perceived, for he made haste to
repair his blunder by assuring Mrs. Holmroyd that he had not intended to
suggest her son should sing in the choir for a consideration, but as an
unpaid, voluntary member. Already (he was at pains to make clear) the
choir of St. Saviour’s was happily strengthened by three or four sons
enlisted from the families of parishioners of standing. A doctor’s son,
and a lawyer’s son, he instanced--to adduce no more. In answer to her
question he rather fancied there was no architect’s son--as yet. But the
Organist (Mr. Rencil) was, he said, a gentleman, a charming fellow, and
a musician of accomplishment in whose hands Mrs. Holmroyd might entrust
her little boy without a moment’s hesitation. Indeed, to Mr. Rencil’s
persuasive charm and the high esteem in which his character was held,
the curate acknowledged the infusion of this better class of singer at
St. Saviour’s to be largely due. It was having (said he) a marked effect
upon the conduct of the choir and the devotional fervour of the
congregation, and was contributing not a little towards the elevation of
the worship of God.
The argument, planted in such unquestionable soil and nurtured with so
much piety, bore fruit. That the senior curate of St. Saviour’s
recognized how distasteful any consideration of money must be for
gentlepeople reduced to feel the need of it, offered a great consolation
to pride. Pride being so inconsistent as to reject the solid food
essential to its support and resolutely subsisting on slops, Mrs.
Holmroyd was more grateful for a few words meaning nothing than she
would have been for a little money meaning a great deal. Perhaps, after
all (she told herself) here was an opportunity. It might be
providential. Oswald’s musical talents might be quickened.
And on the next Sunday but one, palpitating under the importance of his
novel vestment, Oswald took his place as a chorister in the chancel of
St. Saviour’s. It was noticed, when to the solemn reverberation of the
organ, succeeding a remote Amen, the choir moved slowly into sight, that
the lady in mourning with haste let down her veil, whilst the little
girl by whom she was accompanied, drawing closer to her side and
plucking her by the sleeve, exclaimed in a whisper of searching
intensity: “He’s there!”
2
For all Oswald had so much time at his disposal he walked with the
urgent air of one for whose business the moments are not too plentiful;
pressing forward with his wonted staid and concentrated gait; his whole
figure infused with the dutiful self-consciousness that obviously moves
by lofty precept and to pious pattern.
The night was of November mildness, draped with a haze not dense enough
to hide the stars, that hung enmeshed in it here and there like
raindrops in a cobweb, grey and beamless. About this mist was nothing
municipal; nothing mayoral. The mayor’s party, dead like the week
before, and evaporated into the past with the fog that solemnized it,
might be thought of on such a night without envy and without a tear. Two
columns of descriptive letterpress, with a complete list of guests and
several letters on mayoral invidiousness, addressed to the respective
editors, beginning tartly: “Sir,” and signed “Disgusted,” or “Ratepayer”
appearing in the contestant weekly papers, that issued damp and smoking
from the press that very morning, marked all that was left of last
week’s glory. A movement had been instigated (so the papers said) to
present the Mayor’s daughter with an album containing the photographs of
all her guests, which, suitably inscribed and bound in red morocco with
gilt edges and a brass clasp, would supersede the family Bible as an
object of parlour veneration in her after years. All during the week
desultory cabs, rumbling without urgency, had conveyed the bodies of
contributors to the local studios, where their altered features were
composed into a seemly dissimilitude of life beneath the professional
hands of gentlemen who called themselves artist photographers and who
were, in point of fact, pictorial layers-out. But these relics of a
defunct glory--like the virtues of the dead, that inspired small
envy--were bearable. Diluted by time, and converging to no ecstatic beam
of splendour on a selected portion of eternity, they roused not any
longings. To-night nodded its head as complacently as a tired child in a
chair, untroubled by desires. The thick coverlet of last week’s fog
being lifted, distinguishable sounds even from afar rose up into the
void above the sleepy town; the barking of distant dogs, the shouts of
playing children, streets and streets away; the harsh thud of the steam
hammer, falling with forty ton force on soft metal at the railway works;
the clank and snort and reckless clash of colliding buffers from the
shunting yard, where agile engines singled and assembled trucks with the
vigilance of sheep dogs; the slow, stertorous breaths of some labouring
locomotive, harnessed to half a mile of groaning mineral waggons that
crept reluctantly behind it--always a feature of the night-time at
Daneborough.
That Mrs. Holmroyd drew comfort from the clearer night and lack of cabs
only showed how feminine and limited was her understanding of the nature
of the outer world her son walked in. With the removal of the dense and
pall-like fog a protection not less than a menace was, for Oswald,
withdrawn. If the fog had brought nearer the terrors of the unseen and
the unknown, the absence of it left him at the mercy of the known and
seen. The very outlets of the street he lived in held terrors of their
own. There was the street made formidable with a public house called the
“Breadloaf,” largely frequented by wives of the district, that to
unobservant eyes differed little from the dwelling houses it adjoined,
save that it thrust out a lantern at the end of an iron bracket above an
open door from which the coarse breath of laughter blew in gusts at
times, redolent of beer. Out of this same door Oswald had with his own
eyes seen reeling men emerge who staggered blindly as they walked, and
sometimes fell, and rose again with horrible alacrity, drawing blood
away from crimson mouths on the back of their hands. How can the full
horror of such a spectacle be communicated to adults? Gentleman or no
gentleman, such a moment is not one to stand on ceremony or reflect at
length upon the best of fathers. Away! Away at once on feet of
desperation, flogged forward by the awful menace of that bleeding mouth
and crimson knuckles, to where, breathless and palpitating, the fugitive
can halt to gather up his disassembled self and collect the remnants of
gentility out of the seething turmoil of impressions. Every figure met
thereafter bears resemblance to the drunken man. Even the lamp-posts
rock and sway. The whole world is rendered unstable. The stars,
dislodged by the turbid beating of the runner’s heart stagger about the
sky. And what a fearful colour is red. It is a terror of itself. No
logic can stanch the bleeding of that mouth.
And but a street or so beyond there lies another zone of awful
possibilities. It is of stone. A gloomy building, many-windowed, railed
off from the roadway by iron railings, whose entrance two great iron
lamp-posts guard. Even the lamps exert an awful influence of their own,
for they are round. Round, in this conjunction, is horrible. It means
inexpressible things. It means, for one thing, that this is an
Infirmary. Precisely what Infirmary means is yet (for Oswald) unsure.
But people are taken in and out on stretchers, and crowds follow them,
and sometimes women wring their hands, and children gaze with their
mouths open, and dogs get trodden on, and the spirit of calamity seems
to be let loose, and dire fears fasten on the heart, and life grows dim
and dreadful. Oswald has been sucked into the vortex of the crowd that
swept gentility along with it to the iron railings; and he has gazed
enthralled at the globular lamps and at the plate-glass windows beyond,
reflecting blank horror from their blanched panes; and he has been
whelmed in the comments of the crowd--every mouth a running source of
terror. The victim is dead; the victim is not dead; his neck is broken;
his neck is not broken, it is his leg. It is not his leg, it is his arm.
He has been run over; he has fallen from a scaffold; he has been
drowned; his head has been taken off at the railway station; he has
committed suicide. A woman, informed by neighbours on insufficient
evidence that the victim is her husband, transfixes the crowd with a
scream. The scream goes through Oswald and curdles his blood. He awakes
to a consciousness of no stomach and a trembling at the knees. He is
hemmed in by mouths and pulled at by strange hands. Filled suddenly with
awful fear of the hydra-headed danger called a crowd, he remembers the
best of fathers and fights his desperate way out from this contestant
mass of curiosities.
How can the terror of the tramp of awed and urgent feet attendant on a
moving stretcher be conveyed to complaisant, upgrown understandings? How
can one tithe of these living terrors be expressed? They cannot be
conveyed; they cannot be expressed. Dreadfullest of all, they must not
be expressed. Why! To the sons of gentlemen even words can be more
terrible than mortals are, and silences more shudderful than sound.
Sheets thrown sportively above the head, or lying limp upon the
mattress, or a coat suspended, motionless, on a peg behind a door, or
folded garments laid upon a chair in some room where the stealthy
fingers of dusk begin to grope and stray,--these are no insentient
harmless things as adults suppose, but plenipotentiaries from the
kingdom of the terrors. They feel, they think, they live, endowed with a
monstrous mobility that can make itself dead men, hanged men, drowned
men, murdered men, or any sort of men to be afraid of, in a moment.
Aye! In a moment can they. And the sons of gentlemen, bound by the
solemn covenant of their calling, must be secret as the grave, affecting
to see the features of this altered world still tranquil and serene, as
their mothers see them. Evening falls, and the bedly hour draws near.
The good night kiss can be no longer delayed. The stairs, assuming eyes
and a physiognomy, lurk maliciously in wait for sons of gentlemen. Would
to God they had never passed the Infirmary, or seen blood wiped from a
red mouth with the back of a hand, or brought themselves within the
clutches of the Law.
For the very policemen whose leisured tread brings comfort to adults,
and whom the upgrowns pass with an indifference bordering on contempt,
lend dread gravity to street corners. They stand like carved monuments
beneath a gas-lamp. A pang goes through the breast at sight of them.
Conscience, startled by their immobility that is so sculptured and
accusing, makes a hurried inventory of its crimes. How shall they be
confronted? By what demeanour is their august indulgence to be won? By
humility (it seems). By a self-effacement almost abject. By a stoppage
of the breath, by a clenching of the palms, by a stepping on the toes,
by a supplicative saddening of the mouth, by a supreme faith and trust
in heaven.
His course beset and modified by such considerations, the little Oswald
pursued his way to church. He boldly crossed the Horse Green (made
complex with many cries) to its darker and deserted side, and pressed
forward to where through a narrow neck or stricture it led him into
upper Hill Street. To the right of him--already visited this
evening--lay St. Lawrence Square. Doctors lived in Hill Street too, as
brass plates of the most noble proportions testified. Here was St.
Saviour’s Vicarage, for whose due acknowledgment (being a chorister)
Oswald always composed his lips, in passing, to a processional
solemnity, in case the Canon might by any chance be at the window. Over
the road, obliquely facing it, stood Mr. Rencil’s house, through the
Venetian blinds of whose upper windows golden bars of light shone forth
like glorified staves of musical notation. Perhaps Mr. Rencil’s self was
there behind this gilded latticework of lines and spaces.
Something like a thrill passed through Oswald’s bosom at the sight of
this emblem of high musicianship, to which he elevated an allegiant and
venerating gaze.
3
“Hey!”
Oswald was passing the historic livery stables, between the
reverberating archway and the pump. Stripped of mist and imagination
they showed less than half the size of the week before. The pump, as if
conscious of being but a hack plaything for local infancy, hung its ball
head and drooped its wooden handle like a seaside donkey during those
sad spare moments when it has leisure to reflect upon its lot. Trivial
little lights, peeping out of doors and windows of no importance (that
had been too cowed to dare the darkness and show their craven faces the
week before) now made friends with the evening and held companionable
colloquies one with another, as neighbours do.
“Hey!”
The interjection, that had been successively a whistle, catcry, cockcrow
and dogbark (all which, the hurrying Oswald had an uncomfortable feeling
signified himself, and being so obviously pitfalls for gentility had
resolutely ignored) came abreast with much breathing and a palpable
hotness of cheeks, and fell into step with the object of its pursuit in
such an ostensible manner as to make further preoccupation on Oswald’s
part impossible.
“Didn’t you hear me call of you?” the newcomer enquired. “I’ve been
calling of you all the way from Hill Street corner.”
There was a friendliness in this accost so oblivious of social
disparities that Oswald, shrinking from falsehood, acknowledged it with
an interrogative “Have you?” into which he infused as much surprise as
conscience would allow.
For this, that fell into step with him, was one of the dangerous
influences feared by motherhood. This with the plaid kerchief round its
neck, breeched in hybrid corduroy continuations that were too short for
trousers and too long for knickerbockers, was a fellow chorister. Not a
gentleman chorister. Not a volunteer, like Oswald and the doctor and
lawyer’s sons. A paid chorister, who wore a white apron and oversleeves
and lurched round Daneborough each Saturday with a big meat basket on
his arm and hip, and nodded to Oswald with intimacy even when Oswald was
accompanied by his mother; never raising his hat, but singling Oswald
out for invidious salutation as if mothers and sisters were irrelevant;
pitching an amicable “hello!” in a voice that had no more respect for
gentility than a flung stone has for a front window, and even whistling
after Oswald with intent to ratify a treacherous compact of their choral
brotherhood behind his mother’s back. Whether this boy constituted a
friend or foe Oswald could never quite decide. Equally he seemed at home
in Oswald’s company, or the company of Oswald’s fellow-foes, adapting
his conduct to which ever society he chanced to move in at the moment;
at times deriding gloves and a clean collar, and mimicking the hateful
accents of gentility; at other times accosting gentility like an old and
favoured friend.
And yet to-night, despite all complications of companionship this
presence brought a certain comfort with it, assuring Oswald that the
hour was not so utterly fantastic as he feared, and that he would not
find the church foundered in darkness, all its gates shut and padlocked,
the practice over, the choristers departed. Indeed the new arrival
chided Oswald for his haste, enquiring: “What’s your hurry?” and being
met with a tepid reference to time, flouted this ancient proprietor of
scythe and hourglass as one unworthy the fear of any but aged people and
the very young. By the side of his undaunted comrade Oswald felt a
pleasant sense of security. He walked, as one might say, in the shadow
of a mighty hunter, armed at all points against Time’s surprises and
alarms; and this lion of life’s jungle grew harmless as a lamb. The
satisfaction Oswald derived from this aspect of their companionship
caused him to sadden at the thought that the chorister in the corduroy
extremities was no gentleman, and that any lasting friendship between
them was impossible. A melancholy reflection that took on a deeper
significance when the boy by his side, plunging his right hand for a
space into the depths of his pockets, brought forth a palmful of coppers
for Oswald’s wonder, with the remark:
“See them? Do you know how much there is there?”
He clapped the second hand over the first and shook the coins
vigorously, ostensibly as an aid to Oswald’s judgment, but not less (if
the truth be told) for the pleasure of appraising the weight and volume
of his own property.
Oswald shook his head.
There was (it seemed) over a shilling’s worth of coppers. All of it made
by wassailing. Since Tea. He had only just left his sister in order to
come to the choir practice. He went wassailing (so he told Oswald) every
evening now. Except Saturdays--when he didn’t get finished while eleven.
Last year he and his sister had made over ten shillings apiece by
wassailing. As soon as the wassailing season closed he followed
Christmas boxing. By the tone of his enthusiasm it appeared that the
prospects of the present season were excellent. The market feeling was
optimistic. He hoped, in fact, to exceed all previous records.
Anticipations of success so kindled magnanimity within him that he asked
why Oswald did not go wassailing too. For the moment it almost seemed
that the proffer of a partnership was pending and Oswald dropped his
eyes.
For in that moment--and it was no more--a veritable progeny of suppliant
thoughts, the lawless children of his fantasy, trooped around reason;
importunate, persuasive. After all ... was wassailing forbidden to a
gentleman? Was there no means by which wassailing might be constituted
licit--like singing in the choir, or canvassing for orders for pork
pies?
To test the case, Imagination transformed itself into a wassailer. A
gentlemanly wassailer with a white collar and spotless pocket
handkerchief, who showed so clean a face and rapped with such refinement
that not a house but welcomed him within its doors to sing. Coppers,
yes, and silver bits should line his pockets, and his mother’s eyes
should gleam with pride when he drew home from his wassailing each night
and she saw the riches his lips had won. Tears almost started to his own
eyes for very pride of this imaginative second self. The vision,
bursting on him with a splendour wellnigh unbearable, was shaken to its
foundations in the same instant by a startling disruption of externals.
In place of the composed features of his companion that seemed to wait
on his response, he beheld a countenance ecstaticized with the
revelation of a new and preponderant interest. It was the sound of noisy
youth, prosecuting its reckless pastimes in the near neighbourhood of
St. Saviour’s and it acted on the corduroy trousers like a trumpet call
from heaven. Casting Oswald’s companionship to the winds he brandished
both arms as an aid to motion and uttering the cry:
“Hey up! It’s them. Come on! Hello! Ooli-ooli-ooli-ooli!...” dashed off
in the direction of the sounds that had so stirred him.
Chagrined and solitary, the little Oswald withdrew into his empty
mansion of gentility, that echoing habitation of many windows looking
wanly out on the life by which it sees itself assailed; at once a prison
and a home. There were times, and this was one of them, when the
melancholy truth that gentility spells sacrifice oppressed him.
Wassailing, Christmas boxing and errand running on Saturdays were roads
to riches. In those detested corduroy breeches was deposed more wealth
than gentility stood possessed of after months of pride and self-denial.
Lovely as it seemed at home, beneath the glamour of a mother’s influence
and eyes, gentility was no attribute to take abroad. It stood at every
possible disadvantage before the world. To the pushful it must cede;
before the clamorous it must be silent; generosity must it show to the
selfish; to the unscrupulous, honesty; justice to the unjust; compassion
to the hard; pardon to those that wronged it. It must assist the poor
and be too proud to take a penny from the rich. O, what a noble thing
it was! How beautiful the world, if everybody in it might be gentlemen.
4
By this time his reflection had brought him beneath the consolidated
darkness that was St. Saviour’s, obtruding its vague bulk into the sky
and displacing some of the higher stars with its steeple. The church
stood within its own acre at the junction of the Hunmouth and London
Roads, occupying a space of ground whose shape approximated to the
superficies of a flat-iron, being bounded at the broad western base by
iron railings and on its two converging sides by a low stone wall topped
with a triangular coping, apex uppermost, of small service to sitters.
By a sunken wicket in the southern wall, opening on a path that led to
the side porch and thence, past a stone trough and a mouldering scent of
dead flowers, to the vestry, Oswald dutifully took his stand.
Save for the internal glimmer of the church and one cadaverous lamp,
half sunk into the stone above the vestry door, whose pallid flame lit
nothing but itself, intensifying darkness and casting deceptive shadows
on the steps it was intended to define, the churchyard lay in
unalleviated gloom, resort chiefly of the dead and sundry amorous
couples, the latter silent as gargoyles and motionless as monuments,
that haunted the shadow of the churchyard trees, beneath which (upon the
southern side, where Oswald stood) they propped its leaning wall at
intervals with the regularity of buttresses. He wondered where they came
from, these mystic forms at once nebulous and solid, and where
eventually they went to, and was as reverent in heart towards them as to
the sacred edifice itself and the serried stones of which he stood in
such venerating awe. Among these latter the more venturesome of the paid
and early choristers were busy. The church reverberated with cries
immoderate and profane, that rebounded from its stony buttresses as if
they had been balls in a fives court, and the scurry of footsteps over
the gravel as their owners rioted in the obscurity of consecrated
ground, using ledgers like vaulting horses and so corrupting the decorum
of this venerable company with their evil communications that the whole
churchyard was shortly in commotion; headstones leaping like humans, and
marble crosses starting up with both arms menacefully extended to cry
“Hey!” with the abruptness of choristers. Now and again some
particularly audacious assault upon the vestry door brought forth the
verger, irate and imprecatory, to pit his power against the ribald
darkness that mocked him; declaring to the void--
“Now, I’m not going to waste my vocabulary on you. I know who it is. And
Canon shall be cognizant an’ all before the night’s out. Don’t think I
can’t certify you. I can. I can certify you all. I want no colloquy with
any of you, and if I’ve got to come off this step you won’t forget it.”
Whereat the gravestones masquerading as choristers vomited derisive
laughter, and a Gothic pinnacle consecrated to all the virtues disgorged
an obscene word.
The close proximity of eight o’clock was marked by a multiplication of
churchyard cries. Soon, in addition to the demoniac spirits that
debauched the gravity of St. Saviour’s tombstones, there gathered an
independent cluster round the little iron gate where Oswald stood. Some
of the more impatient among the newcomers, made frantic by the clamour
of their kindred beyond, as dogs are irresistibly drawn by barking,
scrambled likewise over the wall. Others instigated independent games in
the roadway, which they alternated fitfully with more audacious sallies
upon the gate and summonses of the invisible verger by name:
“Mester Prestwich! Hey-up! Mester Prestwich!”
Ultimately a shout went up like a triumphant sky rocket, tailed with
ribaldry. It notified the opening of the vestry door, distinguishable as
a rectangular stain of yellow beneath the blue-lipped lamp. This gave
birth to a shadow whose increasing definition revealed motion, and being
too dignified for gravestones (which leaped and danced outrageously)
identified itself at last with the verger’s impressive person. The keys
of office jangled authoritatively in his hand and any lingering doubt
about his identity was dispelled at close quarters by the fact of his
drawing breath with audible difficulty through a snuff-clogged nostril.
His nose, although this hour of darkness did small justice to it, was by
daylight a most episcopal and proper organ. One might say without
irreverence, it was an archiepiscopal organ. When it led the timid to
their pews or headed a processional, or beckoned hesitating strangers
out of the porch into the sacred edifice, its dilating nostrils seemed
to elevate themselves above the common odour of mortality and sniff the
delectable odours of heaven. But for this nose, indeed,--which the
common race of choristers lacked the vision to appreciate--it is said
the verger would have forfeited his holy office long before the little
Oswald came to know him, for he was (if truth spoke truly of him, which
truth is not notoriously prone to do) an individual in his earthly parts
most spiritual, in his spiritual portions most infirm. Certain it is,
that the verger’s resignation was more than once accepted by the Canon
before it had been tendered, with Christian finality: “I am very sorry,
Prestwich. But this time I cannot overlook it. I have the welfare of
this church and the feelings of this congregation to consider. If you
are incapable of performing your duty it is all the more necessary that
I must not fail to discharge mine. I have no alternative but to accept
your resignation.”
Which Prestwich translated to parishioners in the following terms.
“I’ve done my best to temporize with him, but I can’t put up with the
Canon any longer. He’s too heterodox. Too heterodox by half. There’s no
reasoning with him. I’ve done my best to keep things together, for the
sake of all parties concerned, but if church comes to the ground--as
it’s sure to do--Canon has nobody but himself to blame. He can’t say I
haven’t capitulated with him. I have.”
Whereat he would take the opportunity of bidding farewell to such
parishioners as had any reputation for sensitive purses--either in the
church or at their own homes, whither he betook himself for the
purpose--saying it would be the last sad occasion on which he would be
able to speak to them in an ecclesiastical capacity and it was not
without deep deliberation that he had decided to sever his connection
with a church and cause so dear to him. “I’ve given the Canon every
chance. I’ve put up with more than most men in my position would have
suffered, for the sake of worship and the congregation. I know the
temper of the congregation better than he knows it. In my exceptional
opportunities for intimate colloquy they repose confidences in me that
they’d think twice before depositing in him. If I go, it won’t be long
before they follow. Church will be empty before many weeks.”
And the next Sunday, that was to have marked his absence from St.
Saviour’s, and the church’s first step upon the road to ruin, saw him
floating through the aisles and transepts in his sable robes of office
as before; balancing his wand and elevating his mahogany nostrils like
the distended louvres of the swell organ at full. For that ceremonious
member, more securely than the verger’s verbal applications, prevailed
over the Canon in the end, as an irreplaceable asset to the church’s
dignity. The Canon’s self admitted: “Prestwich may occasionally drink,
but the fellow has a manner with him. If only he’d kept himself in hand
he might have aspired to a cathedral.” The resignation was remitted.
Prestwich was given one more chance. He sought the congregation’s
private ear, and called upon it in its private home, to announce the
Canon’s uncompromising surrender.
“He’s come to his senses, you’ll be thankful to hear,” the verger
communicated. “I had a long Conclave with him on Saturday, and he
earnestly begged me to reconsider my dictum for the sake of the church
and the parishioners. I told him I was willing to make what sacrifices I
could to augment congregational harmony and promote the unity of
worship, but I could allow no interference with my office neither from
him nor nobody. If that’s interfered with all Authority goes. There’s an
end to cohesion. It’s the stultification of worship. We might as well be
nonconformists at once, and done with it. I’ve told Canon so. He’s given
his word, and so we shall see how he goes on.”
From which it will be remarked that the verger possessed a literary
wardrobe of no ordinary capacity for the clothing of his ideas; years of
association with dignitaries of every degree having in fact afforded him
an opportunity to pick up a marvellous secondhand assortment of verbal
boots and shoes, shirts, vests and oratorical garments in general (some
of historical association, others nearly new and scarcely shop-soiled)
with which to mantle the dignity of his calling and garb sentiments
worthy of his nose. Whether he always wore the garments of this
miscellaneous wardrobe wisely, or in the nicest taste, is another
question, but such stress did he lay on the importance of possessing
what he called “a Vocabulary” that his indictment of a fellow-creature
could be formulated in no more scathing fashion than an accusation of
the lack of it. Whether the accused chanced to be a rival verger at St.
Gyles’s, or a disfavoured cleric, an officious churchwarden, or a male
singer addicted to pomposity, the judicial question invariably resolved
itself into; “What is he?”
“A man of no vocabulary!” said the Verdict. “A man you might listen to
for a whole day and never hear a word come off his lips you didn’t
understand. Without a vocabulary no man--I don’t care who he is--can
call himself complete. As Archdeacon Oliver said to me one day in one of
the frequent conversational colloquies me and him used to have together;
‘Words, not Raiment, make a man, Prestwich. Words are power. Words are
character. Words are life. By a man’s Vocabulary may we know and judge
him.’
“ ... But what,” the verger would enquire with indignation and
despondency, “ ... what is the good of vocabularies in a place like
this? They’re wasted. They’re thrown away. They’re not worth a ha’penny
to anybody here. They lead to no preferment. There’s more than half of
mine I can’t use. People wouldn’t comprehend me if I did. They’d stare.
They’d beg my pardon. I’ve known them to do it. People that wears the
cloth and nominates themselves Clerks in Holy Orders.”
By now as a result of crowding round the gate and consequent
displacements, the little Oswald--although the first comer to await
admission--stood on the outer fringe of the throng attendant on the
verger’s dignified approach. The paid choristers, betraying an
incomprehensible desire for entry, fought among themselves for
precedence before the bars of the gate, as if they were caged animals
and this were feeding time. Some of them even attempted to retain
priority by laying hold of the wicket, whereat the verger (displaying
wonderful accuracy and promptitude) rapped their knuckles loudly with
his key, saying, in his nose-congested voice:
“Now then! Let’s have no colloquy. Don’t let me have to tell you twice!”
This done, he paused and fixed the impatient choristers with an eye
which, even in the darkness--was felt to be terrible. An eye that seemed
to deputize for his Vocabulary and produced a marked effect upon the
crowd, converting the contestant choristers into statuary and freezing
them to silence. On which, as if at last accepting these evidences as
sufficient subscription to his office, the verger stooped and with a not
too hasty hand undid the lock.
5
Only the lights above the choir-stalls were burning. The great nave,
yawning inimitably beyond, seemed as if cut off from the chancel ogive
by a velvet pall. Pulpit and brass lectern were wrapped in calico, that
imparted to the familiar contours swelling beneath these pallid
coverlets the vague immensity of the unseen. The church was a vast
repository of whispers. The dropping of a hymnbook multiplied itself
startlingly throughout the interminable building like the clapping of
dead and apathetic hands. Coughs prolonged themselves into a chain of
dismal groans as if the spirits were in pain. Not a sound within the
chancel but was challenged by a dozen sounds beyond. It seemed the dread
occupants of the outer tombs and mouldy crypts below were gathered all
together to attend the practice. Oswald, feeling how inadequate were the
powers of one gentleman to cope with such forces as these, shivered in
his heart to think the verger had occupied this church alone, before yet
Light was.
Now, in quick succession, the heavy echoes of the vestry latch resounded
through the church as belated choristers trooped in, hot and breathy.
The verger, immobile against the sanctuary, propped up from the
altar-rail with an arm, turned his austere profile towards the vestry
and fixed each newcomer with a look of interdiction that would have
deterred any but a chorister, and checked even those. The harmonium,
dislodged from its lair behind the organ by two of the senior boys, was
borne into the chancel and deposited before the shrouded lectern under
its layer of weekly dust. The psalter and hymnbooks, stacked chin-high
like a pile of plates in a waiter’s arms, were distributed throughout
the choir, violently snatched at and fought for in transit, and much
used about the head and person; old copies being repudiated and forcibly
exchanged for new; new copies being rapidly converted into old through
the heat with which their ownership was contested.
“That’ll do now!” the verger’s voice declared. “I’ve told you once. Next
time I’ve got to address any of you it’ll be digital.” The organist’s
factotum, or right-hand man, appearing in the chancel during this sally,
tendered to the indignant Prestwich a mild and ingratiatory “good
evening.”
“I won’t have it,” the verger said, ignoring the salutation as below the
level of his outraged dignity, and an infringement on authority during
the active discharge of itself. “And so you know. If there’s any
recurrence of it, out you go. That’s my Dictum. It’s quite immaculate to
me Who you are. I’m not going to waste my time with you.”
The folds of this ample indignation being momentarily relaxed as if
Prestwich were on the point of disrobing injured dignity, the factotum
found encouragement to renew his greeting: “Good evening, Mr.
Prestwich,” to which the verger recognizing the voice and deeming it of
insufficient consequence to justify the least modification of his
demeanour, contributed an abbreviated “evening,” that sounded more like
a reproof to interruption than an acknowledgment of courtesy.
“And so I’ve told you,” he repeated. “I’ve told you all. I’m responsible
for the preservation of this fabric and the behaviour of everybody in it
and I won’t stand the least dereliction of my office--not from the
Archbishop himself.” Saying which and decided more by the impediment of
his refractory organ than by any satisfaction of an authority
vindicated, he returned to the sanctuary, where he took up a position
commanding the choirstalls in readiness to reassert himself again if
necessary.
Meanwhile the organist’s factotum laid on the harmonium the heavy parcel
of church music wrapped up in brown paper, with which he had arrived
encumbered, and taking ingenious advantage of the verger’s authority,
grafted his own upon it (though in a voice carefully modulated so as not
to compete with what the irate verger said) telling the boys; “Order,
now!” and “Silence!” in a sort of apologetic undertone, obviously
fearful lest Prestwich might resent anything suggestive of an
infringement of his rights.
He was a lean and awkward youth, in an overcoat too small for him. By
occupation he was a clerk in the Railway Mineral Office but by
predilection he was an organist, and in a tentative and surreptitious
sort of way his hair struggled to express this aspiring part in him by a
redundancy about the neck, albeit the chief effect produced on the
unmusical who viewed him from behind consisted in a certain greasiness
of collar. Towards the end of every six weeks or so this opulence of
lock became most noticeable; but provincial barbers unacquainted with
the lives and habits of the Great Masters, are an unimaginative race,
and at the end of this period he would appear one night at the practice
with his hat sunk down to his accentuated ears; a neck so shorn and
meagre as to suggest decline, and, thus transmogrified would begin his
painful progress to musicianship from the bottom of the ladder once
again. In return for musical instruction of a loose and interrupted sort
he served as Mr. Rencil’s vade-mecum and handy-man; mended the church
music; wrote some of the more formal of the organist’s letters; kept the
choir books and did those semi-menial services which are prone to tumble
to the lot of enthusiasm--enthusiasm being frequently no more than
Folly, bound in calf and glorified with gilt edges. At times, sustained
by the illusion of having an organ lesson, he would blow for the
organist during a whole evening, and copy out tattered voluntaries into
the late night hours as an aid to the understanding of musical
composition. To his friends, or rather to such of them as had no contact
with the choir, he spoke of himself occasionally as Choir Master and
Deputy Organist. But he was in reality neither of these, although he
fulfilled the servile offices of both, carrying all the heavier music to
and from the organist’s house, bearing urgent messages to the Vicarage,
running errands and supplementing the blower’s services when required.
At unimportant week-night services he did, indeed, deputize on the organ
bench occasionally, perspiring minims out of his forehead, and touching
sundry pedals with a tentative and cautious toe as if they were
explosives. But he was seen to greatest advantage when unlocking the
panels of the console with the key his master had entrusted to him for
the purpose; or when, with profound understanding, he pushed all the
stops home after the concluding voluntary.
Having this evening unlocked the organ and made impressive and judicial
selection of stops for the Master’s use, he put up the humble harmonium
lid and drew forth the white wood baton from its place of repose on the
black keys in readiness for Mr. Rencil’s use, and first tapping the
music desk for the surreptitious indulgence of his own authority,
besought the choristers to find the psalms for Sunday.
“The Psalms for Sunday!” he proclaimed in a voice so startlingly
imitative of the absent organist as to bring the blushes up to his very
hair. Anxious to expunge this flagrant act of plagiarism he added in
tones by contrast supplicative and contrite: “Come along now. Don’t
let’s waste any more time. Mr. Rencil will be here in a minute!”
6
Amid the ruffling of psalter leaves and the clapping of heads with them,
and facetious appeals to the Deputy:
“Please Mester Wembling, what day’ll next Sunday be?” succeeded by such
stereotyped replies as “Good Friday,” “Bank Holiday,” “the forty-fifth
of last January,” with their consequent retaliations and the dexterous
doubling up of psalters too confidingly held open in unwary hands--all
of which, under cover of disposing his own pages the deputy tactfully
ignored; taking pencil notes of the chants and hymn tunes from the rough
copy drawn from his breast pocket in the organist’s handwriting--the
Organist himself arrived.
His approach, between the clicking of the great latch and his appearance
in the chancel, was sufficiently notified to the observant by the
transformation in the verger’s demeanour, who, having first fastened on
the vestry door a gaze of renewed and concentrated displeasure in
preparation for some flushed and guilty head, exchanged this and his
stony attitude for an alert and welcoming posture as if at last he found
himself confronted with a presence worthy of his recognition.
Mr. Rencil came accompanied by two boys, sons of the doctor and of the
lawyer respectively, each of whom bore a Grammar School cap in his hand;
a dog-eared much dismembered mortarboard that Oswald’s eyes
instinctively looked for and rested on with a gratification almost
possessive. To the paid and corduroyed choristers this mortarboard
constituted an object of envy and traditional hate. To Oswald it was an
object of soulful emulation; a bond of learning and gentility. Some
day--that dim, delectable some day awaiting wistfully its turn behind
the throng and pressure of these more competitive, immediate days, like
Oswald’s self behind the crush of ruder selves that dispossessed him--he
was to wear such a cap, and go to such a school, and acquire great
wisdom, and make himself worthy of the best of fathers. Some day, too,
he was to have music lessons from the organist of St. Saviour’s, whom
both as chorister and prospective pupil his loyalty proclaimed a
musician without parallel, whilst his love, shyly disguised beneath its
very yearning for expression, vested him with every virtue. The
kindliness of the organist’s eyes, the gentle droop of his brown
moustache, the attractive softness of his voice, the sympathetic
friendliness of his hand--all stirred Oswald’s affections to a degree of
unspeakable devotion. For this worshipped hand, so smooth, so white, so
marvellously certain of its way and whereabouts upon the keys, had
rested more than once on Oswald’s shoulder, as it rested now on the
shoulder of the doctor’s son--who lived (this latter) at the double
brass plate in Hill Street where the empty medicine bottles went up the
long passage to the red lamp overhanging a door at the end of it,
coughing dreadfully, some of them, when Oswald was on his rounds at
night; and came down filled, withdrawing their corks and exchanging
sniffs and trial drinks with one another, as Oswald had himself observed
and greatly wondered at. And the organist’s eyes, through the large
lenses that seemed to liquefy and soften them, had rested on Oswald’s
own with a tenderness not often to be met with in the eyes of men. One
night, never to be forgotten, he had actually overtaken Oswald beneath
the lamp-post that spread its parsimonious light on Canon Quexley’s
steps, and had (to the confusion of Oswald’s wildest hopes) not only
recognized but walked with him as far as the vestry door. Inspired by
which stimulating memory Oswald ever took the same way, and gazed at the
organist’s window with an intensity that was already half a prayer.
Mr. Rencil called him “Oswald” too, as he called by their christian
names the doctor and lawyer’s sons. It was a tribute to gentility, and
the proud distinction of volunteers. The paid choristers who thrust
forth their predatory hands each quarter’s end for the jangling hire
that the deputy dropped into them, were unmitigated “Smiths” and
“Higginsons,” and “Browns” and “Butlers,” and so on uniformly through
the mercenary list of surnames. But, this distinction apart, no
differentiation marked the organist’s treatment of his choir. To all
alike he showed the same kind smile, the same enlarged and lenient eye,
the same soft voice. Even to the shoulders of the surnames his hand was
not a stranger; and yet--with, peradventure, the sole exception of the
Canon’s self--there was no presence whose mere approach drew the choir
to a prompter recollection of decorum. As he came down the chancel with
a comprehensive smile of greeting, he stopped before the little Oswald,
dutifully erect with his psalter held before him and his lips pursed to
attention, and took him playfully by the ear.
“Oswald, you rogue, you weren’t at the practice last Friday. In the end
we had to begin without you. Why was that?”
A voice suggested: “It was Mayor’s Party.” Another voice contemptuously
said: “Think _he_ was at Mayor’s Party?” Neither of these two voices was
Oswald’s. Realizing his embarrassment Mr. Rencil released the boy’s ear
with the gentlest shake of reassurance, and turned to Oswald’s
neighbour, distinguished by a crimson flannel wrapping round his neck.
“Now Hopwood, how’s the throat going on? Ought you to be singing? I see
you have it bandaged still.” So, with a word to one or other he
approached the deputy and addressed himself to the work in hand.
The practice began. The deputy seated himself upon the blower’s
rush-bottomed chair, brought from the blower’s gloomy purlieus behind
the organ, whose depressed seat had been raised to harmonium height by
the expedient of old church books and tattered voluntaries. Mr. Rencil
tapped the instrument lightly with his tapered baton. It breathed a
bronchial response beneath the pressure of the deputy’s feet. They
soared into the psalms for Sunday. From time to time the organist
accentuated the pointing with his baton on the choir ledges or rapped
the music into silence at some blunder too palpable for pardon, such as
an aitchless “Holy” or a mispronounced word. At other moments he strayed
towards the altar, and even wandered down into the darkling nave--far
beyond the range of Oswald’s fearful eyes--sublimely unconscious of the
unseen terrors lurking in it, from whose profundity his corrective voice
emerged, trailing a train of stupefying echoes as if a cab were
lumbering up the aisle. Meanwhile, sundry of the senior singers also
sauntered in by ones and twos, with the leisureliness befitting honorary
members. Their attendance--save on those special occasions when Mr.
Rencil requested it--was subject to no such invidious rule of
punctuality as brought so many of the choristers to practice in a
perspiration, whilst their conduct at rehearsal was exempt from the
harassing restrictions laid upon the juniors in front. During the psalms
and canticles it was their privilege to remain seated, alternately
singing and reverently discussing the latest news among themselves, such
as murders, elections and starting prices, and occasionally dropping an
admonitory hymnbook on the head of some chorister so unmindful of the
respect due to Mr. Rencil and his Maker as to cease singing and lend his
ears and open mouth to a conversation not concerning him. Most of these
newcomers were obviously arrived at an age when their voices, in the
lyric sense, could be of small service to God, but they helped to fill
the surplices on Sunday, even if they added nothing substantial to the
singing. They still retained, however, the impressive habit of clearing
their throats as though the whole responsibility of choral service hung
upon them, and speaking in the historic present of a vocal organ nobody
ever heard. Still, as church was the only place where their singing
would have been tolerated, they clung to it with the persistence of a
worthless husband to a good wife, and were more regular attendants than
the better singers to whom the world at large offered a wider sphere of
temptations. These arrived later, usually towards anthem time, with the
dissimulated consequence of Festival soloists, smoothing their hair and
pulling down their waistcoats as if in preparation for the platform. All
of them were united in their esteem of Mr. Rencil, for whose personal
attentions they vied, and in a general way the choir practice was more
regarded as an opportunity for social intercourse and the interchange of
words and smiles with the organist of St. Saviour’s than as a means of
perfecting praise for the worship of heaven--in which department not a
few considered themselves proficient enough already. To-night the chief
topic of conversation appeared to centre in the health of Alderman
Bankett--not the husband, but the father-in-law, of the Mrs. Bankett
whom everybody knew--who occupied a detached house along the Hunmouth
Road, and had been dangerously ill for some days. Taking advantage of a
lull in the singing Mr. Rencil turned to ask the men if there were any
further tidings of the alderman’s condition. One had heard nothing since
midday; another understood the alderman was sinking; a third shook his
head. “There’s bark in front of the house,” interpolated one of the
choirboys (not Oswald) suddenly. All eyes turned upon the speaker.
“When was that?” asked one of the seniors, judicially.
“To-night,” answered the boy. “Ever so deep.... You could kick it.”
“There’s been bark there this two days,” said another of the men,
indifferently. “That’s nothing to go by.”
“It’s a bad sign, is bark,” commented the judicial member. “A very bad
sign. When it comes to bark for anybody.... I’m very sorry. It’s
generally fatal.”
They were on the point of resuming the interrupted singing when the
vestry latch snapped heavily again and a heated chorister, holding his
cap screwed tightly in both hands as if he were wringing water out of
it, came swiftly into view. For his composure’s sake this entry
coincided with an inauspicious moment. Mr. Rencil, glancing at his watch
and then turning his thoughtful eyes through their gold-rimmed lenses
upon the delinquent, said in a voice whose unaltered softness lacked
nothing of reproachful severity:
“You are late to-night, Anderson. How is that?”
Without directly answering this question, but wringing his cap the
harder and sliding into place amidst his fellows, the chorister was
heard to say:
“Alderman Bankett’s dead.”
Before the chancel could recover from the effect produced by this
portentous tidings, the verger--reappearing dramatically before the
altar rails--gave out in an impressive voice:
“It is my painful obligation to announce that Alderman Bankett passed
away at 7.45. His death removes one of the oldest members of the
Corporation from our midst, and his demise will be a conspicuous
deprivation to the Council.”
This tribute to the defunct Alderman was ceremonial solely--Prestwich’s
private estimation of the late Alderman Bankett (whom he stigmatized as
an upstart of no Vocabulary) being well known.
The late delinquent, regaining assurance in the sudden alternation of a
demeanour occasioned by his news, and seeking to wrest back some of the
popularity unscrupulously appropriated by the verger, took advantage of
a nasal stoppage on the latter’s part to exclaim:
“Bell’s ringing for him now. You can hear it.”
7
Almost to a man the choir drew its breath and listened. After a while
there dropped into the breath-held stillness of the church a dull and
leaden sound; the portentous slow pulse of St. Gyles’s passing bell. All
were visibly impressed, but none so profoundly as the little Oswald, who
clasped his book as if it had been a mother’s hand and listened,
open-mouthed and silenced, to the solemn knell that went through his
small frame like a throb from eternity’s heart, accompanied with vague
shapes of policemen and blood-smeared men and infirmaries and dark ways
home. His own heart reciprocated the throb, and his lips shaped
themselves to the unspoken word “Dead!” The word had a deep significance
for him. Alderman Bankett, whom he did not know, was Dead. The news was
terrible. What tidings for his mother. Instantly he wished the practice
over that he might hasten the proud moment of breaking it to her.
The punctuation of the bell, like a full stop awaited, released all
these captive breaths which, growing more audible and more difficult of
repression, broke out in coughs and converse. Alderman Bankett, though
of late an infrequent worshipper by reason of infirmity, had in earlier
days paid pew-rent at St. Saviour’s. His son--the husband of that Mrs.
Bankett in St. Lawrence Square whom Oswald and everybody knew--was one
of the present churchwardens, and formed a familiar feature of the
service, walking on Sunday behind a stiff outstretched arm holding an
offertory plate. The Alderman’s death involved considerations for St.
Saviour’s.
“I suppose, Sir,” said Mr. Blenkinsop the Rate Collector, half rising
from his seat and addressing the Organist, “I suppose, Sir, we shall
have the privilege of the Dead March on Sunday?”
For nearly forty years Mr. Blenkinsop had monopolized a place in St.
Saviour’s choir on the strength of an apocryphal voice, to which he
administered the pitch by means of a pipe kept in his waistcoat pocket
for the purpose, as if he fed it from a bottle, and sustained on
lozenges that disseminated a melancholy odour of paregoric through the
chancel when he sucked them. By virtue of this pitch pipe, and these
lozenges, Mr. Blenkinsop (with due respect to the organist of St.
Saviour’s, whose word he held sacred, and whose utterances, humbly
assimilated to-day, were re-issued as expressions of his own authority
to-morrow) Mr. Blenkinsop based his claim to musical consideration. Mr.
Rencil, turning his thoughtful glasses upon the Rate Collector said he
assumed that the Dead March would enter into the service on Sunday.
“Morning and evening, Sir?” enquired the Rate Collector eagerly.
“We can spare an alderman or two,” he declared, “for the Dead March.” He
wished to make clear that it was the March in Saul he meant. “None of
your Mendelssohns or Beethovens!” he exclaimed emphatically. “They
aren’t in it, Sir. They haven’t the grandeur. They don’t go through you.
But Handel’s different. That’s what I call Sublime Music. We can’t have
too much of it. It’s an education. It’s a Sermon. It lays hold of a man.
After he’s heard that he can go back to his Sunday dinner with something
to think about.”
Questions were raised, too, concerning anthems; and the spirits of the
choir rose visibly to discussion of services in This and That. Somebody
in F, and Somebody in D, and Somebody (jocosely) in L--which drew the
accustomed draft of small-beer laughter from the stalls. In the midst of
these deliberations the figure of Prestwich suddenly appeared, dusting
both palms together as if applauding his own entry, who, drawing
confidentially near enough to Mr. Rencil in order that a whisper, guided
adroitly by a hand, might reach the organist’s ear, announced in a voice
partaking of the quality of a whisper only in the outward manner of its
delivery:
“The Canon’s coming, Sir.”
He added, in tones of as much injury as the need for haste allowed, “He
says the main gates is to be opened of a Friday, now. Just in case he
wants to use ’em. He can’t fiddle about with side walks, he says. First
it’s Lock this one; then it’s Lock that one; then it’s Lock ’em all. Now
it’s Leave ’em all open. There’s no materia medica about his goings on.
He’s too ultramontane to be argued with. That’s what’s the matter with
him. I’m about.... Here he comes!”
The apparition of the Vicar of St. Saviour’s at a choir practice, albeit
a contingency to be reckoned with, was rare. Accepting his ignorance of
music as sufficient proof of the art’s inferiority, Canon Quexley
concerned himself little with the choral disposition of St. Saviour’s
worship but left this matter largely in the hands of Mr. Rencil. From
time to time, as an act of policy, he showed himself within the church
on Friday, to encourage effort and stimulate attendance, but such
musical questions as were referred to him on these occasions were
briefly dealt with, the Canon betraying no great desire to dwell on
matters so far below his comprehension. But that his presence imposed a
fresh criterion of conduct was evident by the behaviour of the choir.
The choristers assumed an upright posture, taking their books in both
hands. The smiles still lingering on the men’s faces were extinguished
like surreptitious candles in a school dormitory. The Deputy dropped his
under lip and expressed respect by a lowering of facial intelligence.
The Rate Collector, after a moment’s hesitation, rose to his feet; the
others limply following.
8
The Canon came into view from behind the choir vestry, still wearing his
hat, which as he passed before the altar rails he solemnly removed. He
advanced with a careful and calculated tread; a tread deliberately
posited like the premise of a syllogism, for use in consecrated places
and on ceremonious occasions. Within the fabric, indeed, he walked as he
spoke; weighing each step as if it were a word, and lifting up his eyes
from alternate feet to heaven and down again, as though in conversation
with higher powers. An Inverness cape amplified his portly person with
its voluminous folds, one wing of which (exposing its silken lining) lay
negligently retroverted on a shoulder. In the matter of profiles he
showed inferior to Prestwich, who in this respect at least might have
changed places with his vicar not at all to the church’s disadvantage.
He lacked Prestwich’s classic nose and chiselled nostrils; his own organ
being blunted by a certain flaccidity. The bile-tinted cheeks, somewhat
pouched and baglike, shook as he walked, and the folds of his neck
overhung his Roman collar. But his forehead, most cathedrally domed,
reflected the choirlights from its gleaming surface, with the intensity
of a halo. He coughed, on coming between the choir stalls, with a
resonant cough suggesting crypt-like depths of dignity and
understanding; a cough of purpose rather than necessity; the very verger
of a cough, imbued with the importance of what it portended, and the
function it served. And it served, too, in some sort as an indirect
acknowledgment of the choir, which--save for this and a grave
inclination of the head, as if some stranger had saluted him--he did not
explicitly notice. His countenance relaxed as little to the expression
of social amenity as his cape; both, indeed, being rather utilized to
eliminate the human element from his person as a thing calculated to
compromise dignity and prejudice rank. In his official dealings with the
world he bestowed smiles sparingly, and certainly discouraged any
interchange of them with the choir, which he condescended to acknowledge
purely as an abstraction, like sin, in which convenient form it might be
apprehended by the intellect without any derogatory passage through the
organs of sight,--these approaches to his private person, indeed, being
kept discreetly curtained against intrusion, like the vicarage windows
looking on the street, behind whose panes it was but rarely pedestrians
might catch a glimpse of his canonical head. They were cold eyes, of a
steely colour and a metallic hardness, that seemed as if capable of
calculating the small currency of life to a ha’penny; being by nature
more adapted to compute figures than subserve rapture. In unguarded
moments, as he spoke or listened, it was noticeable that they strayed
from his control like children from the vigilance of a governess, to
busy themselves with increasing interest in external trifles--such as
boots and shoes and ties and watch-chains and partings in the
hair--until, coming at length into direct collision with other eyes not
less active and enquiring than themselves, they were peremptorily
recalled and withdrawn from intercourse behind their fleshy lids as if
these had been the governess’s flounces.
As he drew near to Mr. Rencil (whom alone he recognized or greeted) it
was observable that he held the pince-nez in his ungloved right hand; a
white and flabby hand whose etiolated flesh suggested too much seclusion
from sun and air, reminding Oswald irresistibly of the waxen pork
exposed to view in Waxford’s shop. Mr. Rencil, receiving the august
visitor with a look of pleasant, mild enquiry, adverted to the recent
tidings, saying he was sorry to hear.... The Canon, with a remote
crimping of his eyes and a slight action of the hand and pince-nez,
indicative not precisely of impatience, but of an understanding of all
the considerations involved in this topic, too complete for words,
assented.
“ ... To-night. At 7-45. Yes, yes. It was to be expected.... And now,
with regard to Sunday....”
No words were expended in reference to the late Alderman’s virtues. It
might have been, for any allusion made to the subject, that he had not
any. The Canon dropped his voice to an introspective murmur that taxed
(as it was designed to do) the ears of the listening choir, who, though
obviously not included in the conversation assumed an intelligent part
in it for their credit’s sake. Stray words of confabulation escaped.
“The interment.... Most probably the Corporation.... With regard to
Sunday....”
Here the Rate Collector, whose mouth opened each time the conversation
blew his way, in a desire to vindicate his forty years’ membership,
believed he had entrapped the Canon’s elusive eye at last. He seized the
moment to clap a retentive supposition on it, saying:
“I suppose, Sir....”
The supposition fell with strange abruptness as if a hymnbook had fallen
on the chancel tiles. The Canon, seemingly aware of some intrusive
sound, but blank as to the source of it, turned pained enquiring
eyebrows on the organist as though seeking confirmation and
enlightenment. Mr. Rencil interpreted the Rate Collector’s petition,
whereupon, deigning to acknowledge it from this official source, the
Canon answered:
“To be sure. To be sure.”
“To be sure ... the dead march on Sunday, Mr. Blenkinsop,” the organist
transmitted. “So that will set your mind at rest,” he added with a
smile.
“Morning and evening, Sir?” the Collector summoned confidence to ask, in
a voice of larger assurance by virtue of what had been conceded to it.
Once more, the question was referred to the Canon’s ear and the
canonical murmur vouchsafed acquiescence, saying: “Certainly....
Certainly.” Then, as though feeling that some small comment might at
this juncture without impropriety be committed to the choir, he said in
a voice addressed to nobody in particular, but dedicated to the service
of all: “The late Alderman was for some years associated with this
church.”
A vague murmur, apparently appreciative, rose up like incense from the
choir stalls at this communication. Many of the members were obviously
engaged in thinking what remark they might contribute with prestige to
themselves. One said: “Ah! It’s a sad affair to be sure. A very sad
affair!” with his face saddened to the expression he judged most
creditable to his own sentiments and most appropriate to the Vicar.
Other members, not to be outdone, threw in touching contributions to the
sadness of Alderman Bankett’s death, like coins to the collecting plate,
feeling the eye of the church upon them. The Tax Collector, thinking it
his turn once more, assumed a deeply moralizing attitude and voice, and
depositing his hand upon the book he sang from, as though to attest
religious truth, declared:
“It’s what we must all be prepared for when it pleases the Almighty to
call us.”
If this show of devout submission were intended to recommend the speaker
on the grounds of piety to the canonical ear, it only showed that Mr.
Blenkinsop’s forty years’ experience of pitch-pipes and paregoric
lozenges within this sacred edifice had been in vain. The name of the
Deity, coming from secular lips, brought to Canon Quexley not comfort
but a manifest uneasiness verging on apprehension. Already the extending
area of the conversation had imparted a restless movement to his glasses
and a certain instability to his feet. Wincing under the name of the
Lord--as a doctor might do under receipt of a prescription for his
cough, tendered by some misguided patient--he raised his canonical hat
with an impulse almost suggesting for one moment that he meant to put it
on; regarded its outer and inner surfaces, and moved in an atmosphere of
exclusive meditation towards the altar. This fit of deep abstraction
having brought him safely out of range of the Tax Collector and any
indiscreet deities he stopped, gazed fixedly at his feet and at his
pince-nez, still out-held, and said over his shoulder:
“Of course ... Mr. Rencil....”
The sentence was not completed. In its unterminated state it furnished
an implicate request for the Organist’s ear.
“Of course, Mr. Rencil ...” the Canon said again, and balancing his
pince-nez began to move once more towards the altar. Canon and organist,
engaging in a conversation of greater freedom as they left the choir,
passed out of sight towards the vestry door, followed by Prestwich--who,
all this while, had not been idle, but associating himself with the
canonical person by a studious propinquity, as if the canon’s rank were
incomplete without him, had addressed various menacing, intense and
expostulatory gestures towards the junior choristers, commanding them in
irate whispers to “stand up”, “turn your head round,” “cease talking
there,” and “be still.”
With the conclusive snapping of the vestry latch and Mr. Rencil’s
return, it was as if a great blanket had been lifted from the spirits of
the choir. All were sensible of the honour conferred by the Canon’s
visit--which they might now enjoy at leisure, freed from the constraints
and responsibilities his presence imposed. Mr. Rencil announced that the
first part of the funeral service for the deceased Alderman would
probably take place at St. Saviour’s--though the alderman was to be
interred at the Cemetery--and in this case he might have to ask for the
assistance of the choir. The interment was provisionally arranged for
Tuesday. Would those who thought they could conveniently be present put
up their hands?
Various hands, of various sizes and complexions, were lifted into the
prominence of the choirlights, some tentatively, others--perhaps ashamed
of the spectacle they presented, or repenting a too rapid
decision--were, after hesitation, withdrawn. Oswald, not too certain in
his mind what it was that was being demanded of these hands, and a prey
to the politeness that shrinks from the least assertion of self, did not
raise his own hand with the rest, albeit offering the organist a timid
and beseeching eye. But Mr. Rencil, counting up the erect palms and
finding their number few, appealed to him by name, asking if he did not
think his mother would spare him on Tuesday. Thrilled with this direct
appeal, and burning with the loyal desire to concede any service that
Mr. Rencil might require of him, Oswald answered in an undertone “he
thought she would.” The organist turned his smile upon the Rate
Collector. “I’m afraid it’s no use my asking _you_, Mr. Blenkinsop!”
“If it’s to be the Dead March in Saul, Sir,” said the Rate
Collector--first to the organist, and then to every face in turn of
which the choir was composed,--“there’s nothing will keep me away.”