A month later the restoration work at Saint Sepulchre's was fairly
begun, and in the south transept a wooden platform had been raised on
scaffold-poles to such a height as allowed the masons to work at the
vault from the inside. This roof was no doubt the portion of the fabric
that called most urgently for repair, but Westray could not disguise
from himself that delay might prove dangerous in other directions, and
he drew Sir George Farquhar's attention to more than one weak spot which
had escaped the great architect's cursory inspection.
But behind all Westray's anxieties lurked that dark misgiving as to the
tower arches, and in his fancy the enormous weight of the central tower
brooded like the incubus over the whole building. Sir George Farquhar
paid sufficient attention to his deputy's representations to visit
Cullerne with a special view to examining the tower. He spent an autumn
day in making measurements and calculations, he listened to the story of
the interrupted peal, and probed the cracks in the walls, but saw no
reason to reconsider his former verdict or to impugn the stability of
the tower. He gently rallied Westray on his nervousness, and, whilst he
agreed that in other places repair was certainly needed, he pointed out
that lack of funds must unfortunately limit for the present both the
scope of operations and the rate of progress.
Cullerne Abbey was dissolved with the larger religious houses in 1539,
when Nicholas Vinnicomb, the last abbot, being recalcitrant, and
refusing to surrender his house, was hanged as a traitor in front of the
great West Gate-house. The general revenues were impropriated by the
King's Court of Augmentations, and the abbey lands in the immediate
vicinity were given to Shearman, the King's Physician. Spellman, in his
book on sacrilege, cites Cullerne as an instance where church lands
brought ruin to their new owner's family; for Shearman had a spendthrift
son who squandered his patrimony, and then, caballing with Spanish
intriguants, came to the block in Queen Elizabeth's days.
"For evil hands have abbey lands,
Such evil fate in store;
Such is the heritage that waits
Church-robbers evermore."
Thus, in the next generation the name of Shearman was clean put away;
but Sir John Fynes, purchasing the property, founded the Grammar School
and almshouses as a sin-offering for the misdoings of his predecessors.
This measure of atonement succeeded admirably, for Horatio Fynes was
ennobled by James the First, and his family, with the title of
Blandamer, endures to this present.
On the day before the formal dissolution of their house the monks sung
the last service in the abbey church. It was held late in the evening,
partly because this time seemed to befit such a farewell, and partly
that less public attention might be attracted; for there was a doubt
whether the King's servants would permit any further ceremonies. Six
tall candles burnt upon the altar, and the usual sconces lit the
service-books that lay before the brothers in the choir-stalls. It was
a sad service, as every good and amiable thing is sad when done for the
last time. There were agonising hearts among the brothers, especially
among the older monks, who knew not whither to go on the morrow; and the
voice of the sub-prior was broken with grief, and failed him as he read
the lesson.
The nave was in darkness except for the warming-braziers, which here and
there cast a ruddy glow on the vast Norman pillars. In the obscurity
were gathered little groups of townsmen. The nave had always been open
for their devotions in happier days, and at the altars of its various
chapels they were accustomed to seek the means of grace. That night
they met for the last time--some few as curious spectators, but most in
bitterness of heart and profound sorrow, that the great church with its
splendid services was lost to them for ever. They clustered between the
pillars of the arcades; and, the doors that separated the nave from the
choir being open, they could look through the stone screen, and see the
serges twinking far away on the high altar.
Among all the sad hearts in the abbey church, there was none sadder than
that of Richard Vinnicomb, merchant and wool-stapler. He was the
abbot's elder brother, and to all the bitterness naturally incident to
the occasion was added in his case the grief that his brother was a
prisoner in London, and would certainly be tried for his life.
He stood in the deep shadow of the pier that supported the north-west
corner of the tower, weighed down with sorrow for the abbot and for the
fall of the abbey, and uncertain whether his brother's condemnation
would not involve his own ruin. It was December 6, Saint Nicholas' Day,
the day of the abbot's patron saint. He was near enough to the choir to
hear the collect being read on the other side of the screen:
"_Deus qui beatum Nicolaum pontificem innumeris decorasti miraculis:
tribue quaesumus ut ejus mentis, et precibus, a gehennae incendiis
liberemur, per Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum. Amen_."
"Amen," he said in the shadow of his pillar. "Blessed Nicholas, save
me; blessed Nicholas, save us all; blessed Nicholas, save my brother,
and, if he must lose this temporal life, pray to our Lord Christ that He
will shortly accomplish the number of His elect, and reunite us in His
eternal Paradise."
He clenched his hands in his distress, and, as a flicker from the
brazier fell upon him, those standing near saw the tears run down his
cheeks.
"_Nicholas qui omnem terram doctrina replevisti, intercede pro peccatis
nostris_," said the officiant; and the monks gave the antiphon:
"_Iste est qui contempsit vitam mundi et pervenit ad coelestia regna_."
One by one a server put out the altar-lights, and as the last was
extinguished the monks rose in their places, and walked out in
procession, while the organ played a dirge as sad as the wind in a
ruined window.
The abbot was hanged before his abbey gate, but Richard Vinnicomb's
goods escaped confiscation; and when the great church was sold, as it
stood, for building material, he bought it for three hundred pounds, and
gave it to the parish. One part of his prayer was granted, for within a
year death reunited him to his brother; and in his pious will he
bequeathed his "sowle to Allmyhtie God his Maker and Redemer, to have
the fruition of the Deitie with Our Blessed Ladie and all Saints and the
Abbey Churche of Saint Sepulchre with the implements thereof, to the
Paryshe of Cullerne, so that the said Parishioners shall not sell,
alter, or alienate the said Churche, or Implements or anye part or
parcell thereof for ever." Thus it was that the church which Westray
had to restore was preserved at a critical period of its history.
Richard Vinnicomb's generosity extended beyond the mere purchase of the
building, for he left in addition a sum to support the dignity of a
daily service, with a complement of three chaplains, an organist, ten
singing-men, and sixteen choristers. But the negligence of trustees and
the zeal of more religious-minded men than poor superstitious Richard
had sadly diminished these funds. Successive rectors of Cullerne became
convinced that the spiritual interests of the town would be better
served by placing a larger income at their own disposal for good works,
and by devoting less to the mere lip-service of much daily singing.
Thus, the stipend of the Rector was gradually augmented, and Canon
Parkyn found an opportunity soon after his installation to increase the
income of the living to a round two thousand by curtailing extravagance
in the payment of an organist, and by reducing the emoluments of that
office from two hundred to eighty pounds a year.
It was true that this scheme of economy included the abolition of the
week-day morning-service, but at three o'clock in the afternoon evensong
was still rehearsed in Cullerne Church. It was the thin and vanishing
shadow of a cathedral service, and Canon Parkyn hoped that it might
gradually dwindle away until it was dispersed to nought. Such formalism
must certainly throttle any real devotion, and it was regrettable that
many of the prayers in which his own fine voice and personal magnetism
must have had a moving effect upon his hearers should be constantly
obscured by vain intonations. It was only by doing violence to his own
high principles that he constrained himself to accept the emoluments
which poor Richard Vinnicomb had provided for a singing foundation, and
he was scrupulous in showing his disapproval of such vanities by
punctilious absence from the week-day service. This ceremony was
therefore entrusted to white-haired Mr Noot, whose zeal in his Master's
cause had left him so little opportunity for pushing his own interests
that at sixty he was stranded as an underpaid curate in the backwater of
Cullerne.
At four o'clock, therefore, on a week-day afternoon, anyone who happened
to be in Saint Sepulchre's Church might see a little surpliced
procession issue from the vestries in the south transept, and wind its
way towards the choir. It was headed by clerk Janaway, who carried a
silver-headed mace; then followed eight choristers (for the number fixed
by Richard Vinnicomb had been diminished by half); then five
singing-men, of whom the youngest was fifty, and the rear was brought up
by Mr Noot. The procession having once entered the choir, the clerk
shut the doors of the screen behind it, that the minds of the officiants
might be properly removed from contemplation of the outer world, and
that devotion might not be interrupted by any intrusion of profane
persons from the nave. These outside Profane existed rather in theory
than fact, for, except in the height of summer, visitors were rarely
seen in the nave or any other part of the building. Cullerne lay remote
from large centres, and archaeologic interest was at this time in so
languishing a condition that few, except professed antiquaries, were
aware of the grandeur of the abbey church. If strangers troubled little
about Cullerne, the interest of the inhabitants in the week-day service
was still more lukewarm, and the pews in front of the canopied stalls
remained constantly empty.
Thus, Mr Noot read, and Mr Sharnall the organist played, and the
choir-men and choristers sang, day by day, entirely for clerk Janaway's
benefit, because there was no one else to listen to them. Yet, if a
stranger given to music ever entered the church at such times, he was
struck with the service; for, like the Homeric housewife who did the
best with what she had by her, Mr Sharnall made the most of his
defective organ and inadequate choir. He was a man if much taste and
resource, and, as the echoes of the singing rolled round the vaulted
roofs, a generous critic thought little of cracked voices and leaky
bellows and rattling trackers, but took away with him an harmonious
memory of sunlight and coloured glass and eighteenth-century music; and
perhaps of some clear treble voice, for Mr Sharnall was famed for
training boys and discovering the gift of song.
Saint Luke's little summer, in the October that followed the
commencement of the restoration, amply justified its name. In the
middle of the month there were several days of such unusual beauty as to
recall the real summer, and the air was so still and the sunshine so
warm that anyone looking at the soft haze on Cullerne Flat might well
have thought that August had returned.
Cullerne Minster was, as a rule, refreshingly cool in the warmth of
summer, but something of the heat and oppressiveness of the outside air
seemed to have filtered into the church on these unseasonably warm
autumn days. On a certain Saturday a more than usual drowsiness marked
the afternoon service. The choir plumped down into their places when
the Psalms were finished, and abandoned themselves to slumber with
little attempt at concealment, as Mr Noot began the first lesson.
There were, indeed, honourable exceptions to the general somnolence. On
the cantoris side the worn-out alto held an animated conversation with
the cracked tenor. They were comparing some specially fine onions under
the desk, for both were gardeners and the autumn leek-show was near at
hand. On the decani side Patrick Ovens, a red-haired little treble, was
kept awake by the necessity for altering _Magnificat_ into _Magnified
Cat_ in his copy of Aldrich in G.
The lesson was a long one. Mr Noot, mildest and most beneficent of
men, believed that he was at his best in denunciatory passages of
Scripture. The Prayer-Book, it was true, had appointed a portion of the
Book of Wisdom for the afternoon lesson, but Mr Noot made light of
authorities, and read instead a chapter from Isaiah. If he had been
questioned as to this proceeding, he would have excused himself by
saying that he disapproved of the Apocrypha, even for instruction of
manners (and there was no one at Cullerne at all likely to question this
right of private judgment), but his real, though perhaps unconscious,
motive was to find a suitable passage for declamation. He thundered
forth judgments in a manner which combined, he believed, the terrors of
supreme justice with an infinite commiseration for the blindness of
errant, but long-forgotten peoples. He had, in fact, that "Bible voice"
which seeks to communicate additional solemnity to the Scriptures by
reciting them in a tone never employed in ordinary life, as the
fledgling curate adds gravity to the Litany by whispering "the hour of
death and Day of Judgment."
Mr Noot, being short-sighted, did not see how lightly the punishments
of these ancient races passed over the heads of his dozing audience, and
was bringing the long lesson to a properly dramatic close when the
unexpected happened: the screen-door opened and a stranger entered. As
the blowing of a horn by the paladin broke the repose of a century, and
called back to life the spellbound princess and her court, so these
slumbering churchmen were startled from their dreams by the intruder.
The choir-boys fell to giggling, the choir-men stared, clerk Janaway
grasped his mace as if he would brain so rash an adventurer, and the
general movement made Mr Sharnall glance nervously at his stops; for he
thought that he had overslept himself, and that the choir had stood up
for the _Magnificat_.
The stranger seemed unconscious of the attention which his appearance
provoked. He was no doubt some casual sightseer, and had possibly been
unaware that any service was in progress until he opened the
screen-door. But once there, he made up his mind to join in the
devotions, and was walking to the steps which led up to the stalls when
clerk Janaway popped out of his place and accosted him, quoting the
official regulations in something louder than a stage whisper:
"Ye cannot enter the choir during the hours of Divine service. Ye
cannot come in."
The stranger was amused at the old man's officiousness.
"I am in," he whispered back, "and, being in, will take a seat, if you
please, until the service is over."
The clerk looked at him doubtfully for a moment, but if there was
amusement to be read in the other's countenance, there was also a
decision that did not encourage opposition. So he thought better of the
matter, and opened the door of one of the pews that run below the stalls
in Cullerne Church.
But the stranger did not appear to notice that a place was being shown
him, and walked past the pew and up the little steps that led to the
stalls on the cantoris side. Directly behind the singing-men were five
stalls, which had canopies richer and more elaborate than those of the
others, with heraldic escutcheons painted on the backs. From these
seats the vulgar herd was excluded by a faded crimson cord, but the
stranger lifted the cord from its hook, and sat down in the first
reserved seat, as if the place belonged to him.
Clerk Janaway was outraged, and bustled up the steps after him like an
angry turkey-cock.
"Come, come!" he said, touching the intruder on the shoulder; "you
cannot sit here; these are the Fording seats, and kep' for Lord
Blandamer's family."
"I will make room if Lord Blandamer brings his family," the stranger
said; and, seeing that the old man was returning to the attack, added,
"Hush! that is enough."
The clerk looked at him again, and then turned back to his own place,
routed.
"_And in that day they shall roar against thee like the roaring of the
sea, and if one look unto the land behold darkness and sorrow, and the
light is darkened in the heavens thereof_," said Mr Noot, and shut the
book, with a glance of general fulmination through his great round
spectacles.
The choir, who had been interested spectators of this conflict of
lawlessness as personified in the intruder, and authority as in the
clerk, rose to their feet as the organ began the _Magnificat_.
The singing-men exchanged glances of amusement, for they were not
altogether averse to seeing the clerk worsted. He was an autocrat in
his own church, and ruffled them now and again with what they called his
bumptiousness. Perhaps he did assume a little as he led the procession,
for he forgot at times that he was a peaceable servant of the sanctuary,
and fancied, as he marched mace in hand to the music of the organ, that
he was a daring officer leading a forlorn hope. That very afternoon he
had had a heated discussion in the vestry with Mr Milligan, the bass,
on a question of gardening, and the singer, who still smarted under the
clerk's overbearing tongue, was glad to emphasise his adversary's defeat
by paying attention to the intruder.
The tenor on the cantoris side was taking holiday that day, and Mr
Milligan availed himself of the opportunity to offer the absentee's copy
of the service to the intruder, who was sitting immediately behind him.
He turned round, and placed the book, open at the _Magnificat_, before
the stranger with much deference, casting as he faced round again a look
of misprision at Janaway, of which the latter was quick to appreciate,
the meaning.
This by-play was lost upon the stranger, who nodded his acknowledgment
of the civility, and turned to the study of the score which had been
offered him.
Mr Sharnall's resources in the way of men's voices were so limited that
he was by no means unused to finding himself short of a voice-part on
the one side or the other. He had done his best to remedy the
deficiency in the Psalms by supplying the missing part with his left
hand, but as he began the _Magnificat_ he was amazed to hear a mellow
and fairly strong tenor taking part in the service with feeling and
precision. It was the stranger who stood in the gap, and when the first
surprise was past, the choir welcomed him as being versed in their own
arts, and Clerk Janaway forgot the presumption of his entrance and even
the rebellious conduct of Mr Milligan. The men and boys sang with new
life; they wished, in fact, that so knowledgeable a person should be
favourably impressed, and the service was rendered in a more creditable
way than Cullerne Church had known for many a long day. Only the
stranger was perfectly unmoved. He sang as if he had been a lay-vicar
all his life, and when the _Magnificat_ was ended, and Mr Sharnall
could look through the curtains of the organ-loft, the organist saw him
with a Bible devoutly following Mr Noot in the second lesson.
He was a man of forty, rather above the middle height, with dark
eyebrows and dark hair, that was beginning to turn grey. His hair,
indeed, at once attracted the observer's attention by its thick
profusion and natural wavy curl. He was clean-shaven, his features were
sharply cut without being thin, and there was something contemptuous
about the firm mouth. His nose was straight, and a powerful face gave
the impression of a man who was accustomed to be obeyed. To anyone
looking at him from the other side of the choir, he presented a
remarkable picture, for which the black oak of Abbot Vinnicomb's stalls
supplied a frame. Above his head the canopy went soaring up into
crockets and finials, and on the woodwork at the back was painted a
shield which nearer inspection would have shown to be the Blandamer
cognisance, with its nebuly bars of green and silver. It was, perhaps,
so commanding an appearance that made red-haired Patrick Ovens take out
an Australian postage-stamp which he had acquired that very day, and
point out to the boy next to him the effigy of Queen Victoria sitting
crowned in a gothic chair.
The stranger seemed to enter thoroughly into the spirit of the
performance; he bore his part in the service bravely, and, being
furnished with another book, lent effective aid with the anthem. He
stood up decorously as the choir filed out after the Grace, and then sat
down again in his seat to listen to the voluntary. Mr Sharnall
determined to play something of quality as a tribute to the unknown
tenor, and gave as good a rendering of the Saint Anne's fugue as the
state of the organ would permit. It was true that the trackers rattled
terribly, and that a cipher marred the effect of the second subject; but
when he got to the bottom of the little winding stairs that led down
from the loft, he found the stranger waiting with a compliment.
"Thank you very much," he said; "it is very kind of you to give us so
fine a fugue. It is many years since I was last in this church, and I
am fortunate to have chosen so sunny an afternoon, and to have been in
time for your service."
"Not at all, not at all," said the organist; "it is we who are fortunate
in having you to help us. You read well, and have a useful voice,
though I caught you tripping a little in the lead of the _Nunc Dimittis_
Gloria." And he sung it over by way of reminder. "You understand
church music, and have sung many a service before, I am sure, though you
don't look much given that way," he added, scanning him up and down.
The stranger was amused rather than offended at these blunt criticisms,
and the catechising went on.
"Are you stopping in Cullerne?"
"No," the other replied courteously; "I am only here for the day, but I
hope I may find other occasions to visit the place and to hear your
service. You will have your full complement of voices next time I come,
no doubt, and I shall be able to listen more at my ease than to-day?"
"Oh no, you won't. It's ten to one you will find us still worse off.
We are a poverty-stricken lot, and no one to come over into Macedonia to
help us. These cursed priests eat up our substance like canker-worms,
and grow sleek on the money that was left to keep the music going. I
don't mean the old woman that read this afternoon; he's got _his_ nose
on the grindstone like the rest of us--poor Noot! He has to put brown
paper in his boots because he can't afford to have them resoled. No,
it's the Barabbas in the rectory-house, that buys his stocks and shares,
and starves the service."
This tirade fell lightly on the stranger's ears. He looked as if his
thoughts were a thousand miles away, and the organist broke off:
"Do you play the organ? Do you understand an organ?" he asked quickly.
"Alas! I do not play," the stranger said, bringing his mind back with a
jerk for the answer, "and understand little about the instrument."
"Well, next time you are here come up into the loft, and I will show you
what a chest of rattletraps I have to work with. We are lucky to get
through a service without a breakdown; the pedal-board is too short and
past its work, and now the bellows are worn-out."
"Surely you can get that altered," the stranger said; "the bellows
shouldn't cost so much to mend."
"They are patched already past mending. Those who would like to pay for
new ones haven't got the money, and those who have the money won't pay.
Why, that very stall you sat in belongs to a man who could give us new
bellows, and a new organ, and a new church, if we wanted it. Blandamer,
that's his name--Lord Blandamer. If you had looked, you could have seen
his great coat of arms on the back of the seat; and he won't spend a
halfpenny to keep the roofs from falling on our heads."
"Ah," said the stranger, "it seems a very sad case." They had reached
the north door, and, as they stepped out, he repeated meditatively: "It
seems a very sad case; you must tell me more about it next time we
meet."
The organist took the hint, and wished his companion good-afternoon,
turning down towards the wharves for a constitutional on the riverside.
The stranger raised his hat with something of foreign courtesy, and
walked back into the town.