The old Bishop of Carisbury was dead, and a new Bishop of Carisbury
reigned in his stead. The appointment had caused some chagrin in
Low-Church circles, for Dr Willis, the new Bishop, was a High Churchman
of pronounced views. But he had a reputation for deep personal piety,
and a very short experience sufficed to show that he was full of
Christian tolerance and tactful loving-kindness.
One day, as Mr Sharnall was playing a voluntary after the Sunday
morning-service, a chorister stole up the little winding steps, and
appeared in the organ-loft just as his master had pulled out a handful
of stops and dashed into the _stretto_. The organist had not heard the
boy on the stairs, and gave a violent start as he suddenly caught sight
of the white surplice. Hands and feet for an instant lost their place,
and the music came perilously near breaking down. It was only for an
instant; he pulled himself together, and played the fugue to its logical
conclusion.
Then the boy began, "Canon Parkyn's compliments," but broke off; for the
organist greeted him with a sound cuff and a "How many times have I told
you, sir, not to come creeping up those stairs when I am in the middle
of a voluntary? You startle me out of my senses, coming round the
corner like a ghost."
"I'm very sorry, sir," the boy said, whimpering. "I'm sure I never
meant--I never thought--"
"You never _do_ think," Mr Sharnall said. "Well, well, don't go on
whining. Old heads don't grow on young shoulders; don't do it again,
and there's a sixpence for you. And now let's hear what you have to
say."
Sixpences were rare things among Cullerne boys, and the gift consoled
more speedily than any balm in Gilead.
"Canon Parkyn's compliments to you, sir, and he would be glad to have a
word with you in the clergy-vestry."
"All in good time. Tell him I'll be down as soon as I've put my books
away."
Mr Sharnall did not hurry. There were the Psalter and the chant-book
to be put open on the desk for the afternoon; there were the
morning-service and anthem-book to be put away, and the evening-service
and anthem-book to be got out.
The establishment had once been able to afford good music-books, and in
the attenuated list of subscribers to the first-edition Boyce you may
see to this day, "The Rector and Foundation of Cullerne Minster (6
copies)." Mr Sharnall loved the great Boyce, with its parchment paper
and largest of large margins. He loved the crisp sound of the leaves as
he turned them, and he loved the old-world clefs that he could read nine
staves at a time as easily as a short score. He looked at the weekly
list to check his memory--"Awake up my Glory" (_Wise_). No, it was in
Volume Three instead of Two; he had taken down the wrong volume--a
stupid mistake for one who knew the copy so well. How the rough calf
backs were crumbling away! The rusty red-leather dust had come off on
his coat-sleeves; he really was not fit to be seen, and he took some
minutes more to brush it all off. So it was that Canon Parkyn chafed at
being kept waiting in the clergy-vestry, and greeted Mr Sharnall on his
appearance with a certain tartness:
"I wish you could be a little quicker when you are sent for. I am
particularly busy just now, and you have kept me waiting a quarter of an
hour at least."
As this was precisely what Mr Sharnall had intended to do, he took no
umbrage at the Rector's remarks, but merely said:
"Pardon me; scarcely so long as a quarter of an hour, I think."
"Well, do not let us waste words. What I wanted to tell you was that it
has been arranged for the Lord Bishop of Carisbury to hold a
confirmation in the minster on the eighteenth of next month, at three
o'clock in the afternoon. We must have a full musical service, and I
shall be glad if you will submit a sketch of what you propose for my
approval. There is one point to which I must call your attention
particularly. As his lordship walks up the nave, we must have a
becoming march on the organ--not any of this old-fashioned stuff of
which I have had so often to complain, but something really dignified
and with tune in it."
"Oh yes, we can easily arrange that," Mr Sharnall said
obsequiously--"`See the Conquering Hero comes,' by Handel, would be very
appropriate; or there is an air out of one of Offenbach's Operas that I
think I could adapt to the purpose. It is a very sweet thing if
rendered with proper feeling; or I could play a `Danse Maccabre' slowly
on the full organ."
"Ah, that is from the `Judas Maccabaeus,' I conclude," said the Rector,
a little mollified at this unexpected acquiescence in his views. "Well,
I see that you understand my wishes, so I hope I may leave that matter
in your hands. By the way," he said, turning back as he left the
vestry, "what _was_ the piece which you played after the service just
now?"
"Oh, only a fugal movement--just a fugue of Kirnberger's."
"I _wish_ you would not give us so much of this fugal style. No doubt
it is all very fine from a scholastic point of view, but to most it
seems merely confused. So far from assisting me and the choir to go out
with dignity, it really fetters our movements. We want something with
pathos and dignity, such as befits the end of a solemn service, yet with
a marked rhythm, so that it may time our footsteps as we leave the
choir. Forgive these suggestions; the _practical_ utility of the organ
is so much overlooked in these days. When Mr Noot is taking the
service it does not so much matter, but when I am here myself I beg that
there may be no more fugue."
The visit of the Bishop of Carisbury to Cullerne was an important
matter, and necessitated some forethought and arrangement.
"The Bishop must, of course, lunch with us," Mrs Parkyn said to her
husband; "you will ask him, of course, to lunch, my dear."
"Oh yes, certainly," replied the Canon; "I wrote yesterday to ask him to
lunch."
He assumed an unconcerned air, but with only indifferent success, for
his heart misgave him that he had been guilty of an unpardonable breach
of etiquette in writing on so important a subject without reference to
his wife.
"Really, my dear!" she rejoined--"really! I hope at least that your
note was couched in proper terms."
"Psha!" he said, a little nettled in his turn, "do you suppose I have
never written to a Bishop before?"
"That is not the point; _any_ invitation of this kind should always be
given by me. The Bishop, if he has any _breeding_, will be very much
astonished to receive an invitation to lunch that is not given by the
lady of the house. This, at least, is the usage that prevails among
persons of _breeding_." There was just enough emphasis in the
repetition of the last formidable word to have afforded a _casus belli_,
if the Rector had been minded for the fray; but he was a man of peace.
"You are quite right, my dear," was the soft answer; "it was a slip of
mine, which we must hope the Bishop will overlook. I wrote in a hurry
yesterday afternoon, as soon as I received the official information of
his coming. You were out calling, if you recollect, and I had to catch
the post. One never knows what tuft-hunting may not lead people to do;
and if I had not caught the post, some pushing person or other might
quite possibly have asked him sooner. I meant, of course, to have
reported the matter to you, but it slipped my memory."
"Really," she said, with fine deprecation, being only half pacified, "I
do not see who there _could_ be to ask the Bishop except ourselves.
Where should the Bishop of Carisbury lunch in Cullerne except at the
Rectory?" In this unanswerable conundrum she quenched the smouldering
embers of her wrath. "I have no doubt, dear, that you did it all for
the best, and I hate these vulgar pushing nobodies, who try to get hold
of everyone of the least position quite as much as you do. So let us
consider whom we _ought_ to ask to meet him. A small party, I think it
should be; he would take it as a greater compliment if the party were
small."
She had that shallow and ungenerous mind which shrinks instinctively
from admitting any beauty or intellect in others, and which grudges any
participation in benefits, however amply sufficient they may be for all.
Thus, few must be asked to meet the Bishop, that it might the better
appear that few indeed, beside the Rector and Mrs Parkyn, were fit to
associate with so distinguished a man.
"I quite agree with you," said the Rector, considerably relieved to find
that his own temerity in asking the Bishop might now be considered as
condoned. "Our party must above all things be select; indeed, I do not
know how we could make it anything but very small; there are so few
people whom we _could_ ask to meet the Bishop."
"Let me see," his wife said, making a show of reckoning Cullerne
respectability with the fingers of one hand on the fingers of the other.
"There is--" She broke off as a sudden idea seized her. "Why, of
course, we must ask Lord Blandamer. He has shown such marked interest
in ecclesiastical matters that he is sure to wish to meet the Bishop."
"A most fortunate suggestion--admirable in every way. It may strengthen
his interest in the church; and it must certainly be beneficial to him
to associate with correct society after his wandering and Bohemian life.
I hear all kinds of strange tales of his hobnobbing with this Mr
Westray, the clerk of the works, and with other persons entirely out of
his own rank. Mrs Flint, who happened to be visiting a poor woman in a
back lane, assures me that she has every reason to believe that he spent
an hour or more in the clerk's house, and even ate there. They say he
positively ate tripe."
"Well, it will certainly do him good to meet the Bishop," the lady said.
"That would make four with ourselves; and we can ask Mrs Bulteel. We
need not ask her husband; he is painfully rough, and the Bishop might
not like to meet a brewer. It will not be at all strange to ask her
alone; there is always the excuse of not liking to take a businessman
away from his work in the middle of the day."
"That would be five; we ought to make it up to six. I suppose it would
not do to ask this architect-fellow or Mr Sharnall."
"My dear! what can you be thinking of? On no account whatever. Such
guests would be _most_ inappropriate."
The Rector looked so properly humble and cast down at this reproof that
his wife relented a little.
"Not that there is any _harm_ in asking them, but they would be so very
ill at ease themselves, I fear, in such surroundings. If you think the
number should be even, we might perhaps ask old Noot. He _is_ a
gentleman, and would pass as your chaplain, and say grace."
Thus the party was made up, and Lord Blandamer accepted, and Mrs
Bulteel accepted; and there was no need to trouble about the curate's
acceptance--he was merely ordered to come to lunch. But, after all had
gone so well up to this point, the unexpected happened--the Bishop could
not come. He regretted that he could not accept the hospitality so
kindly offered him by Canon Parkyn; he had an engagement which would
occupy him for any spare time that he would have in Cullerne; he had
made other arrangements for lunch; he would call at the Rectory half an
hour before the service.
The Rector and his wife sat in the "study," a dark room on the north
side of the rectory-house, made sinister from without by dank
laurestinus, and from within by glass cases of badly-stuffed birds. A
Bradshaw lay on the table before them.
"He cannot be _driving_ from Carisbury," Mrs Parkyn said. "Dr Willis
does not keep at all the same sort of stables that his predecessor kept.
Mrs Flint, when she was attending the annual Christian Endeavour
meeting at Carisbury, was told that Dr Willis thinks it wrong that a
Bishop should do more in the way of keeping carriages than is absolutely
necessary for church purposes. She said she had passed the Bishop's
carriage herself, and that the coachman was a most unkempt creature, and
the horses two wretched screws."
"I heard much the same thing," assented the Rector. "They say he would
not have his own coat of arms painted on the carriage, for what was
there already was quite good enough for him. He cannot possibly be
driving here from Carisbury; it is a good twenty miles."
"Well, if he does not drive, he must come by the 12:15 train; that would
give him two hours and a quarter before the service. What business can
he have in Cullerne? Where can he be lunching? What can he be doing
with himself for two mortal hours and a quarter?"
Here was another conundrum to which probably only one person in Cullerne
town could have supplied an answer, and that was Mr Sharnall. A letter
had come for the organist that very day:
"The Palace,
"Carisbury.
"My dear Sharnall,
"(I had almost written `My dear Nick'; forty years have made my pen a
little stiff, but you must give me your official permission to write
`My dear Nick' the very next time.) You may have forgotten my hand,
but you will not have forgotten me. Do you know, it is I, Willis, who
am your new Bishop? It is only a fortnight since I learnt that you
were so near me--
"`Quam dulce amicitias,
Redintegrare nitidas' -
"and the very first point of it is that I am going to sponge on you,
and ask myself to lunch. I am coming to Cullerne at 12:45 to-day
fortnight for the Confirmation, and have to be at the Rectory at 2:30,
but till then an old friend, Nicholas Sharnall, will give me food and
shelter, will he not? Make no excuses, for I shall not accept them;
but send me word to say that in this you will not fail of your duty,
and believe me always to be
"Yours,
"John Carum."
There was something that moved strangely inside Mr Sharnall's battered
body as he read the letter--an upheaval of emotion; the child's heart
within the man's; his young hopeful self calling to his old hopeless
self. He sat back in his armchair, and shut his eyes, and the
organ-loft in a little college chapel came back to him, and long, long
practisings, and Willis content to stand by and listen as long as he
should play. How it pleased Willis to stand by, and pull the stops, and
fancy he knew something of music! No, Willis never knew any music, and
yet he had a good taste, and loved a fugue.
There came to him country rambles and country churches and Willis with
an "A.B.C. of Gothic Architecture," trying to tell an Early English from
a Decorated moulding. There came to him inimitably long summer
evenings, with the sky clearest yellow in the north, hours after sunset;
dusty white roads, with broad galloping-paths at the side, drenched with
heavy dew; the dark, mysterious boskage of Stow Wood; the scent of the
syringa in the lane at Beckley; the white mist sheeting the Cherwell
vale. And supper when they got home--for memory is so powerful an
alchemist as to transmute suppers as well as sunsets. What suppers!
Cider-cup with borage floating in it, cold lamb and mint sauce,
watercress, and a triangular commons of Stilton. Why, he had not tasted
Stilton for forty years!
No, Willis never knew any music, but he loved a fugue. Ah, the fugues
they had! And then a voice crossed Mr Sharnall's memory, saying, "When
I am here myself, I beg that there may be no more fugue." "No more
fugue"--there was a finality in the phrase uncompromising as the "no
more sea" of the Apocalyptic vision. It made Mr Sharnall smile
bitterly; he woke from his daydream, and was back in the present.
Oh yes, he knew very well that it was his old friend when he first saw
on whom the choice had fallen for the Bishopric. He was glad Willis was
coming to see him. Willis knew all about the row, and how it was that
Sharnall had to leave Oxford. Ay, but the Bishop was too generous and
broad-minded to remember that now. Willis must know very well that he
was only a poor, out-at-elbows old fellow, and yet he was coming to
lunch with him; but did Willis know that he still--He did not follow the
thought further, but glanced in a mirror, adjusted his tie, fastened the
top button of his coat, and with his uncertain hands brushed the hair
back on either side of his head. No, Willis did not know that; he never
should know; it was _never_ too late to mend.
He went to the cupboard, and took out a bottle and a tumbler. Only very
little spirit was left, and he poured it all into the glass. There was
a moment's hesitation, a moment while enfeebled will-power was nerving
itself for the effort. He was apparently engaged in making sure that
not one minim of this most costly liquor was wasted. He held the bottle
carefully inverted, and watched the very last and smallest drop detach
itself and fall into the glass. No, his will-power was not yet
altogether paralysed--not yet; and he dashed the contents of the glass
into the fire. There was a great blaze of light-blue flame, and a puff
in the air that made the window-panes rattle; but the heroic deed was
done, and he heard a mental blast of trumpets, and the acclaiming voice
of the _Victor Sui_. Willis should never know that he still--because he
never would again.
He rang the bell, and when Miss Euphemia answered it she found him
walking briskly, almost tripping, to and fro in the room. He stopped as
she entered, drew his heels together, and made her a profound bow.
"Hail, most fair chastelaine! Bid the varlets lower the draw-bridge and
raise the portcullis. Order pasties and souse-fish and a butt of
malmsey; see the great hall is properly decored for my Lord Bishop of
Carisbury, who will take his _ambigue_ and bait his steeds at this
castle."
Miss Joliffe stared; she saw a bottle and an empty tumbler on the table,
and smelt a strong smell of whisky; and the mirth faded from Mr
Sharnall's face as he read her thoughts.
"No, wrong," he said--"wrong this once; I am as sober as a judge, but
excited. A Bishop is coming to lunch with me. _You_ are excited when
Lord Blandamer takes tea with you--a mere trashy temporal peer; am I not
to be excited when a real spiritual lord pays me a visit? Hear, O
woman! The Bishop of Carisbury has written to ask, not me to lunch with
him, but him to lunch with me. You will have a Bishop lunching at
Bellevue Lodge."
"Oh, Mr Sharnall! pray, sir, speak plainly. I am so old and stupid, I
can never tell whether you are joking or in earnest."
So he put off his exaltation, and told her the actual facts.
"I am sure I don't know, sir, what you will give him for lunch," Miss
Joliffe said. She was always careful to put in a proper number of
"sirs," for, though she was proud of her descent, and considered that so
far as birth went she need not fear comparison with other Cullerne
dames, she thought it a Christian duty to accept fully the position of
landlady to which circumstances had led her. "I am sure I don't know
what you will give him for lunch; it is always so difficult to arrange
meals for the clergy. If one provides _too_ much of the good things of
this world, it seems as if one was not considering sufficiently their
sacred calling; it seems like Martha, too cumbered with much serving,
too careful and troubled, to gain all the spiritual advantage that must
come from clergymen's society. But, of course, even the most
spiritually-minded must nourish their _bodies_, or they would not be
able to do so much good. But when less provision has been made, I have
sometimes seen clergymen eat it all up, and become quite wearied, poor
things! for want of food. It was so, I remember, when Mrs Sharp
invited the parishioners to meet the deputation after the Church
Missionary Meeting. All the patties were eaten before the deputation
came, and he was so tired, poor man! with his long speech that when he
found there was nothing to eat he got quite annoyed. It was only for a
moment, of course, but I heard him say to someone, whose name I forget,
that he had much better have trusted to a ham-sandwich in the station
refreshment-room.
"And if it is difficult with the food, it is worse still with what they
are to drink. Some clergymen do so dislike wine, and others feel they
need it before the exertion of speaking. Only last year, when Mrs
Bulteel gave a drawing-room meeting, and champagne with biscuits was
served before it, Dr Stimey said quite openly that though he did not
consider all who drank to be _reprobate_, yet he must regard alcohol as
the Mark of the Beast, and that people did not come to drawing-room
meetings to drink themselves sleepy before the speaking. With Bishops
it must be much worse; so I don't know what we shall give him."
"Don't distress yourself too much," the organist said, having at last
spied a gap in the serried ranks of words; "I have found out what
Bishops eat; it is all in a little book. We must give him cold lamb--
cold ribs of lamb--and mint sauce, boiled potatoes, and after that
Stilton cheese."
"Stilton?" Miss Joliffe asked with some trepidation. "I am afraid it
will be very expensive."
As a drowning man in one moment passes in review the events of a
lifetime, so her mind took an instantaneous conspectus of all cheeses
that had ever stood in the cheese-cradle in the palmy days of Wydcombe,
when hams and plum-puddings hung in bags from the rafters, when there
was cream in the dairy and beer in the cellar. Blue Vinny, little
Gloucesters, double Besants, even sometimes a cream-cheese with rushes
on the bottom, but Stilton never!
"I am afraid it is a _very_ expensive cheese; I do not think anyone in
Cullerne keeps it."
"It is a pity," Mr Sharnall said; "but we cannot help ourselves, for
Bishops _must_ have Stilton for lunch; the book says so. You must ask
Mr Custance to get you a piece, and I will tell you later how it is to
be cut, for there are rules about that too."
He laughed to himself with a queer little chuckle. Cold lamb and mint
sauce, with a piece of Stilton afterwards--they would have an Oxford
lunch; they would be young again, and undefiled.
The stimulus that the Bishop's letter had brought Mr Sharnall soon wore
off. He was a man of moods, and in his nervous temperament depression
walked close at the heels of exaltation. Westray felt sure in those
days that followed that his friend was drinking to excess, and feared
something more serious than a mere nervous breakdown, from the agitation
and strangeness that he could not fail to observe in the organist's
manner.
The door of the architect's room opened one night, as he sat late over
his work, and Mr Sharnall entered. His face was pale, and there was a
startled, wide-open look in his eyes that Westray did not like.
"I wish you would come down to my room for a minute," the organist said;
"I want to change the place of my piano, and can't move it by myself."
"Isn't it rather late to-night?" Westray said, pulling at his watch,
while the deep and slow melodious chimes of Saint Sepulchre told the
dreaming town and the silent sea-marshes that it lacked but a quarter of
an hour to midnight. "Wouldn't it be better to do it to-morrow
morning?"
"Couldn't you come down to-night?" the organist asked; "it wouldn't take
you a minute."
Westray caught the disappointment in the tone.
"Very well," he said, putting his drawing-board aside. "I've worked at
this quite long enough; let us shift your piano."
They went down to the ground-floor.
"I want to turn the piano right-about-face," the organist said, "with
its back to the room and the keyboard to the wall--the keyboard quite
close to the wall, with just room for me to sit."
"It seems a curious arrangement," Westray criticised; "is it better
acoustically?"
"Oh, I don't know; but, if I want to rest a bit, I can put my back
against the wall, you see."
The change was soon accomplished, and they sat down for a moment before
the fire.
"You keep a good fire," Westray said, "considering it is bed-time."
And, indeed, the coals were piled high, and burning fiercely.
The organist gave them a poke, and looked round as if to make sure that
they were alone.
"You'll think me a fool," he said; "and I am. You'll think I've been
drinking, and I have. You'll think I'm drunk, but I'm not. Listen to
me: I'm not drunk; I'm only a coward. Do you remember the very first
night you and I walked home to this house together? Do you remember the
darkness and the driving rain, and how scared I was when we passed the
Old Bonding-house? Well, it was beginning then, but it's much worse
now. I had a horrible idea even then that there was something always
following me--following me close. I didn't know what it was--I only
knew there was _something_ close behind me."
His manner and appearance alarmed Westray. The organist's face was very
pale, and a curious raising of the eyelids, which showed the whites of
the eyes above the pupils, gave him the staring appearance of one
confronted suddenly with some ghastly spectacle. Westray remembered
that the hallucination of pursuant enemies is one of the most common
symptoms of incipient madness, and put his hand gently on the organist's
arm.
"Don't excite yourself," he said; "this is all nonsense. Don't get
excited so late at night."
Mr Sharnall brushed the hand aside.
"I only used to have that feeling when I was out of doors, but now I
have it often indoors--even in this very room. Before I never knew what
it was following me--I only knew it was something. But now I know what
it is: it is a man--a man with a hammer. Don't laugh. You don't _want_
to laugh; you only laugh because you think it will quiet me, but it
won't. I think it is a man with a hammer. I have never seen his face
yet, but I shall some day. Only I know it is an evil face--not hideous,
like pictures of devils or anything of that kind, but worse--a dreadful,
disguised face, looking all right, but wearing a mask. He walks
constantly behind me, and I feel every moment that the hammer may brain
me."
"Come, come!" Westray said in what is commonly supposed to be a
soothing tone, "let us change this subject, or go to bed. I wonder how
you will find the new position of your piano answer."
The organist smiled.
"Do you know why I really put it like that?" he said. "It is because I
am such a coward. I like to have my back against the wall, and then I
know there can be no one behind me. There are many nights, when it gets
late, that it is only with a great effort I can sit here. I grow so
nervous that I should go to bed at once, only I say to myself, `Nick'--
that's what they used to call me at home, you know, when I was a
boy--`Nick, you're not going to be beat; you're not going to be scared
out of your own room by ghosts, surely.' And then I sit tight, and play
on, but very often don't think much of what I'm playing. It is a sad
state for a man to get into, is it not?" And Westray could not traverse
the statement.
"Even in the church," Mr Sharnall went on, "I don't care to practise
much in the evening by myself. It used to be all right when Cutlow was
there to blow for me. He is a daft fellow, but still was some sort of
company; but now the water-engine is put in, I feel lonely there, and
don't care to go as often as I used. Something made me tell Lord
Blandamer how his water-engine contrived to make me frightened, and he
said he should have to come up to the loft himself sometimes to keep me
company."
"Well, let me know the first evening you want to practise," Westray
said, "and I will come, too, and sit in the loft. Take care of
yourself, and you will soon grow out of all these fancies, and laugh at
them as much as I do." And he feigned a smile. But it was late at
night; he was high-strung and nervous himself, and the fact that Mr
Sharnall should have been brought to such a pitiable state of mental
instability depressed him.
The report that the Bishop was going to lunch with Mr Sharnall on the
day of the Confirmation soon spread in Cullerne. Miss Joliffe had told
Mr Joliffe the pork-butcher, as her cousin, and Mr Joliffe, as
churchwarden, had told Canon Parkyn. It was the second time within a
few weeks that a piece of important news had reached the Rector at
second-hand. But on this occasion he experienced little of the chagrin
that had possessed him when Lord Blandamer made the great offer to the
restoration fund through Westray. He did not feel resentment against
Mr Sharnall; the affair was of too solemn an importance for any such
personal and petty sentiments to find a place. Any act of any Bishop
was vicariously an act of God, and to chafe at this dispensation would
have been as out of place as to be incensed at a shipwreck or an
earthquake. The fact of being selected as the entertainer of the Bishop
of Carisbury invested Mr Sharnall in the Rector's eyes with a
distinction which could not have been possibly attained by mere
intellect or technical skill or devoted drudgery. The organist became
_ipso facto_ a person to be taken into account.
The Rectory had divined and discussed, and discussed and divined, how it
was, could, would, should, have been that the Bishop could be lunching
with Mr Sharnall. Could it be that the Bishop had thought that Mr
Sharnall kept an eating-house, or that the Bishop took some special diet
which only Mr Sharnall knew how to prepare? Could it be that the
Bishop had some idea of making Mr Sharnall organist in his private
chapel, for there was no vacancy in the Cathedral? Conjecture charged
the blank wall of mystery full tilt, and retired broken from the
assault. After talking of nothing else for many hours, Mrs Parkyn
declared that the matter had no interest at all for her.
"For my part, I cannot profess to understand such goings-on," she said
in that convincing and convicting tone which implies that the speaker
knows far more than he cares to state, and that the solution of the
mystery must in any case be discreditable to all concerned.
"I wonder, my dear," the Rector said to his wife, "whether Mr Sharnall
has the means to entertain the Bishop properly."
"Properly!" said Mrs Parkyn--"properly! I think the whole proceeding
entirely improper. Do you mean has Mr Sharnall money enough to
purchase a proper repast? I should say certainly not. Or has he proper
plates or forks or spoons, or a proper room in which to eat? Of course
he has not. Or do you mean can he get things properly cooked? Who is
to do it? There is only feckless old Miss Joliffe and her stuck-up
niece."
The Canon was much perturbed by the vision of discomfort which his wife
had called up.
"The Bishop ought to be spared as much as _possible_," he said; "we
ought to do all we _can_ to save him annoyance. What do you think?
Should we not put up with a little inconvenience, and ask Sharnall to
bring the Bishop here, and lunch himself? He must know perfectly well
that entertaining a Bishop in a lodging-house is an unheard-of thing,
and he would do to make up the sixth instead of old Noot. We could
easily tell Noot he was not wanted."
"Sharnall is such a disreputable creature," Mrs Parkyn answered; "he is
quite as likely as not to come tipsy; and, if he does not, he has no
_breeding_ or education, and would scarcely understand polite
conversation."
"You forget, my dear, that the Bishop is already pledged to lunch with
Mr Sharnall, so that we should not be held responsible for introducing
him. And Sharnall has managed to pick up some sort of an education--I
can't imagine where; but I found on one occasion that he could
understand a little Latin. It was the Blandamer motto, `_Aut Fynes, aut
finis_.' He may have been told what it meant, but he certainly seemed
to know. Of course, no real knowledge of Latin can be obtained without
a _University_ education"--and the Rector pulled up his tie and
collar--"but still chemists and persons of that sort do manage to get a
smattering of it."
"Well, well, I don't suppose we are going to talk Latin all through
lunch," interrupted his wife. "You can do precisely as you please about
asking him."
The Rector contented himself with the permission, however ungraciously
accorded, and found himself a little later in Mr Sharnall's room.
"Mrs Parkyn was hoping that she might have prevailed on you to lunch
with us on the day of the Confirmation. She was only waiting for the
Bishop's acceptance to send you an invitation; but we hear now," he said
in a dubitative and tentative way--"we hear now that it is possible that
the Bishop may be lunching with you."
There was a twitch about the corners of Canon Parkyn's mouth. The
position that a Bishop should be lunching with Mr Sharnall in a common
lodging-house was so exquisitely funny that he could only restrain his
laughter with difficulty.
Mr Sharnall gave an assenting nod.
"Mrs Parkyn was not quite sure whether you might have in your lodgings
exactly everything that might be necessary for entertaining his
lordship."
"Oh dear, yes," Mr Sharnall said. "It looks a little dowdy just this
minute, because the chairs are at the upholsterers to have the gilt
touched up; we are putting up new curtains, of _course_, and the
housekeeper has already begun to polish the best silver."
"It occurred to Mrs Parkyn," the Rector continued, being too bent on
saying what he had to say to pay much attention to the organist's
remarks--"it occurred to Mrs Parkyn that it might perhaps be more
convenient to you to bring the Bishop to lunch at the Rectory. It would
spare you all trouble in preparation, and you would of course lunch with
us yourself. It would be putting us to no inconvenience; Mrs Parkyn
would be glad that you should lunch with us yourself."
Mr Sharnall nodded, this time deprecatingly.
"You are very kind. Mrs Parkyn is very considerate, but the Bishop has
signified his intention of lunching in _this_ house; I could scarcely
venture to contravene his lordship's wishes."
"The Bishop is a friend of yours?" the Rector asked.
"You can scarcely say that; I do not think I have set eyes on the man
for forty years."
The Rector was puzzled.
"Perhaps the Bishop is under some misconception; perhaps he thinks that
this house is still an inn--the Hand of God, you know."
"Perhaps," said the organist; and there was a little pause.
"I hope you will consider the matter. May I not tell Mrs Parkyn that
you will urge the Bishop to lunch at the Rectory--that you both"--and he
brought out the word bravely, though it cost him a pang to yoke the
Bishop with so unworthy a mate, and to fling the door of select
hospitality open to Mr Sharnall--"that you both will lunch with us?"
"I fear not," the organist said; "I fear I must say no. I shall be very
busy preparing for the extra service, and if I am to play `See the
Conquering Hero' as the Bishop enters the church, I shall need time for
practice. A piece like that takes some playing, you know."
"I hope you will endeavour to render it in the very best manner," the
Rector said, and withdrew his forces _re infecta_.
The story of Mr Sharnall's mental illusions, and particularly of the
hallucination as to someone following him, had left an unpleasant
impression on Westray's mind. He was anxious about his fellow-lodger,
and endeavoured to keep a kindly supervision over him, as he felt it to
be possible that a person in such a state might do himself a mischief.
On most evenings he either went down to Mr Sharnall's room, or asked
the organist to come upstairs to his, considering that the solitude
incident to bachelor life in advancing years was doubtless to blame to a
large extent for these wandering fancies. Mr Sharnall occupied himself
at night in sorting and reading the documents which had once belonged to
Martin Joliffe. There was a vast number of them, representing the
accumulation of a lifetime, and consisting of loose memoranda, of
extracts from registers, of manuscript-books full of pedigrees and
similar material. When he had first begun to examine them, with a view
to their classification or destruction, he showed that the task was
distinctly uncongenial to him; he was glad enough to make any excuse for
interruption or for invoking Westray's aid. The architect, on the other
hand, was by nature inclined to archaeologic and genealogic studies, and
would not have been displeased if Mr Sharnall had handed over to him
the perusal of these papers entirely. He was curious to trace the
origin of that chimera which had wasted a whole life--to discover what
had led Martin originally to believe that he had a claim to the
Blandamer peerage. He found, perhaps, an additional incentive in an
interest which he was beginning unconsciously to take in Anastasia
Joliffe, whose fortunes might be supposed to be affected by these
investigations.
But in a little while Westray noticed a change in the organist's
attitude as touching the papers. Mr Sharnall evinced a dislike to the
architect examining them further; he began himself to devote a good deal
more time and attention to their study, and he kept them jealously under
lock and key. Westray's nature led him to resent anything that
suggested suspicion; he at once ceased to concern himself with the
matter, and took care to show Mr Sharnall that he had no wish whatever
to see more of the documents.
As for Anastasia, she laughed at the idea of there being any foundation
underlying these fancies; she laughed at Mr Sharnall, and rallied
Westray, saying she believed that they both were going to embark on the
quest of the nebuly coat. To Miss Euphemia it was no laughing matter.
"I think, my dear," she said to her niece, "that all these searchings
after wealth and fortune are not of God. I believe that trying to
discover things"--and she used "things" with the majestic
comprehensiveness of the female mind--"is generally bad for man. If it
is good for us to be noblemen and rich, then Providence will bring us to
that station; but to try to prove one's self a nobleman is like
star-gazing and fortune-telling. Idolatry is as the sin of witchcraft.
There can be no _blessing_ on it, and I reproach myself for ever having
given dear Martin's papers to Mr Sharnall at all. I only did so
because I could not bear to go through them myself, and thought perhaps
that there might be cheques or something valuable among them. I wish I
had burnt everything at first, and now Mr Sharnall says he will not
have the papers destroyed till he has been through them. I am sure they
were no blessing at all to dear Martin. I hope they may not bewitch
these two gentlemen as well."