Jared Pellet used to declare with a grim smile that he thought he had
been more happy as a poor man in Duplex Street than he was now that he
had inherited his brother's property and thriving business; for he had
never known how much misery, poverty, and wretchedness was in the world
before the secretaries of different charities began taking ample care to
keep him well-informed upon the subject. Jared used to say he thought,
he was not sure though, he almost found the money a trouble to him; in
fact, it would have been a burden if he had not somewhat lightened it by
the arrangement he made respecting Harry and the money brought by his
mother into the firm. He did not now find so much time for dreaming
over his old organ, sooner than part from which he would almost have
given up the worldly goods now in his possession.
The old house was kept on for some time in Duplex Street almost intact;
and when it was decided to give it up, Mrs Jared had a good long cry
over it, in spite of its pinched looks and bare rooms, but where she
said that she had passed so many, many happy hours, gone never to
return.
Wonderful was the collection of odds and ends brought away to be
deposited in the wealthy new home--one and all articles that it was
declared to be impossible to leave behind. One was Jared's glue-pot,
which showed its malignant disposition to the very last, and, after
being wrapped up carefully in paper, proved to have a quantity of nasty,
foul, sticky water somewhere in its internal regions, which ran out all
over the other objects packed in the box.
Patty, too, must be obstinate about the old tin-kettle of a piano, with
the rusty wires, being left behind. What were instruments of great
compass from Broadwood or Collard? They could not make her feel that
she was to desert old friends. How many boxes of strange pieces of
ware, and fragments of this and that, were packed up under the name of
playthings, it is hard to say.
One, at least, of Mrs Jared's weaknesses has been already mentioned.
This may not come in the same list, but during the arrangements what
time the house in Duplex Street was turned what she called inside out,
and the question was in full discussion as to what was to be taken, what
left to be sold, this lady suddenly exclaimed, in answer to
expostulations--"What! leave that rolling-pin and paste-board? No, not
if I know it: I've had them twenty years, and--"
The remainder of Mrs Jared's speech was inaudible from her head suddenly
disappearing in the depths of a big box, where she was rolling the
implements in question in the folds of an old scorched ironing-blanket
for safety. It is worthy of remark, that at the time Mrs Jared was
packing, her jacket was hung beside her on the knob of the door, and
that jacket was handsome, and of ermine.
"Well, dear, is there anything else you would like to take?" said Jared.
"Yes; that there is!" was the reply, as Mrs Jared took down a bunch of
extremely dusty sweet herbs from a hook in the kitchen ceiling, and
placed it beside the swaddled rolling-pin. "Yes; the things were hard
enough to get together, and somehow I can hardly realise, even now, that
we can afford to leave them behind!"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
After that night in the church, Jared took a dislike to the reflector,
for as to giving up the right to conducting the service at St Runwald's,
that was out of the question, and Mr Timson used to boast to the vicar
that they had not only the best, but the richest organist in London.
And it was only occasionally, as a personal favour, to one of the above
gentlemen, that a stranger was allowed to try the instrument.
That reflector Jared took down himself from over the keyboard of the
organ, and old Purkis bore it into the damp vestry, where in course of
time its reflective power became almost _nil_.
But though Jared no longer possessed a reflector in which he could gaze
and dream, and conjure up the past, yet one has a mirror of the mind
upon which, after a breath, the surface shines as I sit late this wintry
night, as Purkis sat of old in the dim shades of the gloomy old church,
listening to the inspiring music of the grand old organ, thundering in
peals, wailing in sighs, or pouring forth jubilant melody. For above me
in the distance, from behind a curtain suspended to a brass rod, rises a
faint glow as from some soft light, above which start up, like the
golden pillars dimly seen when the northern lights flush the wintry sky,
the mighty pipes whose summits are in the deep obscurity which clouds
the open roof of the edifice. And in my mirror what is there first? An
indelible picture? No; for it fades to give place to others, as now
there is visible Jared's patient lined old face poring over music-book
and keyboard by the light of one feeble candle which seems to shed a
halo round his quaint old head.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now the interior of the old church by day, with Jared at the organ. A
bright spring morning, and the organist in the morning costume of a
glossy black dress-coat and trousers--Tim Ruggles' cut for a ducat!--
white vest, and patent leather-boots. His grizzly hair has a peculiar
knotty appearance? and did any mirror reflect odours, most surely there
would be a smell of curling-tongs and singeing. There is a camellia,
too, in his button-hole, and he has just hurried up-stairs, splitting a
pair of white kid-gloves all to ribbons in dragging them off. Crash!
That's the brass curtain-rings on the rod, so that Jared can screw
himself round and gaze down into the church, now that he has taken a
music-book from the locker and placed it upon the stand of the opened
organ.
The sun streams through the tinted windows in golden and ruddy glories
piercing the sombre twilight of the church with rays whereon dance
myriad motes of dust--dust perhaps mingled with that of the generations
of the past. Jared is looking over the heads of many people anxiously
towards the chancel; and now seems to come a strange rushing sound, and
a dull creak, creak, which makes the towering old instrument to shudder.
But that is only Ichabod Gunnis, grown tall and out of leathers,
toiling away at the long handle of the bellows till the little weight
tells that the wind-chest is full.
And now here comes the party which Jared left in the vestry, for there
is a buzz of excitement in the church, and heads are craning, while Tim
Ruggles is so excited that he stands up on the cushions of the pew he
helps to occupy so as to have a better view of what is going on.
Here they come! No, they don't; that's only old Purkis in full uniform,
plump, ruddy, glistening with moisture that he is too dignified to
remove, as he rolls solemnly down the nave towards the door, waving the
people back with his cane. Smile? Not he! beadles don't smile in
public life, only when out of uniform; and as to using a handkerchief,
he could not do that, unless compelled by such a fleshquake or sneeze as
now shakes Mr Purkis's frame, caused by that sooty dust that pervades
the church, and not by damp.
But now they do come: Patty leaning upon the arm of Harry Clayton;
Timson next, rounder than ever, with Janet on his arm--bridesmaids--more
friends--a bright confusion of figures, with only one here and there to
be recognised in the mirror. But there is Canau; there Mr Grey, who has
doffed his surplice; and, right at the back, there is Mrs Purkis, crying
and laughing together, but turning solemn directly after, as becomes the
pew-opener of St Runwald's.
Peal up the wedding-march, old Jared! But Jared can't play; not he. He
has blundered several chords, though no one is a bit the wiser. He
would break down, only he has known the piece by heart for years. There
is music open, stave and cleff and crotchet and quaver; but the
big-headed notes seem to be bobbing up and down upon their spindle
bodies, and wagging their tails, and waltzing round and round. And
really the book might just as well be in the locker as upon the stand;
for, though Jared knows it not, it is upside down. There is dew all
over Jared's spectacles, and they refuse to be seen through, while a
great tear has trickled down, gathering strength from affluents as it
proceeds, till it hangs upon the tip of Jared's nose, to go plash down
at last upon the central G natural of the fingerboard. And there are
more weak tears stealing down from behind his spectacles to moisten his
cheeks. They might be taken for perspiration, since he is smiling as he
plays mechanically, for he never performed in a more soulless fashion in
his life.
But then he always was weak, and queer, and unbusinesslike; and "some
people are such fools!" It could hardly be expected that at such a time
he should be exact in his fingering; but his actions are so odd that one
might say, "Bring a strait waistcoat," only that he is in one already,
which crackles at every motion. And now comes a dismal groan, due to
the exciting event; for, probably for only the third or fourth time in
his life--being, in spite of his vagaries, a most exemplary
bellows-boy--Ichabod has let the wind out of the organ.
It does not matter, for the wedding-party is already in the porch, being
waited on by a deputation from the Campanological Brethren, in the shape
of Beaky Jem of the tenor, who grins and rubs his Roman rostrum as he
growls out something about the bells. Timson is at him, though,
fighting hard to get a hand into his tight pocket, and fighting just as
hard to get it out with what must have been a satisfactory answer; for
St Runwald's peal asserts itself this day, far above the roar of the
streets, ringing out merrily in thousands of changes, stimulated by the
"sight o' beer that there was in that belfry sewerly."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The mirror blank, and then a tall, pale woman listening with clasped
hands to a never-wearying tale told her by a strangely-wrinkled little
man, who sits and pretends to smoke, and pokes at and arranges the
scrubby trifle of hair by his temples with the stem of his pipe--a tale
of a little gentle child whose spirit fled as he slept, holding her to
his quaint but loving breast. How many times Tim Ruggles has told of
little Pine it were hard to say, but neither he nor his listener ever
tires; and perhaps it is due to their hands that flowers bloom so
sweetly upon the little grave. The fount of tears might have been dry
before now; but no! there is always one ready to fall to the child's
memory. A strange, quiet woman this, who rarely speaks, seldom smiles,
save when Patty Clayton enters with a dimple-faced baby, and sits and
lets the pale, silent woman kneel by her side, and gaze with a yearning
love at the tiny piece of humanity, which coos and laughs in her face.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jared again, and grown older. The man who was puzzled years before by a
letter in French from a small Norman town, saying that the writer had
been much surprised at not seeing Monsieur Pellet after his note
appointing an interview; but that arrangements could be entered into for
the reception of one lady boarder. Jared could not understand this
letter, but the truth forced itself upon him at last, that it must have
been intended for his brother, who was on his way to keep his
appointment when that stern voice cried "Stay!"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jared is in his old place, with two fresh cherubs perched there, one on
either side of the organ--fresh-coloured, bright-eyed, restless cherubs,
upon whom the old wooden bloated angels of the instrument look jealously
down. And there sits "Grandpa," pretending to practise, but a very
slave to the whims and caprices of these household gods. Wonderful now
are the variations made upon the pieces played: pedals are pressed down
by tiny feet, stops are pulled out or pushed in; then bass or treble
discords are played at unexpected times by little pudgy hands; or in the
midst of the grand composition of some noble old master, the organ once
more gives forth its dying wails, for the wind is out, through Ichabod
Gunnis playing at "bo-peep" between the curtains with one of the
cherubs, and miscalculating the lasting properties of a well-pumped,
full chest of wind. But all this does not trouble Jared, who looks the
picture of earthly happiness.
Poor Jared! he is head of the Austin Friars establishment, but he is
afraid of the manager there, and slinks guardedly in and out. He goes
every other day, because his son-in-law wishes it; but Jared is always
very nervous, and fancies that the manager looks down upon him, because
he comes up every Sunday from Highgate to play St Runwald's organ, and
afterwards eat a modest chop in Fleet Street with Canau, who generally
has been with him to help him with the stops.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The scenes come quickly now across the face of the mirror--scenes of
grey old men smoking long pipes, and playing cribbage or whist at
Harry's place, or at Jared's home; of life's downward course made
smoother for many by the heaped-up wealth that Jared inherits; of old
Timson standing before the organist, with hands beneath his coat-tails,
and a frown upon his brow, though there is an odd twinkle in his eye as
he points to a deficiency in the poor-box, reproached the while by the
vicar, who goes with the churchwarden to empty the boxes upon the very
next day, to find that deficiency is amply made up.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
No glance at mirror now, but a long gaze from a seat at the reality.
There is the faint glow from behind the curtain; the softened tones are
pealing and quivering in the air as they float round the darkened
church. The music is sweet but sad, and the soft strains thrill as they
sound funereal--dirge-like. Is it the touch of Jared? The tall golden
pipes stand up ray-like, and they quiver in the glow. The hour is late,
the streets are getting hushed, and the solemnity of the place seems
oppressive, aided as it is in its influence upon the senses by the
wailing strains that sob through the air.
Silence for awhile, and the sense of oppression more heavy; but now once
more come the swelling softened tones of the grand old instrument--
strains wild and extemporised--music that is almost palpable, as it
flows current-like through nave, aisles, and chancel--sad music, solemn
strains--and then once more silence.
A strange thrill now, but only for an instant, of jarring pain; for the
old clock chimes the hour, and each lapse of time is beaten out upon
bell-rim by a ponderous hammer, and the lumbering old machinery is set
to work by its weights, and hammers out a mutilated version of the Old
Hundredth Psalm, before the clicking, grinding works stand still, and
the brazen clangour dies away.
Then comes the organ again, in a sweet strain from some flute-like stop,
from where the faint light rises in a halo, like the herald of the
rising of some great orb of sound. And now come, in a powerful
crescendo, strains loud and deep, then higher and higher, till the
glorious fugue culminates in a mighty burst of harmony, poured forth by
the instrument's full power, but only to die away in distant mutterings
as of thunder, from the deep-toned pedal pipes; for the practice is at
an end.
That was Jared Pellet's touch--that was the old organist, fettered by no
ten-minute edicts of old tea-dealing Timson; that was Jared, rising on
the wings of his music far away from earth; and now, as the last
muttering peal of softened thunder dies away, the faint light is shining
upon the bent grey head of my old friend.