The Nine Tailors (9 page)

“Mr. Godfrey!”

Hilary’s voice was so sharp and excited that Jack Godfrey was quite startled. He very nearly fell off the ladder, adding thereby one more to Batty Thomas’ tale of victims.

“Yes, Miss Hilary?”

“I’ve found such a funny thing here. Do come and look at it.”

“In one moment, Miss Hilary.”

He finished his task and descended. Hilary was standing in a splash of sunshine that touched the brazen mouth of Tailor Paul and fell all about her like Danae’s shower. She was holding the paper where the light could catch it.

“I found this on the floor. Do listen to it. It’s absolutely loony. Do you think Potty Peake could have written it?”

Mr. Godfrey shook his head.

“I couldn’t say, I’m sure, Miss Hilary. He’s queer, is Potty, and he did use to come up here one time, before Rector locked up the trap-door chain. But that don’t look to me like his writing.”

“Well, I don’t think anybody but a lunatic could have written it. Do read it. It’s so funny.” Hilary giggled, being of an age to be embarrassed by lunacy.

Mr. Godfrey set down his belongings with deliberation, scratched his head and perused the document aloud, following the lines with a somewhat grimy forefinger.

“I thought to see the fairies in the fields, but I saw only the evil elephants with their black backs. Woe! how that sight awed me! The elves danced all around and about while I heard voices calling clearly. Ah! how I tried to see—throw off the ugly cloud—but no blind eye of a mortal was permitted to spy them. So then came minstrels, having gold trumpets, harps and drums. These played very loudly beside me, breaking that spell. So the dream vanished, whereat I thanked Heaven. I shed many tears before the thin moon rose up, frail and faint as a sickle of straw. Now though the Enchanter gnash his teeth vainly, yet shall he return as the Spring returns. Oh, wretched man! Hell gapes, Erebus now lies open. The mouths of Death wait on thy end.”

“There, now,” said Mr. Godfrey, astonished. “That’s a funny one, that is. Potty it is, but, if you follow me, it ain’t Potty neither. Potty ain’t no scholar. This here, now, about Ereebus—what do you take that to mean?”

“It’s a kind of an old name for hell,” said Hilary.

“Oh, that’s what it is, is it? Chap that wrote this seems to have got that there place on his mind, like. Fairies, too, and elephants. Well, I don’t know. Looks like a bit of a joke, don’t it now? Perhaps—” (his eye brightened with an idea) “perhaps somebody’s been copying out something out of a book. Yes, I wouldn’t wonder if that’s what that is. One of them old-fashioned books. But it’s a funny thing how it got up here. I’d show it to Rector, Miss Hilary, that’s what I’d do. He knows a lot of books, and maybe he’d know where it come from.”

“That’s a good idea. I will. But it’s awfully mysterious, isn’t it? Quite creepy. Can we go up the tower now, Mr. Godfrey?”

Mr. Godfrey was quite willing, and together they climbed the last long ladder, stretching high over the bells and leading them out by way of a little shelter like a dog-kennel on to the leaded roof of the tower. Leaning against the wind was like leaning against a wall. Hilary pulled off her hat and let her thick bobbed hair blow out behind her, so that she looked like one of the floating singing angels in the church below. Mr. Godfrey had no eyes for this resemblance; he thought Miss Hilary’s angular face and straight hair rather unattractive, if the truth were known. He contented himself with advising her to hold tight by the iron stays of the weathercock. Hilary paid no attention to him, but advanced to the parapet, leaning over between the pierced battlements to stare out southward over the Fen. Far away beneath her lay the churchyard, and, while she looked, a little figure, quaintly foreshortened, crawled beetle-like from the porch and went jogging down the path. Mrs. Venables, going home to lunch. Hilary watched her struggle with the wind at the gate, cross the road and enter the Rectory garden. Then she turned and moved to the east side of the tower, and looked out along the ridged roofs of the nave and chancel. A brown spot in the green churchyard caught her eye and her heart seemed to turn over in her body. Here, at the north-east angle of the church, her mother lay buried, her grave not yet turfed over; and now it looked as though, before long, the earth would have to be opened up again to let the husband join his wife. “Oh, God!” said Hilary, desperately, “don’t let Dad die—You can’t—You simply can’t.”

Beyond the churchyard wall lay a green field, and in the middle of the field there was a slight hollow. She knew that hollow well. It had been there now for over three hundred years. Time had made it shallower, and in three hundred years more it might disappear altogether, but there it still was—the mark left by the great pit dug for the founding of Tailor Paul.

Jack Godfrey spoke close beside her.

“Time I was getting along now, Miss Hilary.”

“Oh, yes. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. Are you ringing a peal to-morrow?”

“Yes, Miss Hilary. We’re going to have a try at Stedman’s. They’re difficult to ring, are Stedman’s, but very fine music when you get them going proper. Mind your head. Miss Hilary. A full peal of 5,040 we’re going to give them—that’s three hours. It’s a fortnit thing as Will Thoday’s all right again, because neither Tom Tebbutt nor young George Wilderspin is what you might call reliable in Stedman’s, and of course, Wally Pratt’s no good at all. Excuse me one minute. Miss Hilary, while I gathers up my traps. But to my mind, there’s more interest, as you might say, in Stedman’s than in any other method, though it takes a bit of thinking about to keep it all clear in one’s head. Old Hezekiah don’t so much care about it, of course, because he likes the tenor rung in. Triples ain’t much fun for him, he says, and it ain’t to be wondered at. Still, he’s an old man now, and you couldn’t hardly expect him to learn Stedman’s at his age, and what’s more, if he could, you’d never get him to leave Tailor Paul. Just a moment, Miss Hilary, while I lock up this here counterpoise. But give me a nice peal of Stedman’s and I ask no better. We never had no Stedman’s till Rector come, and it took him a powerful long time to learn us to ring them. Well I mind the trouble we had with them. Old John Thoday—that’s Will’s father, he’s dead and gone now—he used to say, ‘Boys,’ he said, ‘it’s my belief the Devil himself couldn’t get no sense out of this dratted method.’ And Rector fined him sixpence for swearing, like it says in they old rules. Mind you don’t slip on the stair. Miss Hilary, it’s terrible worn. But we learned Stedman to rights, none the more for that, and to my mind it’s a very pretty method of ringing. Well, good morning to you. Miss Hilary.”;

* * *

The peal of 5,040 Stedman’s Triples was duly rung on Easter Sunday morning. Hilary Thorpe heard it from the Red House, sitting beside the great old four-poster bed, as she had sat on New Year’s morning to hear the peal of Treble Bob Major. Then the noise of the bells had come full and clear; to-day, it reached her only in distant bursts, when the wind, rollicking away with it eastward, bated for a moment or veered round a little to the south.

“Hilary!”

“Yes, Dad.”

“I’m afraid—if I go west this time—I’ll be leaving you rottenly badly off, old girl.”

“I don’t care a dash about that, old thing. Not that you are going west. But if you did, I should be quite all right.”

“There’ll be enough to send you to Oxford, I dare say. Girls don’t seem to cost much there—your uncle will see to it.”

“Yes—and I’m going to get a scholarship, anyway. And I don’t want money. I’d rather make my own living. Miss Bowler says she doesn’t think anything of a woman who can’t be independent.” (Miss Bowler was the English mistress and the idol of the moment.) “I’m going to be a writer, Dad. Miss Bowler says she wouldn’t wonder if I’d got it in me.”

“Oh? What are you going to write? Poetry?”

“Well, perhaps But I don’t suppose that pays very well. I’ll write novels, test-sellers. The sort that everybody goes potty over. Not just bosh ones, but like
The Constant Nymph.
”

“You’ll want a bit of experience before you can write novels, old girl.”

“Rot, Daddy. You don’t want experience for writing novels. People write them at Oxford and they sell like billy-ho. All about how awful everything was at school.”

“I see. And when you leave Oxford, you write one about how awful everything was at college.”

“That’s the idea. I can do that on my head.”

“Well, dear, I hope it’ll work. But all the same, I feel a damned failure, leaving you so little. If only that rotten necklace had turned up! I was a fool to pay that Wilbraham woman for it, but she as good as accused the old Governor of being an accessory, and I—”

“Oh, Dad, please—
please
don’t go on about that silly necklace. Of course you couldn’t do anything else about it. And I don’t want the beastly money. And anyhow, you’re not going to peg out yet.”

But the specialist, arriving on Tuesday, looked grave and, taking Dr. Baines aside, said to him kindly:

“You have done all you could. Even if you had called me in earlier, it could have made no possible difference.”

And to Hilary, still kindly;

“We must never give up hope, you know. Miss Thorpe. I can’t disguise from you that your father’s condition is serious, but Nature has marvellous powers of recuperation. ...”

Which is the medical man’s way of saving that, short of miraculous intervention, you may as well order the coffin.

* * *

On the following Monday afternoon, Mr. Venables was just leaving the cottage of a cantankerous and venomous-tongued old lady on the extreme outskirts of the parish, when a deep, booming sound smote his ear from afar. He stood still with his hand upon the gate.

“That’s Tailor Paul,” said the Rector to himself. Three solemn notes, and a pause.

“Man or woman?”

Three notes, and then three more.

“Man,” said the Rector. He still stood listening. “I wonder if poor old Merryweather has gone at last. I hope it isn’t that boy of Hensman’s.” He counted twelve strokes, and waited. But the bell tolled on, and the Rector breathed a sigh of relief. Hensman’s boy, at least, was safe. He hastily reckoned up the weaklings of his flock. Twenty strokes, thirty strokes—a man of full age. “Heaven send,” thought the Rector, “it isn’t Sir Henry. He seemed better when I saw him yesterday.” Forty strokes, forty-one, forty-two. Surely it must be old Merryweather—a happy release for him, poor old man. Forty-three, forty-four, forty-five, forty-six. Now it must go on—it could not stop at that fatal number. Old Merryweather was eighty-four. The Rector strained his ears. He must have missed the next stroke—the wind was pretty strong, and his hearing was perhaps not as good as it had been.

But he waited full thirty seconds before Tailor Paul spoke again; and after that there was silence for another thirty seconds.

The cantankerous old lady, astonished to see the Rector stand so long bare-headed at her gate, came hobbling down the garden path to know what it was all about.

“It’s the passing-bell,” said Mr. Venables, “they have rung the nine tailors and forty-six strokes, and I’m afraid it must be for Sir Henry.”

“Oh, dear,” said the cantankerous old woman. “that’s bad. Terrible bad, that is.” A peevish kind of pity came into her eyes. “What’s to become of Miss Hilary now, with her mother and father gone so quick, and her only fifteen, and nobody to keep her in check? I don’t hold with girls being left to look arter themselves. They’re troublesome at the best and they didn’t ought to have their parents took away from them.”

“We mustn’t question the ways of Providence,” said the Rector.

“Providence?” said the old woman. “Don’t yew talk to me about Providence. I’ve had enough o’ Providence. First he took my husband, and then he took my ’taters, but there’s One above as’ll teach him to mend his manners, if he don’t look out.”

The Rector was too much distressed to challenge this remarkable piece of theology.

“We can but trust in God, Mrs. Giddings,” he said, and pulled up the starting-handle with a jerk.

* * *

Sir Henry’s funeral was fixed for the Friday afternoon. This was an occasion of mournful importance to at least four persons in Fenchurch St. Paul. There was Mr. Russell, the undertaker, who was a cousin of that same Mary Russell who had married William Thoday. He was determined to excel himself in the matter of polished oak and brass plates, and his hammer and plane had been keeping up a dismal little harmony of their own during the early part of the week. His, also, was the delicate task of selecting the six bearers so that they might be well-matched in height and step. Mr. Hezekiah Lavender and Mr. Jack Godfrey went into conference about the proper ringing of a muffled peal—Mr. Godfrey’s business being to provide and adjust the leather buffets about the clappers of the bells, and Mr. Lavender’s to arrange and conduct the ringing. And Mr. Gotobed, the sexton, was concerned with the grave—so much concerned that he had declined to take part in the peal, preferring to give his whole mind to the graveside ceremonies, although his son, Dick, who assisted him with the spadework, considered himself quite capable of carrying on on his own. There was not, indeed, very much to do in the way of digging. Rather to Mr. Gotobed’s disappointment, Sir Henry had expressed a wish to be buried in the same grave with his wife, so that there was little opportunity for any fine work in the way of shaping, measuring and smoothing the sides of the grave. They had only to cast out the earth—-scarcely yet firm after three rainy months—make all neat and tidy and line the grave with fresh greenery. Nevertheless, liking to be well beforehand with his work, Mr. Gotobed took measures to carry this out on the Thursday afternoon.

The Rector had just come in from a round of visits, and was about to sit down to his tea, when Emily appeared at the sitting-room door.

“If you please, sir, could Harry Gotobed speak to you for a moment?”

“Yes, certainly. Where is he?”

“At the back door, sir. He wouldn’t come in on account of his boots being dirty.”

Mr. Venables made his way to the back door; Mr. Gotobed stood awkwardly on the step, twirling his cap in his hands.