The Cathedral was in one of its kindlier moods. Blue mist veiled the starkness of the Rollo tower and sunshine spilled down the walls and buttresses. It looked almost ethereal, as though built of air and light, and so benign that Isaac decided to venture as far as the south door and deliver his watch to old Tom Hochicorn in person, instead of leaving it for him at the almshouses. He walked down the lime avenue and then climbed the steps to an archway that led into a narrow cloister. Here on a stone bench beside the south door Tom Hochicorn sat with his hands upon his knees, wearing the long gown of dark blue frieze and the crimson skullcap that the Cathedral bedesmen had worn for centuries past. The Cathedral had four bedesmen, one to take care of each of its doors, all old men from the almshouses. Aware of a figure approaching, Tom rose and bowed. There was only one thing in the whole city more charming than his courteous bow, and that was his smile as he welcomed worshipers to his Cathedral and put out his hand to open the door and let them in. Tom loved and trusted the Cathedral as deeply as Isaac hated and feared it. As the years had passed, the conviction that he owned the whole place had grown upon him. Yet no one, looking at old Tom, would have guessed at the fiery love and burning pride that inwardly possessed him. He had meek eyes, along white beard flowing down over his chest and a gentle deprecating voice and manner. Yet if any desperate man had tried to harm the Cathedral in any way Tom would have been capable of violence, and any stranger who dared defile the cloister with a careless word or too loud a laugh heard what Tom thought of him.
“No, Tom, no!” cried Isaac on a note of panic as Tom put out his hand to the door. “Don’t open that door! It’s me—Isaac.”
Tom sat down again and motioned to Isaac to sit beside him on the stone seat. He knew all about Isaac’s fear of the Cathedral, and humored him as he would have humored a nervous child. “Listen, now,” he said encouragingly.
Inside the Cathedral the organist was practicing, and few men could play the music of Bach as he did. Isaac could not but be quieted and listening to the music he began to see a picture in his mind. He saw great pillars soaring upwards like the trees in a forest, and an arched room, very high, lit with dim glory as when the wind blows light cloud across a moonlit sky at night. He saw wide pavements of stone splashed with pools of color, and small chambers like caverns hollowed out and carved and beautified by the surging of wind and sea. Dead men lay here upon biers of dark stone, their eyes closed, their hands upon their breasts. He saw strange vast curtains of shadow, and shafts of light that pierced down from beyond sight to light upon old cloudy banners, a gilded throne, a great rood lifted high up and far away in appalling loveliness. The organ music grew louder, swelling, mounting. It was a dark tide of bitter saltwater, the same tide that had fretted out the caverns and turned the dead men to stone upon their biers. Then it was a thundering of wind in the trees and all the tall columns were swaying in it. Then it was darkness, heavy and hot, shapeless and pitch-black, and the cry that tore across it seemed to stop his heart, to enter into his blood and bones. Yet he could not get up and fly from it; his limbs were like lead, heavy as the limbs of the dead men on the biers. The music stopped.
“Pretty, eh?” said Tom Hochicorn. “Weren’t that a pretty tune?”
“I’ve brought your watch, Tom,” said Isaac hoarsely, and bent to unlock the leather bag. “Here it is.”
“Thankee,” said Tom, opening the worn gunmetal pair cases. “Why, there ain’t no watch paper! You always give I a new watch paper.”
“There’s a watch paper,” said Isaac.
“No, there ain’t,” said Tom, disappointed.
“You’ve dropped it,” said Isaac.
The two old men searched the pavement but could find no watch paper. “I must have dropped it in the shop,” said Isaac. “I’ll put it in an envelope and post it to you. Good-by, Tom.”
“Now there’s no call for you to be off so soon,” said Tom. “ ’Tis close on ten o’clock matins. If you was to sit ’ere with me you’d hear ’em at matins. ’Tis just so pretty as a lot of singing birds.”
“No, Tom,” said Isaac. “I’ve all my clocks to wind.” And he fled.
Outside in the lime avenue again he looked back. Tom Hochicorn was sitting as before, motionless with his hands on his knees. Isaac had the fancy that he and the stone bench he sat on, and the stone wall behind him, had become one. He’ll never get away now, thought Isaac. It’s got him. And he vowed that never again would be yield to the pull of the tides that last night and this morning had nearly got him too. Never again would he even go and look at the Jaccomarchiadus.
2.
There was a seat in the lime avenue and he sat down to wait for ten o’clock to strike. After ten o’clock the Dean would be in the Cathedral and he would be in no danger of running into him while he was winding the clocks. For years he had wound the Deanery clocks and had succeeded in never seeing either the Dean or Mrs. Ayscough. Sitting quietly in the dappled sunshine he had recovered from the terror of that music but he had not forgotten the cry of loneliness. He would never forget it.
Ten o’clock struck and he made his way toward the high wall of the Deanery garden, and followed around it until he came to the cobbled stableyard. Crossing it he arrived at the back door, set hospitably wide under its high stone arch. Pigeons wheeled in the warm sunshine of the yard and in the tall elms of the garden rooks were cawing. In the harness room a boy was whistling as he polished the harness and from the stable door came the smell of hay and horses. As he knocked humbly at the open door Isaac wondered, not for the first time, what it must be like for a man and woman to live in a great house like this and have so many servants. Not very homely, he thought. But then of course the Dean and his wife would be a comfort to each other. Not like himself and Emma. A man could choose his wife. He blushed with shame, realizing suddenly that he was comparing his lot with that of the Dean. It was a presumption. They were such poles apart that they could scarcely be said even to inhabit the same earth.
From the dim, warm interior of the house a stately presence could be seen advancing slowly down a long passage. It was Mr. William Garland, the Dean’s butler. There was no more impressive man in the city. He was of middle height and well-proportioned, though slightly protuberant in the region of the waistcoat. Whether in motion or at rest his carriage and stance were equally magnificent. His impeccable garments might have been made in Savile Row. His fine head, with glossy black hair and whiskers just touched with gray, was that of an elder statesman. His benign countenance and finely modulated voice would have become an Archbishop. Reaching the door he slightly inclined his head and inquired, “Mr. Peabody?”
Isaac replied, “Yes, Mr. Garland. Peabody to wind the clocks.”
“Will you be so good as to step this way, Mr. Peabody?” inquired Garland.
Turning on his heel he progressed back up the passage with the same slow dignity with which he had come down it. Reaching a green baize door he opened it. “Will you be so good as to precede me, Mr. Peabody?” he inquired. “I can then shut the door behind us. To shut noiselessly, it requires the handling of one accustomed to its ways. Thank you, Mr. Peabody.”
Every Saturday Garland received Isaac at the back door at exactly the same hour, with exactly the same words and ceremony. Had he appeared to know without questioning him who Isaac was, Isaac would have felt utterly put out. They were men of about the same age, men of tradition, and they liked to do things in exactly the same way year after year. It gave them a sense of security.
Once through the green baize door they were in the spacious hall, with its shining floor, dark oil paintings of departed Deans, and jardinieres of hothouse plants. It was Isaac’s undeviating rule to minister first of all to the grandfather clock in the hall, a very fine Richard Vick timepiece with a Chippendale case. From there he progressed to the drawing room to wind the Louis Sixteenth cupid clock, and from the drawing room to the dining room and the First Empire marble clock. The clock in the Dean’s study he kept til
l the last. It was an eighteenth-century pedestal clock by Jeremiah Hartley of Norwich, of ebonized wood with brass mounts, the dial and back plate exquisitely engraved, very simple but very perfect in all its parts. He loved it second only to the Dean’s watch.
“I have the Dean’s watch here,” he said to Garland, putting his bag down on the hall table and unlocking it. “I finished it last night.”
“Ah,” said Garland. “The Dean was inquiring for it.” He always said this when Isaac brought the watch back. Isaac did not suppose it was true but he admired the ceaseless quiet vigilance with which Garland kept all who ministered to the Dean’s wants, tradesmen as well as servants, up to the highest possible peak of performance in their duty. Were he to mend the Dean’s watch with the speed of lightning it would still be just not quite quick enough.
“I’ll take it up to him at once,” said Garland.
“At once?” asked Isaac, and suddenly his heart missed a beat. For the first time in years something was not as usual. “At once?” he whispered. “Is the Dean not at matins?”
“A considerable hoarseness,” said Garland, tapping his own throat with solemnity. “Consequent upon a feverish cold caught at the Diocesan Conference. Doctor Jenkins advised a few days indoors.”
“In bed?” asked Isaac.
“Not today,” said Garland. “I expect him downstairs shortly.”
“To the study?” asked Isaac.
And now Garland also realized the seriousness of what had occurred. The Dean was seldom put out of action by his indispositions, not even by his lumbago, for he had great fortitude, and had never before been absent from Saturday matins unless he was away. The Saturday routine was disturbed. The two looked at each other, Isaac clasping and unclasping his hands, which had become clammy in the palms, and Garland reflectively stroking his jaw with his forefinger. Then inspiration came to him.
“You must attend to the study clock first, Mr. Peabody,” he said, and there was in his voice that note of challenging certainty that is noticeable when strong men take desperate decisions on the spur of the moment. “Such a thing is contrary to our routine but we have to consider that should the Dean be down before you leave the house we run the risk of his finding you in the study.” He opened a door behind him and waved a hand toward the room beyond. “The study, Mr. Peabody. You know where to find the clock. If you will give me the Dean’s watch I will take it up.”
Garland departed soft-footed up the great staircase and Isaac entered the study. It was a book-lined, comfortable room with windows looking on the garden, the Dean’s writing table set at right angles to one of them, but Isaac never paid much attention to the room, so anxious was he to greet his old friend the Jeremiah Hartley. Generally he lingered over his examination of it, testing the mechanism, dusting it carefully with the square of soft old silk he kept in his bag for that purpose, rubbing the ebony and brass with a bit of soft chamois leather, but today he was so terrified that he merely wound it and then hurried back into the hall to the Richard Vick with the Chippendale case. He had done no more than open the glass door which covered the clock face when Garland returned hurriedly down the stairs, soft-footed as he had gone up them.
“The Dean is coming down now, Mr. Peabody,” he said, “and unless we are to risk the danger of your being seen in the hall I think—”
“The drawing room?” Isaac interrupted, “or the dining room?”
For a moment or two, so upset was their routine, they could not remember which came first. Then Garland recovered himself. “The drawing room precedes the dining room, I think,” he said. “And there is no danger of Mrs. Ayscough coming down. She has indifferent health and does not leave her boudoir until twelve o’clock.”
Safe in the drawing room, Isaac still trembled. He heard steps come down the stairs, a harsh grating voice complaining of the lateness of the post, Garland’s voice in soothing reply, and then the closing of the study door. From behind it came three stentorian sneezes and then silence. Now he could relax and turn his attention to the Louis Sixteenth clock. It was not in him to dislike any clock but he was not very fond of this one. The mechanism was satisfactory but he did not like the garland of gilded languorous cupids surrounding the dial. Their too-plump hands carried wreaths of impossible flowers, violets and snow-drops blooming at the same time as lilies and roses, and just as large. The room was beautiful but Isaac thought it too luxurious and for the first time he wondered what the woman was like who lived in this room after twelve o’clock. He had heard that she was beautiful. He had also heard that she and the Dean were childless. He was glad to escape from the pink languor of her room to the rich but impersonal glow of the dining-room mahogany, and the severity of the First Empire clock, a monumental marble edifice which inspired respect rather than affection.
But the Richard Vick in the hall inspired both. It had beautifully worked gilt spandrels of winged cherub heads, austere little creatures who had nothing in common with the cupids in the drawing room. It struck the hours with a sonorous and deep-toned bell. The Chippendale case was plain and dignified, with three gilt balls surmounting the hood. Isaac was so absorbed in his careful winding of this treasure that he actually forgot the Dean. Then a bell clanged impatiently in the regions behind the baize door, Garland reappeared and went to the study. On the other side of the door the harsh voice rapped out a question and Isaac, his work finished, clutched his bag and groped blindly for the baize door, for he was suddenly in the worst fright he had known in all his frightened life. He had half-heard the question and it had seemed to inquire, “Is Mr. Peabody still in the house?” He was just escaping when Garland gripped him by the skirts of his voluminous old coat. “The Dean wishes to speak to you, Mr. Peabody,” he said.
Isaac was hardly aware that he had moved into the room until he heard the door shut behind him. “Good morning, Mr. Peabody.” The Dean’s voice was always harsh and ugly but when he had a cold it had a graveyard quality that chilled the blood. Yet Isaac found that he was crawling slowly forward across the carpet toward the tall black figure standing in the central window, and though all but submerged by his own terror he did think it was a lonely figure. The Dean had his back to the light and Isaac could scarcely see his face, but as he came nearer he was acutely conscious of how very clearly the Dean must be seeing him, and not only his face but his sins. He was quite sure he saw him stealing the three pounds from his father’s desk and knew about his getting drunk and not believing in God. Then suddenly personal terror was lost in professional anxiety as he saw that the Dean was holding his watch in one hand and the pair cases in the other. Had he failed in his mending of the watch? Had it stopped again? He came nearer and his heart nearly stopped. A white circle was gleaming inside the pair cases. A watch paper! By mistake he had put one of the watch papers he kept for his humbler clients inside the Dean’s watch. It must be Tom Hochicorn’s watch paper. And what was on it? He couldn’t remember. Several of his watch papers were comic ones. Some were even vulgar. His eyes on the carpet, he swallowed several times and said, “Forgive me, sir. It was an accident. Please forgive me, sir.”
The Dean had been slightly deaf from childhood, when his father had boxed his ears too hard at too early an age, and being morbidly conscious of the nuisance the deaf can be he had formed the habit of not asking people to repeat themselves. To those who did not know him well, and very few did, his ignoring of their remarks, when they could manage to summon up enough courage to make any in his presence, took nothing away from his reputation for arrogance. Terrified and unforgiven, Isaac found to his horror and shame that a tear was trickling down his cheek. He fumbled for his handkerchief, could not find it and had to wipe his face with the back of his hand, and then was startled nearly out of his wits to hear the Dean say, “Thank you, Mr. Peabody. I needed the reminder.” He looked up then, he was so astonished, and found that the Dean was looming over him like a predatory vulture. The craggy, beak-nosed face was so ugly, so seamed and yellow, that he would hav
e recoiled had he not seen the man’s eyes, profoundly sad and obviously very shortsighted. He did not see my sins, thought Isaac suddenly. He can scarcely see me.
Putting his watch down on the writing table the Dean picked up the eyeglasses that hung around his neck on a black ribbon and perched them on the summit of his nose. With their help he read out the inscription.
“I labour here with all my might,
To tell the time by day or night;
In thy devotion copy me,
And serve thy God as I serve thee.
Yes, Mr. Peabody, I needed the reminder. Please God, I will give Him better service in the years that remain to me. I will learn of my watch.”
Afterward Isaac could not understand how he could have had the temerity to say what he did. He said, “It’s a beautiful watch, sir, and you should take better care of it. You overwind it, sir.” And then, intuitively realizing from the bewilderment in the Dean’s face that he was deaf as well as shortsighted, he raised his voice and loudly repeated himself.
“You are quite right,” said the Dean. “I will try to do better. Thank you, Mr. Peabody. Can you spare me a few moments? Will you sit down?”
Mr. Peabody sat down in the chair indicated, facing the Dean across his writing table. He placed his leather bag on the floor and laid his hands upon his knees. Though he was no longer afraid they still trembled a little. He had an unfortunate habit of turning his feet in when he sat down. They were turned in now, toe to toe. His bright childlike blue eyes were fixed expectantly but nervously upon the Dean’s face. The Dean altered the position of the silver inkstand upon his table, and then of his gold pencil and the miniature of his adored wife, and then put them all back where they had been before and wondered what he could say. All his life he had loved children and poor people, and such childlike trusting little oddities as the extraordinary little man sitting opposite to him, all those whom Christ had called the “little ones.” But he never knew what to say to them and his unfortunate appearance always frightened them . . . at least nearly always, for once there had been a small chimney sweep who had seemed not to be afraid. . . . He had become a priest that he might serve the poor but lacking what is called “the common touch,” and being quite unable to preach a sermon that could be understood by intellects less brilliant than his own, he had been such a failure in his various parishes that he had been obliged to turn to schoolmastering. That he had been a famous schoolmaster, and a great one in all eyes but his own, had not comforted him at all.
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