It looked west over Worship Street and east into the elms and lime trees of the Close, with in winter a view of the west front of the Cathedral through their bare branches. The east window was always open in warm weather and bird song filled the room, the smell of the lime blossom in its season and at all times the music of the bells. At morning and evening there was sunshine, and nearly always the fire on the hearth. There were beautiful things in the room, for Miss Montague had inherited the treasures of the past, but they were all a little dimmed with age and they did not intrude themselves. They had kept their stations in this room for so long that they looked rather as though they were painted upon its warm restful shadows.
“You are well, Mr. Peabody?” asked Miss Montague. “And your sister? And Polly?”
“Very well indeed, ma’am. And Emma too, and Polly.”
A slight shadow of anxiety passed from Miss Montague’s face. She did not ask him why he was so late because she was not an inquisitive woman. If she could be told that all was well with her friends she did not need to be told anything further. “Michael Neuwers is five minutes slow by Michael the Archangel, Mr. Peabody,” she said.
“Five minutes slow?” ejaculated Mr. Peabody, and was beside the Michael Neuwers in a moment. It stood in the center of the mantelpiece, in the post of greatest honor, and with the exception of Michael the Archangel was the oldest and most valuable clock in the city. It had been made in the late sixteenth century by the same clockmaker who had made Gilbert Earl of Shrewsbury’s gilt clock, made to the Earl’s instructions. “A small fine hand like an arrow, clenly and strongly made, the dial plate to be made of French crown gold, and the figures to show the hour and the rest to be enamelled the fynelyest and daintyest that can be, but no other colour than blew, white and carnalian.” Miss Montague and Isaac were quite sure that the Montague Michael Neuwers was quite as beautiful as the Earl of Shrewsbury’s. The case of silver gilt was surmounted by a little gilt lion and on the dial plate the Montague lilies and roses, white and crimson, were wreathed about the hour ring. After three centuries the lovely thing still kept good time but Isaac was always a little anxious, just as he was always a little anxious about Miss Montague herself. Though it seemed that the changes and chances of this mortal life did not touch either of them, yet life remained mortal and they were old.
He adjusted and wound the Michael Neuwers with infinite care and tenderness and turned to the Lyre clock. He had no anxiety about it; it was an Isaac Peabody. It was the first clock he had made after he opened his shop and Miss Montague, driving up Cockspur Street in her little pony carriage, had seen it in the window, had stopped and come in. It had been their first meeting, though of course he had known her by sight and by repute, for in those days she was often to be seen in the city. He had been proud to see her in his shop and had bowed very low behind the counter. He could see her now standing in the dusty sunshine, a little middle-aged woman in a black bonnet and shawl, her figure inclining in those days to plumpness but otherwise not so very different from what she was now, for her hair had whitened early. She had dropped him a little curtsy, though she was a great lady in the city and he was only the clockmaker, and smiled at him, and he had loved her from that moment. Then she had asked him if she might buy the Lyre clock. He saw that her hands in their black silk mittens were trembling a little and that she looked a little scared, and he wondered why. Then she told him. “I have never bought myself a present before.”
“You like birds, ma’am?” he had asked, for the clock was wreathed in birds.
“Yes. You see, I live among them. The trees of the Close come right up to my windows. In spring I find young birds on my drawing-room floor. They have hopped in through the window. They never seem afraid of me.”
“Ma’am, you must have the clock,” he had said firmly.
“Won’t you be unhappy to part with it?”
“I made it for you,” he had said, and was quite sure that unknowingly he had.
So she had taken her worn purse from the capacious pocket of her black gown and counted out a few gold sovereigns, and though it was a small price for such an exquisite clock he could see in her eyes that she was uneasy at spending so much on herself. Lest she change her mind he had wrapped it up and carried it out to her pony carriage, and put the reins in her hands and clucked up the old fat white pony rather hurriedly. But she had understood the reason for the hurry and when she drove off she had been laughing.
And now the Lyre clock stood on her escritoire close to the window that looked out into the trees of the Close, and the shadows of flickering leaves on moving boughs caressed it. The Lyre was one of the loveliest of his clocks. The upper part of the pendulum was formed to represent the strings of the instrument, the lyre itself was plain and simple, its only adornment a few curved leaves at the base, and at the summit a crested lark with spread wings. But the clock face in the center had a wreath of tiny enameled birds about the hour ring. The clock had a happy tick, very quick and gay, and chattered to the Michael Neuwers that answered with its slow soft beat. No one could feel lonely, Miss Montague said sometimes, with these two clocks for company.
“Perfectly in time with Michael,” said Isaac, putting the Lyre clock back on the escritoire. “A good clock.”
“Made by a good craftsman,” said Miss Montague.
“They have their own life,” said Isaac. “Clocks are like children. You can start them off right but you can’t do more.”
“Here’s your glass of wine, Mr. Peabody,” said Miss Montague as Sarah came in with a glass of sherry wine and a thin sweet biscuit on a silver tray. “Sit down and tell me your news.”
Isaac always had a glass of wine at Fountains, and he thoroughly enjoyed it, sipping it slowly and making it last as long as possible while he talked to Miss Montague of his affairs. He was not as a rule much of a talker but at Fountains he chattered as fast as the Lyre clock. There was only one thing he did not speak of with Miss Montague, his unhappiness with Emma; that would have seemed to him disloyalty to his sister. Yet always when he left her he felt as though he had spoken of it, for the bitterness in his feelings seemed subtly withdrawn. He never asked himself why this was. Everyone took Miss Montague for granted. But today he had nothing to say about his home affairs because he had to tell Miss Montague about the Dean, watching her all the time that he might see surprise, amusement, delight, affection, lighting her face one after another as he poured it out. Talking to Miss Montague was rather like playing on some musical instrument superbly well. The response one wanted was always forthcoming. Isaac played the last chord and sat back very well pleased with himself.
“Now that is wonderful,” said Miss Montague, able to speak at last. “Horology will be an ideal hobby for the Dean. Up till now I do not think he has had a hobby. He has his religion, of course, but religion is not a good hobby for religious people.”
Isaac was surprised at this. He knew Miss Montague to be a religious woman and in past years he had been a little scared lest she should try to convert him. He was not scared now, for he had discovered that she never spoke of her opinions unless specifically asked to do so. And so, free from fear, he found her the one person in the world with whom he could mention the sore subject of religion, just casually in passing. He asked with twinkling eyes, “Why not, Miss Montague? I thought you considered religion to be the pre-eminent need of man.”
“So I do,” said Miss Montague. “Like food. But a man can’t be always eating, Mr. Peabody. He must do something else between meals or he’ll get indigestion and grow sad and moody.”
Isaac laughed, and then said sadly, “But I shall not see the Dean again. Great men speak kindly to lesser men and then forget what they have said.”
“He will not forget,” said Miss Montague. “But you may have to wait some time before he can summon up enough courage to claim your friendship. It is always thought, Mr. Peabody, that men put on self-confidence with gaiters and crowns. They don’t, you know. A shy man is a
shy man whatever he puts on. How glad I am that the Dean is to take better care of the beautiful watch.”
A clear bell note seemed to come soaring down to them from the height of heaven and after it a silence so profound that Miss Montague and Isaac did not even hear the ticking of the clocks. Michael was like that. He had only to speak once and one did not hear another voice. The charmed moment passed and Isaac was on his feet at once, for Miss Montague had luncheon at one o’clock. It was the moment of English history when mealtimes were in a state of flux. Many people still preferred their main meal of the day at five-thirty but those who followed the fashion were now firmly attached to luncheon, afternoon tea and late dinner. Miss Montague was indifferent to fashion but Sarah insisted that she conform to the social habits of the Close. Regretfully, for she preferred him to her luncheon any day, she held out her hand to Isaac. He bowed over it and went away.
2.
While Isaac was still with the Dean, Polly was walking down Angel Lane on her way to the market. She still wore the outdoor clothes the orphanage had given her, a gray gown and cloak and a plain black bonnet, but with her very first earnings she had bought some cherry-colored ribbon to replace the black velvet strings, enough to make two rosettes and a large defiant bow that tied beneath her chin, and the glory of that ribbon gave her self-confidence among the other girls at the market. She sang softly to herself as she walked along with a big market basket on her arm, and color came into her cheeks with the exercise, the singing and the joy. Several tired women peeped from behind their draped window curtains to see her pass, envious of her lightness and gaiety. And she an orphanage brat! They did not of course know about Job. Nor did they know what she was singing, though they supposed that gay words must go with such a merry tune. The words were these: “A box of pins and a reel of black cotton. One yard of black sarcenet. One eel, fresh. Oranges and cloves, pepper and pigs’ trotters. Gray darning wool and a scrubbing brush. A pound of onions and an ounce of licorice allsorts. Fish heads for Sooty. Fish heads. Fish heads. For Thine is the kingdom the power and the glory. Amen.”
She took the same way to the market that Isaac followed when he went to his shop, running lightly down the flight of steps that he had climbed so laboriously last night. She passed Joshua Appleby’s bookshop with an awed glance for all the books inside, and she wondered what it must be like to be able to read. She thought it must be wonderful and it surprised her that the gentry who were able to read could be bored. Yet they were. What was the matter with them? She was sorry for the gentry; there always seemed to be something the matter with them. She passed St. Peter’s church with a friendly glance, for Emma took her there on Sundays. Just beyond the old porch she turned on the pavement and there before her, with the grave classical town hall for a backcloth, was all the splendor of the city’s market. She stepped off the pavement onto the cobbles with the ecstasy of a duck taking to water or a saint entering heaven, and in a moment was lost sight of in the ebb and flow of noise and color all about her. What did she want with books? she thought suddenly. No book could open the door to anything more strange and rich than this.
If not quite so marvelous as she thought it, the market was a famous one in the fen country and served a wide area. The yard of the Swan and Duck was full of the gigs and carts and carriages that had brought the farmers and gentry of the villages to the market, and the inn stable was full of nags and ponies. Since dawn the drovers had been bringing in the cattle, the pigs squealing in netted carts, the poor sweating cows driven along the fen roads and up the cobbled streets of the city amid a cacophony of shouting men and barking dogs. The only thing that Polly did not like about the market was the fear of the animals and she never went near the town hall end of the square where they were imprisoned in their pens. But the rest of the market was sheer bliss. The stalls ran in long lines across the breadth of the market place, with lanes between them packed with eager women and children in their gayest clothes, laughing and chattering. The men were mostly at the far end, intent upon the beasts, but sometimes a young farmer would elbow his way through the crowd intent upon a fairing for his sweetheart or toys for his children. The choice was wide; almost everything was sold in the market. Many of the goods on the stalls were for sale in the shops any day of the week but they were cheaper in the market and somehow much more exciting spread out like this in the sunshine. There were vegetables and fruit, flowers and fresh farm eggs and butter, ribbons and laces and rolls of colored cloth, toys and sweets, bonnets and shawls, pots and pans and gay china cups and saucers, needles and pins and colored glass beads, chestnuts and gingerbread, pots of honey, willow baskets and clothes pegs, eels and fish caught in the river, picture postcards, corn cures and mousetraps. Four-square about the noise and gaiety and color stood the old, grave, tall houses, and far above it all the Cathedral towered into the sky and Michael tolled the passing quarter hours, echoed by St. Peter’s, St. Nicholas at the North Gate and St. Matthew’s at the South Gate. The busy shoppers were hardly aware of the bells and yet they were a part of market day, their music woven into the laughter and chatter like a thread of gold into homespun cloth.
Polly made her purchases with deliberation because Emma, a careful shopper herself, expected her to take her time, and all the while that she was comparing one stall with another, asking the price of this and that, and singing her gay little song of the needs to herself to refresh her memory, she never once looked at the fish stall. But at last everything except the eel and fish heads was in her basket and she made her way toward the old mounting block close to the Swan and Duck. On the mounting block, week by week, sat old Keziah Lee with her basket full of bunches of wild flowers from the fen, marigolds and water forget-me-nots and yellow irises in their season, with in autumn crab apples for jelly and in winter posies of everlasting flowers dyed in bright colors, and beside her Albert had his fish stall. Keziah was like an old witch to look at, tiny and shriveled in her black bonnet and ragged shawl, and Albert looked like an operatic tenor gone to seed. Since Job had been with them their business had improved. Their fish was cleanly gutted, their eels fresh caught in the river and displayed both in the shop and on the market stall with a curious beauty, laid in shallow woven rush baskets among fragrant leaves of water mint. How such a disreputable couple could encompass the artistry of the little posies, and the general air of freshness that pervaded their shop and stall, was one of the unsolved mysteries of the city. Job, barely visible as a shadow moving noiselessly at the back of the shop or stall, was vaguely thought to be weak in the head, for Keziah and Albert were perpetually shrieking imprecations at him, as though maddened by his incapacity. Their curses seemed to envelop him in a murky shroud of nonentity and no one except Polly ever really saw him.
She had seen him first when she was at Dobson’s orphanage. She had come to Dobson’s from the workhouse, after the terrible row about it which had shaken the city to its foundations and resulted in the dismissal of the workhouse master and most of his staff, and the clearing out of a few surplus children to Dobson’s. The row, she understood, had been caused by the terrible Dean whom everyone hated, but she did not hate him because it was he who had commanded that every year three girls and three boys, the six most promising children in the workhouse, were to be passed on to Dobson’s at his expense. She was proud to be one of the first six chosen, and thankful to leave the workhouse. She never thought about it after she had left it, for she had a wonderful capacity for letting evil things slough off her, but she did not forget the Dean. She had never seen him when he was at the workhouse but she had heard him once from the other side of a closed door. She had trembled, as one did at a peal of thunder, but she had exulted too.
Both she and Job had been at Dobson’s for some while before they saw each other, and they might never have done so had they not had their places in church rearranged, so that they sat just across the aisle from each other. To turn the head only very slightly toward the opposite sex was punishable if noticed by autho
rity, but Polly and Job were both so diminutive that the larger children in front of them and behind them screened them from view, and their eyes met often. Polly was a year older than Job, and already motherly, and when she saw him first her heart seemed to stop, and not only with compassion. She did not analyze the thing that was not compassion but was aware of it as a relief, as though there were a purpose somewhere. She looked at Job and Job looked at her, that first time with shy interest, but the second time with delighted recognition. The third time his eyes were alive and bright and the fourth time they clung to her face with an entreaty that tore her to pieces and afterward, at night, made her sob into her pillow because she was leaving Dobson’s to be maid-of-all-work to Emma in Angel Lane and would not see him again.
But a long while afterward she did see him again. Emma sent her one day to buy fish heads for Sooty at the shop beside the North Gate, and he was there in the shadows gutting fish. He looked much the same except that he was taller and his hair had grown into an untidy black mop. She went close to him and not knowing his name she said gently, “Dear.” He looked up and his black eyes suddenly blazed with light. Then Albert loomed up. One of his great fists landed in Job’s left eye and the other in the small of Polly’s back, sending her lurching back into the front of the shop. She paid for Sooty’s fish heads and then for Job’s sake fled without looking at him again.
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