The Dean's Watch

by Elizabeth Goudge

  Christmas Day at the Deanery was one of the busiest of the year. When the morning services were over there was the ritual of the Christmas dinner, to which the Dean insisted that Elaine invite all the lonely people connected with the Close, such as bachelor minor canons and widows of defunct Cathedral dignitaries. This was usually something of an ordeal for all concerned but today not even the sight of the vast dead turkey could depress the Dean, and old Mrs. Ramsey, whose terrifying privilege it was to sit upon his right, found him almost a genial host. When the guests had gone Elaine dissolved upon the sofa, but the Dean went out to visit the old men at the almshouses until it was time for evensong. Then there was a late tea, followed by the ceremony of the servants’ Christmas tree. The difficult occasion had never seemed so happy. The servants almost forgot their shyness in their pleasure at seeing the Dean looking so much better. Elaine had never been so successful in disguising her boredom or the Dean in overcoming his trepidation, and Garland was so happy that he unbent sufficiently to utter a few mild jokes as he cut the presents from the tree. Yet he did not hold with the Dean going around to the choir school Christmas tree as soon as he had finished with the servants’. It was his custom on Christmas Day, and boys were his delight, but Garland considered that Cook was in the right of it when she remarked that the boys should have made do with the Archdeacon this year. They’d scarcely have noticed the difference; not with their stomachs full.

  Elaine went to bed directly after supper, her husband carrying her candle for her to her room.

  “Are you very tired, my dear?” he asked her. “It has been a long day for you.”

  “Not so tired as usual,” she said, pulling off her rings and dropping them on her dressing table, and she added softly, looking away from him, “It has been a happy Christmas Day. I liked your sermon, Adam.”

  She had never said that before and his heart seemed to make a physical movement of joy. “It is true, Elaine,” he said. “All I said so haltingly is true. I’m glad you liked it. Good night, my dear. Sleep well.”

  She lifted her face and as he kissed her smooth, cool cheek he felt suddenly that he could not leave her. He wanted to ask if he might sit in her armchair for a little while, in her warm scented room, and watch her brush her hair. It was years since he had seen her glorious hair down on her shoulders. But her eyes were drowning in sleep and he feared to weary her. He tiptoed from her room and closed the door softly behind him.

  He went into his study, where Garland had lighted the lamp for him. He was deeply grateful that the labor of the last two days was now accomplished, and most thankful to find himself so well. He was abysmally tired, but he did not feel ill. He would work for a little longer before he went to bed.

  He opened a deep drawer in his desk and took out two piles of papers. One was the manuscript of his book and the other the architectural plans. The unfinished book cried out to him in its desperate plight but he put it to one side. It was himself and so must be denied. For the hundredth time he unfolded all the plans and opened them before him. They were dog-eared now, and stained in several places, for they had been through so many hands and had been argued over so hotly for so long. And now it was all to do again. Tomorrow he would start the fight once more. He thought of it with dread, but that cancer could not be left in the body of the city. He remembered Dean Rollard singing the sixty-eighth psalm. “This is God’s hill, in the which it pleaseth him to dwell.” With what grief must God look upon the North Gate slums, and the rotting human bodies there. The Dean pulled a piece of paper toward him and wrote out the words in his fine handwriting, laying it upon the plan of the city. Then upon another piece of paper he began to calculate the cost of demolition and rebuilding all over again. If he could only get expenditure down a little he might meet less opposition. But he feared he had many enemies. In past years, stung nearly to madness by the sufferings of the poor, he had forced through reforms with too much anger and too much contempt for the oppressors. He was a gentler man now, but it was too late. Yet for an hour he went on working until the figures blurred and his gold pencil slipped from his hand.

  I must go to bed, he thought, and tried to get up from his chair. Then it came again, the rising panic in his blood, the constriction of his throat, as though a rope were being drawn tighter and tighter about it, a roaring in the ears and the agonizing struggle for breath. He did not feel the joy this time, for it was too bad, but a great voice cried out in the crashing blackness of his mind: “Blessed be God.”

  18. The Swans

  1.

  GARLAND did not let it be known for a few hours. “Let them have their breakfast first,” he said to Doctor Jenkins. “And then an hour or two for the children to play with their new toys. Eleven o’clock is time enough.”

  And so it was not until between eleven and twelve on St. Stephen’s Day that the city became aware of the tolling of the great bell. The day was overcast and windless with a few snowflakes drifting down from the gray sky, and the tolling traveled far across the fen. In the city every man and woman stood aghast, stricken by a sense of appalling calamity, and for a few strange moments the memory of each ceased to be a personal thing. This had happened before. Then they came out into the streets, as they had done in centuries past, and stood in frightened groups looking up at the Cathedral, grim and vast today against the gray sky, and each boom of the great bell trembled slowly through their bodies. No one supposed for a moment that it was the Bishop or the Archdeacon. They knew who it was as they had known when Duke Rollo died, and William de la Torre and Peter Rollard. Only this man was greater than those others, great though they had been. What would become of them now? What would become of the city? The Dean was dead. Those who had hated him were as stricken as those who had loved him. Of all the stunned men standing about in the market place the mayor was the first to move. He went back into his house, and into his plush and mahogany dining room, and slammed the door.

  A few moments afterward Isaac left the group in Cockspur Street with whom he had been standing and crept back into his shop. He locked the door and went into his workshop. No shops were open but he had decided to spend the day in his workshop so as not to have to speak to Emma. He had said he had work to do and Polly had packed up some food for him. Throughout their uncomfortable Christmas Day he had spoken to Emma only when he was obliged, he had hated her so much.

  Now he had forgotten Emma. All the miseries that had obsessed his mind twenty minutes ago had vanished. His arms folded on his worktable and his head on his arms, he could think only of one thing. The Dean was dead. Ever since the day when Emma and Job between them had smashed the clock he had been in the grip of one of his bad times, the worst he had ever had. And now the Dean was dead. It was too much. For perhaps an hour he lay drowning in sorrow and self-pity and then he began to cry. And presently he wanted to blow his nose. His handkerchief was in the tail pocket of his coat and he was sitting on it. He had to get up to find it and while he was blowing his nose his eyes fell upon his sandwiches. He ate them. He could not taste anything but it was something to do. After that he felt better and gradually began to remember all the times when the Dean had tried to talk to him, and obstinately wrapped up in himself and his own opinions he had scarcely bothered to listen. That great man had given of his time and strength to try to comfort an insignificant little worm of a clockmaker and he had not bothered to listen. He tried to remember the times, to remember what the Dean had said. That morning in Worship Street, something about giving away joy. Here in the shop, something about the friendly house of God. And on Christmas Eve, he had thought it had not mattered about the breaking of the clock. There had been something too about himself and Emma, but he could not remember what it was. He struggled to remember the words and could not. And the Dean had pleaded with him to go to the Cathedral but he had not gone; not even to the carol service, when he might have seen him once more and taken his hand. Self-reproach gnawed at him. It felt like a rat inside his head gnawing at his skull. It dro
ve him to potter about the workshop trying to do a few jobs, but he couldn’t fix his mind on them. And so the afternoon passed and the window of the workshop was filled with gold. It was the sunset and he must go home to Emma.

  It seemed impossible to do so, hating her as he did, but until he had been able to arrange a separate home for himself his bed and his food were where she was and he had to go home. He locked the shop and crawled up Cockspur Street. It was empty. The market place was empty too and the whole city was silent. He was aware of the Cathedral towering up above him but he would not look at it; it was now not only a terror to him but a reproach. He toiled up the steps to Angel Lane and it was not until he was in sight of his home that he at last became aware of the sunset that had broken through the gray clouds. He had to notice it, for the light was beating upon his eyes. He looked up. It was one of the great fen sunsets, flaming across the sky from horizon to horizon, burning up the earth beneath it to nothingness. But it could not subdue the Cathedral. Isaac was looking straight up at the three great towers and the flaming clouds were streaming out from them like banners. Yet there was no wind, and no movement in the sky except just above the Rollo tower where two small white clouds were in gentle flight. They soared and sank again, infinitely graceful and lovely, the golden light touching their wings and breasts. Then they soared once more and were lost in the light. They were two white swans.

  Isaac had stood watching the sky for perhaps ten minutes, and he had forgotten where he was. Then he came gently back to awareness of Angel Lane. He said to himself that he had imagined it. No swans ever flew as high as that, and not in that manner. The two swans of the broken celestial clock had come into his head as he watched the sky and transformed themselves there into what men call a vision. That sky was enough to make a man imagine anything, it was in itself so unbelievable. He watched it all the way up the lane, so intent upon its glory that he did not realize that he was feeling much happier. As he opened the front door of number twelve he suddenly remembered what the Dean had said about himself and Emma. It came into his mind like the beginning of one of his good times. It came in like light.

  Emma was in the passage and her presence took him so utterly by surprise that he did not shut the door and the light pouring in from the empty street illumined her tear-stained face. Emma was by nature a less self-centered person than Isaac and during the afternoon she had suffered neither self-pity nor self-reproach but just natural sorrow, demonstrative and simple. “Isaac! Isaac!” she cried, and felt in her pocket for her handkerchief. “What a dreadful thing! Give me your coat, my dear.” She wiped her eyes and helped Isaac off with his coat and hung it up. That split in her dress that he had noticed when they had last stood in the passage together was still there and for a moment he remembered how he had feared what might come out of Emma’s chrysalis. Well, it had come out, and gone. Now he must go back to that day, before the clock was broken, and start again from there. “Emma,” he said, “forgive me that I was so surly over Christmas. It does not matter about the clock.”

  Polly, red-eyed but mopped up, appeared in the kitchen door with a tea tray. “I’ve made the tea,” she said. “It’s ’ot.”

  2.

  In the glow of the sunset Doctor Jenkins and Josiah Turnbull the mayor rang the Deanery bell and were admitted by Garland. All the windows were closed and the blinds down and the golden light could penetrate into the house only through a crack here and there. The atmosphere was hot and heavy, restless with the intolerable comings and goings that succeed a death. Garland had been on his feet all day answering the door to lawyers, undertakers and clerics, receiving notes of condolence and answering inquiries for Mrs. Ayscough. He was calm and imperturbable and looked more like an elder statesman than ever. Cook had remarked through her tears to Elaine’s maid that she had thought Mr. Garland would have felt it more than this, especially since it had been he who had found the Dean. Garland had in fact not yet begun to feel anything much except a pain at the back of his head and a distaste for food. He had too much to do, and in everything he did he had to think quickly what the Dean would have wished.

  There had been no time for him to think whether the Dean would have wished him to admit the mayor, for Doctor Jenkins, the mayor just behind him, had stepped quickly in before he could place either of them in proper focus. The pain at the back of his head was making it a little difficult for him to be quite certain, at once, who was there. But he was quickly in command of himself again and in answer to the mayor’s hoarse inquiries answered that he feared Mrs. Ayscough was entirely prostrated.

  “She is taking the sedative I prescribed?” asked Doctor Jenkins curtly.

  “Yes, sir,” said Garland. “Do you wish to see Mrs. Ayscough again?”

  “I do not,” said Doctor Jenkins, a man whom sorrow always robbed of his good manners. “Has anyone touched the Dean’s study table?”

  “No, sir,” said Garland.

  “Then will you be so good as to take the mayor and myself to the study.”

  Garland swallowed and his face went red. He knew very well that the mayor for years had been the Dean’s bitterest opponent, and the study was the room where the Dean had died. But he was also aware that Doctor Jenkins was looking very fixedly at him, and he trusted Doctor Jenkins. With stately tread he led the way to the study, and obeying the doctor’s gesture pulled up a blind. His hands at his sides he stood looking out into the garden while the two men spoke in lowered voices behind him.

  “Mr. Mayor,” said Doctor Jenkins, “I am sure it will be your wish to inform the city yourself of the manner of the Dean’s death. He suffered a heart attack last night while he was working at these plans. You were, I believe, working at them together. That is why I thought you would like to see this table before the papers are put away. I think he had been making calculations on this piece of paper.”

  “Could I see it, Doctor?” asked the mayor.

  “Certainly,” said Doctor Jenkins, and gave it to him.

  The mayor held the paper in his large red hand and adjusted his spectacles. He was silent for a while, breathing heavily. He read right through the paper, missing nothing, for he was a sharp businessman. He noted that the Dean had subtracted the sum for the garden from the total. The Dean had been passionately attached to the idea of the garden. He noted also how the neat handwriting had run suddenly away into a scrawling line when the Dean had dropped the pencil. His own hand shook a little as he held the paper.

  “May I keep this, Doctor?” he asked.

  “Certainly,” said Doctor Jenkins. “He would wish you to do so. This one too. It was lying on the plan of the city. It is part of a verse from a psalm, I believe. What about the plans?”

  “Havelock had better have ’em for the time being,” said the mayor. “But I’ll need ’em later. The matter of a memorial to the Dean will soon be under consideration in the city.”

  Garland’s nails bit into his palm as he clenched his hands. Though he did not look around he could see the mayor’s fat hands folding those two bits of paper, the last things the Dean had touched, except the pencil. He would have given his soul to possess any one of the three. It hurt him to breathe.

  “Thank you, Garland,” said Doctor Jenkins. “That is all, I think.”

  Garland led the way majestically from the room. He doubted if Doctor Jenkins had the slightest right, even legally, to do what he had done, but as he opened the front door and bowed them out it occurred to him that, in this matter, things were moving in the direction the Dean would have wished.

  3.

  After the funeral everyone called on Miss Montague and she hardly knew how to bear it. Never had she so longed to be alone, but as soon as she took the cat on her lap and felt quietness taking hold of her the lid of the letter box was lifted again. Why did they all want to talk about it so much, and with such excessive sentiment? Hadn’t they known? The multitude who had come to the funeral service, not only flocking up from every lane and street in the city but jour
neying to it from all over England, a crowd of men who at one time or another, as public schoolboys, schoolmasters, dons or undergraduates, had had contact with the Dean, had apparently taken the city by surprise. Miss Montague supposed it was always the same. Men and women needed the shock of a death before they could humble themselves to realize that anyone with whom they had lived in daily contact was of far greater stature than they were themselves. And when they had realized it they swung over the other way and did their best to dissolve the strong memory of a great man in a mush of sentimentality. That was human nature. In these days of sorrow and the irritability of fatigue Miss Montague came very near to disliking human nature.

  But a quiet evening came at last and she sat down by the fire. It was dark and Sarah had drawn the curtains. There was a west wind and rain, one of those quiet rains that do no more than whisper at the windowpane, soothing or melancholy according to one’s mood. She took the cat on her lap and was at peace, for she found the sound of the rain restful. She had, she found, passed beyond the first sharpness of sorrow to that state of thankfulness that should have been hers from the beginning. She was ashamed now of the way she had wept by night and snapped at Sarah by day. The fact was that no one had been nearer to her in understanding than he had been and she missed him. Well, she would miss him till she died, and must expect to do so. Her feelings were of no consequence. Would she never understand that? Nothing ever had been, or ever would be, of any consequence except that which had given such power to this man’s life and death. She settled back in her chair and closed her eyes, one hand passing lightly over the cat’s soft back. The cat purred and the ash settled in the grate. She was so tired that she was nearly asleep.