B008O6ZWTG EBOK

by Elizabeth Goudge

  “Mr. Havelock,” said the Dean, much moved, “I feel unworthy. How unworthy we are, we old sinners, of the company of little children. They are as angels.”

  Mr. Havelock’s spectacles slid a little on his nose and he looked at the Dean over the top of them, but father of five and grandfather of eight though he was he forbore to comment. “I trust Bella will do nothing to forfeit your good opinion, Mr. Dean,” he said. “But I think I should tell you that she has until now lacked discipline. She was born in India and has been much in the care of native servants. My wife and I now have charge of her but she has been with us only a month as yet and is still, I fear, something of an autocrat.”

  “Her parents are alive?” asked the Dean anxiously.

  “Very much so, sir. They brought her home to us, the climate being unsuited to white children, and have now returned to India.”

  “She misses them?” asked the Dean, still with anxiety. “She weeps for them?”

  “Bella has shown great adaptability,” said her grandfather evenly. “And now, sir, in what way may I have the honor to serve you? But I am grieved that you should have put yourself to the trouble of coming to see me. I should have waited upon you. I am at your command, sir, at any time.”

  “Why should you be?” asked the Dean unexpectedly. “I have come to see you, Mr. Havelock, about Job Mooring, the fishmonger’s apprentice.”

  Mr. Havelock’s spectacles slid farther down his nose. He replaced them. The moment he had come into the room he had thought the Dean looked unwell, and the oddness of the great man’s behavior had caused him to wonder anxiously if there could be any slight mental disturbance, consequent perhaps upon a disordered liver. Now he was sure of it and was much perturbed. Yet the Dean, when the legalities of apprenticeship had been fully explained to him, showed his usual grasp of affairs. He knew exactly what he wished done in order that Albert Lee should be fully compensated, and Mr. Peabody spared all expense in the taking of an apprentice, and showed no further signs of mental aberration until he said, “Would it be advisable for me to wait upon Mr. Albert Lee myself, Mr. Havelock?”

  “Certainly not, sir!” ejaculated Mr. Havelock. “No, sir. I shall do myself the honor of acting for you personally in this matter. Your name should not be mentioned in connection with fish. You are the Dean of the city.”

  “Have you ever wished you were a shepherd, Mr. Havelock?” asked the Dean. “Or a plowman, driving your bright share through our rich fen earth with the gulls about you?”

  “No, Mr. Dean,” said Mr. Havelock. “I have always felt that indoor occupations are better suited to the vagaries of our climate.”

  “We are what God wills,” said the Dean. “But I should like to have been a shepherd.”

  “Shall I ring the bell for Bella?” asked Mr. Havelock.

  “Thank you, Mr. Havelock,” said the Dean. “Much obliged.”

  Bella entered. She had been attired in a blue pelisse trimmed with swansdown, with a blue bonnet to match. She had mittens on and a little white muff hung around her neck by a cord. Eying the Dean she gestured with one mittened hand toward the bird cage. “Birdie may sing now,” she said. The Dean obediently removed the velvet cloth and a torrent of song poured out into the room. Mr. Havelock appeared to be in the grip of strong emotion but what he said to Bella and the Dean by way of reprobation and apology could not be heard above Birdie’s rejoicing. He led the way out into the hall with some precipitation, but here Minnie was waiting to help the Dean into his cloak and he could not express himself freely. He opened the front door to bow the Dean out but it was Bella who walked out first past his bow, her hands in her muff and her head in the air. Out on the pavement she waited for the Dean and with great kindness took his hand.

  With the door shut Mr. Havelock took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. “I tell you what it is, sir,” said Minnie, “the Dean being so dark-complexioned Miss Bella takes him for one of them darkies she was always ordering about.”

  2.

  Bella and the Dean walked down Worship Street. Bella chatted without cessation but he did not know what she said now because she was so low down. It was as though a robin were singing somewhere on a level with his knee. He could distinguish the music but not the meaning of it, apart from its general meaning of joyful satisfaction with the splendor of the world. Looking down he could not see Bella’s face but only her bonnet. A few tendrils of yellow hair clung about the edge of the bonnet, and her muff, not in use at present, swung from side to side to the rhythm of her trotting footsteps. She trotted like a very determined pony, four steps to the Dean’s one, but it was she who set the pace and the Dean, growing a little breathless, marveled that anyone so young could simultaneously trot and converse so fast without any diminution of energy whatever. Worship Street led into the market place at a sharp incline and this they took almost at a run. The sight of them crossing the market place was an astonishment to all beholders, but they were oblivious of this. In Cockspur Street the incline was again very steep and the Dean’s rheumatic knees slowed him up a little. Bella, impatient, broke away and flew off, skimming down the pavement like a swallow. He was in terror lest flight in one so plump should end in disaster but she landed safely at the window of the clock shop. Here she leaned motionless, her nose pressed against the glass. The Dean followed as quickly as he could, past the small crooked houses with their flights of worn steps leading up to low front doors recessed within porches, past small windows bright with geraniums, and bow-fronted shop windows. Cockspur Street was a gay little street, the happiest in the city. The people who lived here were neither rich nor poor. They were for the most part contented people, good craftsmen who liked their work, and the little shops and homes had been handed down from father to son and were all their world.

  With his eyeglasses on his nose the Dean leaned beside Bella to look at the cuckoo clock. He realized now why it was that they had had to hurry, for the cuckoo clock said six minutes to twelve. Another seven minutes and they would have been too late. He echoed Bella’s deep sigh of relief.

  It was a good cuckoo clock of carved and painted wood. Oak leaves and oak apples curved about the enchanting little double doors which were represented as though opening into the trunk of a tree. As an example of Isaac’s art it was not one of his best clocks, but then he had made it for such as Bella and as a joyous Arcadian toy it was perfect of its kind. Five minutes to twelve. Bella had misted the glass with her passionate breathing and the Dean had to take out his white silk handkerchief and wipe it clear again. Four minutes to twelve by the cuckoo clock, kept slow by Isaac, Michael began to strike. The golden notes rolled down Cockspur Street like flaming suns and after them came the silver star-chiming of little St. Nicholas and St. Matthew’s at the South Gate, almost submerging the deep-toned and moony sadness of St. Peter’s in the market place. Two minutes to twelve by the cuckoo clock. The glass was misted again and Bella wiped it with her muff. Now all the clocks in the window except the cuckoo were striking together, and it sounded as though someone were playing the harpsichord. One minute to twelve by the cuckoo clock. Bella stretched up her mittened hand and held the Dean’s and both hands were trembling as they counted out the sixty seconds. Then the double doors in the oak tree burst open and the cuckoo, yelling joyously, exploded forth. Its voice was as shrill as that of Birdie the canary and for a moment the Dean was profoundly dismayed. Birdie and the cuckoo together in one house? Poor Havelock. What had he done? Into what further indiscretion would this autumnal madness of his precipitate him? Poor Havelock.

  The row suddenly ceased and the cuckoo withdrew as suddenly as he had come out, the little doors closing behind him. Bella withdrew her nose from the glass and pulled the Dean up the steps into the shop. Isaac favored one of those bells which ring when the customer stands on the doormat. Bella was enraptured and impervious to all suggestions that she should come off the mat. Isaac, entering from his workroom with all possible speed, joined his entreaties to those of t
he Dean with no avail. Suddenly the slumbering schoolmaster awoke in Adam Ayscough. “Bella!” he thundered. “Come off that mat immediately!” Bella, her muff lifted coquettishly to her chin, dimpled, smiled, and came off the mat. But with no air of capitulation. She had come off it because she had wanted to come off it. Climbing onto the customer’s chair, showing a good deal of petticoat as she did so, she smiled adorably at the two men and said, “Cuckoo!”

  “Mr. Peabody, might we trouble you to show us the cuckoo clock?” asked the Dean. “Much obliged. Do you like it, Bella?”

  Bella, with the clock beside her on the counter, did not bother to answer the rhetorical question. With a small forefinger she traced the pattern of oak leaves and oak apples, and caressed the closed door. Her lips were slightly parted, her face raised toward the clock like that of a cherub looking into heaven. Her expression, so wicked a few minutes ago, was now rapt and holy. Both men looked at her in awe. Imp though she was, she could still at moments trail her clouds of glory. It was not until she took her finger from the clock, sighed, and began to swish her legs backward and forward among her petticoats in imitation of the clock’s pendulum, that the Dean could bring himself to break the charmed silence and explain the situation to Mr. Peabody.

  “Very good, sir,” said Mr. Peabody. “I will deliver the clock to Worship Street this evening.”

  “Will that inconvenience you, Mr. Peabody?” asked the Dean anxiously.

  “No, sir, no trouble at all. I will leave it on my way home tonight.”

  “I want it now,” said Bella.

  “Not now,” said the Dean. “Mr. Peabody is not at liberty until the evening.”

  “You carry it,” said Bella, sliding off the customer’s chair. “Now.”

  For a moment the Dean was as much taken aback by the suggestion as was Isaac. He was not in the habit of carrying things. He scarcely knew how one set about it. Then the curious recklessness that was reversing the habits of a distinguished lifetime took hold of him again. “Mr. Peabody,” he said, “will you be so good as to wrap it up?”

  “Sir, you cannot carry it,” said Isaac in deep distress. “Even were it suitable for you to be seen carrying a large brown paper parcel through the streets of the city the weight would be far too great for your strength. Indeed, sir, the thing is impossible. Bella must wait.”

  “No,” said Bella. Her face was crimson and her blue eyes were full of fiery points of light. Although neither man had as yet experienced Bella in one of her rages they both felt the deepest apprehension, as though they stood on the rim of a volcano’s crater, with fire and rumblings down below. The Dean was aware that the schoolmaster’s voice would be of no avail now. It had only been of use before because Bella’s will and his own had happened to coincide. He suddenly felt very tired. Authority had always come easily to him, and sometimes in years past he had felt a slight contempt for masters who could not keep order. It was good for him, he realized, to know that even the strongest sometimes meet their match.

  “If it is too heavy for me it is too heavy for you, Mr. Peabody,” he said, looking down at Isaac from his great height. “How do you convey these heavy clocks from place to place?”

  Isaac lowered his voice to tell a secret. “I have a little cart,” he said. “A pushcart. I made it.”

  “Could I push it?” asked the Dean.

  “No, no, no!” said Isaac. “It is only a wooden box on wheels. I myself use it if possible only after dark.”

  “If ever a man needed an apprentice you do,” said the Dean. Then he too dropped his voice. “I’ve seen Havelock. You’ll have Job in a matter of days, I hope.”

  Something in the quality of Bella’s silence suddenly made both men look at her again. Her face was now a most alarming puce color, her body looked strangely swollen and her mouth was slowly opening. “I’ll close the shop,” said Isaac suddenly. “I’ll bring it now, Bella. Just a moment while I fetch my little cart.”

  He hurried back into his workshop and the Dean sat down rather suddenly on the customer’s chair, for really he was extraordinarily exhausted. Bella laid her hand upon his knee. He looked at her and found she was another child. Her exquisite pink and white complexion was restored to her. Her blue eyes were infinitely gentle, her long eyelashes wet with tears that had been arrested on the brink. She stretched up her arms to him and then suddenly she scrambled up, her bonnet falling off, and wound them tightly around his neck, her warm cheek pressed against his. “Bella loves you,” she whispered, and she spoke the truth. She was not an impartially loving child, later in life she would be considered a hard woman, but at a quarter past twelve on this particular autumn morning in the city Bella Havelock suddenly and completely loved Adam Ayscough. He had not known that children loved like this, so suddenly. He had never known this stranglehold about the neck, the velvet softness against his cheek, the scent of a child’s hair, and within him something wept wildly for joy. When Bella whispered, “Get down now,” he set her down very carefully, not knowing if he had held her for an hour or a minute, for time had stopped.

  Isaac reappeared with his box on wheels, as queer a little box as he was a man, but beautifully made; he could not make anything that was not a fine bit of handiwork. He was wearing his caped greatcoat, and his hat with under his arm. “I had thought to show you my clocks, sir,” he said wistfully.

  “Another time,” said the Dean gently. “I will call in one evening just at closing time. That would be best, I think. We shall be undisturbed then. But I am aware of your clocks, Mr. Peabody; beautiful things, alive all around me. Their tick is their pulse and breath.”

  There was a note in his voice that Isaac recognized. The man was happy, as Isaac himself had been happy that night in the workshop not long ago, and Bella was happy. Isaac’s own good time had ended abruptly on Sunday night, its light put out by Emma’s destruction of Job’s treasures, and he was now so wretched that even his memory of the way light and air had flooded into the house when he had opened the front door had no power to help him. The worst of his dark times was that while they were at their worst his good times seemed to him just a betrayal; as though he had loved a wife and found her a whore. But he knew that the Dean and Bella were happy and it eased his breathlessness. He was very much afraid that one of his attacks of asthma was coming on.

  “You’ve a cold, Mr. Peabody?” asked the Dean.

  “No, sir,” said Isaac, coughing peevishly. “But I wanted to show you my clocks.”

  The Dean was sorry for his disappointment but the peevishness added to his joy, for a man is only peevish to his friends.

  “Come now, come now,” he rallied him. “Matters of great moment need leisure and quietness for their consideration. Yes, Bella, we are going. Look, Mr. Peabody is putting the clock into the little carriage.”

  Isaac and the Dean lifted the cart down the steps, Isaac locked the shop door and poised his battered old hat at the back of his head while the Dean placed his immaculate one well down over his forehead, its rim nearly resting on his eyebrows, which was the top hat position he favored. They set out, Isaac trundling his cart up the hill over the cobbles with Bella and the Dean beside him. When they were nearly at the top of the hill he was taken with a sudden fit of coughing. It was a bad one and it winded him. They had to stop while he wheezed and gasped his way back to a hurried painful breathing that greatly distressed the Dean. “What was I thinking of to let you push that heavy cart up the hill, Mr. Peabody? Much distressed. My physical strength is greatly superior to yours.” And he picked up the handles of the little cart.

  “No, sir,” wheezed Isaac. “In a moment we shall be in the market place. Sir, I beg of you.”

  But it was too late; the Dean, pushing the cuckoo clock, had already launched out into the market place. He was, as he had said, stronger than Isaac and he strode forward with a mad, gay recklessness, Bella running beside him hopping and skipping and joyously tossing her muff from side to side. Isaac could only follow after, at first a
ware of nothing except the incredulous astonishment, the horror and shock of the city, which in the raw state of his feelings seemed to a man, woman and child to be lined up all around the market square and gazing dumfounded from every door and window. Then he was abruptly conscious of something that suddenly lit up his darkness as though a shutter had swung back, then closed again, leaving a picture illumined small and bright against the darkness of his mind. Tall silver towers lifted up against the cloudless blue sky above, old houses with crooked roofs and gables gathered about the market place that was filled to the brim with a dazzle of golden sunshine. In the gold a running child with yellow hair, glinting the gay, and an old man as gay as she was, forgetful of himself. Chimes rang out far up in the blue sky. Half past twelve. Other bells answered as though ringing in another world.

  The Dean, Isaac and Bella gained the farther shore and made their way into Worship Street. The small bright picture faded from Isaac’s mind but he had it somewhere, just as he had the picture of Graham’s little bow-windowed shop in Fleet Street, its gables etched black against the stars and its walls washed by moonlight. And others, equally imperishable, small and precious as little pictures painted within a great gold letter in an illuminated manuscript. Sometimes he would fancy that strung together they would have been a sort of speech telling him something. They were all safely kept, all part of the imperishable landscape of the country where he made his clocks.

  At number twenty Minnie answered the Dean’s ring upon the instant and Mr. Havelock was just behind her, anxiety writ large upon his face.

  “Mr. Havelock, I am anxious about this clock,” said the Dean. “It cuckoos. I trust that you and Mrs. Havelock may suffer no disturbance of your rest.” He stood very humbly, and he felt humble, though not as distressed as he felt he ought to have been. It was difficult to feel distressed with Bella refusing to let go of his hand and with gaiety still in his heart. Yet poor Havelock. “Pray forgive me,” he pleaded.