B008O6ZWTG EBOK

by Elizabeth Goudge

  “My dear sir,” ejaculated Mr. Havelock, “Mrs. Havelock and myself are seasoned parents and grandparents. There is the canary. There is Bella herself. One learns a certain trick of dissociation. Bella, thank the Dean for his great kindness.”

  “I have thanked him,” said Bella.

  “Then let Minnie take you to the nursery.”

  Bella adhered.

  “Thank you, Mr. Peabody, put the clock on the hall table,” said Mr. Havelock, changing the subject, a ruse which on rare occasions had been known to unstick Bella. “Minnie will take it to the nursery. Mr. Dean, will you do me the honor of partaking of a little luncheon?”

  “Most kind, most kind,” said the Dean. “My grateful thanks, but my wife is expecting me. Remember me to Mrs. Havelock. . . . Bella.”

  Bella adhered.

  “Bella!” thundered her grandfather.

  The Dean bent down to her. “Bella, we must say good-by. But not for long, I trust. Be a good girl, my dear.”

  Bella suddenly gave in, lifting her face to be kissed. “Bye,” she said, and kissed Isaac too. She went from one to the other, running between them as a puppy will do between two that love him, then disappeared up the stairs in the wake of Minnie and the cuckoo clock. With renewed civilities the three old gentlemen bowed to each other and the door was at last closed. Politeness was important in the city in those days. There was time for it.

  “Do you go home for luncheon, Mr. Peabody?” asked the Dean.

  “No, sir, I have it in the shop. I take sandwiches.” And Isaac trembled a little at the thought of having to go home to Emma for his midday meal as well as for supper.

  “I’ll walk a short way with you.”

  “You will be late home, sir.”

  “Luncheon is at one-thirty. Just a few paces. That’s a nice clock at Havelock’s, the one with the owls on the dining-room mantelpiece.”

  “Edward East sixteen hundred and eighty-four,” said Isaac dispiritedly and began to cough again.

  “Asthma?” asked the Dean gently.

  Isaac nodded and they stopped where an old tall cherry tree leaned over a garden wall. The last of its crimson leaves drifted upon them. Isaac stopped coughing and the Dean put his hand on his shoulder. “Did the child not lighten it at all?” he asked.

  “For a moment,” said Isaac.

  “The child has joy,” said the Dean. “You stored your joy for her within the cuckoo clock. As I see it there is no giving without giving away. But joy is a homing pigeon. Good day to you, Mr. Peabody.”

  His hand tightened for a moment on Isaac’s shoulder and then he turned away.

  11. Swithin’s Lane

  1.

  THERE’S a young person at the back door says she wishes to see you, sir,” said Garland in strangled tones. “I told her it was impossible, of course, sir. She asked me why. I said you were engaged. She said she’d wait. I told her to go away. She smiled at me. I don’t know what to do, sir, I don’t indeed.”

  Bella and the cuckoo clock had been on Monday. Today was Saturday morning. The Dean, at work at his writing table, looked up. Garland’s face was pale and his hands trembled slightly. He was obviously much shaken, worsted, the Dean thought, in some encounter which had not only been contrary to routine but foreign to his whole experience. The Dean put his hand behind his ear. “Could you repeat that, Garland?”

  Garland repeated it, ending miserably, “I don’t like to trouble you with such a thing, sir. I don’t know how it is that I am standing where I am or she where she is. I am ashamed, I am indeed. But Cook tried too, sir.”

  “Don’t distress yourself, Garland,” said the Dean. “Is this young person small and sandy-haired? Quick in her movements? A chin of remarkable determination?”

  “That’s her, sir,” said Garland.

  “Then pray ask her to step this way.” Garland could not believe that he had heard aright but he took a few weak steps toward the door. “One more thing, Garland.” The Dean hesitated, picked his pen up and put it down again. “I am the Dean of this Cathedral city and I should be accessible to all who want me. I fear that has not always been so in the past. You understand, Garland? Much obliged.”

  In a remarkably short space of time Polly, scared but courageous, stood before him. Her face was white inside her bonnet, all the whiter in contrast with the brave crimson ribbons tied beneath her determined chin, and both hands clung rather desperately to the handle of her loaded shopping basket. The Dean was saddened that she, possessed of so much pluck, had found it so hard to come to him. A strong smell of fish emanated from the basket.

  “I could not persuade her to leave it at the back door, sir,” said Garland.

  “She was quite right,” said the Dean. “We have a kitchen cat, I believe. Sit down, my dear. Garland shall set a chair for you. Thank you, Garland.”

  Garland withdrew and Polly sat gingerly on the edge of her chair, still clinging to the basket. “Set it down, my dear,” said the Dean. “It will be quite safe there on the floor.”

  Polly put it down beside her. “It’s not my things, sir,” she explained. “It’s Miss Peabody’s. I market for her on a Saturday morning. I’d be blamed, sir, if anything were to be missing.”

  “You can’t be too careful,” the Dean agreed. “Are you on your way from the market now? Did anything occur there to distress you?”

  “Yes, sir. Job wasn’t at the fish stall. Job’s gone.”

  “Gone?” echoed the Dean.

  “Run away, sir. He’s been gone two days.” She was near breaking point but she controlled herself. No longer able to cling to the handle of the basket, her hands were twisting her handkerchief into a knot. The Dean, trying to see her face inside the bonnet, thought that she had wept but was dry-eyed now. “My dear,” he said, “I had hoped that by this time Job was happily established as Mr. Peabody’s apprentice. I saw Mr. Havelock last Monday and he assured me he would see to the matter. Pray tell me just what has occurred.”

  He leaned forward again with his hand behind his ear. This aid to hearing that he had never liked to use was becoming almost habitual with him now, so important was it that in his present contacts he should hear what the children said. A feeling of guilt was growing in him. He had been unusually busy the last few days and Isaac, Polly and Job, Bella and the cuckoo clock had perforce slipped to the back of his mind. But that would not do. One could not deliberately enter the lives of others and then go in and out just as one wished. Deliberate entry committed one to entire service. “Much ashamed,” he said to himself.

  “Job come in on Wednesday evening,” said Polly, “just as far as the scullery because Miss Peabody she was in the parlor and he couldn’t come no further. He’d brought me a lark made out of a bit of crab-apple wood. Ever so pretty it was. I was just going to tell him how he was to leave the fish and be apprenticed to the clocks when he says to me, ‘Where’s the box you keep my birds in? I want that robin. It’s not right and I’ve got to get it better. The Dean liked it and I’m going to give it him.’ ”

  “Yes?” asked the Dean, listening painfully.

  “Well, sir, I pretended I’d lost it. So he told me to fetch the box, and I said I didn’t know where I’d put it. Then he got angry, for he’s got a temper, Job has, and somehow I let it out. I didn’t mean to, knowing how he’d take on, but I was flustered-like.”

  “What did you let out, my dear?”

  “About Miss Peabody burning the birds.”

  “Burning the birds!” ejaculated the Dean.

  Polly went as crimson as she had formerly been pale. “I forgot, sir. I forgot it was after you went.”

  “What happened after I went?”

  “Miss Peabody, she put all Job’s birds, and the snail and all, in the fire. I think, sir, she was angry that you called when she was out.”

  Polly stopped, shocked by the deepening of the lines in the Dean’s face, the horror in his eyes. He couldn’t have looked worse, she thought, had there been a death in the
family. She thought Job’s birds were very nice but to her they were just pretty toys. To the Dean it seemed they were something more. “And then?” he asked.

  “Job, he took on something dreadful. He looked as though I’d stuck a knife in him. And so to comfort him I tried to tell him about being apprenticed to the clocks. But he didn’t listen, sir. He pushed me away and went out. Banged the door in my face, he did. I’ve never known him rough like that. Quick tempered now and again, but not rough. He’s gentle, Job is.” She paused, a little breathless with her pain. “You see, sir, Job’s not like other boys.”

  “No, Polly,” said the Dean. “What his clocks are to Mr. Peabody Job’s birds are to him. Genius creates from the heart and when the artifact is broken so is the heart. You must forgive his roughness. What did you do then?”

  “There was nothing I could do, sir, but wait for market day, for Miss Peabody she won’t let me out except for the Saturday marketing. I couldn’t tell Mr. Peabody, for he’s having one of his bad times, and asthma like he has so often when he’s low, and I tries to keep cheerful with him when he’s low. But Job wasn’t at the market, and the fish stall was all anyhow, the fish not gutted proper, no clean rushes and no posies for old Keziah to sell. Job had gone, they said. He’d run away.”

  “Did they give a reason?” asked the Dean.

  “Albert Lee, he wouldn’t speak to me. Been drinking. Proper black eye he had. But Keziah she told me quiet-like that Albert had knocked Job about something cruel. That was Wednesday night. Thursday morning they found he’d gone. Had enough and who’s to blame him? But why did he not come to me, sir? I never thought Job could be in trouble and not come to me.” Her voice caught suddenly and the sodden handkerchief ripped in her twisting fingers. The Dean had to lean forward to try to hear what she said next. It was something about the river, and Job not being like other boys.

  “No!” he said harshly. “Not that. There is some good reason why he could not come to you.”

  “You don’t know Job, sir,” said Polly. “Mr. Peabody he gets low but Job he takes things that hard you wouldn’t believe.”

  “Take heart, my dear. I will wait upon Mr. Havelock and find out what he did in the matter. I fear he has blundered. Then I will wait upon Mr. Albert Lee. We will find Job.”

  Polly was cheered. She even tried to smile, and she looked timidly about the beautiful room as though it reassured her. The Dean guessed, rightly, that she was thinking that a man living in a big house like this, with these grand servants, must be able to do anything. Her faith in him, terribly shaken, was coming back.

  “I tell you, Polly,” he said, “ ‘that all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.’ ”

  His harsh voice had a kind of joy in it. Dame Julian’s words had been unpremeditated. They had come into his mind in a manner that brought as much conviction to himself as to Polly.

  “Thank you, sir,” she said, and rose and curtsied. “Please don’t ring for Mr. Garland. I can find my way.”

  But the Dean had already rung the bell. “You will lose yourself in this big house, my dear.” He spoke looking down at her. She had great dignity in her sorrow as well as much courage. Who was she? He thought of Perdita. “Nothing she does or seems but smacks of something greater than herself.” Garland entered and he took her hand in his and bowed to her. She curtsied again and left the room with Garland, who had aged five years in the last twenty minutes. The Dean grieved for Garland. For the last ten years the life of the Deanery had moved as on oiled wheels, not moving one inch from the lines laid down by Garland. Now, the Dean knew, there was change in the air. To him it was as though the wind had set south, but for Garland he feared it might be veering north for a while. And for Elaine? He did not know but he prayed for a west wind and the breaking of the wells.

  2.

  The Dean made a hasty luncheon and after it he set out immediately for Worship Street. Under the Porta, beneath her room, he remembered Mary Montague. “Take a little joy,” she had said. Had he sinned in trying to obey her? He believed not. Joy being of God was a living thing, a fountain not a cistern, one of those divine things that are possessed only as they overflow and flow away, and not easily come by because it must break into human life through the hard crust of sin and contingency. Joy came now here, now there, was held and escaped. But worth the travail of the winning both for himself and the children. He would have liked to go in and see Miss Montague and tell her what had happened, but she rested after luncheon and he dared not delay in his search for Job. It did not matter. Such prayer as hers was, like joy, an overflowing fountain that flowed where it was needed.

  Mr. Havelock’s luncheon had not been as hasty as the Dean’s and he was still enjoying his postprandial nap, his beautiful white silk handkerchief spread over his bald head, his hand serenely folded over the peaceful processes of his excellent digestion, when his visitor was shown into his study.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Havelock,” said the Dean hurriedly, and then, becoming aware of his host’s predicament, his attention was immediately caught by a shimmer of color beyond the windows. “Wonderful dahlias,” he murmured, adjusting his eyeglasses and turning a courteous back upon Mr. Havelock. “You have a good gardener.” They were chrysanthemums but he did not see them very clearly, for time pressed. But he did see a little wooden horse on wheels, abandoned on the lawn. It was a dappled creature with scarlet reins, bright and gay on the vivid green grass. Bella’s horse. He felt a pang of keen pleasure at the sight, as keen as though he had been a lover seeing his lady’s gloves lying on a chair. He saw the little picture as vividly as though he had impeccable eyesight; or as though a shutter had suddenly swung open in a dark room. He would not forget it.

  “Mr. Dean, I was just on the point of waiting upon you. In another moment I should have left the house.”

  Mr. Havelock, smiling, suave and self-possessed, might never have lunched at all. The Dean thought for a moment that the spread handkerchief and folded hands must have been an optical delusion of his poor sight, then remembered the legal gift of swift adjustment. If Havelock had erred in the matter of Job his adjustments would be agile. But he must not be allowed to escape along bypaths, for there was no time.

  “What arrangements did you come to with Mr. Lee?” he asked, his voice an abrupt bark. “The boy has run away.” The Dean could be alarming in an abrupt mood. “The Great Beast is barking” had been a word of warning that in school and college alike had caused men and boys to melt into the landscape, but Mr. Havelock was unperturbed.

  “Mr. Dean, I beg you will take this chair. Run away? I am distressed to hear it. Is the reason known?”

  “Not by me, Mr. Havelock. I am seeking information from yourself.” Mr. Havelock, in an armchair opposite the Dean, put his finger tips together with a maddening deliberation. “And without delay, I beg.”

  “I called on Lee on Wednesday evening,” said Mr. Havelock, with no delay but in tones so calm and unhurried that they held a subtle rebuke. “The boy was out but both Lee and his mother were at home. Disreputable parties, both of them. I was thankful, Mr. Dean, to have spared you personal contact with such a low sort of people. Swithin’s Lane is not a salubrious part of the city.”

  “I know all about Swithin’s Lane,” said the Dean. “What I don’t know is what sort of reply Mr. Lee gave to my proposal.”

  “Unfavorable, sir.”

  “You offered him the compensation we had in mind?”

  “He refused it.”

  “I told you I was ready to increase the sum we had agreed upon as fair and just in order to save the boy.”

  “You did, sir, but I did not bargain with the fellow. The first offer was more than generous. To have increased it would have been for you a concession lacking in dignity. Nor do I believe that Lee would part with that boy for treble the sum.” The Dean remembered what Polly had said about the market stall being in confusion. If Job’s genius stood between his master and destitution here was another comp
lication. “And you must remember, sir, that he has legality on his side.”

  The Dean suspected that Mr. Havelock’s sympathies were entirely with Albert Lee, and suddenly he liked him for it. He was a lawyer. The law was perhaps to him what his birds were to Job. It was in a gentler tone that he asked, “And did you come away without more ado, Mr. Havelock?”

  “I did, sir. I have those, including Bella, who are dependent on me.”

  “You mean the man was violent?”

  “He is of gypsy origin and a heavy drinker. My interview with him was quite an experience.”

  “I am sorry, Mr. Havelock, to have subjected you to it. I am glad to see you physically unharmed and I am obliged to you for your exertions on my behalf.” The Dean rose, Mr. Havelock following suit. “And you can throw no light on the disappearance of the boy?”

  “No, sir. Do you wish me to act further in this matter? I am at all times at your disposal.”

  “No, Mr. Havelock, do no more. As you say, legally we are in the wrong. But I wish that you had informed me sooner as to the failure of your visit.”

  “I was just about to do myself the honor of waiting upon you, sir,” said Mr. Havelock suavely, but the Dean saw a gleam of astonishment in his eyes, quickly veiled. All this to-do over an orphanage brat, a fishmonger’s apprentice. Adam Ayscough struggled with his anger. Yet what right had he to be angry? Absorbed in other work he had permitted Job to go to the back of his mind. Probably it had been the same with Havelock. “Much obliged,” he said humbly, and going into the hall began to feel rather blindly for his hat. “Bella is upstairs?” he asked with the wistful shyness of a young and abashed lover as Mr. Havelock gave him his hat and cloak and stick.

  “I fear she is out for her afternoon walk with her nurse.”

  “Yes, yes, of course. Good day, Mr. Havelock. Much obliged.”

  3.

  Adam Ayscough was in great distress as he made his way down through the narrow twisting streets of the city toward the North Gate slums. He was momentarily forgetful that all was to be well and blamed himself entirely for Albert Lee’s fury and Job’s disappearance. He should not have allowed Havelock to act for him in the matter. The breaking of an apprenticeship contract by the use of bribery had been against Havelock’s legal conscience, and one should never use a man where his conscience is not persuaded. Bribery. The word he had used himself had been “compensation,” which sounded better but meant much the same. In this affair it appeared to him now that Albert Lee had an impregnable moral position and he himself a very poor one. If Job’s skill was necessary to Albert Lee in the prosecution of his business then he had been endeavoring to deprive him of the means of livelihood by means of bribery. Most reprehensible! Yet he intended to continue to do so, for he believed a boy’s salvation to be at stake. Job must be rescued from the sin of this man whatever sin stuck to himself during the process. Only the saints could rescue a soul from evil without falling into the mud themselves. But on the hitherside of this he must do what he could for Albert Lee.