Dorothy L. Sayers - [Lord Peter Wimsey ]

by Nine Tailors

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Forgot!” exclaimed Mr. Lavender, waggling his beard. “Now, just yew take example by his lordship here. He didn’t go forgettin’ things, none the more for bein’ out o’ practice.”

  “Come, come, Hezekiah,” cried the Rector again. “You mustn’t be hard on Wally. We haven’t all had sixty years’ experience.”

  Mr. Lavender grunted, and started the whole touch again from the beginning. This time Mr. Pratt kept his head and his place and the ringing went successfully through to its conclusion.

  “Well rung all,” cried the Rector. “Our new recruit will do us credit, I think, Hezekiah?”

  “I almost fell down in the second lead, though,” said Wimsey, laughing. “I as nearly as possible forgot to lay the four blows in fourths place at the bob. However, nearly isn’t quite.”

  “You’ll keep your place all right, my lord,” said Mr. Lavender. “As for you, Wally Pratt——”

  “I think,” said the Rector, hastily, “we’d better run across to the church now and let Lord Peter get the feel of his bell. You may as well all come over and ring the bells up for service. And, Jack, see to it that Lord Peter’s rope is made comfortable for him. Jack Godfrey takes charge of the bells and ropes,” he added in explanation, “and keeps them in apple-pie order for us.”

  Mr. Godfrey smiled.

  “We’ll need to let the tuckings down a goodish bit for his lordship,” he observed, measuring Wimsey with his eye; “he’s none so tall as Will Thoday, not by a long chalk.”

  “Never you mind,” said Wimsey. “In the words of the old bell-motto: I’d have it to be understood that though I’m little, yet I’m good.”

  “Of course,” said the Rector, “Jack didn’t mean anything else. But Will Thoday is a very tall man indeed. Now where did I put my hat? Agnes, my dear! Agnes! I can’t find my hat. Oh, here, to be sure. And my muffler—I’m so much obliged to you. Now, let me just get the key of the belfry and we—dear me, now! When did I have that key last?”

  “It’s all right, sir,” said Mr. Godfrey. “I have all the keys here, sir.”

  “The church-key as well?”

  “Yes, sir, and the key of the bell-chamber.”

  “Oh, good, good—excellent. Lord Peter will like to go up into the bell-chamber. To my mind, Lord Peter, the sight of a ring of good bells—I beg your pardon, my dear?”

  “I said, Do remember dinner-time, and don’t keep poor Lord Peter too long.”

  “No, no, my dear, certainly not. But he will like to look at the bells. And the church itself is worth seeing, Lord Peter. We have a very interesting twelfth-century font, and the roof is considered to be one of the finest specimens—yes, yes, my dear, we’re just going.”

  The hall-door was opened upon a glimmering world. The snow was still falling fast; even the footprints made less than an hour earlier by the ringers were almost obliterated. They straggled down the drive and crossed the road. Ahead of them, the great bulk of the church loomed dark and gigantic. Mr. Godfrey led the way with an old-fashioned lantern through the lych-gate and along a path bordered with tombstones to the south door of the church, which he opened, with a groaning of the heavy lock. A powerful ecclesiastical odour, compounded of ancient wood, varnish, dry rot, hassocks, hymn-books, paraffin lamps, flowers and candles, all gently baking in the warmth of slow-combustion stoves, billowed out from the interior. The tiny ray of the lantern picked out here the poppy-head on a pew, here the angle of a stone pillar, here the gleam of brass from a mural tablet. Their footsteps echoed queerly in the great height of the clerestory.

  “All Transitional here,” whispered the Rector, “except the Late Perpendicular window at the end of the north aisle, which of course you can’t see. Nothing is left of the original Norman foundation but a couple of drums at the base of the chancel arch, but you can trace the remains of the Norman apse, if you look for it, underneath the Early English sanctuary. When we have more light, you will notice—Oh, yes, Jack, yes, by all means. Jack Godfrey is quite right, Lord Peter—we must not waste time. I am apt to be led away by my enthusiasm.”

  He conducted his guest westwards under the tower arch, and thence, in the wake of Jack Godfrey’s lantern, up a steep and winding belfry stair, its stone treads worn shallow with the feet of countless long-dead ringers. After a turn or so, the procession halted; there was a jingling of keys and the lantern moved away to the right through a narrow door. Wimsey, following, found himself in the ringing-chamber of the belfry.

  It was in no way remarkable, except in being perhaps a little loftier than the average, on account of the exceptional height of the tower. By daylight, it was well lit, having a fine window of three lights on each of its three exterior sides, while low down in the eastern wall, a couple of unglazed openings, defended by iron bars against accident, gave upon the interior of the church, a little above the level of the clerestory windows. As Jack Godfrey set the lantern on the floor, and proceeded to light a paraffin lamp which hung against the wall, Wimsey could see the eight bell-ropes, their woollen sallies looped neatly to the walls, and their upper ends vanishing mysteriously into the shadows of the chamber roof. Then the light streamed out and the walls took shape and colour. They were plainly plastered, with a painted motto in Gothic lettering running round below the windows: “They Have Neither Speech nor Language but their Voices are Heard Among Them, their Sound is Gone Forth into All Lands.” Above this, various tablets of wood, brass and even stone, commemorated the ringing of remarkable peals in the past.

  “We shall hope to put up a new tablet after tonight,” said the Rector’s voice in Wimsey’s ear.

  “I only hope I may do nothing to prevent it,” said Wimsey. “I see you have the old regulations for your ringers. Ah! ‘Keep stroak of time and goe not out, Or elles you forfeit out of doubt For every fault a Jugg of beer.’ It doesn’t say how big a jug, but there is something about the double g that suggests size and potency. ‘If a bell you overthrow ‘Twill cost you sixpence ere you goe.’ That’s cheap, considering the damage it does. On the other hand, sixpence for every swear or curse is rather on the dear side, I think, don’t you, padre? Where’s this bell of mine?”

  “Here, my lord.” Jack Godfrey had unhitched the rope of the second bell, and let down to its full length the portion of rope below the sallie.

  “When you’ve got her raised,” he said, “we’ll fix them tuckings proper. Unless you’d like me to raise her for you?”

  “Not on your life,” said Wimsey. “It’s a poor ringer that can’t raise his own bell.” He grasped the rope and pulled it gently downwards, gathering the slack in his left hand. Softly, tremulously, high overhead in the tower, Sabaoth began to speak, and her sisters after her as the ringers stood to their ropes. “Tin-tin-tin,” cried Gaude in her silvery treble; “tan-tan,” answered Sabaoth; “din-din-din,” “dan-dan-dan,” said John and Jericho, climbing to their places; “bim, bam, bim, bam,” Jubilee and Dimity followed; “bom,” said Batty Thomas; and Tailor Paul, majestically lifting up her great bronze mouth, bellowed “bo, bo, bo,” as the ropes hauled upon the wheels.

  Wimsey brought his bell competently up and set her at backstroke while the tuckings were finally adjusted, after which, at the Rector’s suggestion, a few rounds were rung to let him “get the feel of her.”

  “You can leave your bells up, boys,” said Mr. Hezekiah Lavender, graciously, when this last rehearsal was concluded, “but don’t you go a-taking that for what they calls a preceedent, Wally Pratt. And listen here, all on you; don’t make no mistake. You comes here, sharp at the quarter to eleven, see—and you rings same as usual for service, and after Rector has finished his sermon, you comes up here again quiet and decent and takes your places. Then, while they’re a-singin’ their ’ymn, I rings the nine tailors and the ’alfminute passing-strokes for Old Year, see. Then you takes your ropes in hand and waits for the clock to strike. When she’s finished striking, I says ‘Go!’ and mind as you’re ready to go. An
d when Rector’s done down below, he’s promised to come up and give a ’and from time to time to any man as needs a rest, and I’m sure it’s very kind of him. And I take leave to suppose, Alf Donnington, as you won’t forget the usual.”

  “Not me,” said Mr. Donnington. “Well, so long, boys.”

  The lantern led the way from the ringing-chamber, and a great shuffling of feet followed it.

  “And now,” said the Rector, “and now, Lord Peter, you will like to come and see—dear me!” he ejaculated, as they groped upon the dark spiral stair, “where in the world is Jack Godfrey? Jack! He has gone on down with the others. Ah, well, poor fellow, no doubt he wants to get home to his supper. We must not be selfish. Unfortunately he has the key of the bell-chamber, and without it we cannot conduct our researches. However, you will see much better tomorrow. Yes, Joe, yes—we are coming. Do be careful of these stairs—they are very much worn, especially on the inside. Here we are, safe and sound. Excellent! Now, before we go, Lord Peter, I should so much like to show you——”

  The clock in the tower chimed the three-quarters.

  “Bless my heart!” cried the Rector, conscience-stricken, “and dinner was to be at half-past! My wife—we must wait till tonight. You will get a general idea of the majesty and beauty of our church if you attend the service, though there are many most interesting details that a visitor is almost bound to miss if they are not pointed out to him. The font, for instance—Jack! bring the lantern here a moment—there is one point about our font which is most uncommon, and I should like to show it to you. Jack!”

  But Jack, unaccountably deaf, was jingling the church keys in the porch, and the Rector, sighing a little, accepted defeat.

  “I fear it is true,” he said, as he trotted down the path, “that I am inclined to lose count of time.”

  “Perhaps,” replied Wimsey politely, “the being continually in and about this church brings eternity too close.”

  “Very true,” said the Rector, “very true—though there are mementoes enough to mark the passage of time. Remind me tomorrow to show you the tomb of Nathaniel Perkins—one of our local worthies and a great sportsman. He refereed once for the great Tom Sayers, and was a notable figure at all the ‘mills’ for miles around, and when he died—Here we are at home. I will tell you later about Nathaniel Perkins. Well, my dear, we’re back at last! Not so very late after all. Come along, come along. You must make a good dinner, Lord Peter, to fit you for your exertions. What have we here? Stewed oxtail? Excellent! Most sustaining! I trust, Lord Peter, you can eat stewed oxtail. For what we are about to receive …”

  THE SECOND COURSE

  THE BELLS IN THEIR COURSES

  When mirth and pleasure is on the wing we ring:

  At the departure of a soul we toll.

  RINGERS’ RULES AT SOUTHILL, BEDFORDSHIRE

  AFTER DINNER, MRS. VENABLES resolutely asserted her authority. She sent Lord Peter up to his room, regardless of the Rector, who was helplessly hunting through a set of untidy bookshelves in search of the Rev. Christopher Woollcott’s History of the Bells of Fenchurch St. Paul. “I can’t imagine what has become of it,” said the Rector: “I fear I’m sadly unmethodical. But perhaps you would like to look at this—a trifling contribution of my own to campanological lore. I know, my dear, I know—I must not detain Lord Peter—it is thoughtless of me.”

  “You must get some rest yourself, Theodore.”

  “Yes, yes, my dear. In a moment. I was only—”

  Wimsey saw that the one way to quiet the Rector was to desert him without compunction. He retired, accordingly, and was captured at the head of the stairs by Bunter, who tucked him firmly up beneath the eiderdown with a hot-water bottle and shut the door upon him.

  A roaring fire burned in the grate. Wimsey drew the lamp closer to him, opened the little brochure presented to him by the Rector, and studied the title-page:

  An Inquiry into the Mathematical Theory of the

  IN AND OUT OF COURSE

  together with Directions for

  Calling Bells into Rounds

  from any position in all the recognized Methods upon a New and Scientific Principle

  by

  Theodore Venables, M.A.

  Rector of Fenchurch St. Paul sometime Scholar of Caius Coll: Camb:

  author of

  “Change-ringing for Country Churches,”

  “Fifty Short Touches of Grandsire Triples,” etc.

  “God is gone up with a merry noise.”

  MCMII

  The letter-press was of a soporific tendency; so was the stewed ox-tail; the room was warm; the day had been a tiring one; the lines swam before Lord Peter’s eyes. He nodded; a coal tinkled from the grate; he roused himself with a jerk and read: “… if the 5th is in course after the 7th (says Shipway), and 7th after the 6th, they are right, when the small bells, 2, 3, 4, are brought as directed in the preceding peals; but if 6, 7 are together without the 5th, call the 5th into the hunt. …”

  Lord Peter Wimsey nodded away into dreams.

  He was roused by the pealing of bells.

  For a moment, memory eluded him—then he flung the eiderdown aside and sat up, ruffled and reproachful, to encounter the calm gaze of Burner.

  “Good God! I’ve been asleep! Why didn’t you call me? They’ve begun without me.”

  “Mrs. Venables gave orders, my lord, that you were not to be disturbed until half-past eleven, and the reverend gentleman instructed me to say, my lord, that they would content themselves with ringing six bells as a preliminary to the service.”

  “What time is it now?”

  “Nearly five minutes to eleven, my lord.”

  As he spoke, the pealing ceased, and Jubilee began to ring the five-minute bell.

  “Dash it all!” said Wimsey. “This will never do. Must go and hear the old boy’s sermon. Give me a hair-brush. Is it still snowing?”

  “Harder than ever, my lord.”

  Wimsey made a hasty toilet and ran downstairs, Bunter following him decorously. They let themselves out by the front door, and, guided by Burner’s electric torch, made their way through the shrubbery and across the road to the church, entering just as the organ boomed out its final notes. Choir and parson were in their places and Wimsey, blinking in the yellow lamplight, at length discovered his seven fellow-ringers seated on a row of chairs beneath the tower. He picked his way cautiously over the cocoa-nut matting towards them, while Bunter, who had apparently acquired all the necessary information beforehand, made his unperturbed way to a pew in the north aisle and sat down beside Emily from the Rectory. Old Hezekiah Lavender greeted Wimsey with a welcoming chuckle and thrust a prayer-book under his nose as he knelt down to pray.

  “Dearly beloved brethren—”

  Wimsey scrambled to his feet and looked round.

  At the first glance he felt himself sobered and awe-stricken by the noble proportions of the church, in whose vast spaces the congregation—though a good one for so small a parish in the dead of a winter’s night—seemed almost lost. The wide nave and shadowy aisles, the lofty span of the chancel arch—crossed, though not obscured, by the delicate fan-tracery and crenellated moulding of the screen—the intimate and cloistered loveliness of the chancel, with its pointed arcading, graceful ribbed vault and five narrow east lancets, led his attention on and focused it first upon the remote glow of the sanctuary. Then his gaze, returning to the nave, followed the strong yet slender shafting that sprang fountain-like from floor to foliated column-head, spraying into the light, wide arches that carried the clerestory. And there, mounting to the steep pitch of the roof, his eyes were held entranced with wonder and delight. Incredibly aloof, flinging back the light in a dusky shimmer of bright hair and gilded outspread wings, soared the ranked angels, cherubim and seraphim, choir over choir, from corbel and hammer-beam floating face to face uplifted.

  “My God!” muttered Wimsey, not without reverence. And he softly repeated to himself: “He rode upon the cherubim
s and did fly; He came flying upon the wings of the wind.”

  Mr. Hezekiah Lavender poked his new colleague sharply in the ribs, and Wimsey became aware that the congregation had settled down to the General Confession, leaving him alone and agape upon his feet. Hurriedly he turned the leaves of his prayer-book and applied himself to making the proper responses. Mr. Lavender, who had obviously decided that he was either a half-wit or a heathen, assisted him by finding the Psalms for him and by bawling every verse very loudly in his ear.

  “… Praise Him in the cymbals and dances: praise Him upon the strings and pipe.”

  The shrill voices of the surpliced choir mounted to the roof, and seemed to find their echo in the golden mouths of the angels.

  “Praise Him upon the well-tuned cymbals; praise Him upon the loud cymbals.

  “Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord.”

  The time wore on towards midnight. The Rector, advancing to the chancel steps, delivered, in his mild and scholarly voice, a simple and moving little address, in which he spoke of praising God, not only upon the strings and pipe, but upon the beautiful bells of their beloved church, and alluded, in his gently pious way, to the presence of the passing stranger—“please do not turn round to stare at him; that would be neither courteous nor reverent”—who had been sent “by what men call chance” to assist in this work of devotion. Lord Peter blushed, the Rector pronounced the Benediction, the organ played the opening bars of a hymn and Hezekiah Lavender exclaimed sonorously: “Now, lads!” The ringers, with much subdued shuffling, extricated themselves from their chairs and wound their way up the belfry stair. Coats were pulled off and hung on nails in the ringing-chamber, and Wimsey, observing on a bench near the door an enormous brown jug and nine pewter tankards, understood, with pleasure, that the landlord of the Red Cow had, indeed, provided “the usual” for the refreshment of the ringers.

  The eight men advanced to their stations, and Hezekiah consulted his watch.