“Some people got in and were skylarking, but they meant no harm. I quickly cleared them out.”
“If they got in someone must have let them in. There are not so many keys. Who admitted them?”
“I did not ask.”
“Didn’t ask, Mr Dean! And why didn’t you ask? Is it nothing that people should break in here and skylark, as you call it? Did Smart let them in?”
“Smart is the most discreet of caretakers, Mr Snelgrove.”
“Who, then? Was it Cobbler?”
“I assure you, Mr Snelgrove, I have the matter in hand and will take steps to prevent it happening again.”
“Then it was Cobbler. I have said many times, Mr Dean, that we ought to get rid of that man.”
“Mr Cobbler has his faults, but he is an excellent musician. It would be easier to get rid of him than it would be to replace him.”
“I know little about music, Mr Dean, and frankly I care little. But Cobbler’s character is such that it will one day bring disgrace upon this church, and if you insist upon defending him you may be seriously implicated.”
“That is not a risk which worries me, Mr Snelgrove. And as Mr Cobbler comes directly under my authority I think that the matter of disciplining him may safely be left to me. And I must remind you, by the way, that it is you, and not I, who associate him with the trifling disturbance here last night.”
“And you have not denied that he was responsible. I must remind you, Mr Dean, that as a lawyer I am not unaccustomed to evasiveness.”
“That is very frankly stated, Mr Snelgrove,” said the Dean, and the two men parted, each feeling that he had been called evasive by the other, and resenting it.
Although it seemed to Mr Snelgrove that he had made no impression upon the Dean and had been rebuffed by him with something approaching impertinence, he had in fact worried the Dean considerably. In a life spent in church work, the Dean had never become accustomed to the vigilance of parishioners in observing his every movement, or to the rapidity with which rumour and surmise circulated among them. If their zeal for their salvation, he thought, began to equal their zeal for minding his business, the New Jerusalem would quickly be at hand. He wanted to pass off the affair of the students in the Cathedral as quietly as possible; he hated rebuking people, partly from timidity and partly from genuine kindness, and he valued the Cathedral organist highly. Working with Cobbler he had been able to raise the aesthetic standard of the Cathedral services to a level in which he took pride; he was continually astonished by the slight effect which this work of his appeared to have upon his congregation. Indeed, the better Cobbler’s music was, the more the organist’s personality seemed to grate upon a number of influential Cathedral parishioners. As the Dean looked at Cobbler when the latter appeared in his study at half-past ten on All Saints’ Day, he wondered if these disapproving parishioners were not, perhaps, in the right.
The organist had assumed what was, for him, ceremonial garb for this solemn occasion. That is to say, he wore an ill-fitting and rather dirty blue serge suit, the trousers of which were so short that no one could miss seeing that he wore no socks, and that of the laces in his scuffed black shoes, one was black and one was brown. His shirt was clean but ragged, and his tie had ridden toward his left ear. His hair, which was black, thick and very curly, stood out from his head like a Hottentot’s; he had cut himself several times while shaving, and had staunched the blood with tufts of cotton wool. But it was not the man’s poverty or untidiness which made him a disturbing object; it was the smiling concentration of his lean, swarthy face, and the nervous rolling of his large, black, bird-like eyes. He looked like a gypsy. His appearance was of the sort which causes housewives to lock up their spoons and their daughters.
“This is a serious matter, Mr Cobbler,” said the Dean, who found it hard to begin.
“Serious, indeed,” said Cobbler agreeably.
“I had hoped that your escapade of last night would not become widely known, but already the Press has been plaguing me with questions about what has been happening in the Cathedral.”
“Tck, tck.” Cobbler clucked his tongue sympathetically.
“The Press,” said the Dean, finding himself suddenly incensed against The Bellman, “is a powerful and often a mischievous agency.”
“Dreadful,” said Cobbler, with feeling.
“I cannot guarantee that the story of your escapade may not become known,” said the Dean. And indeed he could not tell whether Miss Pottinger or Mr Snelgrove might not babble something which a reporter might pick up. “You realize what a juicy morsel it would make?”
Cobbler closed his eyes, giving an unconvincing imitation of a man whose thoughts lie too deep for utterance. The Dean knew that he was not achieving the effect he sought. He decided to try another line.
“Mr Cobbler, have I not always tried to be fair with you in all matters relating to your duties at the Cathedral?”
“Mr Dean, your sympathetic co-operation makes my work a pleasure, as the gynaecologist said to the lady contortionist,” said Cobbler, earnestly. The Dean blinked, but decided to ignore the similitude.
“Then why are you not fair to me?” he asked. “You must know that it is not always easy for me to defend you against people in the Cathedral who disapprove of you. Why do you provoke trouble in this wanton fashion?”
“The move into the Cathedral was unpremeditated,” said Cobbler. “I never expected that there would be any trouble.”
“Rowdy singing! And dancing! And you say you did not expect any trouble!”
“It happened very simply. I had been talking to a group of students about music. Walking home, I had another idea, and as I happened to have my key with me, we popped into the Cathedral for a brief illustration.”
“You were singing what sounded to me like a bawdy song.”
“The words are misleading. The tune is a roundelay, and true roundelays are not easy to find. Poets use the word, but you know what loose thinkers poets are. The words are insignificant.”
“Those young people were dancing. And three of them were girls. Young, attractive girls,” added the Dean, severely, for as every moralist knows, youth and charm in a woman makes any deviation from ordinary conduct doubly reprehensible.
“Stirring about rhythmically, perhaps. You know how musical people are.”
“Dancing. Unquestionably they were dancing. I saw a lot of leg.”
Cobbler said nothing, but his eyes rolled in a way the Dean did not like.
“If it was all so innocent, why did they hide when I came upon them?”
“Frightened, I suppose. After all, it was Hallowe’en.”
“What is that, Mr Cobbler?”
“I only meant that you are an awe-inspiring figure in your cloak, Mr Dean.”
“You had been drinking, Mr Cobbler.”
“Not really. I mean, I’ve usually been drinking. But only a sip here and a sup there. Nothing, really. I might have had a beer, early in the evening.”
“Mr Cobbler, let us be plain. You had been drinking, and you brought a rowdy group into the Cathedral. You played secular music, very loudly, and you sang a song of obscene implication. Because of the excellence of your work in general, I might overlook such conduct once, but how am I to defend you against parishioners who feel themselves affronted by your conduct?”
“You mean Auntie Puss?”
“You should not speak so disrespectfully of Miss Pottinger.”
“No disrespect whatever, Mr Dean. All her dearest friends call her that.”
“You are not one of her dearest friends.”
“Through no fault of mine, I assure you.”
“You annoy her, and others.”
“In what way, Mr Dean? Apart from last night, I mean.”
“It’s something about you. You don’t look like a Cathedral organist.”
“That’s lucky for me. Funny chaps, a lot of them. Seem to have no faces. But what can I do about it?”
“You might dress more
neatly. You look too Bohemian for your position.”
“Oh, not that, surely. Bohemian is a word we use of the bad habits of our friends. I’m sure Auntie Puss doesn’t say I look Bohemian.”
“If you wish to know, she says you look like a gypsy golliwog.”
Cobbler opened his mouth very wide, and laughed a loud, long laugh, which made several ornaments on the mantelpiece ring sympathetically. “I wouldn’t have thought the old faggot could think up anything so lively,” he said when he had done.
“You must not call Miss Pottinger an old faggot.”
“Why not, if she can call me a gypsy golliwog?”
The Dean was greatly troubled now. “You will not be serious,” he said.
“Oh come, Mr Dean. That’s what Auntie Puss says about you. We mustn’t get our characters mixed.”
“I mean that you will not look at your situation in a proper way.”
“I know. That’s what one of my teachers used to say. ‘Er ist nicht ernst,’ he would mumble, because I wouldn’t get all sweaty about Brahms.”
“You must be serious. You have a wife and children to support. That is serious, I suppose?”
“Not really.”
“What is serious then?”
“Music, I suppose, in a hilarious sort of way,” said Cobbler, ruffling his hair and grinning.
“The Cathedral is not serious?”
“Perhaps the Cathedral is too serious,” said Cobbler. “It is the House of God, isn’t it? How do we know that God likes His house to be damned dull? Nobody seems to think that God might like a good time, now and then.”
“We are achieving nothing by this conversation,” said the Dean wearily. He felt the old weakness coming over him. He agreed with half of what Cobbler said, and in order to keep from being completely won over he was driven into a puritanical position which he did not enjoy, and in which he had little belief. Before they parted, he had won something resembling an apology from the organist, and a promise that the outrage of the previous night would never be repeated. When they parted, Cobbler’s step was light, and the Dean was sitting hunched up in his chair, greatly troubled. Anyone coming upon them suddenly would not have known that the Dean had been rebuking and disciplining his organist; it looked as though the reverse had been the case.
Professor Vambrace was not a man to utter an empty threat. When he left the office of The Bellman after his unsatisfactory talk with Mr Ridley and Mr Marryat, he went at once to the chambers of his lawyers, Snelgrove, Martin and Fitzalan.
Chambers is the only possible word to describe the place in which this old-established firm discharged their affairs. Offices they were not, for an office suggests a place touched by modern order and efficiency. Nor were they simply rooms, for they had lofty architectural pretensions, and enclosed a dim light and a nineteenth-century frowst which distinguished them from common apartments. They partook largely of that special architectural picturesqueness which is only to be found in Canada, and which is more easily found in Salterton than in newer Canadian cities. Now the peculiar quality of this picturesqueness does not lie in a superficial resemblance to the old world; it is, rather, a compound of colonialism, romanticism and sturdy defiance of taste; it is a fascinating and distinguished ugliness which is best observed in the light of Canadian November and December afternoons. This picturesqueness is not widely admired, and examples of it are continually being destroyed, without one voice being raised in their defence. But where they exist, and are appreciated, they suggest a quality which is rather that of Northern Europe—of Scandinavia and pre-revolutionary Russia—than of England or the USA. It is in such houses as these that the characters in the plays of Ibsen had their being; it was in this light, and against these backgrounds of stained wood and etched glass that the people of Tchekov talked away their lives. And, if the Canadian building be old enough, the perceptive eye may see faint ghosts from Pushkin and Lermontov moving through the halls. This is the architecture of a Northern people, upon which the comfort of England and the luxury of the United States have fallen short of their full effect.
To reach the offices of Snelgrove, Martin and Fitzalan the Professor had to climb a long flight of stairs, which had a marked list to the right, and an elaborate balustrade which seemed to have no purpose but to keep the climber from pitching into the wall which rose directly beside it. The central room of the law chambers was lofty, and suggested a Victorian railway station and a vestry, without precisely resembling either. In it, at a number of tables and desks, sat several stenographers working at typewriters, and as these instruments tapped, the milky opaque glass which composed the partitions which shut off the private rooms of the partners rang and jingled protestingly. Mr Fitzalan was not engaged, and the Professor was shown at once to his private room.
This was a small apartment, much too tall for its floor area, and consequently rather like a well. Its single window looked out on the street, but as the exposure was a northeasterly one it was dark in November. The partition which separated it from the main office was composed of Gothic groining in wood, and the varnish on this wood had, through the years, acquired the rough and scaly surface of an old lizard. In the arches of the partition was a frosted glass, in which an elaborate floral scrollwork had been cut. In such a setting, Ronnie Fitzalan looked oddly frivolous and out of place. He was in his early forties, and on close inspection he looked it, but a first glance did not take in his bald spot, the mottled red of his cheeks, and his dull and drooping eye; it was the jaunty twist of his moustache and the elegance of his tie which held the gaze. He was a cousin of Vambrace’s wife, and he greeted the Professor with cordiality.
Vambrace told his story, displayed the offending clipping from The Bellman, and demanded to know how quickly he could bring an action for libel. But Fitzalan gave him little comfort. ;.
“You’d better forget all about it, Wally,” said he. “Libel’s the very devil even when you’ve got a good case, and you’ve got no case at all. Who put the thing in the paper? You don’t know. You want to sue The Bellman. Right? Well, they’ll fight just as hard as you will. You’ll get all kinds of publicity you don’t want. That’ll do you no good and The Bellman no harm. Suppose you win; what’ve you got? Suppose you lose—and you could lose, you know, just as easy as dammit—you’ve got a big bill for costs and you’ve been made to look a fool. You’d better take The Bellman’s offer of an apology.”
“But they will not apologize,”said Vambrace.
“Not the way you want them to,” said Fitzalan. “How can you expect anybody to eat dirt like that? But they’ve made you an offer, and it’s the best one for you. It’ll save face for you, and save face for them, and it won’t attract a hell of a lot of attention, which is what you seem to want. Damn it all, Wally, do you want to make little Pearlie look like a fool? Do you want to spoil her chances of ever nabbing a husband, poor kid? If you do, just go ahead and shout her name around the court for a few days, or get it on the front page of The Bellman, suggesting that some poor chap has had his head knocked off for pretending he was engaged to her.”
“You are far away from the facts,” said Vambrace.
“I know that, Wally, but not half as far as the general public will be after you’ve had your fun. They’ll get all the details jumbled up, and rumours will be everywhere that Pearl threw down some chap in a nasty way, or that you are such a jealous father that nobody dares come near your girl. You’ve got to give some thought to Pearlie, Wally. And this fellow Bridgetower; you’ve got to give him some consideration.”
“Why?” said the Professor.
“Why? Well, for decency’s sake, that’s why. He’s at the University, isn’t he? So are you. Do you want to kick a colleague around? Maybe you do, but it wouldn’t look well.”
“Decency has never troubled the Bridgetower family in their relations with me,” said Vambrace.
“Oh, I know all about that old quarrel with this fellow’s father. But it was never as bad as you pretended
.”
“I think I am the best judge of that. And this young man has offered me insults which I cannot brook.”
“Listen, Wally, stop talking like a novel by Sir Walter Scott. You should have some thought for Liz and Pearlie.”
“I have. That is why I intend to see this thing through to a finish. It shall not be said that I allowed any reflection to be cast upon them.”
“Wally, you’re crackers. Libel is the slipperiest charge you can take into court. Most libel cases are not worth a damn to anybody but the lawyers. And before you’ve finished with this one, some smart cross-examiner will make you look like a monkey, and then you’ll be worse off than ever.”
Although he despised his cousin-in-law’s vocabulary, and detested being called Wally, and hearing his wife and daughter called Liz and Pearlie, the Professor respected Fitzalan’s ability as a lawyer, and in spite of his protests he was beginning to think that he might forgo the excitements of a law case, and accept The Bellman’s limited apology. But it was at this moment that the senior partner of the firm, Mr Matthew Snelgrove, put his head in at the door.
“I’m very sorry,” said he, “I didn’t realize there was anyone with you, Fitzalan. I was looking for a book.” He made as though to withdraw, but did not do so, for the fact was that he had learned from the office girls that Professor Vambrace was with his junior partner, and after his chat with the Dean that morning, he thought that he could guess why. So after some symbolic shuffling, intended to signify polite withdrawal, he said to the Professor, “I hope that it is nothing unpleasant that brings you to us, Professor Vambrace.”
“Something most unpleasant,” said the Professor, falling into the trap.
“Really?” said Snelgrove, feigning surprise and concern. “If I had suspected that anything was really wrong I would not have inquired. Please overlook my poor attempt at jocularity. Of course any advice that we can give you is at your disposal.”
“My cousin has been giving me what I presume is good advice; he urges me not to go to law.”
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