They moved into the transept, but the doctor managed to buttonhole Westray for a moment en route.
“You will be bored to death,” he said, “with this man’s ignorance and conceit. Don’t pay the least attention to him, but there is one thing I want to take the first opportunity of pressing on you. Whatever is done or not done, however limited the funds may be, let us at least have a sanitary floor. You must have all these stones up, and put a foot or two of concrete under them. Can anything be more monstrous than that the dead should be allowed to poison the living? There must be hundreds of burials close under the floor, and look at the pools of water standing about. Can anything, I say, be more insanitary?”
They were in the south transept, and the Rector had duly pointed out the dilapidations of the roof, which, in truth, wanted but little showing.
“Some call this the Blandamer aisle,” he said, “from a noble family of that name who have for many years been buried here.”
“Their vaults are, no doubt, in a most insanitary condition,” interpolated the doctor.
“These Blandamers ought to restore the whole place,” the organist said bitterly. “They would, if they had any sense of decency. They are as rich as Croesus, and would miss pounds less than most people would miss pennies. Not that I believe in any of this sanitary talk—things have gone on well enough as they are; and if you go digging up the floors you will only dig up pestilences. Keep the fabric together, make the roofs water-tight, and spend a hundred or two on the organ. That is all we want, and these Blandamers would do it, if they weren’t curmudgeons and skinflints.”
“You will forgive me, Mr. Sharnall,” said the Rector, “if I remark that an hereditary peerage is so important an institution, that we should be very careful how we criticise any members of it. At the same time,” he went on, turning apologetically to Westray, “there is perhaps a modicum of reason in our friend’s remarks. I had hoped that Lord Blandamer would have contributed handsomely to the restoration fund, but he has not hitherto done so, though I dare say that his continued absence abroad accounts for some delay. He only succeeded his grandfather last year, and the late lord never showed much interest in this place, and was indeed in many ways a very strange character. But it’s no use raking up these stories; the old man is gone, and we must hope for better things from the young one.”
“I don’t know why you call him young,” said the doctor. “He’s young, maybe, compared to his grandfather, who died at eighty-five; but he must be forty, if he’s a day.”
“Oh, impossible; and yet I don’t know. It was in my first year at Cullerne that his father and mother were drowned. You remember that, Mr. Sharnall—when the Corisande upset in Pallion Bay?”
“Ay, I mind that well enough,” struck in the clerk; “and I mind their being married, becos’ we wor ringing of the bells, when old Mason Parmiter run into the church, and says: ‘Do’ant-’ee, boys—do’ant-’ee ring ’em any more. These yere old tower’ll never stand it. I see him rock,’ he says, ‘and the dust a-running out of the cracks like rain.’ So out we come, and glad enough to stop it, too, because there wos a feast down in the meadows by the London Road, and drinks and dancing, and we wanted to be there. That were two-and-forty years ago come Lady Day, and there was some shook their heads, and said we never ought to have stopped the ring, for a broken peal broke life or happiness. But what was we to do?”
“Did they strengthen the tower afterwards?” Westray asked. “Do you find any excessive motion when the peal is rung now?”
“Lor’ bless you, sir; them bells was never rung for thirty years afore that, and wouldn’t a been rung then, only Tom Leech, he says: ‘The ropes is there, boys; let’s have a ring out of these yere tower. He ain’t been rung for thirty year. None on us don’t recollect the last time he was rung, and if ’er were weak then, ’ers had plenty of time to get strong again, and there’ll be half a crown a man for ringing of a peal.’ So up we got to it, till old Parmiter come in to stop us. And you take my word for it, they never have been rung since. There’s only that rope there”—and he pointed to a bell-rope that came down from the lantern far above, and was fastened back against the wall—“wot we tolls the bell with for service, and that ain’t the big bell neither.”
“Did Sir George Farquhar know all this?” Westray asked the Rector.
“No, sir; Sir George did not know it,” said the Rector, with some tartness in his voice, “because it was not material that he should know it; and Sir George’s time, when he was here, was taken up with more pressing matters. I never heard this old wife’s tale myself till the present moment, and although it is true that we do not ring the bells, this is on account of the supposed weakness of the cage in which they swing, and has nothing whatever to do with the tower itself. You may take my word for that. ‘Sir George,’ I said, when Sir George asked me—‘Sir George, I have been here forty years, and if you will agree not to ask for your fees till my tower tumbles down, why, I shall be very glad.’ Ha, ha, ha! how Sir George enjoyed that joke! Ha, ha, ha!”
Westray turned away with a firm resolve to report to headquarters the story of the interrupted peal, and to make an early examination of the tower on his own behalf.
The clerk was nettled that the Rector should treat his story with such scant respect, but he saw that the others were listening with interest, and he went on:
“Well, ’taint for I to say the old tower’s a-going to fall, and I hope Sir Jarge won’t ever live to larf the wrong side o’ his mouth; but stopping of a ring never brought luck with it yet, and it brought no luck to my lord. First he lost his dear son and his son’s wife in Cullerne Bay, and I remember as if ’twas yesterday how we grappled for ’em all night, and found their bodies lying close together on the sand in three fathoms, when the tide set inshore in the morning. And then he fell out wi’ my lady, and she never spoke to him again—no, not to the day of her death. They lived at Fording—that’s the great hall over there,” he said to Westray, jerking his thumb towards the east—“for twenty years in separate wings, like you mi’d say each in a house to themselves. And then he fell out wi’ Mr. Fynes, his grandson, and turned him out of house and lands, though he couldn’t leave them anywhere else when he died. ’Tis Mr. Fynes as is the young lord now, and half his life he’s bin a wandrer in foreign parts, and isn’t come home yet. Maybe he never will come back. It’s like enough he’s got killed out there, or he’d be tied to answer parson’s letters. Wouldn’t he, Mr. Sharnall?” he said, turning abruptly to the organist with a wink, which was meant to retaliate for the slight that the Rector had put on his stories.
“Come, come; we’ve had enough of these tales,” said the Rector. “Your listeners are getting tired.”
“The man’s in love with his own voice,” he added in a lower tone, as he took Westray by the arm; “when he’s once set off there’s no stopping him. There are still a good many points which Sir George and I discussed, and on which I shall hope to give you our conclusions; but we shall have to finish our inspection to-morrow, for this talkative fellow has sadly interrupted us. It is a great pity the light is failing so fast just now; there is some good painted glass in this end window of the transept.”
Westray looked up and saw the great window at the end of the transept shimmering with a dull lustre; light only in comparison with the shadows that were falling inside