The Nebuly Coat

wife and daughters, piled up on the steps of the shop, and craning their necks towards the marketplace. The postmaster and his clerk and two letter-carriers had come out from the post-office. All the young ladies and young gentlemen from Rose and Storey’s establishment were herded in front of their great glittering shopwindow, and among them shone the fair curls of Mr. Storey, the junior partner, himself. A little lower down was a group of masons and men employed on the restorations, and near them Clerk Janaway leant on his stick.

Many of these people Lord Blandamer knew well by sight, and there was beside a great throng of common folk, but none took any notice of him.

There was something very strange about the crowd. Everyone was looking towards the marketplace, and everyone’s face was upturned as if they were watching a flight of birds. The square was empty, and no one attempted to advance further into it; nay, most stood in an alert attitude, as if prepared to run the other way. Yet all remained spellbound, looking up, with their heads turned towards the marketplace, over which watched the minster church. There was no shouting, nor laughter, nor chatter; only the agitated murmur of a multitude of people speaking under their breath.

The single person that moved was a wagoner. He was trying to get his team and cart up the street, away from the marketplace, but made slow progress, for the crowd was too absorbed to give him room. Lord Blandamer spoke to the man, and asked him what was happening. The wagoner stared for a moment as if dazed; then recognised his questioner, and said quickly:

“Don’t go on, my lord! For God’s sake, don’t go on; the tower’s coming down.”

Then the spell that bound all the others fell on Lord Blandamer too. His eyes were drawn by an awful attraction to the great tower that watched over the marketplace. The buttresses with their broad set-offs, the double belfry windows with their pierced screens and stately Perpendicular tracery, the open battlemented parapet, and clustered groups of soaring pinnacles, shone pink and mellow in the evening sun. They were as fair and wonderful as on that day when Abbot Vinnicomb first looked upon his finished work, and praised God that it was good.

But on this still autumn evening there was something terribly amiss with the tower, in spite of all brave appearances. The jackdaws knew it, and whirled in a mad chattering cloud round their old home, with wings flashing and changing in the low sunlight. And on the west side, the side nearest the marketplace, there oozed out from a hundred joints a thin white dust that fell down into the churchyard like the spray of some lofty Swiss cascade. It was the very death-sweat of a giant in his agony, the mortar that was being ground out in powder from the courses of collapsing masonry. To Lord Blandamer it seemed like the sand running through an hourglass.

Then the crowd gave a groan like a single man. One of the gargoyles at the corner, under the parapet, a demon figure that had jutted grinning over the churchyard for three centuries, broke loose and fell crashing on to the gravestones below. There was silence for a minute, and then the murmurings of the onlookers began again. Everyone spoke in short, breathless sentences, as though they feared the final crash might come before they could finish. Churchwarden Joliffe, with pauses of expectation, muttered about a “judgment in our midst.” The Rector, in Joliffe’s pauses, seemed trying to confute him by some reference to “those thirteen upon whom the tower of Siloam fell and slew them.” An old charwoman whom Miss Joliffe sometimes employed wrung her hands with an “Ah! poor dear⁠—poor dear!” The Catholic priest was reciting something in a low tone, and crossing himself at intervals. Lord Blandamer, who stood near, caught a word or two of the commendatory prayer for the dying, the “Proficiscere,” and “liliata rutilantium,” that showed how Abbot Vinnicomb’s tower lived in the hearts of those that abode under its shadow.

And all the while the white dust kept pouring out of the side of the wounded fabric; the sands of the hourglass were running down apace.

The foreman of the masons saw Lord Blandamer, and made his way to him.

“Last night’s gale did it, my lord,” he said; “we knew ’twas touch and go when we came this morning. Mr. Westray’s been up the tower since midday to see if there was anything that could be done, but twenty minutes ago he came sharp into the belfry and called to us, ‘Get out of it, lads⁠—get out quick for your lives; it’s all over now.’ It’s widening out at bottom; you can see how the base wall’s moved and forced up the graves on the north side.” And he pointed to a shapeless heap of turf and gravestones and churchyard mould against the base of the tower.

“Where is Mr. Westray?” Lord Blandamer said. “Ask him to speak to me for a minute.”

He looked round about for the architect; he wondered now that he had not seen him among the crowd. The people standing near had listened to Lord Blandamer’s words. They of Cullerne looked on the master of Fording as being almost omnipotent. If he could not command the tower, like Joshua’s sun in Ajalon, to stand still forthwith and not fall down, yet he had no doubt some sage scheme to suggest to the architect whereby the great disaster might be averted. Where was the architect? they questioned impatiently. Why was he not at hand when Lord Blandamer wanted him? Where was he? And in a moment Westray’s name was on all lips.

And just then was heard a voice from the tower, calling out through the louvres of the belfry windows, very clear and distinct for all it was so high up, and for all the chatter of the jackdaws. It was Westray’s