“Don’t distress yourself too much,” the organist said, having at last spied a gap in the serried ranks of words; “I have found out what Bishops eat; it is all in a little book. We must give him cold lamb—cold ribs of lamb—and mint sauce, boiled potatoes, and after that Stilton cheese.”
“Stilton?” Miss Joliffe asked with some trepidation. “I am afraid it will be very expensive.”
As a drowning man in one moment passes in review the events of a lifetime, so her mind took an instantaneous conspectus of all cheeses that had ever stood in the cheese-cradle in the palmy days of Wydcombe, when hams and plum-puddings hung in bags from the rafters, when there was cream in the dairy and beer in the cellar. Blue Vinny, little Gloucesters, double Besants, even sometimes a cream-cheese with rushes on the bottom, but Stilton never!
“I am afraid it is a very expensive cheese; I do not think anyone in Cullerne keeps it.”
“It is a pity,” Mr. Sharnall said; “but we cannot help ourselves, for Bishops must have Stilton for lunch; the book says so. You must ask Mr. Custance to get you a piece, and I will tell you later how it is to be cut, for there are rules about that too.”
He laughed to himself with a queer little chuckle. Cold lamb and mint sauce, with a piece of Stilton afterwards—they would have an Oxford lunch; they would be young again, and undefiled.
The stimulus that the Bishop’s letter had brought Mr. Sharnall soon wore off. He was a man of moods, and in his nervous temperament depression walked close at the heels of exaltation. Westray felt sure in those days that followed that his friend was drinking to excess, and feared something more serious than a mere nervous breakdown, from the agitation and strangeness that he could not fail to observe in the organist’s manner.
The door of the architect’s room opened one night, as he sat late over his work, and Mr. Sharnall entered. His face was pale, and there was a startled, wide-open look in his eyes that Westray did not like.
“I wish you would come down to my room for a minute,” the organist said; “I want to change the place of my piano, and can’t move it by myself.”
“Isn’t it rather late tonight?” Westray said, pulling at his watch, while the deep and slow melodious chimes of Saint Sepulchre told the dreaming town and the silent sea-marshes that it lacked but a quarter of an hour to midnight. “Wouldn’t it be better to do it tomorrow morning?”
“Couldn’t you come down tonight?” the organist asked; “it wouldn’t take you a minute.”
Westray caught the disappointment in the tone.
“Very well,” he said, putting his drawing-board aside. “I’ve worked at this quite long enough; let us shift your piano.”
They went down to the ground-floor.
“I want to turn the piano right-about-face,” the organist said, “with its back to the room and the keyboard to the wall—the keyboard quite close to the wall, with just room for me to sit.”
“It seems a curious arrangement,” Westray criticised; “is it better acoustically?”
“Oh, I don’t know; but, if I want to rest a bit, I can put my back against the wall, you see.”
The change was soon accomplished, and they sat down for a moment before the fire.
“You keep a good fire,” Westray said, “considering it is bedtime.” And, indeed, the coals were piled high, and burning fiercely.
The organist gave them a poke, and looked round as if to make sure that they were alone.
“You’ll think me a fool,” he said; “and I am. You’ll think I’ve been drinking, and I have. You’ll think I’m drunk, but I’m not. Listen to me: I’m not drunk; I’m only a coward. Do you remember the very first night you and I walked home to this house together? Do you remember the darkness and the driving rain, and how scared I was when we passed the Old Bonding-house? Well, it was beginning then, but it’s much worse now. I had a horrible idea even then that there was something always following me—following me close. I didn’t know what it was—I only knew there was something close behind me.”
His manner and appearance alarmed Westray. The organist’s face was very pale, and a curious raising of the eyelids, which showed the whites of the eyes above the pupils, gave him the staring appearance of one confronted suddenly with some ghastly spectacle. Westray remembered that the hallucination of pursuant enemies is one of the most common symptoms of incipient madness, and put his hand gently on the organist’s arm.
“Don’t excite yourself,” he said; “this is all nonsense. Don’t get excited so late at night.”
Mr. Sharnall brushed the hand aside.
“I only used to have that feeling when I was out of doors, but now I have it often indoors—even in this very room. Before I never knew what it was following me—I only knew it was something. But now I know what it is: it is a man—a man with a hammer. Don’t laugh. You don’t want to laugh; you only laugh because you think it will quiet me, but it won’t. I think it is a man with a hammer. I have never seen his face yet, but I shall some day. Only I know it is an evil face—not hideous, like
