“Come, come!” Westray said in what is commonly supposed to be a soothing tone, “let us change this subject, or go to bed. I wonder how you will find the new position of your piano answer.”
The organist smiled.
“Do you know why I really put it like that?” he said. “It is because I am such a coward. I like to have my back against the wall, and then I know there can be no one behind me. There are many nights, when it gets late, that it is only with a great effort I can sit here. I grow so nervous that I should go to bed at once, only I say to myself, ‘Nick’—that’s what they used to call me at home, you know, when I was a boy—‘Nick, you’re not going to be beat; you’re not going to be scared out of your own room by ghosts, surely.’ And then I sit tight, and play on, but very often don’t think much of what I’m playing. It is a sad state for a man to get into, is it not?” And Westray could not traverse the statement.
“Even in the church,” Mr. Sharnall went on, “I don’t care to practise much in the evening by myself. It used to be all right when Cutlow was there to blow for me. He is a daft fellow, but still was some sort of company; but now the water-engine is put in, I feel lonely there, and don’t care to go as often as I used. Something made me tell Lord Blandamer how his water-engine contrived to make me frightened, and he said he should have to come up to the loft himself sometimes to keep me company.”
“Well, let me know the first evening you want to practise,” Westray said, “and I will come, too, and sit in the loft. Take care of yourself, and you will soon grow out of all these fancies, and laugh at them as much as I do.” And he feigned a smile. But it was late at night; he was high-strung and nervous himself, and the fact that Mr. Sharnall should have been brought to such a pitiable state of mental instability depressed him.
The report that the Bishop was going to lunch with Mr. Sharnall on the day of the Confirmation soon spread in Cullerne. Miss Joliffe had told Mr. Joliffe the pork-butcher, as her cousin, and Mr. Joliffe, as churchwarden, had told Canon Parkyn. It was the second time within a few weeks that a piece of important news had reached the Rector at secondhand. But on this occasion he experienced little of the chagrin that had possessed him when Lord Blandamer made the great offer to the restoration fund through Westray. He did not feel resentment against Mr. Sharnall; the affair was of too solemn an importance for any such personal and petty sentiments to find a place. Any act of any Bishop was vicariously an act of God, and to chafe at this dispensation would have been as out of place as to be incensed at a shipwreck or an earthquake. The fact of being selected as the entertainer of the Bishop of Carisbury invested Mr. Sharnall in the Rector’s eyes with a distinction which could not have been possibly attained by mere intellect or technical skill or devoted drudgery. The organist became ipso facto a person to be taken into account.
The Rectory had divined and discussed, and discussed and divined, how it was, could, would, should, have been that the Bishop could be lunching with Mr. Sharnall. Could it be that the Bishop had thought that Mr. Sharnall kept an eating-house, or that the Bishop took some special diet which only Mr. Sharnall knew how to prepare? Could it be that the Bishop had some idea of making Mr. Sharnall organist in his private chapel, for there was no vacancy in the Cathedral? Conjecture charged the blank wall of mystery full tilt, and retired broken from the assault. After talking of nothing else for many hours, Mrs. Parkyn declared that the matter had no interest at all for her.
“For my part, I cannot profess to understand such goings-on,” she said in that convincing and convicting tone which implies that the speaker knows far more than he cares to state, and that the solution of the mystery must in any case be discreditable to all concerned.
“I wonder, my dear,” the Rector said to his wife, “whether Mr. Sharnall has the means to entertain the Bishop properly.”
“Properly!” said Mrs. Parkyn—“properly! I think the whole proceeding entirely improper. Do you mean has Mr. Sharnall money enough to purchase a proper repast? I should say certainly not. Or has he proper plates or forks or spoons, or a proper room in which to eat? Of course he has not. Or do you mean can he get things properly cooked? Who is to do it? There is only feckless old Miss Joliffe and her stuck-up niece.”
The Canon was much perturbed by the vision of discomfort which his wife had called up.
“The Bishop ought to be spared as much as possible,” he said; “we ought to do all we can to save him annoyance. What do you think? Should we not put up with a little inconvenience, and ask Sharnall to bring the Bishop here, and lunch himself? He must know perfectly well that entertaining a Bishop in a lodging-house is an unheard-of thing, and he would do to make up the sixth instead of old Noot. We could easily tell Noot he was not wanted.”
“Sharnall is such a disreputable creature,” Mrs. Parkyn answered; “he is quite as likely as not to come tipsy; and, if he does not, he has no breeding or education, and would scarcely understand polite conversation.”
“You forget, my
