She looked at him angrily.
“How do I come to be here? How do you come to be here? If I had a little training, I should sing better, and if I had your training, Mr. Sharnall”—and she brought out his name with a sneering emphasis—“I should not be here at all, drinking myself silly in a place like this.”
She got up, and went back to the old fiddler, but her words had a sobering influence on the organist, and cut him to the quick. So all his good resolutions had vanished. His promise to the Bishop was broken; the Bishop would be back again on Monday, and find him as bad as ever—would find him worse; for the devil had returned, and was making riot in the garnished house. He turned to pay his reckoning, but his half-crown had gone to the Creole; he had no money, he was forced to explain to the landlord, to humiliate himself, to tell his name and address. The man grumbled and made demur. Gentlemen who drank in good company, he said, should be prepared to pay their shot like gentlemen. Mr. Sharnall had drunk enough to make it a serious thing for a poor man not to get paid. Mr. Sharnall’s story might be true, but it was a funny thing for an organist to come and drink at the Merrymouth, and have no money in his pocket. It had stopped raining; he could leave his overcoat as a pledge of good faith, and come back and fetch it later. So Mr. Sharnall was constrained to leave this part of his equipment, and was severed from a well-worn overcoat, which had been the companion of years. He smiled sadly to himself as he turned at the open door, and saw his coat still hang dripping on the peg. If it were put up to auction, would it ever fetch enough to pay for what he had drunk?
It was true that it had stopped raining, and though the sky was still overcast, there was a lightness diffused behind the clouds that spoke of a rising moon. What should he do? Whither should he turn? He could not go back to the Hand of God; there were some there who did not want him—whom he did not want. Westray would not be home, or, if he were, Westray would know that he had been drinking; he could not bear that they should see that he had been drinking again.
And then there came into his mind another thought: he would go to the church, the water-engine should blow for him, and he would play himself sober. Stay, should he go to the church—the great church of Saint Sepulchre alone? Would he be alone there? If he thought that he would be alone, he would feel more secure; but might there not be someone else there, or something else? He gave a little shiver, but the drink was in his veins; he laughed pot-valiantly, and turned up an alley towards the centre tower, that loomed dark in the wet, misty whiteness of the cloud screened moon.
XIV
Westray returned to Cullerne by the evening train. It was near ten o’clock, and he was finishing his supper, when someone tapped at the door, and Miss Euphemia Joliffe came in.
“I beg your pardon for interrupting you, sir,” she said; “I am a little anxious about Mr. Sharnall. He was not in at teatime, and has not come back since. I thought you might know perhaps where he was. It is years since he has been out so late in the evening.”
“I haven’t the least idea where he is,” Westray said rather testily, for he was tired with a long day’s work. “I suppose he has gone out somewhere to supper.”
“No one ever asks Mr. Sharnall out. I do not think he can be gone out to supper.”
“Oh, well, I dare say he will turn up in due course; let me hear before you go to bed if he has come back;” and he poured himself out another cup of tea, for he was one of those thin-blooded and old-womanly men who elevate the drinking of tea instead of other liquids into a special merit. “He could not understand,” he said, “why everybody did not drink tea. It was so much more refreshing—one could work so much better after drinking tea.”
He turned to some calculations for the section of a tie-rod, with which Sir George Farquhar had at last consented to strengthen the south side of the tower, and did not notice how time passed till there came another irritating tap, and his landlady reappeared.
“It is nearly twelve o’clock,” she said, “and we have seen nothing of Mr. Sharnall. I am so alarmed! I am sure I am very sorry to trouble you, Mr. Westray, but my niece and I are so alarmed.”
“I don’t quite see what I am to do,” Westray said, looking up. “Could he have gone out with Lord Blandamer? Do you think Lord Blandamer could have asked him to Fording?”
“Lord Blandamer was here this afternoon,” Miss Joliffe answered, “but he never saw Mr. Sharnall, because Mr. Sharnall was not at home.”
“Oh, Lord Blandamer was here, was he?” asked Westray. “Did he leave no message for me?”
“He asked if you were in, but he left no message for you. He drank a cup of tea with us. I think he came in merely as a friendly visitor,” Miss Joliffe said with some dignity. “I think he came in to drink a cup of tea with me. I was unfortunately at the Dorcas meeting when he first arrived, but on my return he drank tea with me.”
“It is curious; he seems generally to come on Saturday afternoons,” said Westray. “Are you always at the Dorcas meeting on Saturday afternoons?”
“Yes,” Miss Joliffe said, “I am always at the meeting on Saturday afternoons.”
There was a minute’s pause—Westray
