The Nine Tailors (4 page)

“We shall hope to put up a new tablet after tonight,” said the Rector’s voice in Wimsey’s ear.

“I only hope I may do nothing to prevent it,” said Wimsey. “I see you have the old regulations for your ringers. Ah! ‘Keep stroak of time and goe not out, Or elles you forfeit out of doubt For every fault a Jugg of beer.’ It doesn’t say how big a jug, but there is something about the double g that suggests size and potency. ‘If a bell you overthrow ’Twill cost you sixpence ere you goe.’ That’s cheap, considering the damage it does. On the other hand, sixpence for every swear or curse is rather on the dear side, I think, don’t you, padre? Where’s this bell of mine?”

“Here, my lord.” Jack Godfrey had unhitched the rope of the second bell, and let down to its full length the portion of rope below the sallie.

“When you’ve got her raised,” he said, “we’ll fix them tuckings proper. Unless you’d like me to raise her for you?”

“Not on your life,” said Wimsey. “It’s a poor ringer that can’t raise his own bell.” He grasped the rope and pulled it gently downwards, gathering the slack in his left hand. Softly, tremulously, high overhead in the tower, Sabaoth began to speak, and her sisters after her as the ringers stood to their ropes. “Tin-tin-tin,” cried Gaude in her silvery treble; “tan-tan,” answered Sabaoth; “din-din-din,” “dan-dan-dan,” said John and Jericho, climbing to their places; “bim, bam, bim, bam,” Jubilee and Dimity followed; “bom,” said Batty Thomas; and Tailor Paul, majestically lifting up her great bronze mouth, bellowed “bo, bo, bo,” as the ropes hauled upon the wheels.

Wimsey brought his bell competently up and set her at backstroke while the tuckings were finally adjusted, after which, at the Rector’s suggestion, a few rounds were rung to let him “get the feel of her.”

“You can leave your bells up, boys,” said Mr. Hezekiah Lavender, graciously, when this last rehearsal was concluded, “but don’t you go a-taking that for what they calls a preceedent, Wally Pratt. And listen here, all on you; don’t make no mistake. You comes here, sharp at the quarter to eleven, see—and you rings same as usual for service, and after Rector has finished his sermon, you comes up here again quiet and decent and takes your places. Then, while they’re a-singin’ their ’ymn, I rings the nine tailors and the ’alf-minute passing-strokes for Old Year, see. Then you takes your ropes in hand and waits for the clock to strike. When she’s finished striking, I says ‘Go!’ and mind as you’re ready to go. And when Rector’s done down below, he’s promised to come up and give a ’and from time to time to any man as needs a rest, and I’m sure it’s very kind of him. And I take leave to suppose, Alt Donnington, as you won’t forget the usual.”

“Not me,” said Mr. Donnington. “Well, so long, boys.”

The lantern led the way from the ringing-chamber, and a great shuffling of feet followed it.

“And now,” said the Rector, “and now. Lord Peter, you will like to come and see—Dear me!” he ejaculated, as they groped upon the dark spiral stair, “where in the world is Jack Godfrey? Jack! He has gone on down with the others. Ah, well, poor fellow, no doubt he wants to get home to his supper. We must not be selfish. Unfortunately he has the key of the bell-chamber, and without it we cannot conduct our researches. However, you will see much better to-morrow. Yes, Joe, yes—we are coming. Do be careful of these stairs—they are very much worn, especially on the inside. Here we are, safe and sound. Excellent! Now, before we go. Lord Peter, I should so much like to show you—”

The clock in the tower chimed the three-quarters. “Bless my heart!” cried the Rector, conscience-stricken, “and dinner was to be at half-past! My wife—we must wait till to-night. You will get a general idea of the majesty and beauty of our church if you attend the service, though there are many most interesting details that a visitor is almost bound to miss if they are not pointed out to him, The font, for instance—Jack! bring the lantern here a moment—there is one point about our font which is most uncommon, and I should like to show it to you. Jack!”

But Jack, unaccountably deaf, was jingling the church keys in the porch, and the Rector, sighing a little, accepted defeat.

“I fear it is true,” he said, as he trotted down the path, “that I am inclined to lose count of time.”

“Perhaps,” replied Wimsey politely, “the being continually in and about this church brings eternity too close.”

“Very true,” said the Rector, “very true—though there are mementoes enough to mark the passage of time. Remind me to-morrow to show you the tomb of Nathaniel Perkins—one of our local worthies and a great sportsman. He refereed once for the great Tom Sayers, and was a notable figure at all the ‘mills’ for miles around, and when he died—Here we are at home. I will tell you later about Nathaniel Perkins. Well, my dear, we’re back at last! Not so very late after all. Come along, come along. You must make a good dinner, Lord Peter, to fit you for your exertions. What have we here? Stewed oxtail? Excellent! Most sustaining! I trust, Lord Peter, you can eat stewed oxtail. For what we are about to receive...”

THE BELLS IN THEIR COURSES

When mirth and pleasure is on the wing we ring;
At the departure of a soul we toll.

Ringers’ Rules at Southill, Bedfordshire.

After dinner, Mrs. Venables resolutely asserted her authority. She sent Lord Peter up to his room, regardless of the Rector, who was helplessly hunting through a set of untidy bookshelves in search of the Rev. Christopher Woollcott’s
History of the Bells of Fenchurch St. Paul.

“I can’t imagine what has become of it,” said the Rector: “I fear I’m sadly unmethodical. But perhaps you would like to look at this—a trifling contribution of my own to campanological lore. I know, my dear, I know—I must not detain Lord Peter—it is thoughtless of me.”

“You must get some rest yourself, Theodore.”

“Yes, yes, my dear. In a moment. I was only—”

Wimsey saw that the one way to quiet the Rector was to desert him without compunction. He retired, accordingly, and was captured at the head of the stairs by Bunter, who tucked him firmly up beneath the eiderdown with a hot-water bottle and shut the door upon him.

A roaring fire burned in the grate. Wimsey drew the lamp closer to him, opened the little brochure presented to him by the Rector, and studied the title-page:

An Inquiry into
the Mathematical Theory
of the
IN AND OUT OF COURSE
together with Directions for
Calling Bells into Rounds
from any position
in all the recognised Methods
upon a
New and Scientific Principle
by
Theodore Venables, M.A.
Rector of Fenchurch St. Paul
sometime Scholar of Caius Coll: Camb:
author of
“Change-ringing for Country Churches,”
“Fifty Short Touches of Grandsire Triples,”
etc.
“God is gone up with a merry noise.”
MCMII

The letter-press was of a soporific tendency; so was the stewed oxtail; the room was warm; the day had been a tiring one; the lines swam before Lord Peter’s eyes. He nodded; a coal tinkled from the grate; he roused himself with a jerk and read: “... if the 5th is in course after the 7th (says Shipway), and 7th after the 6th, they are right, when the small bells, 2, 3, 4, are brought as directed in the preceding peals; but if 6, 7 are together without the 5th, call the 5th into the hunt....”

Lord Peter Wimsey nodded away into dreams.

* * *

He was roused by the pealing of bells.

For a moment, memory eluded him—then he flung the eiderdown aside and sat up, ruffled and reproachful, to encounter the calm gaze of Bunter.

“Good God! I’ve been asleep! Why didn’t you call me? They’ve begun without me.”

“Mrs. Venables gave orders, my lord, that you were not to be disturbed until half-past eleven, and the reverend gentleman instructed me to say, my lord, that they would content themselves with ringing six bells as a preliminary to the service.”

“What time is it now?”

“Nearly five minutes to eleven, my lord.”

As he spoke, the pealing ceased, and Jubilee began to ring the five-minute bell.

“Dash it all!” said Wimsey. “This will never do. Must go and hear the old boy’s sermon. Give me a hairbrush. Is it still snowing?”

“Harder than ever, my lord.”

Wimsey made a hasty toilet and ran downstairs, Bunter following him decorously. They let themselves out by the front door, and, guided by Bunter’s electric torch, made their way through the shrubbery and across the road to the church, entering just as the organ boomed out its final notes. Choir and parson were in their places and Wimsey, blinking in the yellow lamplight, at length discovered his seven fellow-ringers seated on a row of chairs beneath the tower. He picked his way cautiously over the cocoa-nut matting towards them, while Bunter, who had apparently acquired all the necessary information beforehand, made his unperturbed way to a pew in the north aisle and sat down beside Emily from the Rectory. Old Hezekiah Lavender greeted Wimsey with a welcoming chuckle and thrust a prayer-book under his nose as he knelt down to pray.

“Dearly beloved brethren—”

Wimsey scrambled to his feet and looked round. At the first glance he felt himself sobered and awestricken by the noble proportions of the church, in whose vast spaces the congregation—though a good one for so small a parish in the dead of a winter’s night—seemed almost lost. The wide nave and shadowy aisles, the lofty span of the chancel arch—crossed, though not obscured, by the delicate fan-tracery and crenellated moulding of the screen—the intimate and cloistered loveliness of the chancel, with its pointed arcading, graceful ribbed vault and five narrow east lancets, led his attention on and focused it first upon the remote glow of the sanctuary. Then his gaze, returning to the nave, followed the strong yet slender shafting that sprang fountain-like from floor to foliated column-head, spraying into the light, wide arches that carried the clerestory. And there, mounting to the steep pitch of the roof, his eyes were held entranced with wonder and delight. Incredibly aloof, flinging back the light in a dusky shimmer of bright hair and gilded outspread wings, soared the ranked angels, cherubim and seraphim, choir over choir, from corbel and hammerbeam floating face to face uplifted.

“My God!” muttered Wimsey, not without reverence. And he softly repeated to himself: “He rode upon the cherubims and did fly; He came flying upon the wings of the wind.”

Mr. Hezekiah Lavender poked his new colleague sharply in the ribs, and Wimsey became aware that the congregation had settled down to the General Confession, leaving him alone and agape upon his feet. Hurriedly he turned the leaves of his prayer-book and applied himself to making the proper responses. Mr. Lavender, who had obviously decided that he was either a half-wit or a heathen, assisted him by finding the Psalms for him and by bawling every verse very loudly in his ear.

“... Praise Him in the cymbals and dances: praise Him upon the strings and pipe.”

The shrill voices of the surpliced choir mounted to the roof, and seemed to find their echo in the golden mouths of the angels.

“Praise Him upon the well-tuned cymbals; praise Him upon the loud cymbals.

“Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord.”

* * *

The time wore on towards midnight. The Rector, advancing to the chancel steps, delivered, in his mild and scholarly voice, a simple and moving little address, in which he spoke of praising God, not only upon the strings and pipe, but upon the beautiful bells of their beloved church, and alluded, in his gently pious way, to the presence of the passing stranger—“please do not turn round to stare at him; that would be neither courteous nor reverent”—who had been sent “by what men call chance” to assist in this work of devotion. Lord Peter blushed, the Rector pronounced the Benediction, the organ played the opening bars of a hymn and Hezekiah Lavender exclaimed sonorously: “Now, lads!” The ringers, with much subdued shuffling, extricated themselves from their chairs and wound their way up the belfry stair. Coats were pulled off and hung on nails in the ringing-chamber, and Wimsey, observing on a bench near the door an enormous brown jug and nine pewter tankards, understood, with pleasure, that the landlord of the Red Cow had, indeed, provided “the usual” for the refreshment of the ringers. The eight men advanced to their stations, and Hezekiah consulted his watch.

“Time!” he said.

He spat upon his hands, grasped the sallie of Tailor Paul, and gently swung the great bell over the balance. Toll-toll-toll; and a pause; toll-toll-toll; and a pause; toll-toll-toll; the nine tailors, or teller-strokes, that mark the passing of a man. The year is dead; toll him out with twelve strokes more, one for every passing month. Then silence. Then, from the faint, sweet tubular chimes of the clock overhead, the four quarters and the twelve strokes of midnight. The ringers grasped their ropes.

“Go!”

The bells gave tongue: Gaude, Sabaoth, John, Jericho, Jubilee, Dimity, Batty Thomas and Tailor Paul, rioting and exulting high up in the dark tower, wide mouths rising and falling, brazen tongues clamouring, huge wheels turning to the dance of the leaping ropes. Tin tan din dan bim bam bom bo—tan tin din dan bam bim bo bom—tin tan dan din him bam born bo—tan tin dan din bam him bo bom—tan dan tin bam din bo bim bom—every bell in her place striking tuneably, hunting up, hunting down, dodging, snapping, laying her blows behind, making her thirds and fourths, working down to lead the dance again. Out over the flat, white wastes of fen, over the spear-straight, steel-dark dykes and the wind-bent, groaning poplar trees, bursting from the snow-choked louvres of the belfry, whirled away southward and westward in gusty blasts of clamour to the sleeping counties went the music of the bells—little Gaude, silver Sabaoth, strong John and Jericho, glad Jubilee, sweet Dimity and old Batty Thomas, with great Tailor Paul bawling and striding like a giant in the midst of them. Up and down went the shadows of the ringers upon the walls, up and down went the scarlet sallies flickering roofwards and floorwards, and up and down, hunting in their courses, went the bells of Fenchurch St. Paul.