The Nebuly Coat/Chapter Eight

Miss Joliffe must have had a protracted conversation with Lord Blandamer. To Anastasia, waiting in the kitchen, it seemed as if her aunt would never come down. She devoted herself to "Northanger Abbey" with fierce resolution, but though her eyes followed the lines of type, she had no idea what she was reading, and found herself at last turning the pages so frequently and with so much rustling as to disturb her own reverie. Then she shut the book with a bang, got up from her chair, and paced the kitchen till her aunt came back.

Miss Joliffe was full of the visitor's affability.

"It is always the way with these really great people, my dear," she said with effusion. "I have always noticed that the nobility are condescending; they adapt themselves so entirely to their surroundings." Miss Joliffe fell into a common hyperbole in qualifying an isolated action as a habit. She had never before been brought face to face with a peer, yet she represented her first impression of Lord Blandamer's manner as if it were a mature judgment based upon long experience of those of his rank and position.

"I insisted on his using the presentation inkstand, and took away that shabby little black thing; and I could see at once that the silver one was far more like what he had been accustomed to use. He seemed to know something about us, and even asked if the young lady who had shown him in was my niece.  That was you; he meant you, Anastasia; he asked if it was you.  I think he must have met dear Martin somewhere, but I really was so agitated by such a very unexpected visit that I scarcely took in all he said.  Yet he was so careful all the time to put me at my ease that at last I ventured to ask him if he would take some light refreshment.  'My lord,' I said, 'may I be so bold as to offer your lordship a cup of tea?  It would be a great honour if you would partake of our humble hospitality.'  And what do you think he answered, my dear?  'Miss Joliffe'—and he had such a winning look—'there is nothing I should like better. I am very tired with walking about in the church, and have still some little time to wait, for I am going to London by the evening train.' Poor young man! (for Lord Blandamer was still young in Cullerne, which had only known his octogenarian predecessor) he is no doubt called to London on some public business—the House of Lords, or the Court, or something like that. I wish he would take as much care of himself as he seems to take for others. He looks so very tired, and a sad face too, Anastasia, and yet is most considerate. 'I should like a cup of tea very much'—those were his exact words—'but you must not trouble to come all the way upstairs again to bring it to me. Let me come down and take it with you.'

"'Forgive me, my lord,' was my answer, 'but I could not permit that. Our establishment is much too homely, and I shall feel it a privilege to wait on you, if you will kindly excuse my walking-clothes, as I have just come back from an afternoon meeting. My niece often wishes to relieve me, but I tell her my old legs are more active than her young ones even still.'"

Anastasia's cheeks were red, but she said nothing, and her aunt went on: "So I will take him some tea at once. You can make it, my dear, if you like, but put a great deal more in than we use ourselves.  The upper classes have no call to practise economy in such matters, and he is no doubt used to take his tea very strong.  I think Mr Sharnall's teapot is the best, and I will get out the silver sugar-tongs and one of the spoons with the 'J' on them."

As Miss Joliffe was taking up the tea, she met Westray in the hall. He had just come back from the church, and was not a little concerned at his landlady's greeting. She put down her tray, and, with a fateful gesture and an "Oh, Mr Westray, what do you think?" beckoned him aside into Mr Sharnall's room. His first impression was that some grave accident had happened, that the organist was dead, or that Anastasia Joliffe had sprained an ankle; and he was relieved to hear the true state of affairs. He waited a few minutes while Miss Joliffe took the visitor his tea, and then went upstairs himself.

Lord Blandamer rose.

"I must apologise," he said, "for making myself at home in your room; but I hope your landlady may have explained who I am, and how I come to take so great a liberty. I am naturally interested in Cullerne and all that concerns it, and hope ere long to get better acquainted with the place—and the people," he added as an after-thought. "At present I know disgracefully little about it, but that is due to my having been abroad for many years; I only came back a few months ago. But I need not bother you with all this; what I really wanted was to ask you if you would give me some idea of the scheme of restoration which it is proposed to undertake at the minster.  Until last week I had not heard that anything of the kind was in contemplation."

His tone was measured, and a clear, deep, voice gave weight and sincerity to his words. His clean-shaven face and olive complexion, his regular features and dark eyebrows, suggested a Spaniard to Westray as he spoke, and the impression was strengthened by the decorous and grave courtesy of his manner.

"I shall be delighted to explain anything I can," said the architect, and took down a bundle of plans and papers from a shelf.

"I fear I shall not be able to do much this evening," Lord Blandamer said; "for I have to catch the train to London in a short time; but, if you will allow me, I will take an early opportunity of coming over again. We might then, perhaps, go to the church together.  The building has a great fascination for me, not only on account of its own magnificence, but also from old associations.  When I was a boy, and sometimes a very unhappy boy, I used often to come over from Fording, and spend hours rambling about the minster.  Its winding staircases, its dark wall-passages, its mysterious screens and stalls, brought me romantic dreams, from which I think I have never entirely wakened.  I am told the building stands in need of extensive restoration, though to the outsider it looks much the same as ever.  It always had a dilapidated air."

Westray gave a short outline of what it was considered should ultimately be done, and of what it was proposed to attack for the present.

"You see, we have our work cut out for us," he said. "The transept roof is undoubtedly the most urgent matter, but there are lots of other things that cannot be left to themselves for long. I have grave doubts about the stability of the tower, though my Chief doesn't share them to anything like the same extent: and perhaps that is just as well, for we are hampered on every side by lack of funds.  They are going to have a bazaar next week to try to give the thing a lift, but a hundred bazaars would not produce half that is wanted."

"I gathered that there were difficulties of this kind," the visitor said reflectively. "As I came out of the church after service to-day I met the organist. He had no idea who I was, but gave his views very strongly as to Lord Blandamer's responsibilities for things in general, and for the organ in particular.  We are, I suppose, under some sort of moral obligation for the north transept, from having annexed it as a burying-place.  It used to be called, I fancy, the Blandamer Aisle."

"Yes, it is called so still," Westray answered. He was glad to see the turn the conversation had taken, and hoped that a deus ex machina had appeared. Lord Blandamer's next question was still more encouraging.

"At what do you estimate the cost of the transept repairs?"

Westray ran through his papers till he found a printed leaflet with a view of Cullerne Minster on the outside.

"Here are Sir George Farquhar's figures," he said. "This was a circular that was sent everywhere to invite subscriptions, but it scarcely paid the cost of printing. No one will give a penny to these things nowadays.  Here it is, you see—seven thousand eight hundred pounds for the north transept."

There was a little pause. Westray did not look up, being awkwardly conscious that the sum was larger than Lord Blandamer had anticipated, and fearing that such an abrupt disclosure might have damped the generosity of an intended contributor.

Lord Blandamer changed the subject.

"Who is the organist? I rather liked his manner, for all he took me so sharply, if impersonally, to task.  He seems a clever musician, but his instrument is in a shocking state."

"He is a very clever organist," Westray answered. It was evident that Lord Blandamer was in a subscribing frame of mind, and if his generosity did not extend to undertaking the cost of the transept, he might at least give something towards the organ. The architect tried to do his friend Mr Sharnall a service. "He is a very clever organist," he repeated; "his name is Sharnall, and he lodges in this house. Shall I call him?  Would you like to ask him about the organ?"

"Oh no, not now; I have so little time; another day we can have a chat. Surely a very little money—comparatively little money, I mean—would put the organ in proper repair. Did they never approach my grandfather, the late Lord Blandamer, on the question of funds for these restorations?"

Westray's hopes of a contribution were again dashed, and he felt a little contemptuous at such evasions. They came with an ill grace after Lord Blandamer's needlessly affectionate panegyric of the church.

"Yes," he said; "Canon Parkyn, the Rector here, wrote to the late Lord Blandamer begging for a subscription to the restoration fund for the church, but never got any answer."

Westray flung something like a sneer into his tone, and was already sorry for his ungracious words before he had finished speaking. But the other seemed to take no offence, where some would have been offended.

"Ah," he said, "my grandfather was no doubt a very sad old man indeed. I must go now, or I shall miss my train. You shall introduce me to Mr Sharnall the next time I come to Cullerne; I have your promise, remember, to take me over the church.  Is it not so?"

"Yes—oh yes, certainly," Westray said, though with less cordiality perhaps than he had used on the previous occasion. He was disappointed that Lord Blandamer had promised no subscription, and accompanied him to the foot of the stairs with much the same feelings as a shop-assistant entertains for the lady who, having turned over goods for half an hour, retreats with the promise that she will consider the matter and call again.

Miss Joliffe had been waiting on the kitchen stairs, and so was able to meet Lord Blandamer in the hall quite accidentally. She showed him out of the front-door with renewed professions of respect, for she knew nothing of his niggardly evasions of a subscription, and in her eyes a lord was still a lord. He added the comble to all his graces and courtesies by shaking her hand as he left the house, and expressing a hope that she would be so kind as to give him another cup of tea, the very next time he was in Cullerne.

The light was failing as Lord Blandamer descended the flight of steps outside the door of Bellevue Lodge. The evening must have closed in earlier than usual, for very soon after the visitor had gone upstairs Anastasia found it too dark to read in the kitchen; so she took her book, and sat in the window-seat of Mr Sharnall's room.

It was a favourite resort of hers, both when Mr Sharnall was out, and also when he was at home; for he had known her from childhood, and liked to watch the graceful girlish form as she read quietly while he worked at his music. The deep window-seat was panelled in painted deal, and along the side of it hung a faded cushion, which could be turned over on to the sill when the sash was thrown up, so as to form a rest for the arms of anyone who desired to look out on a summer evening.

The window was still open, though it was dusk; but Anastasia's head, which just appeared above the sill, was screened from observation by a low blind. This blind was formed of a number of little green wooden slats, faded and blistered by the suns of many summers, and so arranged that, by the turning of a brass, urn-shaped knob, they could be made to open and afford a prospect of the outer world to anyone sitting inside.

It had been for some time too dark for Anastasia to read, but she still sat in the window-seat; and as she heard Lord Blandamer come down the stairs, she turned the brass urn so as to command a view of the street. She felt herself blushing in the dusk, at the reiterated and voluminous compliments which her aunt was paying in the hall. She blushed because Westray's tone was too off-handed and easy towards so important a personage to please her critical mood; and then she blushed again at her own folly in blushing. The front-door shut at last, and the gaslight fell on Lord Blandamer's active figure and straight, square shoulders as he went down the steps. Three thousand years before, another maiden had looked between the doorpost and the door, at the straight broad back of another great stranger as he left her father's palace; but Anastasia was more fortunate than Nausicaa, for there is no record that Ulysses cast any backward glance as he walked down to the Phaeacian ship, and Lord Blandamer did turn and look back.

He turned and looked back; he seemed to Anastasia to look between the little blistered slats into her very eyes. Of course, he could not have guessed that a very foolish girl, the niece of a very foolish landlady in a very commonplace lodging-house, in a very commonplace country town, was watching him behind a shutter; but he turned and looked, and Anastasia stayed for half an hour after he had gone, thinking of the hard and clean-cut face that she had seen for an instant in the flickering gaslight.

It was a hard face, and as she sat in the dark with closed eyes, and saw that face again and again in her mind, she knew that it was hard. It was hard—it was almost cruel. No, it was not cruel, but only recklessly resolved, with a resolution that would not swerve from cruelty, if cruelty were needed to accomplish its purpose. Thus she reasoned in the approved manner of fiction. She knew that such reasonings were demanded of heroines. A heroine must be sadly unworthy of her lofty role if she could not with a glance unmask even the most enigmatic countenance, and trace the passions writ in it, clearly as a page of "Reading without Tears." And was she, Anastasia, to fall short in such a simple craft? No, she had measured the man's face in a moment; it was resolved, even to cruelty. It was hard, but ah! how handsome! and she remembered how the grey eyes had met hers and blinded them with power, when she first saw him on the doorstep. Wondrous musings, wondrous thought-reading, by a countrified young lady in her teens; but is it not out of the mouths of babes and sucklings that strength has been eternally ordained?

She was awakened from her reverie by the door being flung open, and she leapt from her perch as Mr Sharnall entered the room.

"Heyday! heyday!" he said, "what have we here? Fire out, and window open; missy dreaming of Sir Arthur Bedevere, and catching a cold—a very poetic cold in the head."

His words jarred on her mood like the sharpening of a slate-pencil. She said nothing, but brushed by him, shut the door behind her, and left him muttering in the dark.

The excitement of Lord Blandamer's visit had overtaxed Miss Joliffe. She took the gentlemen their supper—and Mr Westray was supping in Mr Sharnall's room that evening—and assured Anastasia that she was not in the least tired. But ere long she was forced to give up this pretence, and to take refuge in a certain high-backed chair with ears, which stood in a corner of the kitchen, and was only brought into use in illness or other emergency. The bell rang for supper to be taken away, but Miss Joliffe was fast asleep, and did not hear it. Anastasia was not allowed to "wait" under ordinary circumstances, but her aunt must not be disturbed when she was so tired, and she took the tray herself and went upstairs.

"He is a striking-looking man enough," Westray was saying as she entered the room; "but I must say he did not impress me favourably in other respects. He spoke too enthusiastically about the church.  It would have sat on him with a very good grace if he had afterwards come down with five hundred pounds, but ecstasies are out of place when a man won't give a halfpenny to turn them into reality."

"He is a chip of the old block," said the organist.

"That's a saw about here. Well, I rubbed it into him this afternoon, and all the harder because I hadn't the least idea who he was."

There was a fierce colour in Anastasia's cheeks as she packed the dirty plates and supper débris into the tray, and a fiercer feeling in her heart. She tried hard to conceal her confusion, and grew more confused in the effort. The organist watched her closely, without ever turning his eyes in her direction. He was a cunning little man, and before the table was cleared had guessed who was the hero of those dreams, from which he had roused her an hour earlier.

Westray waved away with his hand a puff of smoke which drifted into his face from Mr Sharnall's pipe.

"He asked me whether anyone had ever approached the old lord about the restoration, and I said the Rector had written, and never got an answer."

"It wasn't to the old lord he wrote," Mr Sharnall cut in; "it was to this very man. Didn't you know it was to this very man?  No one ever thought it worth ink and paper to write to old Blandamer.  I was the only one, fool enough to do that.  I had an appeal for the organ printed once upon a time, and sent him a copy, and asked him to head the list. After a bit he sent me a cheque for ten shillings and sixpence; and then I wrote and thanked him, and said it would do very nicely to put a new leg on the organ-stool if one should ever break.  But he had the last word, for when I went to the bank to cash the cheque, I found it stopped."

Westray laughed with a thin and tinkling merriment that irritated Anastasia more than an honest guffaw.

"When he stuck at seven thousand eight hundred pounds for the church, I tried to give you a helping hand with the organ. I told him you lived in the house; would he not like to see you?  'Oh no, not now,' he said; 'some other day.'"

"He is a chip of the old block," the organist said again bitterly. "Gather figs of thistles, if you will, but don't expect money from Blandamers."

Anastasia's thumb went into the curry as she lifted the dish, but she did not notice it. She was only eager to get away, to place herself outside the reach of these slanderous tongues, to hide herself where she could unburden her heart of its bitterness. Mr Sharnall fired one more shaft at her as she left the room.

"He takes after his grandfather in other ways besides close-fistedness. The old man had a bad enough name with women, and this man has a worse. They are a poor lot—lock, stock, and barrel."

Lord Blandamer had certainly been unhappy in the impression which he created at Bellevue Lodge; a young lady had diagnosed his countenance as hard and cruel, an architect had detected niggardliness in his disposition, and an organist was resolved to regard him at all hazards as a personal foe. It was fortunate indeed for his peace of mind that he was completely unaware of this, but, then, he might not perhaps have troubled much even if he had known all about it. The only person who had a good word for him was Miss Euphemia Joliffe. She woke up flushed, but refreshed, after her nap, and found the supper-things washed and put away in their places.

"My dear, my dear," she said deprecatingly, "I am afraid I have been asleep, and left all the work to you. You should not have done this, Anastasia.  You ought to have awakened me." The flesh was weak, and she was forced to hold her hand before her mouth for a moment to conceal a yawn; but her mind reverted instinctively to the great doings of the day, and she said with serene reflection: "A very remarkable man, so dignified and yet so affable, and very handsome too, my dear."