any one at home?” said a high-pitched, harsh voice, as the door was quietly opened, and a little yellow-looking Frenchman entered, a tasselled cane in one hand, a cigarette being held between the fingers of the other, but only to be changed to the hand which held the cane, that its owner might raise the pinched hat worn on one side of his head, and salute gravely the two occupants of the room.
“Aha! the good-day to you bose. The good Monsieur Pellet is well? and you, my dear child, you do bloom again like the flowers.”
Patty smiled as she held out her hand; the little Frenchman gravely raising it to his lips, and then crossing to where Jared had stood, looking ten years older, till, reseating himself at his bench, he began to make the metal tongue vibrate furiously, sending a very storm of wind through it, so rapidly he worked his foot; now making the note too sharp, now too flat, and taking twice as long as usual to complete his task.
“No, no, mon ami; he is too sharps – now too flats again. Aha, it is bad!” exclaimed the visitor, dropping cane and cigarette to thrust both fingers into his ears as Jared brought forth a most atrocious shriek from the tortured tongue.
“My ear’s gone completely, I believe,” exclaimed Jared, looking in a bewildered way at his visitor.
“Ah, no, no; try him again – yais, try him again;” and the visitor leaned over the performer. “Ta-ta” he hummed, nodding his head, and beating time with a finger. “Better – yes, better – better still – one leetle touch, and – aha, it is done – so!” he exclaimed triumphantly, as the little note now sounded clear and pure.
“And now I must have two string for my violin. They do wear out so fast.” Which was a fact, and nothing could have more fully displayed Monsieur Canau’s friendship than his constant usage of Jared Pellet’s strings, best Roman by name, worst English by nature. “Why do you not come to-day?” he continued, as Patty opened a tin canister, and emptied a dozen of the transparent rings of catgut upon the table.
“I could not leave,” said Patty, hastily. “We are anxious about the organ.”
“Yes, oui, of course; and the good papa will get it?”
“He has not written yet,” said Patty, dolefully.
“But he is méchant! Why do you not write? Eh! what – you are going to? It is good; then I will not stay. But write – write – for you must have it. What! you shake your head. Fie; you must have it. And you, ma fille – I will take these two – and you will come to us soon, for the poor Janette is triste, and longs for you, and the birds pine; but he goes to write. Adieu.”
The little Frenchman kissed his hand to both in turn, and, with his yellow face in puckers, stole out of the door on tip-toe, turning back for an instant to make a commanding gesture at Jared, who rose from his bench and went slowly towards the table.
For, be it known, that the post of organist to St Runwald’s was vacant – the church that everybody knows, situated as it is in a corner, with houses all round, turning their backs as if ashamed, and hiding it, lest people should see what a patch Sir Christopher Wren made of the fine old Gothic building when he restored it, squaring the windows, putting up a vinegar-cruet steeple, padding, curtaining, brass-rodding, and cushioning the interior to make calm the slumbers of miserable sinners; and, one way and another, so changing it that, could the monks of old once more have gazed upon the place, they would have groaned in their cowls, and called Sir Christopher a barbarian.
But the only groans proceeding from cowls were those which were heard upon windy nights, when showers of blacks were whirled round and round and then deposited in the corners of the window sills, or against the lead framing, whence they could filter through in a dust of the blackest, which would gather upon the pew edges in despite of the pew-opener’s duster, ready to be transferred to faces by fingers, or to rise of itself and make church-goers sneeze and accuse the old place of being damp, the churchwarden of being stingy with the coals, the pew-opener of not lighting the fires at proper time to air the church, and the vicar of spinning out his sermons, finishing off by accounting for the smallness of the attendance by declaring that it was impossible for a parish to be religious where there was such a damp church. And all this through the sootiness of the neighbouring houses, for St Runwald’s was as dry as a bone – as the bones of the old fathers who lay below in the vaults, placed there hundreds of years ago, when Borgle’s yard was occupied by a monastery, and matins and vespers were rung out from the tower of the church.
Jared Pellet in after times could have told you it was not damp, in spite of the words of Sampson Purkis, the beadle, who said that there were “sympsons” of it, else why did the steel fastenings of the poor-boxes grow rusty? unless – but thereby hangs a tale. Jared could have told you the place was not damp by the organ, for would not the stops have stuck, and the notes refused to speak, had there been moisture? But at this period he was in ignorance, for, incited thereto by his wife, his daughter Patty, Mr Timson, the churchwarden, and Monsieur Canau, professor of the violin, Jared Pellet was about to offer himself as a candidate for the vacant post of organist, to perform which task he had now settled himself at a table – some four or five small faces that had come peeping in at the door having been warned off by divers very alarming looking frowns and shakes of the head.
But it was no easy task to write a letter at Jared Pellet’s. True, there had been a pennyworth of the best “cream laid,” and envelopes to match, obtained for the occasion; but the ink in the penny bottle was thick, and when thinned with vinegar to prevent it from coming off the nibs upon the paper in beads, it looked brown and bitty. Then the pen spluttered, partly from rust, partly from having been turned into a tool for raising the tongues of silent harmonium notes.
So fresh pens and ink had to be procured, when Jared wrote one application, and smeared his name, and then said, “Tut-tut-tut!” He wrote a second, but that did not look well, for there was a hair in the pen, and he put two n’s in candidate. He then wrote a third, but only to find that he had done so with the paper upside down, when he exclaimed —
“There never was a letter yet that didn’t get more and more out of tune – I mean didn’t get worse – the more you tried.”
Patty did not speak, only looked sympathetic, and as if she would gladly have written the letter herself. But Jared tried once more, and this time a proper missive was written, passed round, and approved by both Mrs Pellet and her daughter. Then the postage stamp was affixed to the envelope with paste, for Jared had managed to lick off all the gum; and at last, when the important document had been safely posted, its writer recollected half a score things he ought to have said, and after fidgeting all the evening, went off despairingly to bed, feeling certain that the post of organist could never be his.
Volume One – Chapter Three.
Organic
A busy day at St Runwald’s. Mrs Nimmer, the pew-opener, in a clean cap, like a white satin raised pie. Mr Purkis, the beadle – of “Purkis’s Shoe Emporium,” in private life – in full uniform and dignity. He had cuffed Ichabod Gunnis, the organ-blower, for spinning his top in the porch, and sent that young gentleman howling up the stair leading to the loft, where he thrust off his big charity-boy shoes, and stole down again in his soft, speckled-grey worsted stockings, to where from a darkened corner he could catch sight of his portly enemy, and relieve his mind by turning his back, doubling down, and grinning between his legs, distorting his face after the fashion of the corbels of the old church, the tongue being a prominent figure as to effect. For quite five minutes Ichabod showed his utter contempt for the church dignitary in question, who was all the time in a brown study, calculating the amount he would probably receive by way of what he called “donus,” upon the appointment of a new organist – a train of thought interrupted by the consideration of the verses he should distribute at the coming
