The Nebuly Coat

He laughed to himself with a queer little chuckle. Cold lamb and mint sauce, with a piece of Stilton afterwards—they would have an Oxford lunch; they would be young again, and undefiled.

The stimulus that the Bishop’s letter had brought Mr Sharnall soon wore off. He was a man of moods, and in his nervous temperament depression walked close at the heels of exaltation. Westray felt sure in those days that followed that his friend was drinking to excess, and feared something more serious than a mere nervous breakdown, from the agitation and strangeness that he could not fail to observe in the organist’s manner.

The door of the architect’s room opened one night, as he sat late over his work, and Mr Sharnall entered. His face was pale, and there was a startled, wide-open look in his eyes that Westray did not like.

“I wish you would come down to my room for a minute,” the organist said; “I want to change the place of my piano, and can’t move it by myself.”

“Isn’t it rather late to-night?” Westray said, pulling at his watch, while the deep and slow melodious chimes of Saint Sepulchre told the dreaming town and the silent sea-marshes that it lacked but a quarter of an hour to midnight. “Wouldn’t it be better to do it to-morrow morning?”

“Couldn’t you come down to-night?” the organist asked; “it wouldn’t take you a minute.”

Westray caught the disappointment in the tone.

“Very well,” he said, putting his drawing-board aside. “I’ve worked at this quite long enough; let us shift your piano.”

They went down to the ground-floor.

“I want to turn the piano right-about-face,” the organist said, “with its back to the room and the keyboard to the wall—the keyboard quite close to the wall, with just room for me to sit.”

“It seems a curious arrangement,” Westray criticised; “is it better acoustically?”

“Oh, I don’t know; but, if I want to rest a bit, I can put my back against the wall, you see.”

The change was soon accomplished, and they sat down for a moment before the fire.

“You keep a good fire,” Westray said, “considering it is bed-time.” And, indeed, the coals were piled high, and burning fiercely.

The organist gave them a poke, and looked round as if to make sure that they were alone.

“You’ll think me a fool,” he said; “and I am. You’ll think I’ve been drinking, and I have. You’ll think I’m drunk, but I’m not. Listen to me: I’m not drunk; I’m only a coward. Do you remember the very first night you and I walked home to this house together? Do you remember the darkness and the driving rain, and how scared I was when we passed the Old Bonding-house? Well, it was beginning then, but it’s much worse now. I had a horrible idea even then that there was something always following me—following me close. I didn’t know what it was—I only knew there was something close behind me.”

His manner and appearance alarmed Westray. The organist’s face was very pale, and a curious raising of the eyelids, which showed the whites of the eyes above the pupils, gave him the staring appearance of one confronted suddenly with some ghastly spectacle. Westray remembered that the hallucination of pursuant enemies is one of the most common symptoms of incipient madness, and put his hand gently on the organist’s arm.

“Don’t excite yourself,” he said; “this is all nonsense. Don’t get excited so late at night.”

Mr Sharnall brushed the hand aside.

“I only used to have that feeling when I was out of doors, but now I have it often indoors—even in this very room. Before I never knew what it was following me—I only knew it was something. But now I know what it is: it is a man—a man with a hammer. Don’t laugh. You don’t want to laugh; you only laugh because you think it will quiet me, but it won’t. I think it is a man with a hammer. I have never seen his face yet, but I shall some day. Only I know it is an evil face—not hideous, like pictures of devils or anything of that kind, but worse—a dreadful, disguised face, looking all right, but wearing a mask. He walks constantly behind me, and I feel every moment that the hammer may brain me.”

“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 second-hand. 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 dear, that the Bishop is already pledged to lunch with Mr Sharnall, so that we should not be held responsible for introducing him. And Sharnall has managed to pick up some sort of an education—I can’t imagine where; but I found on one occasion that he could understand a little Latin. It was the Blandamer motto, ‘Aut Fynes, aut finis.’ He may have been told what it meant, but he certainly seemed to know. Of course, no real knowledge of Latin can be obtained without a University education”—and the Rector pulled up his tie and collar—“but still chemists and persons of that sort do manage to get a smattering of it.”

“Well, well, I don’t suppose we are going to talk Latin all through lunch,” interrupted his wife. “You can do precisely as you please about asking him.”

The Rector contented himself with the permission, however ungraciously accorded, and found himself a little later in Mr Sharnall’s room.

“Mrs Parkyn was hoping that she might have prevailed on you to lunch with us on the day of the Confirmation. She was only waiting for the Bishop’s acceptance to send you an invitation; but we hear now,” he said in a dubitative and tentative way—“we hear now that it is possible that the Bishop may be lunching with you.”

There was a twitch about the corners of Canon Parkyn’s mouth. The position that a Bishop should be lunching with Mr Sharnall in a common lodging-house was so exquisitely funny that he could only restrain his laughter with difficulty.

Mr Sharnall gave an assenting nod.

“Mrs Parkyn was not quite sure whether you might have in your lodgings exactly everything that might be necessary for entertaining his lordship.”

“Oh dear, yes,” Mr Sharnall said. “It looks a little dowdy just this minute, because the chairs are at the upholsterers to have the gilt touched up; we are putting up new curtains, of course, and the housekeeper has already begun to polish the best silver.”

“It occurred to Mrs Parkyn,” the Rector continued, being too bent on saying what he had to say to pay much attention to the organist’s remarks—“it occurred to Mrs Parkyn that it might perhaps be more convenient to you to bring the Bishop to lunch at the Rectory. It would spare you all trouble in preparation, and you would of course lunch with us yourself. It would be putting us to no inconvenience; Mrs Parkyn would be glad that you should lunch with us yourself.”

Mr Sharnall nodded, this time deprecatingly.

“You are very kind. Mrs Parkyn is very considerate, but the Bishop has signified his intention of lunching in this house; I could scarcely venture to contravene his lordship’s wishes.”

“The Bishop is a friend of yours?” the Rector asked.

“You can scarcely say that; I do not think I have set eyes on the man for forty years.”

The Rector was puzzled.

“Perhaps the Bishop is under some misconception; perhaps he thinks that this house is still an inn—the Hand of God, you know.”

“Perhaps,” said the organist; and there was a little pause.

“I hope you will consider the matter. May I not tell Mrs Parkyn that you will urge the Bishop to lunch at the Rectory—that you both”—and he brought out the word bravely, though it cost him a pang to yoke the Bishop with so unworthy a mate, and to fling the door of select hospitality open to Mr Sharnall—“that you both will lunch with us?”