The Dean's Watch

by Elizabeth Goudge

  “Of course, now!” said Mr. Penny, standing behind them and rubbing his hands happily together. “How could I have forgotten who it was? David? Joshua? Job! Job Mooring. He comes to my church. Attends at St. Peter’s. No one young comes except Job and the king’s daughter. Did you light the fire, Job?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good boy. Good boy. And you’ve put the teapot on the hob. Good boy. Letitia’s dressing gown. I’ve always kept it. Now we’ll have tea.”

  “Mr. Penny, you are very wet,” said the Dean. “I beg that first of all you will go upstairs and put on some dry clothes.”

  He spoke with authority and Mr. Penny ambled off murmuring to himself, “Tea and toast. I like tea and toast. Tea and toast.” The Dean could hear him stumbling up a long flight of dark stairs and he pictured them as going on forever. What a vast height darkness had, and what depth. The fire and the one guttering candle on the mantelpiece did not illumine the further reaches of Mr. Penny’s vast cobwebbed study. Beyond the torn carpet, the piles of books on the floor, and the tall chair where he had put his hat and cloak, the walls vanished in a shapeless infinity of darkness. He thought the clouds must have come over the first stars.

  “You’re wet too, sir,” said Job shyly.

  “No matter,” said the Dean, “I shall change when I get home. Did you jump from that window, Job?”

  “Yes, sir. I sprained my ankle.”

  The Dean looked at the clumsy bandages that protruded from beneath Letitia’s dressing gown. They were obviously the combined work of Job and Mr. Penny, not of Doctor Jenkins. Dark ridges were gouged out under Job’s eyes and there were beads of sweat on his forehead. He must have broken the ankle. “Could you tell me what happened?” he asked gently. “I know that Albert Lee beat you and that you tried to run away. I know no more than that.”

  Job sat up straight on the sofa. “I could be making the toast, sir. Mr. Penny likes toast.”

  The Dean saw his hand tighten on the edge of the sofa as he moved. Yes, the boy had courage. He liked courage in a boy. He was proud of Job. Adjusting his eyeglasses and looking about him he perceived a platter of grimy-looking bread in the hearth before the fire, with a toasting fork. A pat of butter and milk in a cracked jug stood on the mantelpiece beside the guttering candle. “Stay where you are, Job,” he croaked commandingly. “I used to make toast at your age. I can’t have forgotten the trick of it.”

  A three-legged stool was near him. He lowered himself down to it with the utmost care, for he doubted if any article of furniture in this house could be used with any assurance of safety, speared a piece of bread on the toasting fork and held it hopefully toward the fire. The steam from his wet garments rose about himself and Job like smoke from a bonfire. He was divided between sorrow that Mr. Penny should be living out his old age in this cobwebbed darkness, and he had not known it, amusement at his own situation, and a return of that strange joy that once or twice lately had suddenly arisen within him as he had seen the spring rising through the cracked marble of the floor. It was strange because until now foreign to his experience. He took it when it came with a humble, startled gratitude.

  “I had meant to go to Willowthorn, sir,” said Job. “You can see Willowthorn from the drove where I used to get the flowers and berries for Keziah’s posies. I like Willowthorn. I thought I might get work there. But first I thought I must tell Polly where I was going, so she shouldn’t worrit. But I couldn’t go then, it was late and dark and she’d have been in bed. So I hid in the rushes by the river till the morning. My ankle hurt but I held it in the river and that eased it. The water was cool.”

  “It’s dirty there,” said the Dean, his eyes on Job.

  A strong shudder passed through the boy’s body. “Yes, sir. It’s horrible there. Slimy. And then there was Polly—”

  He broke off in confusion and the Dean found himself intensely and absurdly happy. So Job’s love for Polly had not been quenched. It had about it something of the divine toughness. Polly would be a happy woman.

  “Go on, Job,” he said jubilantly.

  “I started for the city as soon as it was light, sir, for Polly gets up early. But my ankle made me slow, it was swelled up so much, and when I got to the market place and was passing St. Peter’s I thought I’d rest it a bit, and I sat in the porch. There’s a seat there under the notice board.”

  “Mr. Penny found you there?”

  “Yes, sir. He gets up early and goes to the church for his office. I couldn’t tell you what an office is, sir, only that it’s something Mr. Penny does in the church before breakfast. He saw that I’d hurt myself. He said to come to his house and he’d give me a bandage for my ankle. But when we’d got the bandage on I didn’t seem to be able to stand on the foot, so he said to stay a while. Tomorrow I hope I’ll be better and get away. I don’t want to burden Mr. Penny but he says he likes the company.”

  “You didn’t think of writing to tell Polly you were safe?”

  “I did write, sir, and Mr. Penny he said he’d send it by the milkman.” He paused and asked sharply. “Didn’t he, sir?”

  “I’m afraid not,” said the Dean.

  “No, sir? But he’s a very kind gentleman.”

  “Kindness, thank God, we can keep until the end. Memory, not always. It is no matter. Is this toast as it should be, Job?”

  Job looked at the charred bread. “You turn it around to the other side now, sir. Does Polly know I ran away?”

  “Yes. She is much concerned on your account. On my way home I will do myself the honor of calling at Angel Lane and assuring them of your safety. And, Job, this afternoon I called on Mr. Albert Lee and came to a satisfactory arrangement with him. You will not go back there. You are released from your indentures and will go to Mr. Peabody and learn to be a clockmaker.”

  Job was silent for so long that the Dean allowed the charred bread to burst into flames while he adjusted his eyeglasses and looked at him anxiously. But Job, sitting upright on the sofa, was merely happy. The Dean thought he had never seen such happiness in a human face. It seemed to light the whole room. Even the shapeless dark appeared to go down before it, as utterly annihilated as is a man’s shadow when he swings around to face the sun. It occurred to the Dean that he had never before been a witness of one of those moments of entire reversal that come only once or twice in a human life. For Job, in the space of one moment, death had become life. It was like seeing the son of the widow of Nain sit suddenly bolt upright on his bier. The Dean turned to shake the burned bread off into the fire, then spearing another piece on the toasting fork he tried again.

  “I fear I lack concentration,” he said to Job. “These domestic tasks are not as simple as they appear to those who do not habitually perform them.”

  Job suddenly found his voice. “Thank you, sir. This is the second time you’ve taken me out of hell.”

  “That sounds overdramatic, Job. What do you mean? The second time?”

  “You wouldn’t remember the first time, sir. I was a sweep’s climbing boy and my master and I came to sweep a chimney at the Deanery. I wouldn’t go up it, for I’d got that I couldn’t sweep another chimney. You sent me to Dobson’s.”

  Job’s eyes were fixed on the Dean’s face in an agony of pleading as dramatic as his speech. He wanted the Dean to remember more than he had ever wanted anything in this life; yet he had just said that old men did not always remember. For a moment the Dean looked puzzled, then slowly his face lit up. To see the hard lines soften, and tenderness and delight beaming in the eyes that looked at him over the top of the Dean’s spectacles, was a greater joy to Job than the fact of his own deliverance.

  “Dear me!” ejaculated the Dean. “Most extraordinary! I have never forgotten that little urchin. In your early years at Dobson’s, Job, I inquired now and again as to your welfare. You, and boys like you, have been continually in my prayers. You must forgive me that I did not recognize you when we met at Mr. Peabody’s. You must remember that I am shortsight
ed and that you have altered considerably. I am obliged to you, Job, for making yourself known to me. Much obliged.”

  The strange, tall, dusky room, lit by the light of the flames, was like a cavern in a mountain. It might have been in Job’s world. It was in his world. He and the old man were close together in his world, and his world was real. The great figure of his dreams was once more exclusively his own.

  The Dean broke a silence in which he too had been aware that he belonged to this boy, and the boy to him. This sense of belonging was one of the profounder satisfactions of love. “Job,” he said, “I am perplexed upon one point. Where are you to lodge while working for Mr. Peabody?”

  “Could I lodge here, sir?” asked Job. “With Mr. Penny? He needs company. I could look after him, night and morning. Make his bed, cook him a kipper. I’d like that, sir.”

  While the second piece of toast blackened the Dean considered the suggestion. At first sight he thought it bad. This house was no place for a boy. But then this boy was not as other boys. He could see Job finding books that he liked among the masses scattered on the floor. He could see him digging in the old garden whose wild trees pressed against the windows, and finding peace deep as a well in quiet empty rooms, the shadow of leaves, moonlight moving on a wall. If some good woman could be found who would be willing to sweep up the cobwebs in this house, and upon occasions cook something more substantial than a kipper, these two might do very well together.

  “We will think of it, Job,” he said. “And thank you that you wished to give me that robin. Polly told me of your intention and I am much obliged to you for your kindness.” He paused, searching for words. “I should like to offer you my sympathy in the loss of all those little birds so lovingly created. The snail, too, and the mouse. It is a loss whose magnitude I am myself perhaps not able to estimate, for my clumsy fingers have never known the artist’s skill. I did once, I recollect, make wool roses but they were not recognizable. But I do write books and were the manuscript of one to be burned before publication I should, I know, feel it at my heart.”

  His words seemed to have gone over Job’s head, for when he looked at the boy he saw nothing in his eyes but a blazing hatred that deeply shocked him. Job, it seemed, could be as virulent a hater as he was a tough lover. “Don’t hate, Job!” he said sharply, but he was so shocked that he could say nothing more. It was a relief when Mr. Penny came in.

  Mr. Penny, attired in strange but dry garments, an old pair of cricketing trousers and the frock coat he wore for funerals, was almost in merry mood. While the Dean toasted with more concentration and less eccentricity than before he made the tea, hot and strong and sweet, and poured it into cracked cups. Long ago he had liked being hospitable and guests around his fireside had been one of his joys. Suddenly it was so again. From the deeps of his old memory funny stories that he used to tell began floating mysteriously up to the surface, stories that he had not told for forty years. He told them again, chuckling over them, his thin hands wrapped lovingly about his hot teacup. The Dean capped them with others. Job, whose pain was not unbearable if he kept still, kept still and ate buttered toast. For the rest of his life buttered toast would seem to him the ambrosia of the gods.

  The pealing of bells all over the city brought the Dean to his feet. Seven o’clock. He must go, for he had much to do, but for the first time in his life he took leave of a social occasion with regret. “Good night, Job,” he said. “I shall be sending Doctor Jenkins to look at your ankle. Keep still until he comes. I will inform Mr. Peabody and Polly of your safety. Be at peace now and let the tide carry you into calm water. That is all you have to do for the moment. God bless you. Thank you, Mr. Penny, for an excellent tea. Yes, that is my cloak. Much obliged. I am glad, sir, that we met each other in the drove this afternoon. To have had some speech with you has been a privilege.”

  By this time they were in the hall and Mr. Penny had just opened the front door. Outside was darkness, the cool breath of night, the faint rustling of overgrown trees in the wild dark garden. “A privilege,” repeated the Dean. He meant what he said. Mr. Penny under the bludgeonings of disaster had not lost his sense of direction or of allegiance. He never would. Love still owned him, steered him, drew him to itself. No matter how eccentric he became he would never go off course.

  “Thank you, sir,” he said now with sudden dignity. “May I know your name, my friend? I should like to know your name.”

  He had met Adam Ayscough before, but he did not remember. The Dean did not want him to remember and he replied, “My name is Adam.”

  “Adam,” said Mr. Penny. “A good name. Adam and Job. Both good names. Good day to you, sir. I am needed at home.”

  He suddenly abandoned the Dean, forgetful of him, and shuffled back across the hall to Job. Adam Ayscough shut the front door behind him and felt his way down the broken steps with the help of his stick. The firelight shining from the study window illumined his way through the dripping garden to the lane, and out in the market place the riding lights were ready with their welcome.

  He climbed up the steps to Angel Lane and knocked at the door of number twelve. It was opened by Isaac and in the lighted oblong of the kitchen door stood Polly, holding a soup tureen to her chest, her figure taut with anxiety. A crack of light shone along the line of the parlor door, slightly ajar, where instinct told the Dean that Emma was listening.

  “Good evening, Mr. Peabody. Job is safe with Mr. Penny, the Rector of St. Peter’s. He had a fall and hurt his ankle. There is, I think, no cause for anxiety but I am on my way to ask Doctor Jenkins to look at it. I have seen Mr. Lee and Job’s connection with him is now ended.”

  Polly had disappeared from the lighted doorway and the steaming tureen was reposing on the kitchen table. The Dean thought he heard the back door opening and closing and was aware of someone slipping silent and ghostlike behind him, and then running like the wind down the street. He was also aware that the line of light down the parlor door was a little wider than before. What would Emma do to Isaac when she discovered that Polly had fled without leave to attend to the comfort of Job and Mr. Penny? He raised his voice. “Will you be so good, Mr. Peabody, as to present my compliments to your sister? Would it be convenient, do you think, if I were to wait upon her after evensong on Monday, about the hour of five? I would come in now but I was caught in the rain and I am too wet to enter a lady’s parlor. I owe Miss Peabody an apology and I would count it an honor and privilege if I might be allowed to make her acquaintance.”

  Isaac, nodding like a mandarin, murmured incoherently. When he had opened the door his shoulders had been sagging and he had been coughing. A dejected gray woolen muffler with one end wrapped around his neck and the other trailing on the floor had seemed the very symbol of his misery. Now, seeing the conspiratorial gleam in the Dean’s eyes, his own lit up. He straightened himself and saw that there were stars above the roofs across the way. One great planet burned with a rosy glow. Each street lamp, reflected in the wet cobbles, had its own glory. The smell of onion soup that flowed out from the little house into the street had a remarkable pungency. Isaac was fond of onions. Job was safe and Emma was mollified, for the parlor door had closed softly. The rosy planet so dazzled his eyes that he did not for the moment realize that the Dean had left him. When he did realize it he did not mind; his love was creeping like a girdle around the whole city and nothing he loved was absent from him. Job was safe. No one he loved was in danger. Nor was he. He had been cold and shivering for days but now he was warm. Gathering up the trailing end of muffler as though it were a dowager’s train he turned back into the house, shut the door and called out cheerily, “I’ll bring in the soup, Emma.”

  3.

  The Dean walked along Worship Street, knocked at Doctor Jenkins’s door and left a message with the astonished parlor maid. Then he turned homeward, flogging his weary mind to the remembrance of his next duties. He could now leave Job and Mr. Penny in the competent hands of Doctor Jenkins and Polly, but he mus
t find a permanent housekeeper for St. Peter’s vicarage. He would ask Elaine. He would ask her tonight. He must see Havelock. He must find an apprentice for Albert Lee. The things he must do went round and round in his head. It seemed a long way from Worship Street to the Deanery and when Garland opened the door to him he stumbled clumsily on the mat.

  “You’re wet, sir!” said Garland angrily, taking off his cloak. “You’re wet through, sir!”

  “No matter,” said the Dean. “If I change quickly I shall not, I trust, be late for dinner. Mrs. Ayscough has not been anxious?”

  “Mrs. Ayscough has had her dressmaker with her, sir,” said Garland, and shut his mouth like a trap.

  “Ah!” said the Dean with a sigh of relief. “She has been occupied.”

  He was going upstairs, Garland with him. Presently he was in his dressing room, changing his wet things, and Garland was presenting him with a small but fiery drink on a tray. He waved it aside but Garland appeared to have taken root in the carpet and his silent fury was so intimidating that the Dean drank it. Subsequently he felt warmer, but more muddled. Garland moved soft-footed about the room, and presently the Dean found himself impeccably dressed for dinner. Then he was in the drawing room with Elaine, not very sure whether Garland had inserted him through the door, as a nurse inserts the small boy she has brought down from the nursery for his hour with his mother, or whether he had not. The gong boomed and he and Elaine went in to dinner.

  Hot food make him feel more like himself and after dinner, when they were by the drawing-room fire, she with her embroidery, he asked her, “My dear, what happened to that housemaid we had? The one you sent away.”