Peering across his desk at Isaac there came back to his mind an incident of his schoolmastering days which seemed to him to epitomize the greatness of his failure. Walking one day down the main aisle of the school library, his great head thrust forward, hands behind his back, he was suddenly aware that the place was not, as he had thought, empty. Crouching in a corner, trying not to be seen, was a terrified new boy with dirty smudges of tears upon his face. Instantly his headmaster had known how it was with him, for he himself, handicapped by his deafness and ugliness, had been hideously tormented in his first year at his public school. His heart gave a lurch of pity and he bore down upon the boy with intent to comfort him. But the boy, his eyes bright and wild with terror, swerved aside and fled.
Trying to think of something to say to Mr. Peabody the Dean suddenly remembered that incident, and that his nick-name among schoolboys and undergraduates had been “the Great Beast,” after the alarming creature in the Book of Revelations. The little man with his trembling hands reminded him of that small boy. He said to himself that it would be the same again. He could never reach the simple humble folk whom he loved the best. He could fight for the children, he could carry the sins of men, he could command their obedience and respect, but not their love. Something wrong with him. A man can change very much in his own fortune through his own efforts but the kind of man that he is he cannot change. He will hang about his own neck, like a dead fowl tied round the neck of a dog, until the end. The Dean’s thoughts were always inclined toward anxiety and gloom, and never more so than when he had a cold. He sneezed violently and trumpeted into his handkerchief. Reappearing from its folds he said anxiously, and without premeditation, “Mr. Peabody, I should not have asked you to stay. I fear you will catch this cold.”
Oddly enough this approach seemed the right one, for Isaac brightened up immediately. “I have just had it, sir,” he said with all the complacency of a man who sees another enduring a misfortune from which for the moment he is immune. “It’s about in the city. A terrible cold.” For a few minutes they told each other about the great colds of their lives, and then anxiety again rearing its head the Dean asked, “Am I encroaching upon your time? At leisure myself this morning, I am forgetting that other men are not.”
“I am at leisure, sir,” said Isaac. “It is my clock-winding day. I don’t open the shop on Saturdays.”
“You enjoy your work, Mr. Peabody?”
“Enjoy it, sir?” Isaac was so astonished that the question could even be asked that he could not for the moment answer it. Then he said, “Clocks and watches, sir, they’re alive. They live longer than we do if they’re treated right. There’s nothing in this world so beautiful as a well-made timepiece. And every one different, sir. Never even a watch cock the same.”
“What is a watch cock, Mr. Peabody?” asked the Dean.
This time astonishment deprived Isaac of the power of speech. That a man could carry the most beautiful watch in the world about with him in his pocket for half a lifetime and never open the inner case to look at its works was to him incredible. He supposed a rich man like the Dean, who owned so many lovely things, took them so much for granted that they meant little to him. A man of a certain type might even long to be free of the mall. Isaac had great intuition. He had realized earlier the Dean’s loneliness. Now he realized his weariness. Finding his voice at last he said, “Your own watch, sir, has a watch cock of unusual and beautiful design. If you will let me have it I will show you.”
The Dean handed him his watch, saying with that painful contortion of the facial muscles which so few people realized was his personal version of a smile, “Be careful of my watch paper, Mr. Peabody. I treasure that watch paper.”
Isaac carefully removed the pair cases and the paper and opened the watch. “There, sir,” he said with triumph. “Though the mechanism of a watch is not seen it is a point of honor with watchmakers to make it as beautiful as possible. You’ll never see two watch cocks the same, and you’ll never see one as unusual as this one of yours.” Then seeing with what difficulty the Dean was peering through his eyeglasses Isaac produced his jeweler’s eyepiece. “Put this in your eye, sir. You’ll see better that way. Now did you ever see anything so beautifully wrought as that little figure? The odd thing is, sir, that I’ve never seen a human figure on a watch cock. Faces, often, but not a figure.”
The Dean was silent, gazing intently at the man bent nearly double by the burden on his back. “Who is he?” he asked.
“I don’t know, sir,” said Isaac. “That’s what I hoped you’d be able to tell me.”
“At a guess I should say it was Christian,” said the Dean. “You know your Pilgrim’s Progress, I expect, Mr. Peabody. You remember how Christian carried his burden up the ‘place somewhat ascending’ where there was a cross, and at the foot of the cross it fell off him and rolled away. Or it might be the Son of God Himself, carrying away the sin of the world.” Isaac shifted uncomfortably in his seat, embarrassed as he always was when the sore subject of religion came into the conversation. Though he had not lifted his head the Dean knew all about his embarrassment. “Did you notice the Ayscough family motto, Mr. Peabody?” he went on. “It is on the back of the watch.”
The suggestion that there could be anything at all about any watch that came into his hands that he did not notice so amazed Isaac that his embarrassment vanished, as the Dean intended it should. “Yes, sir,” he said, “it is beautifully engraved. But my Latin is rusty, sir. I left school too early. I am not certain of its meaning.”
“It is from the twenty-eighth verse of the sixty-eighth psalm,” said the Dean. “ ‘Thy God hath sent forth strength for thee.’ Sometimes I think how odd it is, Mr. Peabody, that I should be spending my old age as Dean of this city whose history is so bound up with that particular psalm. You will remember Prior Hugh’s monks singing it as they passed away from the city into the storm. And then Dean Peter Rolland—‘This is God’s hill, in the which it pleaseth him to dwell.’ Do you attach importance to coincidence, Mr. Peabody?”
“No, sir,” said Isaac.
“Then you will laugh at me when I tell you that I believe I do. Take this bad cold of mine—is it a fortuitous accident that it kept me from going to matins this morning? Well, Mr. Peabody, whether it is or not I shall thank God tonight for the pleasure of your acquaintance.”
Isaac was not more astonished by this speech than the Dean himself. Never could he remember talking to anyone with the ease with which he was now talking to Mr. Peabody. And the little man was speaking up well and clearly and losing his nervousness. It would not last, of course. Sooner or later he would blunder in some way, and see his friend afraid of him. For a moment his own mind beat about in fear, and then he remembered that Mr. Peabody was master of a craft about which he knew nothing. There were not many subjects about which he was ignorant but by the mercy of God horology was one of them. If he could sit at Mr. Peabody’s feet as his pupil, he the poor man in his total ignorance, the little man would not be afraid of him, for knowledge does not fear ignorance.
“I think the maker’s name is engraved inside the watch, Mr. Peabody,” he said, peering through the eyepiece. “But I cannot read it. Can you enlighten me?”
“Yes, sir,” said Isaac eagerly. “ ‘George Graham fecit 1712.’ ”
“A well-known horologist?”
“One of the greatest. Thomas Tompion’s nephew, sir.” The great name of Tompion seemed to leave the Dean where it found him and Isaac was both grieved and shocked at the depths of his ignorance. Like all good teachers he was scarcely able to bear ignorance on his own subject and he said in a breathless rush, “I could tell you about them, sir, one day, if you had the leisure—if I would not be presuming.”
“I will hold you to that, Mr. Peabody,” said the Dean promptly. “I shall be delighted to be your pupil. Seventeen hundred and twelve. This watch was, I believe, a gift to my great-grandfather when he came of age. It has come down from father to son and has
seen much history, for all my ancestors were fighting men. Our crest, as you see, is a sword. I broke with family tradition when I went into the Church and my father never forgave me.” The Dean, his watch in his hand, had almost forgotten Isaac as his mind wandered back over the past, but now he looked up anxiously. “I must be boring you, Mr. Peabody. Old men are at their most tedious when garrulous.”
“No, no, sir!” said Isaac, and his eyes were so bright with interest that the Dean smiled and said, “Well, Mr. Peabody, you have taught me to put a greater value on my watch. You must feel surprise that I have had so little curiosity about it, but the fact is that when my father thrashed me it was always for five minutes by this watch. Five minutes can seem a long while to a small boy.” The Dean’s sallow face suddenly flushed because in excusing himself to Mr. Peabody he had been betrayed into disloyalty to his father. Self-excuse was contemptible and always led to something worse. “Do not misunderstand me, my father was a man whose son I am proud to be. Discipline is necessary for the young. As a schoolmaster I have myself thrashed hundreds of boys.” He smiled at Isaac. “Mr. Peabody, if I take greater care of my watch in future I am afraid that you will miss it. We must arrange something. Shall we—”
But Isaac was not told what they were to arrange, for Garland entered, throwing the door wide. “Archdeacon Fromantel,” he announced, and the Archdeacon entered, impeccably gaitered, a man of fine presence. At sight of Isaac his eyebrows shot far up his expressive forehead. The Dean sneezed with great sadness, but he rose from his seat with dignity and courtesy.
“You know Mr. Peabody, Archdeacon?” he asked.
But Isaac had sidled behind Garland like a terrified crab seeking cover behind a rock and when the Dean looked for him he was gone.
With Michael striking half past eleven Garland and Isaac paused for just a moment’s whispered chat, but the disintegration of the Deanery routine caused them to do it on the wrong side of the green baize door and their sin found them out. A drift of perfume reached them from the direction of the stairs, and a soft froufrou of silk petticoats. “Mrs. Ayscough!” gasped Garland. “Half an hour early!” Caught in the guilty act of this unlawful communication, he and Isaac were for a moment rooted to the spot, their eyes unable to leave the beautiful woman descending the stairs. Elaine Ayscough seemed to Isaac to be a figure of legend. In appearance she might have been Dante’s Beatrice, or the Elaine of her own name. Sunshine striking through a window gleamed on her pale gold hair, smoothly parted and drawn back into a chignon. Her white neck rose swanlike from the plain collar of a soft gray dress. She wore no jewels apart from her wedding ring and the little gold shells in her ears. Her face seemed designed for the pale gold setting of a cameo ring; even in the glory of the sun it lacked the warmth of living flesh. Isaac was unable to understand how a woman so simply dressed, even more simply dressed than Emma, could give such an impression of fashion and elegance. It was true that Mrs. Ayscough was a tall woman, but then so was Emma. If he had known how much the simple gray dress had cost he would have understood better.
At the foot of the stairs Mrs. Ayscough paused. She had apparently not seen Isaac, but she seemed to see Garland and her delicate eyebrows arched very slightly in a manner reminiscent of Archdeacon Fromantel, except that his eyebrows had shot up in unpremeditated astonishment and the movement of hers was intentional. “The gentleman who winds the clocks, madam,” said Garland.
“Oh?” said Mrs. Ayscough, and for a moment her gray eyes met Isaac’s as she moved across the hall toward the drawing room. Garland reached a fumbling hand behind his back and pulled the baize door open and Isaac scurried down the passage behind it and fled.
Sitting on the seat in the lime avenue again he could not forget Mrs. Ayscough’s pale cold eyes, and compassion for the man he had just left welled up in him, and after that amazement at his own compassion. He had never thought of the Olympian figures of the Close as in need of compassion; nor, he supposed, had anybody else in the city. All of them, and especially the terrible Dean, had seemed to live in a world where compassion was not necessary. He saw now that it was the very first necessity, always and everywhere, and should flow between all men, always and everywhere. Men lived with their nearest and dearest and knew little of them, and strangers passing by in the street were as impersonal as trees walking, and all the while there was this deep affinity, for all men suffered.
6. Fountains
1.
TWELVE o’clock boomed out and Isaac shot up out of his seat. Twelve o’clock! For twelve years he had progressed from the Deanery to Canon Wiseman’s to wind the Dresden clock, from there to Canon Willoughby’s, to the Rimbault chiming clock, and then to Miss Montague at Fountains. The Palace and Worship Street were reserved for the afternoon. For all these appointments he had never been a moment late, arriving on Miss Montague’s doorstep punctually at a quarter to twelve to minister to the Michael Neuwers and the Lyre clock. Whatever would Miss Montague and Sarah think? They would fear some disaster had happened to him. Isaac was a comic figure as he literally ran down the elm avenue to the Porta. He stood panting on Miss Montague’s doorstep at five past twelve. The Dresden and the Rimbault must wait, for Canon Wiseman and Canon Willoughby would not be so disturbed by his nonappearance as Miss Montague and Sarah.
Fountains, after the death of Blanche the widow of Duke Jocelyn, had become a part of the Priory. After the monks had been driven away it had been left empty but later had been restored and made into a private house again by Thomas Montague when he became mayor. It had remained in the possession of the Montagues ever since. Fountains actually formed part of the Porta. Miss Montague’s drawing room was over the arch and her front door was within it. A small brass plate above the letter box had Fountains inscribed on it in letters that were nearly worn away. Beside the door was an ancient iron bellpull but it had to be pulled out a good four inches before anything happened, and as it was very stiff only the strongest could get it out far enough. The elderly, by Miss Montague’s special instructions, lifted up the brass flap over the letter box and dropped it, and went on lifting and dropping until Sarah came. This morning Isaac lifted and dropped once only before she opened the door, her face puckered with anxiety beneath her snowy mobcap. She pulled him in, shut the door and gave him a good shaking. Although she was around about eighty years of age and scarcely bigger than a marmoset, her shake had surprising strength. “Do you know the time, Isaac Peabody?” she demanded. “There’s twelve gone by Michael five minutes past, and you due in this house at a quarter to twelve and not a minute later. You’ve had us all of a tremble. . . . He’s here, ma’am,” she called up the stairs to an unseen presence, “and none the worse, drat him!”
With swift monkeylike movements she clawed Isaac’s hat from his head and his coat from his back. He laughed. Miss Montague and Sarah were perhaps the best friends he had in the city and at Fountains he was at his happiest. Though he came here every week he looked around him in delight, sniffing the fragrant smell of Fountains, stretching his spirit in its particular atmosphere of antiquity and peace. It was so old that to come inside it was like coming into some abode of ancient knights hollowed out of the sheer rock. The lancet windows looking on Worship Street were set in such thick walls that they did not let much light into the stone-floored hall, but there was nearly always a log fire burning there and it gleamed on the tapestries on the walls and upon the old oak chest that Sarah polished till it shone like glass. Miss Montague was fond of potpourri and there were several bowls of it in the hall, scenting the warm air that was already pungent with the smell of the burning logs. Fountains had at all seasons of the year an autumnal warmth and graciousness, and no chill of winter in spite of the great age of the house, of its mistress, of Sarah, of Araminta the housemaid and Jemima the cook.
“There now,” said Sarah, taking a clothesbrush from the chest and belaboring Isaac about the shoulders. “Don’t that Polly of yours ever brush your coat? Don’t ee waste time telling me now what y
ou’ve been up to. You go on up to the mistress and she’ll tell me later.”
Two staircases led up from the hall, one being a circular stone staircase leading up to a room in the tower. Of the two small towers that flanked the Porta, Fountains contained one and the almshouses the other. The second staircase of dark oak had been put in by Sir Thomas Montague in the sixteenth century and led to the bedrooms and drawing room. Up this Isaac climbed, turning left at the top, where firelight gleamed behind a half-open door.
“Come in, Mr. Peabody,” called Miss Montague. She had a clear voice, with only an occasional huskiness in it, and no one hearing it would have guessed that she was older than Sarah.
Mr. Peabody entered the room and standing at the door made a beautiful bow. His bow was memorable, being of the same period as his antique garments. Miss Montague acknowledged his bow with an inclination of the head that oddly combined, as did her whole presence, the dignity of a great lady with a saint’s humility and a gamin’s impish humor. She sat erect in her chair beside the fire, her thin fine old hands caressing the cat in her lap, her small feet in black velvet shoes resting upon a footstool. She had left off paying any attention to fashion forty years ago and dressed as she pleased, in a plain old black gown, a fichu draped over her shoulders and a square of lace flung over her plentiful white hair. Whether she had had any beauty in her youth it was impossible to say. She was now a dumpy old lady with a soft face of indeterminate feature, and faded blue eyes that were both shrewd and tender. Those upon whom her eyes rested immediately thought the world of themselves, for it was obvious that she saw with one glance all the good in them to which their own families seemed so strangely blind. She did not as a rule talk very much herself but then she did not often get the opportunity, so eager was everyone else to talk to her. No one ever seemed to know very much about her. She was just old Miss Montague of Fountains, and she had always been there, as changeless as her room.
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