Читать книгу The Inquisitor. A Novel - Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole - Страница 5

The thin papery sky of the early autumn afternoon was torn, and the eye of the sun, pale but piercing, looked through and down. The eye's gaze travelled on a shaft of light to the very centre of the town. A little scornful, very arrogant, it surveyed the scene. The Cathedral had chimed at three, and at once the bells began with their accustomed melody to ring for Evensong. The town, bathed in a smoky haze, clustered about and around the Cathedral, Cathedral Green and Arden Gate, dropping through the High Street, then lower to the Market-place, then sharply over the Rock to Seatown that bordered the river. Slowly up, beyond the river, sloped the quiet autumn fields to the hills that spread, like dun cloths, to the sea. For the moment, while the sun's eye gazed its last on that afternoon, the huddled town, the long fields, the wide band of sea caught a pale glow of light, looking up to the sun with the timidity of a girl reassured by her lover's unexpected attentions.

Men lolling in Riverside Street said: 'There's the sun!'

At the St. Leath Hotel on Pol Hill beyond the town, windows stole a glimmering shade. In Canon's Yard the old houses with their twisted shapes and crooked chimneys grinned, for an instant, like toothless old men. It was market day and in the Market-place the huddled sheep, the wide-eyed cows, the barking dogs, the farmers, the old women were mistily gold-lit as with a divine dust. The frock-coated statue at the top of Orange Street was illuminated at the nose; in the yard of the old 'Bull' a weary maid rubbed her eyes; Hattaway, the architect, standing in the door of Bennett's bookshop, looked up to the sky and smiled; two of the old ladies of 10 Norman Row, starting out for their walk, said together: 'Why, there's the sun!'; Mr. Stephen Furze, alone in his cobwebby room, saw the sun strike ladders of light through the air and shook his head at them; young 'Penny' Marlowe, arranging chrysanthemums in the drawing-room at St. James's Rectory, smiled mysteriously as though surprised in a secret.

The King Harry Tower caught the light, then seemed, with a proud gesture of disdain, to toss it away.

The eye of the sun, having seen everything, withdrew.

Mists were rising from the river.

The Reverend Peter Gaselee, young and ardent, was crossing the Cathedral Green to Evensong. Half-way over he was stopped by a bent figure, shoulders wrapped in a grey shawl, hat shabby and shapeless, that said in a sharp and piercing voice: 'Ah, Mr. Gaselee—Sun came out for a moment but it's gone in again.' Peter Gaselee was annoyed by this interruption, for he was in a hurry and old Mr. Mordaunt was a fool. However, it was his policy to be agreeable to everyone—it was also the obligation of his cloth. So he said brightly:

'Ah, Mr. Mordaunt—been sketching?'

'Yes, I have. I've stopped now because the light's too bad. If the sun had stayed I'd have had half an hour more.' He drew his grey shawl closer about his shoulders. 'Like to see what I've been doing?'

'Delighted,' Gaselee said, but thought—'Silly old ass—always must be showing his mad sketches to everyone.' His fine thin nose twitched as it always did when he was irritated, but his smile was genial as the old man, with a trembling hand, drew out a sketch-book.

'There—the light's bad. But you can see it all right, I daresay.' He opened the book and showed, his fingers tapping against the paper, a double-page drawing. Gaselee flattered himself that he had a fine knowledge of the Arts. He and old Ronder, and possibly Hattaway, were the only men, he told himself, who cared for such things in Polchester.

There was no doubt that old Mordaunt could draw. The Cathedral rose from the paper like a living thing, the King Harry Tower like the proud head of a triumphant giant.

'Those lines in King Harry look like teeth,' he said, for he must say something.

'Well, they do sometimes. In certain lights.'

'And who's that standing in the West Door?'

The old man peered more closely. 'Oh, you see someone there, do you? So did I. But there wasn't anyone there really. At least I don't think so.'

'He's too large for life anyway.'

'Yes, long and thin and black. That's how I saw him.'

'How do you mean—you saw him—if there wasn't anyone there?'

The old man began eagerly: 'Oh well, light does strange things. But I've often thought I've seen him. Very thin, in black. He never moves even when the light changes.'

'Shadows, I suppose.'

'Yes, shadows.'

Gaselee smiled and nodded his head. 'Good afternoon, Mr. Mordaunt. I must be getting on. Going to Evensong.'

'Good day to you, Mr. Gaselee. I must be getting on too. Yes, I must. Good day to you.'

Gaselee walked on. He passed in at the West Door.

Old Mordaunt drew his shawl very closely about him indeed and slip-slopped along, hugging the sketch-book closely to him, the sketch-book that was more to him than wife or child or any human being.

Gaselee walked rapidly through the nave and up into the choir. He found his favourite seat, the end one but two on the left towards the altar, knelt down and prayed, then settled himself with comfort and looked about him.

The lights were lit because of the duskiness of the afternoon; the curtains had not been drawn and he could see, beyond the misty candlelight that hovered, like a benediction, over the choir-seats, into the dark colours of the nave. A deep, comforting silence, made more peaceful by the distant rhythm of the bells, brooded at the heart of the building. A choir-boy was moving in and out of the seats arranging the service-papers.

Once the place had blazed with crimson and gold, paintings of extravagant colour on the walls, marble pavements, the windows shining in the pageantry of coloured glass. Behind him to the left was the Black Bishop's Tomb, the Tomb itself made of a solid block of dark-blue stone, the figure of the Bishop carved in black marble. . . . Ah, there is Mrs. Braund, wife of the Archdeacon, stout, comfortable, and a strange lady with her. There would be very few people to-day.

A thick-set man came stamping along, head up as though he commanded the place, Lampiron, the sculptor—but he never would show his work to anybody—a rude man of whom Gaselee was secretly afraid. . . .

The bells stopped. The organ began. The procession came in. Only Canons Dale and Moffit to-day—Dale, young, thin, with a face like a hawk, old Moffit hobbling along on a stick.

'Dearly beloved brethren . . .' The service began.

After a while Gaselee lost himself in reminiscence.

Although he was only twenty-eight he seemed to himself to have led already a life of surpassing interest and excitement. He was to himself a figure of quite extraordinary interest. Everything that happened to him was wonderful, although not so wonderful as the things that were going to happen to him.

The first thing that astonished him was that he had been able to do so much for himself. Nothing could have been more ordinary than his parentage, his birthplace. His father had been rector of a Wiltshire parish, miles from anywhere, lost in rolling down and country lane. He had been the only child, and his parents had, from the very first, thought him exceptional. His mother had adored him and he had for her all the condescending love of a favoured only child. His father was a saint, an old stout man now with dishevelled white hair, a passion for gardening, for cricket, for dogs and the people of his village. Gaselee felt for him a stern protective affection, the feeling that one has for someone who knows nothing about life, who may be taken in by anyone or anything, who is so simple as to be not altogether sane. When people spoke to Gaselee of his father and said that he was one of God's saints and a very merry man, adored by his people, Gaselee agreed, but with an implication that it was kind and generous of them to say so. . . . Dear old man . . .

From a very early age his parents had been astonished at their son's ability to express himself, for they themselves had never found words easy. They wondered, too, at his appetite for reading, at the things that he knew and, as he grew older, they listened with loving attention to his opinions about everything. He told them, affectionately, how old-fashioned they were, and they agreed absolutely with his opinion.

Because they were poor they could not send him to one of the larger public schools. He went to Taunton.

He did very well there, though not brilliantly. He knew a little of everything and was popular because he behaved to everybody as they would wish him to behave. He made no very close relationships because he never gave himself completely to anybody. He had no time for that because he was so busy organizing his own progress. This with one exception. Much to his own surprise and even to his chagrin he developed a passion for a boy called Radcliffe. He was not accustomed to passion and it made him uncomfortable. He could not help himself. Charlie Radcliffe was a quiet, good-natured boy with nothing at all remarkable about him. He could be of no use to Gaselee in any way. At first he returned Gaselee's friendship; then he quietly withdrew, giving no reasons. This was the greatest trouble in Gaselee's school life. He was baffled and bewildered by it. Everything else went well and he won an Exhibition at Jesus College, Cambridge. At Cambridge he lived carefully—he never threw money about. He rowed for his College, was popular exactly as he had been at school and made no close friends. He went to a Clergy Training College at Drymouth and did well there too. Then he had a curacy near Exeter; two years ago he became curate of St. James's, Polchester, whose Rector was the Reverend Richard Marlowe.

He had come to Polchester because he felt that it was a good stepping-stone for him. Bishop Kendon was an old man now but famous in the world for his books, his energy, his strength of character. Many remarkable men had been at Polchester—Bishop Purcell, Archdeacon Brandon, Wistons of Pybus St. Anthony. The Pybus living was famous for its incumbents, the majority of whom had been moved to great preferment.

During his two years in Polchester he had, he was sure, made a real mark. He was popular, considered intelligent, and as a preacher increasingly in demand. He was an excellent preacher, modern, easy, well informed, sometimes eloquent, always sensible. He took part in many of the town's activities, played golf, sang with an agreeable light tenor, was considered better-read than anyone in the town save old Canon Ronder.

With Ronder he had made a strong alliance and here there was something genuine and real. Although the old man was seventy-five, disgracefully stout and exceedingly lazy, he had a mind that delighted young Gaselee's—sharp, cynical, brilliantly instructed, keen as a dagger. Gaselee's two years had been very happy and successful ones. He had a right to be pleased.

He realized that the time of the anthem had arrived. He looked at a printed sheet that had been laid in front of him and murmured, 'Another of Doggett's experiments.' It was like Doggett to write a new anthem and perform it for the first time at an ordinary daily Evensong when there would be no audience.

Some people said Doggett had genius, and Gaselee, who loved music and knew when it was good, thought that he might have, but the man was so silent, so retiring, did so little for himself and his future—a little mousy man with a large round head and a face like an egg, who seemed not to care whether one liked his music or no. Gaselee had been kind to him, but Doggett didn't seem to know it.

This was a setting of a poem of Christina Rossetti's.

Gaselee read the poem:

Love is the key of life and death,

Of hidden heavenly mystery:

Of all Christ is, of all He saith,

Love is the key.

As three times to His Saint He saith,

He saith to me, He saith to thee,

Breathing His Grace-conferring Breath:

'Lovest thou Me?'

Ah, Lord, I have such feeble faith,

Such feeble hope to comfort me:

But love it is, is strong as death,

And I love Thee.

The second verse was sung by a boy unaccompanied.

'That's young Klitch, the son of the man with the curiosity shop,' Gaselee reflected. In the third verse seven bars were repeated, reminding him a little of the close of the adagio in Mozart's 'Jupiter' symphony. 'I'll tell Doggett that. I bet he never thought of it. There's something ridiculous,' he thought, 'in an ugly little boy whispering into space "Lovest thou Me?" even though——' Then something pulled him up as sharply as though his face had been struck.

Deep shame held him. They were kneeling and he buried his hands and prayed. It was his soul that had risen from some deep chasm where too often it was hid, and clearly, quietly, faced him. For he cared for beauty and all lovely things, goodness and high conduct and the nobility of man. He believed in God, but life was for ever offering him alternatives, pride and wit and self-advancement and the good opinion of his fellows. Soon, very soon, when he was walking through the lighted town to his lodgings, the world would surge back again—'Because Christina was a poet, because a boy sang unaccompanied, because Doggett is a musician, I was sentimentally moved as old stout Mrs. Braund has been moved. A boy sang, a poet wrote, a musician played, and I believed in God. . . .'

But the mood had not quite passed. His eyes were closed behind his hands, but it seemed to him that the Cathedral slowly filled. The great empty spaces of the nave had been cold, but through the West Door they crowded in, hundreds upon hundreds, silently. They formed now a serried mass, flowing out into St. Margaret's Chapel, into King Henry's Chapel, under the shields of Henry V. and Warwick the King-Maker, over the ledger-stones of the Priors, beside the tomb of Henry Quair, the Franciscan friar, with its trefoil canopy, into the Lady Chapel with its carvings of angels, into the King's Chapel with the lovely 'Virgin and Children' windows, into the North-east Transept where is the tomb of the Saxon bishop Wilfred, along the South Aisle that has the tombs of Prior Edward of Barpledon and the great Bishop Holcroft, into the Chapel of All Angels where the famous Emily, daughter of the Earl of Glebeshire, lover of the poor, heroine of the battle of Drymouth, lies, yes, up into the King Harry Tower, down into the Norman Crypt, and, at last, behind him, crowded about the Tomb of the Black Bishop itself, like a mist from the sea, an invasion, an army, a mighty breathing, watching, waiting multitude.

The fantasy was so strong that he scarcely dared to raise his eyes, and when at last he glanced about him, piercing the wavering light of the candles, he still could not be entirely resolved. In his ears and in his eyes there was a conviction of a pressing multitude and he felt that thousands of eyes were bent upon himself.

He was apprehensive; he was suddenly afraid. It was like a nightmare that he sometimes had of making some fearful blunder before a critical company. In his dream he realized that pause, that look of wonder and that awful certainty within himself that he had, in a moment of incautiousness, made a mistake that nothing now could undo. Slowly his eyes cleared. The Cathedral was empty save for the little gathering of human beings about him. Only, as he looked towards the altar he fancied that one high, thin figure remained, black, motionless, solitary. Then that illusion also passed. The choir was filing out, Broad the verger preceded Dale and Moffit—old Moffit, his head bent, tap-tapping with his stick.

Gaselee was himself again. On the way out he smiled at Mrs. Braund, nodded to Lampiron, and felt with pleasure the keen evening air blow about his forehead.

Now it so happened that at the moment of the singing for the first time of Mr. Doggett's setting of Christina Rossetti's poem, Polchester received a new citizen. The 3.45 from Drymouth steamed into Polchester Station, gave itself a little shake of appreciation and slumbrously stopped.

Out of one of the third-class carriages stepped a large stout man. The first person in Polchester to have a real conversation with this man was Mr. Herbert Klitch, who had the curiosity shop, No. 11 Norman Row.

Norman Row is a line of small and rather ancient shops and houses that abuts on Arden Gate, facing the Green and the Cathedral. Just behind this row of buildings is Canon's Yard. Some of the houses of Norman Row date back to the sixteenth century. There are a number of shops—the Cathedral Shop that has all the postcards, the guide-books, Canon Moffit's book on the Cathedral, cheap imitations of the knocker of the West Door, the carvings of the angels in the Lady Chapel, little replicas of Henry Quair, the Black Bishop, Bishops Wilfred and Holcroft, religious books and, most popular of all, small bronze copies of the Harmer John Memorial. Next to the Cathedral Shop is the Glebeshire Tea Shop, and next to that the Woollen Shop which is run by the Association of Glebeshire Industries. Also in Norman Row live Broad the head verger, Mr. Doggett the organist, Mrs. Coole who has a lodging-house for old ladies.

Mrs. Coole's house is No. 10, the Cathedral Shop No. 3, Mr. Doggett's No. 8, Mr. Klitch's No. 11.

Herbert Klitch was a round, rosy-faced Pickwick sort of man, very jolly, not a fool, with a great affection for his wife and his boy and girl. Especially he had a passionate love of his boy, Guy, who, besides having a fine treble and being head boy in the Choir School, was a nice child with a real talent for mechanics.

As the Cathedral chimed four o'clock Klitch turned on the electric light. The shop had been dark for some time now, but Klitch had not troubled: he had been alone there, sitting in his back room, glancing out of his back window, which, through a space in the houses of Canon's Yard, looked away on the left to fields and a thin line of graceful hills. He always said he had one of the best views in Polchester, for his back window gave him green fields on one side and the town and the drop to the Rock on the other, while the front shop commanded the whole of the Green and the Cathedral in its complete splendour.

'The whole of Life, Nature, Commerce, Religion—and in Canon's Yard itself the daily humours of the human animal.' His shop, he considered, was the true centre of the town.

He was, himself, broad-minded, tolerant, looked on everyone with humour and was an enthusiastic gossip. One of his weaknesses perhaps was that he could keep nothing to himself. He knew everything about the town, what the St. Leaths were doing at the Castle, old Ronder's present pulling of intricate strings, why Lady Mary Bassett had quarrelled with Mrs. Cronin, what Humphrey Carris had up his sleeve. Especially did all the life of the Cathedral—clerical, human, musical, official—pass under his eye. And because he had money enough, a good wife, good children, a fine digestion, and was able to laugh at his enemies, he was a happy man.

His shop was crowded with things good, bad and indifferent—furniture, pictures, suits of armour, a stuffed crocodile, silver, china, rugs and old books. There were always some valuable things to be found there by those who knew. He had no conscience at all about cheating anyone who was ignorant enough to be cheated. His theory was that anyone who wished to buy old things should learn something about the job. He dealt with an admirable 'faker' in Drymouth who could provide you with a Chippendale chair, a piece of Lowestoft, a Girtin water-colour in no time at all. He made his living, in the main, from the junk that was in his front window. He was clever at arranging his window, and would have there some delicate china, an Indian shawl, some Toby jugs, and a piece of carving from a Spanish cathedral, so tactfully placed that they all gave lustre to one another.

When someone came to the shop who had true knowledge, he brought out his real things. This was his happiest time, for he had a great and genuine love of the true and the beautiful. He would surprisingly lower his prices for a connoisseur, feeling that here was another artist like himself. One or two things—a Bonington drawing, a small Chippendale table, some Waterford glass—he loved so much that he kept them to himself. He himself painted water-colours and very bad they were.

Not only was his face round and rosy but his skin was very smooth and he was a pattern of cleanliness. He always wore a rather high wing-collar and in his tie a gold pin. He liked loose pepper-and-salt tweeds in the winter time, and on his thick gold watch-chain was a Masonic sign. He was a high official in the local Lodge. His short thick legs were quick, impatient, impulsive, and the rest of his body seemed to move with slow good-nature behind them as though it said: 'Hold on, legs. You'll wear me out one of these days, but I'm proud of you all the same.' He thought a pretty girl one of the nicest things in the world and I would not say that he had been always faithful to Mrs. Klitch. 'In spirit—always,' he would say, and Mrs. Klitch said, 'What I don't hear about don't worry me.'

He went into the front shop, and, looking about him, thought that he would soon close, for it was not likely that there would be any more customers to-day. He was filled with pride and satisfaction. The front shop was nice, very nice indeed. He arranged a few things, humming 'Raindrops on the Roof' as he did so. He stopped and patted his Chinese Warrior on the shoulder. He was very proud of his Warrior, a big figure in red-and-gold lacquer, carrying a sword. He had a black hat and black boots and in his eyes there was a stare of cold arrogant brutality which Klitch greatly appreciated.

Then (Klitch often afterwards remembered the exact circumstances) his shop-bell rang, the door opened and a man came in. He was tall, broad and stout. He was wearing an ulster and carried a shabby brown bag. This last he at once put down on a sham Chippendale chair and said: 'Mr. Herbert Klitch?' His voice, even as revealed by those few words, was remarkable. It had a resonance quite unusual, so that you felt that it was carried on in a series of reverberating echoes. Nevertheless its tone was tunefully deep and true.

'Yes, that's me,' said Klitch ungrammatically.

'Ah,' said the man. Then he took off his ulster. 'Just as though,' Klitch said afterwards, 'he meant to stay for the night.' He smiled a broad and beaming smile. This should have been friendly and yet was not altogether so. As Klitch very quickly noticed, the man was in many ways a series of contradictions. He was big and should have given an impression of great strength, but there was too much flesh on his bones. His head was finely shaped, but the cheeks were flabby, the mouth too small. The eyes were large and friendly but also a little sly. His most remarkable feature was his nose, which was unusually long, fleshy about the nostrils, and gave the impression, as some noses do, that it had a life independent of the rest of the face. His colouring was fair and he had an untidy light-brown moustache.

The moment that Klitch really looked at him he said to himself, 'Now where have I seen that nose before?'

The stranger stood with his legs apart and began to talk.

'I've just arrived in your town and left my bag at the station,' he said. 'The fact is that I have only a few shillings in my pocket. Don't be afraid,' he went on, laughing, 'I'm not going to beg; no, and I'm not going to hold a pistol at your head either. I was looking all the way along for a curiosity shop, somewhere to sell a very pretty thing I've got in my bag here. I thought I was beat and then I came on your shop.' He smiled in a friendly, intimate way. 'You see, I only landed at Drymouth this morning and there were one or two things I had to buy there. I'm staying with relatives here in Polchester, but I don't want to arrive without a penny to my name. I'll be getting a cheque from America in a day or two, but that will take a week or more to clear.' He looked around him. 'You've got some nice things here.'

'Yes,' said Klitch, 'I have—and I don't know that I want any more. Times as they are, we're all trying to sell things rather than buy them.'

'Perfectly,' said the stranger. 'I fully appreciate that, but when you've seen what I've got here I think you'll like it.'

He turned to the shabby bag, opened it and, from the middle of a pair of not-too-fresh pyjamas, produced something in brown paper. Klitch, who was a good observer and liked to say, with his head on one side, that nothing was too small to be important, noticed that the hands were big, podgy, and the backs of them covered with brown freckles. 'I'd know those hands again anywhere,' he thought. The man, with great care, his face puckered with childlike seriousness, unwrapped the paper and then held up something that made Klitch exclaim, in spite of himself, 'Ah!'

It had been his habit for many years to assume complete indifference if he was a purchaser and show a friendly eagerness if a seller. He was disgusted with himself for saying 'Ah!' The man said nothing. He simply held up his prize against the light and his whole big body was taut with pride.

He was holding a crucifix of black marble. The Christus was carved in white ivory. It stood on a pedestal of brilliant green ivory.

'You may well say "Ah,"' he remarked at last. 'You won't see another like this in a hurry. Spanish—seventeenth century.'

No, Klitch wouldn't. He realized that. Moreover the artist-demon in him was stirring, gripping his heart with its talons, urging him on, spiteful vindictive little animal, to perform some egregious commercial folly.

'Yes. It's fine,' Klitch said. 'I won't deny it.' He examined it more closely. He took it into his expert hands. The figure was exquisitely carved and it was no absurd fancy of Klitch's that, with its dignity of suffering, its abnegation of all pride, its poignant authority, the room and everything in it should be aware of a new presence.

Klitch placed it on a table. Both men looked at it.

'Of course,' said the man, 'it's worth I don't know how much. If I waited I could get anything I like for it in London.'

'Perhaps,' said Klitch, 'you could and perhaps you couldn't. It's amazing these days what low prices fine things are fetching at Christie's and Sotheby's.'

'Oh, that's not the way,' said the man. 'The thing to do is to find somebody who wants it, somebody who must have it. But I haven't the time. That's the damnable part of it. Fact is,' he went on, growing more confidential, 'I don't want to part with it—if I can see a way out.'

'What's its history?' Klitch asked.

'I got it from a man in New Mexico. He said it came from Toledo. It's seventeenth-century Spanish all right though.'

'Probably stolen,' Klitch thought, and told himself to be careful.

The man went on: 'Now this is what I thought you might do. Let me have fifty pounds or so. Give me three months. If I can pay you back with interest in that time I take it back. If not, at the end of three months, you keep it. It's worth three or four hundred if it's worth a penny.'

'Staying in Polchester?' Klitch asked.

'Well, to be honest with you I don't know. Depends how I like my relations and how they like me. But you're safe enough any way. If I abscond in the night you've got the thing for keeps. I'll give you a paper saying that if I'm absent from this town a month without redeeming it it's yours. Nothing could be fairer than that.'

Yes, Klitch thought, that was fair enough. He knew where he could sell it to-morrow for a hundred. But he didn't want to sell it. The longer he looked at it the more he liked it. Fifty pounds was a lot of money, but he had done well that summer.

'I'm not a pawnbroker, you know,' he said, smiling.

'This is different,' said the man.

Yes, it was. Klitch hadn't seen so beautiful a thing for a long time.

'All right. I'll do it,' he said suddenly.

'Cash,' said the man.

'I think I've got enough. Come into the back room.'

He sat down and wrote out a declaration. Then he jumped up.

'Wait a moment,' he said. 'I'll have a witness if you don't mind.' He went to the little staircase and called out: 'Maria! You there?'

Someone answered, and presently a little woman with grey hair and a mottled face like a strawberry came down.

'Here, Maria! I want you to witness this.'

Mrs. Klitch stared at the big man with great interest, but she was a discreet woman, did her business and retired up the stairs again. Then the man sat down and, holding the pen very clumsily in his big hand, signed his name.

'Why!' Klitch cried. 'Furze? Michael Furze? Any relation of Mr. Stephen Furze?'

'I'm his brother,' said the man.

That, thought Klitch, is where I got the nose from!

'His brother!' Klitch said. 'Stephen Furze's brother! Well I never!'

They went back into the front room.

'Yes, my name's Michael Furze. My friends call me Mike.' The man, smiling, stood swaying slightly on his big legs.

Klitch gave him three ten-pound notes and the rest in ones.

'So you're going to stay with him?'

'I suppose so. I haven't seen him for twenty years. What's he like now?'

'What was he like twenty years ago?'

'Oh, thin as a stick and mean as hell.'

'Well, he's just the same now. He's not liked in the town. Too many people owe him money.'

'Ah—same old Stephen.' Furze's eyes narrowed. 'He had a girl of ten when I last saw him. She still with him?'

'Oh yes.'

'And Sarah?'

'Mrs. Furze? Yes, she's still there.'

'They don't know I'm coming,' Furze said, grinning. 'It'll give them a bit of a surprise.'

'I expect it will.' Then Klitch added: 'I doubt if you'll stay there long.'

'Why? What's the matter with them?'

'A bit miserly, the old people. You won't get much to eat.'

'Oh, won't I?' Furze smiled again.

'You'll find the town a bit quiet too,' Klitch said.

'Just what I want—some quiet. I've roamed the world over. Moscow, Tokio, Honolulu, New Zealand, Paraguay, Colombia—anywhere you like. I could tell you some stories. . . . But I've always fancied a place like this. I'm a religious man.'

'You're what?' asked Klitch.

'Religious. Does that sound odd to you?'

'No. Not odd,' said Klitch. 'Only precious few people are these days.'

'Well, they ought to be.' The voice began to boom again. 'They'll find it mighty uncomfortable for themselves one day. The soul—what's more important than the soul? Here for seventy years or so, then—eternity. Eternity! Just think of it, man! When I was in Paraguay once . . .'

He then proceeded to tell an amazing story with dragons and witch-doctors and tortured old women and a large black snake in it. The story was wonderful and most unconvincing. Furze stopped with a click.

'Well, there—I could talk all night. I must be getting on and give my dear relations a shock. A miser is he, dear Stephen? Always was. Grown on him, I expect.'

'I expect it has,' Klitch said gravely.

'I hate to leave that with you. May I come in and look at it sometimes?'

'Why, of course.'

'I'll buy it back from you in no time. You'll see.' He shook hands and Klitch was astonished at their soft pudginess. 'Good night. Many thanks.' He picked up his shabby bag and went out.

Klitch looked, from the open door, after him. There was no sign of him. He had been swallowed up as though he had never been. A thin, vaporous mist had come up, but above it stars shone out and the Cathedral, like a black ship, sailed against the pale sky.

'That's a rum bloke,' Klitch thought. 'Never met a rummer.'

He looked at the Cathedral. Empty now and silent. Not a soul there. He wondered sometimes what it felt at night. Did the spirits of the old priests and warriors and monks come out from their tombs? He had thought sometimes that he would invade that silence. What would he discover? A foolish, fantastic thought, but then he had for so long lived with old, discarded things, chairs and tables and pictures and suits of armour that seemed to him to have a life of their own. Well, if chairs and tables had, why not knights and bishops?

He went back into the shop and looked at the crucifix. Yes, it was lovely. He hoped fervently that that fellow would not find the money.

He called up the staircase: 'Maria! Come down and see what I've got!'