The Adventures of Harry Revel | Page 5

the extreme western end of the church,
and in due time watched the proceedings from that respectful distance
and across a gulf of empty pews.
--That is to say, some of us watched. I have no doubt that Miss
Plinlimmon did, for instance; nay, that her attention was riveted.
Otherwise I cannot explain what followed.
On the previous night I had gone to bed almost supperless, as usual. I
had come, as usual, ravenous to breakfast, and for once I had sated, and
more than sated, desire. For years after, though hungry often enough in
the course of them, I never thought with longing upon cold veal or
strawberries, nor have I ever recovered an unmitigated appetite for
either.
It is certain, then, that even before the ceremony began--and the bride
arrived several minutes late--I slumbered on the back bench of the
gallery. The evidence of six boys seated near me agrees that, at the
moment when Mr. Scougall produced the ring, I arose quietly, but
without warning, and made my exit by the belfry door. They supposed
that I was taken ill; they themselves were feeling more or less
uncomfortable.
The belfry stairway, by which we had reached the door of our gallery,
wound upward beyond it to the top of the tower, and gave issue by a
low doorway upon the dwarf battlements, from which sprang a spire

some eighty feet high. This spire was, in fact, a narrowing octagon, its
sides hung with slate, its eight ridges faced with Bath stone, and edged
from top to bottom with ornamental crockets.
The service over, bride and bridegroom withdrew with their friends to
the vestry for the signing of the register; and there, while they dallied
and interchanged good wishes, were interrupted by the beadle, a
white-faced pew-opener, and two draymen from the street, with news
(as one of the draymen put it, shouting down the rest) that "one of
Scougall's yellow orphans was up clinging to the weathercock by his
blessed eyebrows; and was this a time for joking, or for feeling
ashamed of themselves and sending for a constable?"
The drayman shouted and gesticulated so fiercely with a great hand
flung aloft that Mr. Scougall, almost before comprehending,
precipitated himself from the church. Outside stood his hired carriage
with its pair of greys, but the driver was pointing with his whip and
craning his neck like the rest of the small crowd.
It may have been their outcries, but I believe it was the ringing of the
dockyard bell for the dinner-hour, which awoke me. In my dreams my
arms had been about some kindly neck (and of my dreams in those
days, though but a glimpse ever survived the waking, in those glimpses
dwelt the shade, if not the presence, of my unknown mother). They
were, in fact, clasped around the leg of the weathercock.
Unsympathetic support! But I have known worse friends. A mercy it
was, at any rate, that I kept my embrace during the moments when
sense returned to me, with vision of the wonders spread around and
below. Truly I enjoyed a wonderful view--across the roofs of Plymouth,
quivering under the noon sun, and away to the violet hills of Dartmoor;
and, again, across the water and shipping of the Hamoaze to the green
slopes of Mount Edgcumbe and the massed trees slumbering in the heat.
Slumber, indeed, and a great quiet seemed to rest over me, over the
houses, the ships, the whole wide land. By the blessing of Heaven, not
so much as the faintest breeze played about the spire, or cooled the
copper rod burning my hand (and, again, it may have been this that
woke me). I sat astride the topmost crocket, and glancing down

between my boot heels, spied the carriage with its pair of greys
flattened upon the roadway just beyond the verge of the battlements,
and Mr. Scougall himself dancing and waving his arms like a small but
very lively beetle.
Doubtless, I had ascended by the narrow stairway of the crockets: but
to descend by them with a lot of useless senses about me would be a
very different matter. No giddiness attacked me as yet; indeed I knew
rather than felt my position to be serious. For a moment I thought of
leaving my perch and letting myself slip down the face of the slates, to
be pulled up short by the parapet; but the length of the slide daunted me,
and the parapet appeared dangerously shallow. I should shoot over it to
a certainty and go whirling into air. On the other hand, to drop from my
present saddle into the one below was no easy feat. For this I must back
myself over the edge of it, and cling with body and legs