The Nebuly Coat | Page 5

against the wall--"wot we tolls the
bell with for service, and that ain't the big bell neither."
"Did Sir George Farquhar know all this?" Westray asked the Rector.
"No, sir; Sir George did not know it," said the Rector, with some
tartness in his voice, "because it was not material that he should know it;

and Sir George's time, when he was here, was taken up with more
pressing matters. I never heard this old wife's tale myself till the present
moment, and although it is true that we do not ring the bells, this is on
account of the supposed weakness of the cage in which they swing, and
has nothing whatever to do with the tower itself. You may take my
word for that. `Sir George,' I said, when Sir George asked me--`Sir
George, I have been here forty years, and if you will agree not to ask
for your fees till my tower tumbles down, why, I shall be very glad.' Ha,
ha, ha! how Sir George enjoyed that joke! Ha, ha, ha!"
Westray turned away with a firm resolve to report to headquarters the
story of the interrupted peal, and to make an early examination of the
tower on his own behalf.
The clerk was nettled that the Rector should treat his story with such
scant respect, but he saw that the others were listening with interest,
and he went on:
"Well, 'taint for I to say the old tower's a-going to fall, and I hope Sir
Jarge won't ever live to larf the wrong side o' his mouth; but stopping
of a ring never brought luck with it yet, and it brought no luck to my
lord. First he lost his dear son and his son's wife in Cullerne Bay, and I
remember as if 'twas yesterday how we grappled for 'em all night, and
found their bodies lying close together on the sand in three fathoms,
when the tide set inshore in the morning. And then he fell out wi' my
lady, and she never spoke to him again--no, not to the day of her death.
They lived at Fording--that's the great hall over there," he said to
Westray, jerking his thumb towards the east--"for twenty years in
separate wings, like you mi'd say each in a house to themselves. And
then he fell out wi' Mr Fynes, his grandson, and turned him out of
house and lands, though he couldn't leave them anywhere else when he
died. 'Tis Mr Fynes as is the young lord now, and half his life he's bin a
wandrer in foreign parts, and isn't come home yet. Maybe he never will
come back. It's like enough he's got killed out there, or he'd be tied to
answer parson's letters. Wouldn't he, Mr Sharnall?" he said, turning
abruptly to the organist with a wink, which was meant to retaliate for
the slight that the Rector had put on his stories.

"Come, come; we've had enough of these tales," said the Rector. "Your
listeners are getting tired."
"The man's in love with his own voice," he added in a lower tone, as he
took Westray by the arm; "when he's once set off there's no stopping
him. There are still a good many points which Sir George and I
discussed, and on which I shall hope to give you our conclusions; but
we shall have to finish our inspection to-morrow, for this talkative
fellow has sadly interrupted us. It is a great pity the light is failing so
fast just now; there is some good painted glass in this end window of
the transept."
Westray looked up and saw the great window at the end of the transept
shimmering with a dull lustre; light only in comparison with the
shadows that were falling inside the church. It was an insertion of
Perpendicular date, reaching from wall to wall, and almost from floor
to roof. Its vast breadth, parcelled out into eleven lights, and the infinite
division of the stonework in the head, impressed the imagination; while
mullions and tracery stood out in such inky contrast against the
daylight yet lingering outside, that the architect read the scheme of
subarcuation and the tracery as easily as if he had been studying a plan.
Sundown had brought no gleam to lift the pall of the dying day, but the
monotonous grey of the sky was still sufficiently light to enable a
practised eye to make out that the head of the window was filled with a
broken medley of ancient glass, where translucent blues and yellows
and reds mingled like the harmony of an old patchwork quilt. Of the
lower divisions of the window, those at the sides had no colour to
clothe their nakedness, and remained in ghostly whiteness; but the three
middle