Volume Three—Chapter Twenty Seven.

In the Reflector.

Jared Pellet used to declare with a grim smile that he thought he had been more happy as a poor man in Duplex Street than he was now that he had inherited his brother’s property and thriving business; for he had never known how much misery, poverty, and wretchedness was in the world before the secretaries of different charities began taking ample care to keep him well-informed upon the subject. Jared used to say he thought, he was not sure though, he almost found the money a trouble to him; in fact, it would have been a burden if he had not somewhat lightened it by the arrangement he made respecting Harry and the money brought by his mother into the firm. He did not now find so much time for dreaming over his old organ, sooner than part from which he would almost have given up the worldly goods now in his possession.

The old house was kept on for some time in Duplex Street almost intact; and when it was decided to give it up, Mrs Jared had a good long cry over it, in spite of its pinched looks and bare rooms, but where she said that she had passed so many, many happy hours, gone never to return.

Wonderful was the collection of odds and ends brought away to be deposited in the wealthy new home—one and all articles that it was declared to be impossible to leave behind. One was Jared’s glue-pot, which showed its malignant disposition to the very last, and, after being wrapped up carefully in paper, proved to have a quantity of nasty, foul, sticky water somewhere in its internal regions, which ran out all over the other objects packed in the box.

Patty, too, must be obstinate about the old tin-kettle of a piano, with the rusty wires, being left behind. What were instruments of great compass from Broadwood or Collard? They could not make her feel that she was to desert old friends. How many boxes of strange pieces of ware, and fragments of this and that, were packed up under the name of playthings, it is hard to say.

One, at least, of Mrs Jared’s weaknesses has been already mentioned. This may not come in the same list, but during the arrangements what time the house in Duplex Street was turned what she called inside out, and the question was in full discussion as to what was to be taken, what left to be sold, this lady suddenly exclaimed, in answer to expostulations—“What! leave that rolling-pin and paste-board? No, not if I know it: I’ve had them twenty years, and—”

The remainder of Mrs Jared’s speech was inaudible from her head suddenly disappearing in the depths of a big box, where she was rolling the implements in question in the folds of an old scorched ironing-blanket for safety. It is worthy of remark, that at the time Mrs Jared was packing, her jacket was hung beside her on the knob of the door, and that jacket was handsome, and of ermine.

“Well, dear, is there anything else you would like to take?” said Jared.

“Yes; that there is!” was the reply, as Mrs Jared took down a bunch of extremely dusty sweet herbs from a hook in the kitchen ceiling, and placed it beside the swaddled rolling-pin. “Yes; the things were hard enough to get together, and somehow I can hardly realise, even now, that we can afford to leave them behind!”

After that night in the church, Jared took a dislike to the reflector, for as to giving up the right to conducting the service at St Runwald’s, that was out of the question, and Mr Timson used to boast to the vicar that they had not only the best, but the richest organist in London. And it was only occasionally, as a personal favour, to one of the above gentlemen, that a stranger was allowed to try the instrument.

That reflector Jared took down himself from over the keyboard of the organ, and old Purkis bore it into the damp vestry, where in course of time its reflective power became almost nil.

But though Jared no longer possessed a reflector in which he could gaze and dream, and conjure up the past, yet one has a mirror of the mind upon which, after a breath, the surface shines as I sit late this wintry night, as Purkis sat of old in the dim shades of the gloomy old church, listening to the inspiring music of the grand old organ, thundering in peals, wailing in sighs, or pouring forth jubilant melody. For above me in the distance, from behind a curtain suspended to a brass rod, rises a faint glow as from some soft light, above which start up, like the golden pillars dimly seen when the northern lights flush the wintry sky, the mighty pipes whose summits are in the deep obscurity which clouds the open roof of the edifice. And in my mirror what is there first? An indelible picture? No; for it fades to give place to others, as now there is visible Jared’s patient lined old face poring over music-book and keyboard by the light of one feeble candle which seems to shed a halo round his quaint old head.

Now the interior of the old church by day, with Jared at the organ. A bright spring morning, and the organist in the morning costume of a glossy black dress-coat and trousers—Tim Ruggles’ cut for a ducat!—white vest, and patent leather-boots. His grizzly hair has a peculiar knotty appearance? and did any mirror reflect odours, most surely there would be a smell of curling-tongs and singeing. There is a camellia, too, in his button-hole, and he has just hurried up-stairs, splitting a pair of white kid-gloves all to ribbons in dragging them off. Crash! That’s the brass curtain-rings on the rod, so that Jared can screw himself round and gaze down into the church, now that he has taken a music-book from the locker and placed it upon the stand of the opened organ.

The sun streams through the tinted windows in golden and ruddy glories piercing the sombre twilight of the church with rays whereon dance myriad motes of dust—dust perhaps mingled with that of the generations of the past. Jared is looking over the heads of many people anxiously towards the chancel; and now seems to come a strange rushing sound, and a dull creak, creak, which makes the towering old instrument to shudder. But that is only Ichabod Gunnis, grown tall and out of leathers, toiling away at the long handle of the bellows till the little weight tells that the wind-chest is full.

And now here comes the party which Jared left in the vestry, for there is a buzz of excitement in the church, and heads are craning, while Tim Ruggles is so excited that he stands up on the cushions of the pew he helps to occupy so as to have a better view of what is going on.

Here they come! No, they don’t; that’s only old Purkis in full uniform, plump, ruddy, glistening with moisture that he is too dignified to remove, as he rolls solemnly down the nave towards the door, waving the people back with his cane. Smile? Not he! beadles don’t smile in public life, only when out of uniform; and as to using a handkerchief, he could not do that, unless compelled by such a fleshquake or sneeze as now shakes Mr Purkis’s frame, caused by that sooty dust that pervades the church, and not by damp.

But now they do come: Patty leaning upon the arm of Harry Clayton; Timson next, rounder than ever, with Janet on his arm—bridesmaids—more friends—a bright confusion of figures, with only one here and there to be recognised in the mirror. But there is Canau; there Mr Grey, who has doffed his surplice; and, right at the back, there is Mrs Purkis, crying and laughing together, but turning solemn directly after, as becomes the pew-opener of St Runwald’s.

Peal up the wedding-march, old Jared! But Jared can’t play; not he. He has blundered several chords, though no one is a bit the wiser. He would break down, only he has known the piece by heart for years. There is music open, stave and cleff and crotchet and quaver; but the big-headed notes seem to be bobbing up and down upon their spindle bodies, and wagging their tails, and waltzing round and round. And really the book might just as well be in the locker as upon the stand; for, though Jared knows it not, it is upside down. There is dew all over Jared’s spectacles, and they refuse to be seen through, while a great tear has trickled down, gathering strength from affluents as it proceeds, till it hangs upon the tip of Jared’s nose, to go plash down at last upon the central G natural of the fingerboard. And there are more weak tears stealing down from behind his spectacles to moisten his cheeks. They might be taken for perspiration, since he is smiling as he plays mechanically, for he never performed in a more soulless fashion in his life.

But then he always was weak, and queer, and unbusinesslike; and “some people are such fools!” It could hardly be expected that at such a time he should be exact in his fingering; but his actions are so odd that one might say, “Bring a strait waistcoat,” only that he is in one already, which crackles at every motion. And now comes a dismal groan, due to the exciting event; for, probably for only the third or fourth time in his life—being, in spite of his vagaries, a most exemplary bellows-boy—Ichabod has let the wind out of the organ.

It does not matter, for the wedding-party is already in the porch, being waited on by a deputation from the Campanological Brethren, in the shape of Beaky Jem of the tenor, who grins and rubs his Roman rostrum as he growls out something about the bells. Timson is at him, though, fighting hard to get a hand into his tight pocket, and fighting just as hard to get it out with what must have been a satisfactory answer; for St Runwald’s peal asserts itself this day, far above the roar of the streets, ringing out merrily in thousands of changes, stimulated by the “sight o’ beer that there was in that belfry sewerly.”

The mirror blank, and then a tall, pale woman listening with clasped hands to a never-wearying tale told her by a strangely-wrinkled little man, who sits and pretends to smoke, and pokes at and arranges the scrubby trifle of hair by his temples with the stem of his pipe—a tale of a little gentle child whose spirit fled as he slept, holding her to his quaint but loving breast. How many times Tim Ruggles has told of little Pine it were hard to say, but neither he nor his listener ever tires; and perhaps it is due to their hands that flowers bloom so sweetly upon the little grave. The fount of tears might have been dry before now; but no! there is always one ready to fall to the child’s memory. A strange, quiet woman this, who rarely speaks, seldom smiles, save when Patty Clayton enters with a dimple-faced baby, and sits and lets the pale, silent woman kneel by her side, and gaze with a yearning love at the tiny piece of humanity, which coos and laughs in her face.

Jared again, and grown older. The man who was puzzled years before by a letter in French from a small Norman town, saying that the writer had been much surprised at not seeing Monsieur Pellet after his note appointing an interview; but that arrangements could be entered into for the reception of one lady boarder. Jared could not understand this letter, but the truth forced itself upon him at last, that it must have been intended for his brother, who was on his way to keep his appointment when that stern voice cried “Stay!”

Jared is in his old place, with two fresh cherubs perched there, one on either side of the organ—fresh-coloured, bright-eyed, restless cherubs, upon whom the old wooden bloated angels of the instrument look jealously down. And there sits “Grandpa,” pretending to practise, but a very slave to the whims and caprices of these household gods. Wonderful now are the variations made upon the pieces played: pedals are pressed down by tiny feet, stops are pulled out or pushed in; then bass or treble discords are played at unexpected times by little pudgy hands; or in the midst of the grand composition of some noble old master, the organ once more gives forth its dying wails, for the wind is out, through Ichabod Gunnis playing at “bo-peep” between the curtains with one of the cherubs, and miscalculating the lasting properties of a well-pumped, full chest of wind. But all this does not trouble Jared, who looks the picture of earthly happiness.

Poor Jared! he is head of the Austin Friars establishment, but he is afraid of the manager there, and slinks guardedly in and out. He goes every other day, because his son-in-law wishes it; but Jared is always very nervous, and fancies that the manager looks down upon him, because he comes up every Sunday from Highgate to play St Runwald’s organ, and afterwards eat a modest chop in Fleet Street with Canau, who generally has been with him to help him with the stops.

The scenes come quickly now across the face of the mirror—scenes of grey old men smoking long pipes, and playing cribbage or whist at Harry’s place, or at Jared’s home; of life’s downward course made smoother for many by the heaped-up wealth that Jared inherits; of old Timson standing before the organist, with hands beneath his coat-tails, and a frown upon his brow, though there is an odd twinkle in his eye as he points to a deficiency in the poor-box, reproached the while by the vicar, who goes with the churchwarden to empty the boxes upon the very next day, to find that deficiency is amply made up.

No glance at mirror now, but a long gaze from a seat at the reality. There is the faint glow from behind the curtain; the softened tones are pealing and quivering in the air as they float round the darkened church. The music is sweet but sad, and the soft strains thrill as they sound funereal—dirge-like. Is it the touch of Jared? The tall golden pipes stand up ray-like, and they quiver in the glow. The hour is late, the streets are getting hushed, and the solemnity of the place seems oppressive, aided as it is in its influence upon the senses by the wailing strains that sob through the air.

Silence for awhile, and the sense of oppression more heavy; but now once more come the swelling softened tones of the grand old instrument—strains wild and extemporised—music that is almost palpable, as it flows current-like through nave, aisles, and chancel—sad music, solemn strains—and then once more silence.

A strange thrill now, but only for an instant, of jarring pain; for the old clock chimes the hour, and each lapse of time is beaten out upon bell-rim by a ponderous hammer, and the lumbering old machinery is set to work by its weights, and hammers out a mutilated version of the Old Hundredth Psalm, before the clicking, grinding works stand still, and the brazen clangour dies away.

Then comes the organ again, in a sweet strain from some flute-like stop, from where the faint light rises in a halo, like the herald of the rising of some great orb of sound. And now come, in a powerful crescendo, strains loud and deep, then higher and higher, till the glorious fugue culminates in a mighty burst of harmony, poured forth by the instrument’s full power, but only to die away in distant mutterings as of thunder, from the deep-toned pedal pipes; for the practice is at an end.

That was Jared Pellet’s touch—that was the old organist, fettered by no ten-minute edicts of old tea-dealing Timson; that was Jared, rising on the wings of his music far away from earth; and now, as the last muttering peal of softened thunder dies away, the faint light is shining upon the bent grey head of my old friend.

The End.