“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.