“It’s the old part of the town,” said the organist; “there isn’t one house in ten with anyone in it now. All we fashionables have moved further up. Airs from the river are damp, you know, and wharves so very vulgar.”
They left the narrow street, and came on to what Westray made out to be a long wharf skirting the river. On the right stood abandoned warehouses, square-fronted, and huddled together like a row of gigantic packing-cases; on the left they could hear the gurgle of the current among the mooring-posts, and the flapping of the water against the quay wall, where the east wind drove the wavelets up the river. The lines of what had once been a horse-tramway still ran along the quay, and the pair had some ado to thread their way without tripping, till a low building on the right broke the line of lofty warehouses. It seemed to be a church or chapel, having mullioned windows with stone tracery, and a bell-turret at the west end; but its most marked feature was a row of heavy buttresses which shored up the side facing the road. They were built of brick, and formed triangles with the ground and the wall which they supported. The shadows hung heavy under the building, but where all else was black the recesses between the buttresses were blackest. Westray felt his companion’s hand tighten on his arm.
“You will think me as great a coward as I am,” said the organist, “if I tell you that I never come this way after dark, and should not have come here to-night if I had not had you with me. I was always frightened as a boy at the very darkness in the spaces between the buttresses, and I have never got over it. I used to think that devils and hobgoblins lurked in those cavernous depths, and now I fancy evil men may be hiding in the blackness, all ready to spring out and strangle one. It is a lonely place, this old wharf, and after nightfall—” He broke off, and clutched Westray’s arm. “Look,” he said; “do you see nothing in the last recess?”
His abruptness made Westray shiver involuntarily, and for a moment the architect fancied that he discerned the figure of a man standing in the shadow of the end buttress. But, as he took a few steps nearer, he saw that he had been deceived by a shadow, and that the space was empty.
“Your nerves are sadly overstrung,” he said to the organist. “There is no one there; it is only some trick of light and shade. What is the building?”
“It was once a chantry of the Grey Friars,” Mr Sharnall answered, “and afterwards was used for excise purposes when Cullerne was a real port. It is still called the Bonding-House, but it has been shut up as long as I remember it. Do you believe in certain things or places being bound up with certain men’s destinies? because I have a presentiment that this broken-down old chapel will be connected somehow or other with a crisis of my life.”
Westray remembered the organist’s manner in the church, and began to suspect that his mind was turned. The other read his thoughts, and said rather reproachfully:
“Oh no, I am not mad—only weak and foolish and very cowardly.”
They had reached the end of the wharf, and were evidently returning to civilisation, for a sound of music reached them. It came from a little beer-house, and as they passed they heard a woman singing inside. It was a rich contralto, and the organist stopped for a moment to listen.
“She has a fine voice,” he said, “and would sing well if she had been taught. I wonder how she comes here.”