Mr Sharnall

“ Gentlemen who drank in good company, he said, should be prepared to pay their shot like gentlemen. Mr Sharnall had drunk enough to make it a serious thing for a poor man not to get paid. Mr Sharnall’s story might be true, but it was a funny thing for an organist to come and drink at the Merrymouth, and have no money in his pocket. It had stopped raining; he could leave his overcoat as a pledge of good faith, and come back and fetch it later. So Mr Sharnall was constrained to leave this part of his equipment, and was severed from a well-worn overcoat, which had been the companion of years. ”

“ Then the nine days' wonder ceased, and Mr Sharnall passed into the great oblivion of middle-class dead. His successor was not immediately appointed. Canon Parkyn arranged that the second master at the National School, who had a pretty notion of music, and was a pupil of Mr Sharnall, should be spared to fill the gap. As Queen Elizabeth, of pious memory, recruited the privy purse by keeping in her own hand vacant bishoprics, so the rector farmed the post of organist at Cullerne Minster. ”

“ Miss Joliffe stared; she saw a bottle and an empty tumbler on the table, and smelt a strong smell of whisky; and the mirth faded from Mr Sharnall's face as he read her thoughts.
"No, wrong," he said—"wrong this once; I am as sober as a judge, but excited. A Bishop is coming to lunch with me. You are excited when Lord Blandamer takes tea with you—a mere trashy temporal peer; am I not to be excited when a real spiritual lord pays me a visit? Hear, O woman! The Bishop of Carisbury has written to ask, not me to lunch with him, but him to lunch with me. ”

“ Anastasia's thumb went into the curry as she lifted the dish, but she did not notice it. She was only eager to get away, to place herself outside the reach of these slanderous tongues, to hide herself where she could unburden her heart of its bitterness. Mr Sharnall fired one more shaft at her as she left the room.
"He takes after his grandfather in other ways besides close-fistedness. The old man had a bad enough name with women, and this man has a worse. They are a poor lot—lock, stock, and barrel." ”

“ Don’t make success any criterion of life; don’t talk about ‘getting on.’ We shan’t be judged by how we have got on. Come along with me; show you’ve got your old resolution, your old will-power.”
“I haven’t got the power,” Mr Sharnall said; “I can’t help it.” But he took his hand from the cupboard-door.
“Then let me help it for you,” said the Bishop; and he opened the cupboard, found a half-used bottle of whisky, drove the cork firmly into it, and put it under his arm inside the lappet of his coat. “Come along.” ”

“ Then the boy began, “Canon Parkyn’s compliments,” but broke off; for the organist greeted him with a sound cuff and a “How many times have I told you, sir, not to come creeping up those stairs when I am in the middle of a voluntary? You startle me out of my senses, coming round the corner like a ghost.”
“I’m very sorry, sir,” the boy said, whimpering. “I’m sure I never meant—I never thought—”
“You never do think,” Mr Sharnall said. “Well, well, don’t go on whining. Old heads don’t grow on young shoulders; don’t do it again, and there’s a sixpence for you. ”

“ Carisbury is not so very far off, so do come. There is always a bed ready for you. Will you walk up the street with me now? I have to go to the Rectory, and I suppose you will be going to the church, will you not?"
"Yes," said Mr Sharnall; "I'll come with you if you wait one minute. I think I'll take just a drop of something before I go, if you'll excuse me. I feel rather run down, and the service is a long one. You won't join me, of course?" And he went to the cupboard.
The Bishop's opportunity was come.
"Don't, Sharnall. Don't, Nick," he said; "don't take that stuff. ”

“ Mr Sharnall said one evening, when Lord Blandamer had gone. “I can’t stop his giving new bellows or a new pedal-board. And we do want the new board and the additional pipes. As it is, I can’t play German music, can’t touch a good deal of Bach’s organ work. Who is to say this man nay, if he chooses to alter the organ? But I’m not going to truckle to anyone, and least of all to him. Do you want me to fall flat on my face because he is a lord? Pooh! we could all be lords like him. Give me another week with Martin’s papers, and I’ll open your eyes. ”

“ Mr Sharnall did not hurry. There were the Psalter and the chant-book to be put open on the desk for the afternoon; there were the morning-service and anthem-book to be put away, and the evening-service and anthem-book to be got out.
The establishment had once been able to afford good music-books, and in the attenuated list of subscribers to the first-edition Boyce you may see to this day, “The Rector and Foundation of Cullerne Minster (6 copies) .” Mr Sharnall loved the great Boyce, with its parchment paper and largest of large margins. ”

“ The only person to exhibit no interest in this unhappy nobleman, who had outraged propriety by offering to contribute to the restoration of the minster, was Anastasia herself; and even tolerant Miss Joliffe was moved to chide her niece’s apathy in this particular.
“I do not think it becomes us, love, young or old, to take so little notice of great and good deeds. Mr Sharnall is, I fear, discontented with the station of life to which it has pleased Providence to call him, and I am less surprised at his not always giving praise where praise should be given; but with the young it is different. ”

“ None of them took any notice of Mr Sharnall, for music was exercising its transporting power, and their thoughts were far away. Some were with old Cullerne whalers, with the harpoon and the ice-floe; some dreamt of square-stemmed timber-brigs, of the Baltic and the white Memel-logs, of wild nights at sea and wilder nights ashore; and some, remembering violet skies and moonlight through the mango-groves, looked on the Creole woman, and tried to recall in her faded features, sweet, swart faces that had kindled youthful fires a generation since. ”

“ I am not quite so young as I was.”
“Ay,” he said, as she showed him into Mr Sharnall’s room, “we are all of us growing older; it behoves us to walk circumspectly, for we never know when we may be taken.” ”

“ The boys had sung sleepily and flat; Jaques had murdered the tenor solo with his strained and raucous voice; and old Janaway remembered afterwards that Mr Sharnall had never vouchsafed a good-afternoon as he strode angrily down the aisle.
Things were no better when he reached Bellevue Lodge. He was wet and chilled, and there was no fire in the grate, because it was too early in the year for such luxuries to be afforded. He would go to the kitchen, and take his tea there. It was Saturday afternoon. Miss Joliffe would be at the Dorcas meeting, but Anastasia would be in ”

“ It is so rarely that argument prevails to change opinion that the young man was flattered to see that the considerations which he was able to marshal were strong enough, at any rate, to influence Mr Sharnall’s determination. ”

“ There was something that moved strangely inside Mr Sharnall’s battered body as he read the letter—an upheaval of emotion; the child’s heart within the man’s; his young hopeful self calling to his old hopeless self. He sat back in his armchair, and shut his eyes, and the organ-loft in a little college chapel came back to him, and long, long practisings, and Willis content to stand by and listen as long as he should play. How it pleased Willis to stand by, and pull the stops, and fancy he knew something of music! No, Willis never knew any music, and yet he had a good taste, and loved a fugue. ”

“ On healthy youth climatic influences have no effect, and robust middle age, if it perceive them, goes on its way steadfast or stolid, with a cela passera, tout passera. But on the feeble and the failing such times fall with a weight of fretful despondency; and so they fell on Mr Sharnall.
He was very restless about the time of the mid-day meal. There came up a thick, dark fog from the sea, which went rolling in great masses over Cullerne Flat, till its fringe caught the outskirts of the town. After that, it settled in the streets, and took up its special abode in Bellevue Lodge ”

“ So take an old man's word: cheer up, and wait on my lord, and get him to give 'ee a new organ."
"Bah!" said Mr Sharnall, who was far too used to Janaway's manner to take umbrage or pay attention to it. "Bah! I hate all Blandamers. I wish they were as dead and buried as dodos; and I'm not at all sure they aren't. I'm not at all sure, mind you, that this strutting peacock has any more right to the name of Blandamer than you or I have. I'm sick of all this wealth. No one's thought anything of to-day, who can't build a church or a museum or a hospital. ”

“ But it's no use raking up these stories; the old man is gone, and we must hope for better things from the young one."
"I don't know why you call him young," said the doctor. "He's young, maybe, compared to his grandfather, who died at eighty-five; but he must be forty, if he's a day."
"Oh, impossible; and yet I don't know. It was in my first year at Cullerne that his father and mother were drowned. You remember that, Mr Sharnall—when the Corisande upset in Pallion Bay?" ”

“ It is here that the Cull, which has run for miles under willow and alder, through deep pastures golden with marsh marigolds or scented with meadow-sweet, past cuckoo-flower and pitcher-plant and iris and nodding bulrush, forsakes better traditions, and becomes a common town-sluice before it deepens at the wharves, and meets the sandy churn of the tideway. Mr Sharnall had become aware that he was tired, and he stood and leant over the iron paling that divides the roadway from the stream. ”

“ No evidence of any importance was given at the inquest except Westray's and the doctor's, and no other evidence was, in fact, required. Dr Ennefer had made an autopsy, and found that the immediate cause of death was a blow on the back of the head. But the organs showed traces of alcoholic habit, and the heart was distinctly diseased. It was probable that Mr Sharnall had been seized with a fainting fit as he left the organ-stool, and had fallen backwards with his head on the pedal-board. ”

“ Rummer followed rummer, and still the Creole woman sang at intervals, and still the company smoked and drank.
Mr Sharnall drank too, but by-and-by saw things less clearly, as the room grew hotter and more clouded with tobacco-smoke. Then he found the Creole woman standing before him, and holding out a shell for contributions. He had in his pocket only one single coin—a half-crown that was meant to be a fortnight’s pocket-money; but he was excited, and had no hesitation.
“There,” he said, with an air of one who gives a kingdom—“there, take that: you deserve it ”

“ What a strange accident it was, what a strange thing that Sharnall should have been haunted by that wandering fancy of a man following him with a hammer, and then have been found in this very loft, with the desperate wound on him that the pedal-note had dealt! How much had happened—his own proposal to Anastasia, his refusal, and now that event for which the bells were ringing! How quickly the scenes changed! What a creature of an hour was he, was every man, in face of these grim walls that had stood enduring, immutable, for generation after generation, for age after age! ”

“ Should we not put up with a little inconvenience, and ask Sharnall to bring the Bishop here, and lunch himself? He must know perfectly well that entertaining a Bishop in a lodging-house is an unheard-of thing, and he would do to make up the sixth instead of old Noot. We could easily tell Noot he was not wanted.”
“Sharnall is such a disreputable creature,” Mrs Parkyn answered; “he is quite as likely as not to come tipsy; and, if he does not, he has no breeding or education, and would scarcely understand polite conversation.” ”

“ He seemed once more to be making his way up the ghostly nave, on past the pillars that stood like gigantic figures in white winding-sheets, on under the great tower arches. Once more he was groping in the utter darkness of the newel stair, once more he came out into the organ-loft, and saw the baleful silver and sea-green of the nebuly coat gleaming in the transept window. And in the corners of the room lurked presences of evil, and a thin pale shadow of Sharnall wrung its hands, and cried to be saved from the man with the hammer. ”

“ But, sir," he added impressively, "if the conclusion as I've drawed is correct, theer's safe to be shooting if you're recognized, so keep in the shadder o' the wall, d' ye see. Now, are ye ready?—keep behind me—so. Here they come, I think."
Somewhere along the dark River hoarse cries arose, and the confused patter of running feet that drew rapidly louder and more distinct. Nearer they came until Barnahas could hear voices that panted out fierce curses; also he heard Mr. Shrig's pistol click as it was cocked. ”

“ Sure enough, from the darkness behind, came a sound there was no mistaking, the rush and patter of pursuing feet, and the feet were many.
"Are we to fight here?" demanded Barnabas, buttoning his coat.
"No, not yet, sir. Ah! there's Oliver—told you it vould be a fine night. This vay, sir!" And turning to the left again, Mr. Shrig led the way down a narrow passage. Half-way along this dim alley he paused, and seating himself upon a dim step, fell to mopping his brow. ”