The Nine Tailors (39 page)

So a period of inaction set in. Jim Thoday returned to his ship; Will Thoday, his marriage ceremony performed, went home and went on with his work. In time the parrot forgot its newly-learnt phrases—only coming out with them at long and infrequent intervals. The Rector carried on with his marryings, churchings and baptisms, and Tailor Paul tolled out a knell or two, or struck her solemn blows as the bells hunted in their courses. And the River Wale, rejoicing in its new opportunity, and swollen by the heavy rains of a wet summer and autumn, ground out its channel inch by inch and foot by foot, nine feet deeper than before, so that the water came up brackish at high tide as far as the Great Leam and the Old Bank Sluices were set open to their full extent, draining the Upper Fen.

And it was needed; for in that summer the water lay on the land all through August and September, and the corn sprouted in the stocks, and the sodden ricks took fire and stank horribly, and the Rector of Fenchurch St. Paul, conducting the Harvest Festival, had to modify his favourite sermon upon Thankfulness, for there was scarcely sound wheat enough to lay upon the altar and no great sheaves for the aisle windows or for binding about the stoves, as was customary. Indeed, so late was the harvest and so dank and chill the air, that the stoves were obliged to be lit for the evening service, whereby a giant pumpkin, left incautiously in the direct line of fire, was found to be part-roasted when the time came to send the kindly fruits of the earth to the local hospital.

Wimsey had determined that he would never go back to Fenchurch St. Paul. His memories of it were disquieting, and he felt that there were one or two people in that parish who would be better pleased if they never saw his face again. But when Hilary Thorpe wrote to him and begged him to come and see her during her Christmas holidays, he felt bound to go. His position with regard to her was peculiar. Mr. Edward Thorpe, as Trustee under her father’s will and her natural guardian, had rights which no court of law would gainsay; on the other hand Wimsey, as sole trustee to the far greater Wilbraham estate, held a certain advantage. He could, if he chose, make things awkward for Mr. Thorpe. Hilary possessed written evidence of her father’s wishes about her education, and Uncle Edward could scarcely now oppose them on the plea of lack of funds. But Wimsey, holding the purse-strings, could refuse to untie them unless those wishes were carried out. If Uncle Edward chose to be obstinate, there was every prospect of a legal dog-fight; but Wimsey did not believe that Uncle Edward would be obstinate to that point. It was in Wimsey’s power to turn Hilary from an obligation into an asset for Uncle Edward, and it seemed very possible that he would pocket his principles and take the cash. Already he had shown signs of bowing to the rising sun; he had agreed to take Hilary down to spend Christmas at the Red House, instead of with him in London. It was, indeed, not Mr. Thorpe’s fault that the Red House was available; he had done his best to let it, but the number of persons desirous of tenanting a large house in ill-repair, situated in a howling desert and encumbered with a dilapidated and heavily mortgaged property, was not very large. Hilary had her way, and Wimsey, while heartily wishing that the whole business could have been settled in London, liked the girl for her determination to stick to the family estate. Here again, Wimsey was a power in the land. He could put the property in order if he liked and pay off the mortgages, and that would no doubt be a satisfaction to Mr. Thorpe, who had no power to sell under the terms of his trust. A final deciding factor was that if Wimsey did not spend Christmas at Fenchurch, he would have no decent excuse for not spending it with his brother’s family at Denver, and of all things in the world, a Christmas at Denver was most disagreeable to him.

Accordingly, he looked in at Denver for a day or two, irritated his sister-in-law and her guests as much as, and no more than, usual and thence, on Christmas Eve, made his way across country to Fenchurch St. Paul.

“They seem,” said Wimsey, “to keep a special brand of disgusting weather in these parts.” He thrust up his hand against the hood of the car, discharging a deluge of water. “Last time it was snowing and now it’s pelting cats and dogs. There’s a fate in it, Bunter.”

“Yes, my lord,” said that long-suffering man. He was deeply attached to his master, but sometimes felt his determined dislike of closed cars to be a trifle unreasonable. “A very inclement season, my lord.”

“Well, well, we must push on, push on. A merry heart goes all the way. You don’t look very merry, Bunter, but then you’re one of those sphinx-like people. I’ve never seen you upset, except about that infernal beer-bottle.”

“No, my lord. That hurt my pride very much, if I may say so. A very curious circumstance, that, my lord.”

“Pure accident, I think, though it had a suspicious appearance at the time. Whereabouts are we now? Oh, yes, Lympsey, of course; we cross over the Great Leam here by the Old Bank Sluice. We must be just coming to it. Yes, there it is. By Jove! some water coming through here!”

He pulled up the car just beyond the bridge, got out and stood in the downpour staring at the sluice. Its five great gates were open, the iron ratchets on the bridge above drawn up to their full extent. Dark and menacing, the swollen flood-water raced through the sluices, eddying and turning and carrying with them the brown reeds and broken willow-stems and here and there fragments of timber filched from the drowned lands of the Upper Fen. And even while he watched, there came a change. Angry little waves and gurgles ruffled the strong flow of the river, with an appearance as of repressed tumult and conflict. A man came out of the gate-house by the bridge and took up his position by the sluice, staring down into the river. Wimsey hailed him.

“Tide coming up?”

“Yes, sir. We has to watch her now if we don’t want to get the water all across the causey. But she don’t rise very far, not without there’s an extraordinary high spring tide. She’s just coming up to springs now, so we has to do a bit of manipulation, like.” He turned, and began to wind down the sluices.

“You see the idea, Bunter. If they shut this sluice, all the upland water has to go by the Old Leam, which has enough to do as it is. But if they leave it open and the tide’s strong enough to carry the flood-water back with it through the sluice, they’ll drown all the country above the sluice.”

“That’s it, sir,” said the man with a grin. “And if the flood-water carries the tide back, we might drown you. It all depends, you see.”

“Then we’ll hope you manipulate things in our favour,” said Wimsey, cheerfully. The rush of water through the arches was slackening now with the lowering of the sluice-gates, the whirlpools became shallower, and the floating sticks and reeds began to eddy against the piles of the bridge. “Just hold her back for a bit till we get to Fenchurch, there’s a good fellow.”

“Oh, we’ll keep her level, don’t you be afraid,” said the man, reassuringly. “There ain’t nothing wrong wi’
this
here sluice.”

He put such marked emphasis on the word “this” that Wimsey looked sharply at him.

“How about Van Leyden’s Sluice?”

The man shook his head.

“I dunno, sir, but I did hear as old Joe Massey down there were in a great taking about they old gates of his. There was three gentlemen went down yesterday to look at ’em—from the Conservancy or the Board or something o’ that, I reckon. But you can’t do nothing much for they gates in flood-time. Mebbe they’ll hold, mebbe they won’t. It’s all according.”

“Well, that’s jolly,” said Wimsey. “Come on, Bunter. Have you made your will? We’d better go while the going’s good.”

Their way this time lay along the south bank or Fenchurch side of the Thirty-foot. Dyke and drain were everywhere abrim and here and there the water stood in the soaked fields as though they needed but little more to sink back into their ancient desolation of mere and fen. There was little movement on the long, straight road. Here a shabby car met them, splashed with mud and squirting water from every pot-hole; here a slow farm cart plodded ahead with a load of mangel-wurzels, the driver huddled under the rough protection of a sodden sack, and deaf and blind to overtaking traffic; there a solitary labourer, bent with rheumatism, slouched homeward dreaming of fire and beer at the nearest pub. The air was so heavy with water, that not till they had passed Frog’s Bridge did they hear the sweet, dull jangle of sound that told them that the ringers were practising their Christmas peal; it drifted through the streaming rain with an aching and intolerable melancholy, like the noise of the bells of a drowned city pulsing up through the overwhelming sea.

They turned the corner beneath the great grey tower and passed by the Rectory wall. As they neared the gate a blast of familiar toots smote upon their ears, and Wimsey slackened speed as the Rector’s car came cautiously nosing its way into the road. Mr. Venables recognised the Daimler immediately, and stopped his engine with the Morris halfway across the road. His hand waved cheerfully to them through the side-curtains.

“Here you are! here you are again!” he cried in welcoming accents, as Wimsey got out and came forward to greet him. “How lucky I am to have just caught you. I expect you heard me coming out. I always blow the horn before venturing into the roadway; the entrance is so very abrupt. How are you, my dear fellow, how are you? Just going along to the Red House, I expect. They are eagerly looking forward to your visit. You will come and see us often, I hope, while you’re here. My wife and I are dining with you to-night. She will be so pleased to meet you again. I said to her, I wondered if I should meet you on the road. What terrible weather, is it not? I have to hurry off now to baptise a poor-little baby at the end of Swamp Drove just the other side of Frog’s Bridge. It’s not likely to live, they tell me, and the poor mother is desperately ill, too, so I mustn’t linger, because I expect I shall have to walk up the Drove with all this mud and it’s nearly a mile and I don’t walk as fast as I did. Yes, I am quite well, thank you, except for a slight cold. Oh, nothing at all—I got a little damp the other day taking a funeral for poor Watson at St. Stephen—he’s laid up with shingles, so painful and distressing, though not dangerous, I’m happy to say. Did you come through St. Ives and Chatteris? Oh, you came direct from Denver. I hope your family are all quite well. I hear they’ve got the floods out all over the Bedford Level. There’ll be skating on Bury Fen if we get any frosts after this—though it doesn’t look like it at present, does it? They say a green winter makes a fat churchyard, but I always think the extreme cold is really more trying for the old people. But I really must push on now. I beg your pardon? I didn’t catch what you said. The bells are a little loud. That’s why I blew my horn so energetically; it is difficult sometimes to hear while the ringing is going on. Yes, we’re trying some Stedman’s to-night. You don’t ring Stedman’s, I think. You must come along one day and have a try at them. Most fascinating. Wally Pratt is making great strides. Even Hezekiah says he isn’t doing so badly. Will Thoday is ringing to-night. I turned over in my mind what you told me, but I saw no reason for excluding him. He did wrong, of course, but I feel convinced that he committed no great sin, and it would arouse so much comment in the village if he left the ringers. Gossip is such a wicked thing, don’t you think? Dear me! I am neglecting my duties sadly in the pleasure of seeing you. That poor child! I
must
go. Oh, dear! I hope my engine won’t give trouble, it is scarcely warmed up. Oh, please don’t trouble. How very good of you. I’m ashamed to trespass on your—Ah! she always responds at once to the starling-handle. Well,
au revoir, au revoir!
We shall meet this evening.”

He chugged off cheerfully, beaming round at them through the discoloured weather curtains and zigzagging madly across the road in his efforts to drive one way and look another. Wimsey and Bunter went on to the Red House.

THE WATERS ARE CALLED HOME

Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts:
all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me.

PSALM xlii. 7.

Christmas was over. Uncle Edward, sourly and reluctantly, had given way, and Hilary Thorpe’s career was decided. Wimsey had exerted himself nobly in other directions. On Christmas Eve, he had gone out with the Rector and the Choir and sung “Good King Wenceslas” in the drenching rain, returning to eat cold roast beef and trifle at the Rectory. He had taken no part in the Stedman’s Triples, but had assisted Mrs. Venables to tie wet bunches of holly and ivy to the font, and attended Church twice on Christmas Day, and helped to bring two women and their infants to be churched and christened from a remote and muddy row of cottages two miles beyond the Drain.

On Boxing Day, the rain ceased, and was followed by what the Rector described as “a tempestuous wind called Euroclydon.” Wimsey, taking advantage of a dry road and a clear sky, ran over to see his friends at Walbeach and stayed the night, hearing great praises of the New Wash Cut and the improvement it had brought to the harbour and the town.

He returned to Fenchurch St. Paul after lunch, skimming merrily along with Euroclydon bowling behind him. Turning across the bridge at Van Leyden’s Sluice, he noticed how swift and angry the river ran through the weir, with flood-water and tide-water meeting the wind. Down by the sluice a gang of men were working on a line of barges, which were moored close against the gates and piled high with sandbags. One of the workmen gave a shout as the car passed over the bridge, and another man, seeing him point and gesticulate, came running from the sluice-head across the road, waving his arms. Lord Peter stopped and waited for him to come up. It was Will Thoday

“My lord!” he cried, “my lord! Thank God you are here! Go and warn them at St. Paul that the sluice-gates are going. We’ve done what we can with sandbags and beams, but we can’t do no more and there’s a message come down from the old Bank Sluice that the water is over the Great Leam at Lympsey, and they’ll have to send it down here or be drowned themselves. She’s held this tide, but she’ll go the next with this wind and the tide at springs. It’ll lay the whole country under water, my lord, and there’s no time to lose.”