“I’m sure you may, my dear. But do be careful. I never think those great high ladders are really safe.”
“Oh, I’m not afraid of them. I love looking at the bells.”
Hilary hastened down the church and caught Jack Godfrey up just as he emerged from the winding stair into the ringing chamber.
“I’ve come to watch you do the bells, Mr. Godfrey. Shall I be in your way?”
“Why no. Miss Hilary, I’d be very pleased for you to come. You better go first up them ladders, same as I can help you if you was to slip.”
“I shan’t slip,” said Hilary, scornfully. She climbed briskly up the thick and ancient rungs, to emerge into the chamber which formed the second story of the tower. It was empty, except for the case which housed the chiming mechanism of the church clock, and the eight bell-ropes rising through the sallie-holes in the floor to vanish through the ceiling in the same way. Jack Godfrey followed her up soberly, carrying his grease and cleaning-rags.
“Be a bit careful of the floor. Miss Hilary,” he urged, “it’s none so good in places.”
Hilary nodded. She loved this bare, sun-drenched room, whose four tall walls were four tall windows. It was like a palace of glass lifted high into the air. The shadows of the splendid tracery of the south window lay scrawled on the floor like a pattern of wrought iron on a gate of brass. Looking down through the dusty panes, she could see the green fen spread out mile upon mile.
“I’d like to go up to the top of the tower, Mr. Godfrey.”
“All right. Miss Hilary; I’ll take you up, if so be as there’s time when I’ve done with the bells.”
The trap-door that led to the bell-chamber was shut; a chain ran down from it, vanishing into a sort of wooden case upon the wall. Godfrey produced a key from his bunch and unlocked this case, disclosing the counterpoise. He pulled it down and the trap swung open.
“Why is that kept locked, Mr. Godfrey?”
“Well, Miss Hilary, now and again it has happened as the ringers has left the belfry door open, and Rector says it ain’t safe. You see, that Potty Peake might come a-traipsing round, or some of they mischeevious lads might come up here and get larking about with the bells. Or they might go up the tower and fall off and hurt theirselves. So Rector said to fix a lock the way they couldn’t get the trapdoor open.”
“I see.” Hilary grinned a little. “Hurt theirselves” was a moderate way of expressing the probable result of a hundred-and-twenty-foot fall. She led the way up the second ladder.
By contrast with the brilliance below, the bell-chamber was sombre and almost menacing. The main lights of its eight great windows were darkened throughout their height; only through the slender panelled tracery above the slanting louvres the sunlight dripped rare and chill, striping the heavy beams of the bell-cage with bars and splashes of pallid gold, and making a curious fantastic patterning on the spokes and rims of the wheels. The bells, with mute black mouths gaping downwards, brooded in their ancient places.
Mr. Godfrey, eyeing them with the cheerful familiarity born of long use, fetched a light ladder that stood against the wall, set it up carefully against one of the crossbeams, and prepared to mount.
“Let me go up first, or I shan’t see what you’re doing.”
Mr. Godfrey paused and scratched his head. The proposal did not seem quite safe to him. He voiced an objection.
“I shall be quite all right; I can sit on the beam. I don’t mind heights one bit. I’m very good at gym.”
Sir Henry’s daughter was accustomed to have her own way, and got it — with the stipulation that she should hold on very tightly by the timber of the cage and not let go or “morris about.” The promise being given, she was assisted to her lofty perch. Mr. Godfrey, whistling a lively air between his teeth, arranged his materials methodically about him and proceeded with his task, greasing the gudgeons and trunnions, administering a spot of oil to the pulley-axle, testing the movement of the slider between the blocks and examining the rope for signs of friction where it passed over wheel and pulley.
“I’ve never seen Tailor Paul as close as this before. She’s a big bell, isn’t she?”
“Pretty fair,” said Jack Godfrey, approvingly, giving the bell a friendly pat on her bronze shoulder. A shaft of sunshine touched the soundbow, lighting up a few letters of the inscription, which ran, as Hilary very well knew:
NINE + TAYLERS + MAKE + A + MANNE + IN + CHRIST + IS + DETH + ATT + END + IN + ADAM+ YET + BEGANNE + 1614
“She’ve done her bit in her time, have old Tailor Paul — many a good ring have we had out of her, not to say a sight of funerals and passing-bells. And we rung her with Gaude for them there Zeppelin raids, to give the alarm like. Rector was saying the other day as she did soon ought ter be quarter-turned, but I don’t know. Reckon she’ll go a bit longer yet. She rings out true enough to my thinking.”
“You have to ring the passing-bell for everyone that dies in the parish, don’t you, whoever they are?”
“Yes, dissenter and church alike. That was laid down by old Sir Martin Thorpe, your great-great-grandfather, when he left the money for the bell-fund. ‘Every Christian soul’ was the words in his will. Why, we even had to ring for that woman as lived up the Long Drove, as was a Roman Catholic. Old Hezekiah was rare put out.” Mr. Godfrey chuckled reminiscently. “‘What, ring old Tailor Paul for a Roman?’ he says, ‘you wouldn’t call the like o’ them Christians, would you. Rector?’ he says. ‘Why, Hezekiah,’ says Rector, ‘we was all Romans in this country once; this church was built by Romans,’ he says. But Hezekiah, he wouldn’t see it. He never had much education, you see. Well, now, Miss Hilary, that’ll do for Tailor Paul, I’m thinking, so if you’ll give me your hand I’ll be helping you down.”
Gaude, Sabaoth, John, Jericho, Jubilee and Dimity each in her turn was visited and anointed. When, however, it came to the turn of Batty Thomas, Mr. Godfrey displayed a sudden and unexpected obstinacy.
“I’m not taking you up to Batty Thomas, Miss Hilary. She’s an unlucky bell. What I mean, she’s a bell that has her fancies and I wouldn’t like for to risk it.”
“What do you mean?”
Mr. Godfrey found it difficult to express himself more plainly.
“She’s my own bell,” he said; “I’ve rung her close on fifteen year now and I’ve looked after her for ten, ever since Hezekiah got too old for these here ladders. Her and me knows one another and she’ve no quarrel with me nor I with her. But she’s queer-tempered. They do say as how old Batty down below, what had her put up here, was a queer sort of man and his bell’s took after him. When they turned out the monks and that — a great many years ago, that’d be — they do say as Batty Thomas tolled a whole night through on her own like, without a hand laid to the rope. And when Cromwell sent his men to break up the images an’ that, there was a soldier come up here into the belfry, I don’t know for what, maybe to damage the bells, but anyhow, up he come; and some of the others, not knowing he was here, began to haul on the ropes, and it seems as how the bells must have been left mouth up. Careless ringers they must have been in those days, but anyhow, that’s how ’twas. And just as this soldier was leaning over to look at the bells, like. Batty Thomas came swinging down and killed him dead. That’s history, that is, and Rector says as how Batty Thomas saved the church, because the soldiers took fright and ran away, thinking it was a judgment, though to my thinking, it was just carelessness, leaving the bell that fashion. Still, there it was. And then, there was a poor lad in old Rector’s time learning to ring, and he tried to raise Batty Thomas and got hisself hanged in the rope. A terrible thing that was, and there again, I say it was carelessness and the lad didn’t ought to have been let practise all alone, and it’s a thing Mr. Venables never will allow. But you see, Miss Hilary, Batty Thomas has killed two men, and while it’s quite understandable as there was carelessness both times or it wouldn’t have happened — well! I wouldn’t like to take any risks, like I said.”