“Nowhere, nowadays; but when I was a boy I used to ring at Duke’s Denver, and when I go home at Christmas and so on, I occasionally lay hand to a rope even now.”
“Duke’s Denver? Of course — St. John ad-Portam-Latinam — a beautiful little church; I know it quite well. But I think you will admit that our bells are finer. Well, now, if you will excuse me, I will just run and put the dining-room in readiness for our practice.”
He bustled away.
“It is very good of you to indulge my husband’s hobby,” said Mrs. Venables; “this occasion has meant so much to him, and he has had so many disappointments about it. But it seems dreadful to offer you hospitality and then keep you hard at work all night.”
Wimsey again assured her that the pleasure was entirely his.
“I shall insist on your getting a few hours’ rest at least,” was all Mrs. Venables could say. “Will you come up now and see your room? You will like a wash and brush-up at any rate. We will have supper at 7.30, if we can get my husband to release you by then, and after that, you really must go and lie down for a nap. I have put you in here — I see your man has everything ready for you.”
“Well, Bunter,” said Wimsey, when Mrs. Venables had departed, leaving him to make himself presentable by the inadequate light of a small oil-lamp and a candle, “that looks a nice bed — but I am not fated to sleep in it.”
“So I understand from the young woman, my lord.”
“It’s a pity you can’t relieve me at the rope, Bunter.”
“I assure your lordship that for the first time in my existence I regret that I have made no practical study of campanology.”
“I am always so delighted to find that there are things you cannot do. Did you ever try?”
“Once only, my lord, and on that occasion an accident was only narrowly averted. Owing to my unfortunate lack of manual dexterity I was very nearly hanged in the rope, my lord.”
“That’s enough about hanging,” said Wimsey, peevishly. “We’re not detecting now, and I don’t want to talk shop.”
“Certainly not, my lord. Does your lordship desire to be shaved?”
“Yes — let’s start the New Year with a clean face.”
“Very good, my lord.”
* * *
Descending, clean and shaven, to the dining-room, Wimsey found the table moved aside and eight chairs set in a circle. On seven of the chairs sat seven men, varying in age from a gnarled old gnome with a long beard to an embarrassed youth with his hair plastered into a cowlick; in the centre, the Rector stood twittering like an amiable magician.
“Ah! there you are! Splendid! excellent! Now, lads, this is Lord Peter Wimsey, who has been providentially sent to assist us out of our difficulty. He tells me he is a little out of practice, so I am sure you will not mind putting in a little time to enable him to get his hand in again. Now I must introduce you all. Lord Peter, this is Hezekiah Lavender, who has pulled the Tenor for sixty years and means to pull it for twenty years longer, don’t you, Hezekiah?”
The little gnarled man grinned toothlessly and extended a knobby hand.
“Proud to meet you, my lord. Yes, I’ve pulled old Tailor Paul a mort o’ times now. Her and me’s well acquainted, and I means to go on a-pulling of her till she rings the nine tailors for me, that I do.”
“I hope you will long be spared to do it, Mr. Lavender.”
“Ezra Wilderspin,” went on the Rector. “He’s our biggest man, and he pulls the smallest bell. That’s often the way of things, isn’t it? He is our blacksmith, by the way, and has promised to get your car put right for you in the morning.”
The blacksmith laughed sheepishly, engulfed Wimsey’s fingers in an enormous hand and retired to his chair in some confusion.
“Jack Godfrey,” continued the Rector. “Number Seven. How’s Batty Thomas going now, Jack?”
“Going fine, thank you, sir, since we had them new gudgeons put in.”
“Jack has the honour of ringing the oldest bell we have,” added the Rector. “Batty Thomas was cast in 1338 by Thomas Belleyetere of Lynn; but she gets her name from Abbot Thomas who re-cast her in 1380—doesn’t she, Jack?”
“So she do, sir,” agreed Mr. Godfrey. Bells, it may be noted, like ships and kittens, have a way of being female, whatever names they are given.
“Mr. Donnington, the landlord of the Red Cow, our churchwarden,” went on the Rector, bringing forward a long, thin man with a squint. “I ought to have mentioned him first of all, by right of his office, but then, you see, though he himself is very distinguished, his bell is not so ancient as Tailor Paul or Batty Thomas. He takes charge of Number Six — Dimity, we call her — a comparative new-comer in her present shape, though her metal is old.”
“And a sweeter bell we haven’t got in the ring,” averred Mr. Donnington, stoutly. “Pleased to meet you, my lord.”
“Joe Hinkins, my gardener. You have already met, I think. He pulls Number Five. Harry Gotobed, Number Four; our sexton, and what better name could a sexton have? And Walter Pratt — our youngest recruit, who is going to ring Number Three and do it very well indeed. So glad you were able to get here in time, Walter. That’s all of us. You, Lord Peter, will take poor William Thoday’s bell. Number Two. She and Number Five were recast in the same year as Dimity — the year of the old Queen’s Jubilee; her name is Sabaoth. Now, let’s get to work. Here is your handbell; come and sit next to Walter Pratt. Our good old friend Hezekiah will be the conductor, and you’ll find he can sing out his calls as loud and clear as the bells, for all he’s seventy-five years past. Can’t you, Grand-dad?”
“Ay, that I can,” cried the old man, cheerfully. “Now, boys, if you be ready, we’ll ring a little touch of 96, just to put this gentleman in the way of it, like. You’ll remember, my lord, that you starts by making the first snapping lead with the treble and after that you goes into the slow hunt till she comes down to snap with you again.”
“Right you are,” said Wimsey. “And after that I make the thirds and fourths.”
“That’s so, my lord. And then it’s three steps forward and one step back till you lay the blows behind.”
“Carry on, sergeant major.”
The old man nodded, adding: “And you, Wally Pratt, mind what you’re about, and don’t go a-follerin’ your course bell beyond thirds place. I’ve tolled yew about that time and again. Now, are you ready, lads — go!”
* * *
The art of change-ringing is peculiar to the English, and, like most English peculiarities, unintelligible to the rest of the world. To the musical Belgian, for example, it appears that the proper thing to do with a carefully-tuned ring of bells is to play a tune upon it. By the English campanologist, the playing of tunes is considered to be a childish game, only fit for foreigners; the proper use of bells is to work out mathematical permutations and combinations. When he speaks of the music of his bells, he does not mean musicians’ music — still less what the ordinary man calls music. To the ordinary man, in fact, the pealing of bells is a monotonous jangle and a nuisance, tolerable only when mitigated by remote distance and sentimental association. The change-ringer does, indeed, distinguish musical differences between one method of producing his permutations and another; he avers, for instance, that where the hinder bells run 7, 5, 6, or 5, 6, 7, or 5, 7; 6, the music is always prettier, and can detect and approve, where they occur, the consecutive fifths of Tittums and the cascading thirds of the Queen’s change. But what he really means is, that by the English method of ringing with rope and wheel, each several bell gives forth her fullest and her noblest note. His passion — and it is a passion — finds its satisfaction in mathematical completeness and mechanical perfection, and as his bell weaves her way rhythmically up from lead to hinder place and down again, he is filled with the solemn intoxication that comes of intricate ritual faultlessly performed. To any disinterested spectator, peeping in upon the rehearsal, there might have been something a little absurd about the eight absorbed faces; the eight tense bodies poised in a spellbound circle on the edges of eight dining-room chairs; the eight upraised right hands, decorously wagging the handbells upward and downward; but to the performers, everything was serious and important as an afternoon with the Australians at Lord’s.