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Updated: June 20, 2025
Mrs Janaway drummed with her knuckles on the supper-table, in amazement that her husband should dare to stand chattering at the door when she had told him that the meal was ready. But, as the conversation revealed by degrees the stranger's identity, curiosity to see the man whose name was in all Cullerne mouths got the better of her, and she came curtseying to the door.
Clerk Janaway was walking across the church, when he saw the architect leaning against a cross-pole of the scaffolding, on the platform high up under the arch of the south transept. "I'm just a-locking up," he called out. "You've got your own key, sir, no doubt?" Westray gave an almost imperceptible nod. "Well, we haven't brought the tower down this time," the clerk went on.
The choir-boys fell to giggling, the choir-men stared, clerk Janaway grasped his mace as if he would brain so rash an adventurer, and the general movement made Mr Sharnall glance nervously at his stops; for he thought that he had overslept himself, and that the choir had stood up for the Magnificat. The stranger seemed unconscious of the attention which his appearance provoked.
"If he whacks me over the head with that or jabs it into my stomach, I'm done," Lawrence thought, and pat to the moment Janaway, his mouth open and his teeth bare, rushed on him and struck at his eyes. Lawrence parried and sprang aside: but his arm was jarred to the elbow. "That was a close call.
A moment later Janaway knew that the stranger was Lord Blandamer, and stepped back instinctively to let him pass. But the open door had caught the attention of the passer-by; he stopped, and greeted the householder cheerily. "A beautiful night, but with a cold touch in the air that makes your warm room look very cheerful."
Mrs Bulteel had been heard to say that she could not allow dear Lord Blandamer to be married without her being there. Canon Parkyn and Mrs Parkyn felt that their presence also was required ex-officio, and Clerk Janaway averred with some redundancies of expletive that he, too, "must see 'em turned off." He hadn't been to London for twenty year.
I dare say it was one of my own bees, and he had the very narrowest escape! And Val wouldn't dream of interfering. Ben and I are the best of friends. Besides, it's Mrs. Janaway I really go to see, poor dear, she don't ever hear a bit o' news from week's end to week's end.
"You cannot beat it," Lord Blandamer assented "you cannot beat it" and then went on suggestively: "Have you ever tried a sprig of mace with it?" No, Mrs Janaway had never heard of that; nor, indeed, had Lord Blandamer either, if the point had been pushed; but she promised to use it the very next time, and hoped that the august visitor would honour them again when it was to be tasted.
But it could not be done: first there was the village policeman to run to earth and information to be laid before him, and then, since Brown's first flustered impulse was to arrest all concerned from Lawrence to Clara Janaway, Lawrence had to walk down with him to Wharton to interview Jack Bendish, as both the nearest magistrate and the nearest sensible man.
Insuperable smokers, inexhaustible yarn-spinners, they had long welcomed Janaway as a kindred spirit the more so that in their view a clerk and grave-digger was in some measure an expert in things unseen, who might anon assist in piloting them on that last cruise for which some had already the Blue Peter at the fore.
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