CASTING OF THE BELL.
OUR village makes itself felt. Pick up the Upper Mudcombe, Thistleden, and Ugley Herald at any time and you will see a reference to it. The second largest goose- berry and the broadest broad-bean recorded this year were ours. Then we are fortunate in having Mr. Bucket Oke in our midst. He is called Bucket to distinguish him from his relations, Silly Oke, Butcher Oke, and Oak-tree Oke, the undertaker, and because he is never seen out of church with- out a bucket. Besides being the parish clerk, he keeps fowls in a run between the church and the cottage. In the fur-and- feather class his Buff Orpington was highly commended, again, at the Ugley show. Bucket Oke is also honorary secre- tary to the quoit club, and is the life and soul of many a game of draughts in the recreation-room. There are other people and other facts too numerous to put down here that point to the importance of our village, but we do not wish it to be said that public attention is drawn to us only when 'a cow has two calves, a potato weighs a pound or resembles a man's face, or even when a. motor-car passing through the village has been going too fast to be aware of the sudden turn in the road by the horse-pond, or the " Sparrow Club " has passed its accounts. As a matter of fact, we feel sometimes the inconvenience of publicity. We have a peal of bells in our church. There is a big bell in London; there is a big bell at Exeter; and there is a big bell here. It was said to weigh a ton and a half, this tenor bell of ours. Always a ton and a half, except when Bucket Oke showed any one over the 'church, when he said :—" Now we pass on to the bell- tower or belfry, noting a tomb of Jacob Jones, Esq., with the inscription, ' Mark the perfect man,' and containing a remark- able peal of bells famous throughout the world, and the tenor bell weighing over one ton and a half." This tenor bell was also used to strike the hours as indicated by the church clock, and could be heard nearly half-a-mile off when the wind was in the right direction. Imagine the dismay of the village when one 'wet morning the bell struck nine times, each time announcing that it was cracked. All felt that the pride of the place was at stake. What would England do ? Our bell was ruined.
I cannot remember exactly the date of the catastrophe that cast, as it were, the fly on the turnip. But I know that it was after Easter, because all the bells were rung oh Easter Sunday. I like church bells. They provide the true music of the humble. There is something charming, too, about one man one note. Then the ringing of the bell is not so. easy that any musician can accomplish it, and many a violinist is unable to take a share in suggesting worship to people far off. Bells have a power all their own, and those who ring them feel something of that power as well as those who listen. "It. is right," an old lady said to me, "that young people should be near to them. There is the church and the far-off chime, as there is the thing and the dream of the thing. There is the singer and the song and the echo of the song. I have got to an age when distant church bells exactly suit my frame of mind; I am near to the time when only one note of the peal will be heard." I remember that the bells in our church were all right on Easter Sunday, because I wrote myself a few lines which were inserted in the Herald, between an advertisement of pills and a notice of a sale, in this way :—" The young men ring the bells to-day : here, in this little village place, we praise as well as pray. My lady, with her happy face hid in her hands, is kneeling still, a. miracle of grace," and so on.
It was, then, some day after Easter that the village was face to face with its first far-reaching calamity. True, Silly Oke had "gone for a soldier," but this trouble had only seriously . _
affected his mother, and had been the cause of secret satis- faction on the part of Bucket Oke, who had not been quite sure that it was a fox that had taken some of his fowls, though he -did not say so when claiming compensation. A cow might die, but, so long as a subscription was not started, the grief was private. This is a village wherein death has made the only vital difference till now. Death, not life, stirs the emotions of villagers. On the window-pane of the room in which I write is scratched :—" A chaise horse named Sharper, remarkable for an inoffensive gentleness of temper, and a favourite of his master by whom he was kept above twenty-five years, was buried in the court-which is beneath this window on March 17, 1789, aged 32." In the church- yard is a stone with an inscription stating that Sarah Bile reached the remarkable age of one hundred and three years, and that her end was peace. The village may have rejoiced in the inoffensive gentleness of Sharper's temper, but I venture to think that not even the not surprising end of Sarah Blis was as capable of affecting us as the cracking of the bell. Every hour of the day we were reminded of our trouble. It tolled- its own passing, and dealt us a recurring blow. Something had to be done; the world might get to hear of our bell that would not be at peace. A meeting was called in the sehool.
At this meeting the rector said that the bell must be re- cast; the bells were impossible to patch or mend, and awkward to move owing to their great weight; this one weighed nine hundredweight. Bucket Oke was on his feet in a moment. A ton and a half was the weight of it, so he had always heard, and would always maintain. Passing over the actual weight of the bell, the rector said that it would be necessary to send it away to a bellfounder's to be recast. Butcher Oke moved that, in view of the value of the bell and the advisability of supporting home industries, the work should be done in the village. The blacksmith said that he would like to second that, asking how, if it were sent away, any one was to know that the firm who melted it down would not keep back much of the material for making for themselves dinner-bells, hand-bells, cow-bells, or muffin-bells. The rector pointed out that he had been credibly informed that the accident was due to the fact that the last speaker had fitted a steel striker to the clock instead of a wrought-iron one; he thought it would be better and cheaper to send the bell away to people who were used to bells. "It wouldn't be right for to part with the bell," said the oldest inhabitant, who had heard little of the argument; "I call to mind that my grandfather said as how it was stolen once afore." On inquiry it appeared that our village had stolen the bell from another village, the name of which the oldest inhabitant had provideeltiauy forgotten, or the rector might have felt it his duty to have led the discussion into other channels. As it was, the squire pointed out that it would be impossible to set up a blastfurnae,e in the village with the funds at his disposal, which at present amounted to nothing; and it was finally provided that the rector, the squire, and Bucket Oke should see it weighed before it left the village and again when it returned, and that they should also make a journey to the bellfounder's for the purpose of actually seeing it put into the furnace and into the mould, so that they could be sure that the new bell would be made of the identical material of the old one. A rummage sale was announced to raise money.
A fortnight ago the rummage sale took place, and now the squire's lady has the satisfaction of seeing her last summer's blue hat on the head of Mrs. Bucket Oke, while Bucket wears the squire's old evening suit to feed the fowls. Last Tuesday the bell was lowered by means of blocks and pulleys, smashed up, and the pieces, having been weighed at the weighbridge and found to be nine hundredweight, were carted away. The village timepiece is silent; a melancholy pervades us. Bucket Oke, showing people round the church, hints darkly that the great bell which weighed over a ton and a half will never be the same again.
Yesterday the rector, the squire, and he motored to the bellfoundry. The rector was happy in the thought that he was doing his duty, the squire unhappy in the thought that it was, an unnecessary waste of a day, but Bucket Oke was fall of pomp and circumstance, though he tried hard to carry off the occasion lightly. He mentioned that he had been about a good deal and seen a goodish bit in his life, but he spoke but little till he had got over the excitement of his first motor-ride. I rather think that he had never been much further than his fowl-run, but he actually called the bellfounder's plant "primitive?' Certainly one might suppose that bells have been made precisely in the same way for thousands of years. " Of what are bells made ? " asked the rector.—" Bell-metal," answered the founder, pushing the last broken piece into the furnace, and proceeding to take bricks and mortar to seal it up. "It will be melted in four hours if you like to wait," he said directly. "I shall then run it out into the mould in the floor. The mould is made of sand, with hair in it to keep it together. The accident would never have happened if you had had me to quarter-turn the bells from time to time ; the clapper must not wear the same place. But I shouldn't care to ring the bells in your church."—" Dear me, why ? " the rector asked, turned from his desire to know exactly how bells were cast.—" Why ? Because I should be afraid of them falling on my head."—" Dear me ! Why ? "—" They ain't safe. The stocks ain't safe. What you want is a steelframe." —" Do you mean to say," said the rector in alarm, " that it isn't safe to stand under the bells on Sunday to ring them " —"I do," said the bellfounder ; " particularly Number One."— " Why Number One particular ?" Bucket Oke asked hoarsely.— " I like the look of the stock of Number One least."—" I rings Number One," Bucket Oke remarked mournfully. The squire was either hard-hearted, or shrewdly suspected that the bellfounder's employment was not as permanent as it might be, for he said :—" I don't think that I can give you any further orders to-day. Perhaps I might think of having the bells rehung if anything happened to Oke here ; it might be a fitting memorial to him. Meanwhile, what was the inscription on this bell ?" Bucket Oke recited the words, full of new meaning for him :- " The living to the church I call, And to the grave I summon all."
J. S. J.
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