Kiss Me Sixpence None The Richer Sheet Music Pdf

[Adam Makin]

Frightenedby some alarm of sleep that was forgottenin the moment of waking, a little boy threw back thebedclothes and with quick heart and breath sat listening tothe torrents of darkness that went rolling by. He darednot open his mouth to scream lest he should be suffocated;he dared not put out his arm to search for the bell-rope lesthe should be seized; he dared not hide beneath the blanketslest he should be kept there; he could do nothing except situp trembling in a vain effort to orientate himself. Had theroom really turned upside down? On an impulse of terrorhe jumped back from the engorging night and bumped hisforehead on one of the brass knobs of the bedstead. Withhorror he apprehended that what he had so often fearedhad finally come to pass. An earthquake had swallowed upLondon in spite of everybody's assurance that London couldnot be swallowed up by earthquakes. He was going downdown to smoke and fire . . . or was it the end of theworld? The quick and the dead . . . skeletons . . . thousandsand thousands of skeletons. . . .

Now surely that Guardian Angel so often conjured mustappear. A shaft of golden candlelight flickered through thehalf open door. The little boy prepared an attitude to greethis Angel that was a compound of the suspicion and courtesywith which he would have welcomed a new governess andthe admiring fellowship with which he would have throwna piece of bread to a swan.

"I don't know. I just woke up, and the room was upsidedown. And first I thought it was an earthquake, and thenI thought it was the Day of Judgment." He suddenly beganto chuckle to himself. "How silly of me, Mother. Of courseit couldn't be the Day of Judgment, because it's night, isn'tit? It couldn't ever be the Day of Judgment in the night,could it?" he continued hopefully.

Mrs. Lidderdale did not hesitate to reassure her small sonon this point. She had no wish to add another to that longlist of nightly fears and fantasies which began with mad dogsand culminated in the Prince of Darkness himself.

Mark always thought of the gas-jets as flowers. Thedimmest of all was the violet; followed by the crocus, thetulip, and the water-lily; the last a brilliant affair with wavyedges, and sparkling motes dancing about in the blue wateron which it swam.

"No darling, he's not that kind of bishop. I can't explainto you why he's coming, because you wouldn't understand;but we're all very anxious, and you must be good and braveand unselfish. Now kiss me and turn over."

"In the quite dark," he offered, dipping down under theclothes so as to be safe by the time the protecting candle-lightwavered out along the passage and the soft closing of hismother's door assured him that come what might there wasonly a wall between him and her.

Mark thought of a beautiful evening in the country asbeheld in a Summer Number, more of an afternoon reallythan an evening, with trees making shadows right across agolden field, and spotted cows in the foreground. It was ablissful and completely soothing picture while it lasted; butit soon died away, and he was back in the midway of aLondon night with icy stretches of sheet to right and leftof him instead of golden fields.

In the year 1875, when the strife of ecclesiastical partieswas bitter and continuous, the Reverend James Lidderdalecame as curate to the large parish of St. Simon's, NottingHill, which at that period was looked upon as one ofthe chief expositions of what Disraeli called "man-millinery."Inasmuch as the coiner of the phrase was a Jew, the priestsand people of St. Simon's paid no attention to it, and wereproud to consider themselves an outpost of the CatholicMovement in the Church of England. James Lidderdalewas given the charge of the Lima Street Mission, atabernacle of corrugated iron dedicated to St. Wilfred; andThurston, the Vicar of St. Simon's, who was a wise, generousand single-hearted priest, was quick to recognize that hismissioner was capable of being left to convert the NottingDale slum in his own way.

The Missioner was a tall hatchet-faced hollow-eyedascetic, harsh and bigoted in the company of his equalswhether clerical or lay, but with his flock tender and comprehendingand patient. The only indulgence he accordedto his senses was in the forms and ceremonies of his ritual,the vestments and furniture of his church. His vicar wasable to give him a free hand in the obscure squalor of LimaStreet; the ecclesiastical battles he himself had to fight withbishops who were pained or with retired military men whowere disgusted by his own conduct of the services at St.Simon's were not waged within the hearing of Lima Street.There, year in, year out for six years, James Lidderdaledenied himself nothing in religion, in life everything. Heused to preach in the parish church during the penitentialseasons, and with such effect upon the pockets of his congregationthat the Lima Street Mission was rich for a longwhile afterward. Yet few of the worshippers in the parishchurch visited the object of their charity, and those that didventure seldom came twice. Lidderdale did not considerthat it was part of the Lima Street religion to be polite towell-dressed explorers of the slum; in fact he ratherencouraged Lima Street to suppose the contrary.

"And I don't like these churchy young fools who comesimpering down in top-hats, with rosaries hanging out oftheir pockets. Lima Street doesn't like them either. LimaStreet is provoked to obscene comment, and that just beforeMass. It's no good, Vicar. My people are savages, and Ilike them to remain savages so long as they go to their duties,which Almighty God be thanked they do."

The Vicar was doubtful of the impression that the Archdeacon'sgaiters would make on Lima Street, and he wasalso doubtful of the impression that the images and pricketsof St. Wilfred's would make on the Archdeacon. The Vicarneed not have worried. Long before Lima Street wasreached, indeed, halfway down Strugwell Terrace, whichwas the main road out of respectable Notting Hill into theMission area, the comments upon the Archdeacon's appearancebecame so embarrassing that the dignitary looked at hiswatch and remarked that after all he feared he should not beable to spare the time that afternoon.

"It is not my work. It is the work of one of my curates.And," said the Vicar to Lidderdale, when he was giving himan account of the projected visitation, "I believe the pompousass thought I was ashamed of it."

Thurston died soon after this, and, his death occurringat a moment when party strife in the Church was fiercerthan ever, it was considered expedient by the Lord Chancellor,in whose gift the living was, to appoint a moremoderate man than the late vicar. Majendie, the new man,when he was sure of his audience, claimed to be just asadvanced as Thurston; but he was ambitious of preferment,or as he himself put it, he felt that, when a member of theCatholic party had with the exercise of prudence and tactan opportunity of enhancing the prestige of his party in ahigher ecclesiastical sphere, he should be wrong to neglectit. Majendie's aim therefore was to avoid controversy withhis ecclesiastical superiors, and at a time when, as he toldLidderdale, he was stepping back in order to jump farther,he was anxious that his missioner should step back withhim.

"I'm not suggesting, my dear fellow, that you should bringSt. Wilfred's actually into line with the parish church. Butthe Asperges, you know. I can't countenance that. Andthe Adoration of the Cross on Good Friday. I really thinkthat kind of thing creates unnecessary friction."

Lidderdale's impulse was to resign at once, for he was aman who found restraint galling where so much passion wentto his belief in the truth of his teaching. When, however,he pondered how little he had done and how much he hadvowed to do, he gave way and agreed to step back with hisvicar. He was never convinced that he had taken the rightcourse at this crisis, and he spent hours in praying for ananswer by God to a question already answered by himself.The added strain of these hours of prayer, which were notrobbed from his work in the Mission, but from the alreadyshort enough time he allowed himself for sleep, told uponhis health, and he was ordered by the doctor to take a holidayto avoid a complete breakdown of health. He stayed fortwo months in Cornwall, and came back with a wife, thedaughter of a Cornish parson called Trehawke. Lidderdalehad been a fierce upholder of celibacy, and the news of hismarriage astonished all who knew him.

Grace Lidderdale with her slanting sombre eyes and fullupcurving lips made the pink and white Madonnas of thelittle mission church look insipid, and her husband was horrifiedwhen he found himself criticizing the images whoseability to lure the people of Lima Street to worship in theway he believed to be best for their souls he had neverdoubted. Yet, for all her air of having trafficked for strangewebs with Eastern merchants, Mrs. Lidderdale was onlyoutwardly Phoenician or Iberian or whatever other dimlyimagined race is chosen for the strange types that in Cornwallmore than elsewhere so often occur. Actually she was asimple and devout soul, loving husband and child and thepoor people with whom they lived. Doubtless she had lookedmore appropriate to her surroundings in the tangled gardenof her father's vicarage than in the bleak Mission House ofLima Street; but inasmuch as she never thought about herappearance it would have been a waste of time for anybodyto try to romanticize her. The civilizing effect of her presencein the slum was quickly felt; and though Lidderdalecontinued to scoff at the advantages of civilization, he finallylearnt to give a grudging welcome to her various schemes formaking the bodies of the flock as comfortable as her husbandtried to make their souls.

When Mark was born, his father became once more theprey of gloomy doubt. The guardianship of a soul whichhe was responsible for bringing into the world was a ceaselesscare, and in his anxiety to dedicate his son to God he becamea harsh and unsympathetic parent. Out of that desire tojustify himself for having been so inconsistent as to take awife and beget a son Lidderdale redoubled his efforts toput the Lima Street Mission on a permanent basis. Thecivilization of the slum, which was attributed by piousvisitors to regular attendance at Mass rather than toMrs. Lidderdale's gentleness and charm, made it much easierfor outsiders to explore St. Simon's parish as far as LimaStreet. Money for the great church he designed to build ona site adjoining the old tabernacle began to flow in; andfive years after his marriage Lidderdale had enough moneysubscribed to begin to build. The rubbish-strewn waste-groundoverlooked by the back-windows of the MissionHouse was thronged with workmen; day by day the walls ofthe new St. Wilfred's rose higher. Fifteen years after Lidderdaletook charge of the Lima Street Mission, it wasdecided to ask for St. Wilfred's, Notting Dale, to be createda separate parish. The Reverend Aylmer Majendie hadbecome a canon residentiary of Chichester and had beensucceeded as vicar by the Reverend L. M. Astill, a man moreof the type of Thurston and only too anxious to help hissenior curate to become a vicar, and what is more cut 200a year off his own net income in doing so.

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