Lamb in Love by Carrie Brown Page B

church architect would influence his contribution to the committee, though he was not a religious man, for he was rarely seen at church. And indeed it took him just a few moments to assess the nature of the committee’s errand andto wave away, in a manner Norris saw as wonderfully American, all polite preliminaries. He took out his checkbook immediately.
    â€œHow much do you want?” he asked.
    There was some hesitation at this point. The members of the committee were unprepared for such directness. But finally Dr. Faber, who as Hursley’s physician occupies a rank of some stature in the village, spoke up and said, quite firmly, “We’re told that Renatus Harris—no doubt you are familiar with his work, Mr. Perry?—will himself come to St. Alphage for sixteen thousand pounds.”
    Norris heard that Mr. Perry is said to have raised his eyebrows only fractionally at this point. “An instrument sui generis, I take it.”
    â€œNothing less,” averred Dr. Faber.
    And that was all there was to it.
    The organ at St. Alphage comprises four divisional organs, Norris likes to explain to anyone who will listen, one more than is generally appointed for a small church. The presence of the swell organ, however, in addition to the great, choir, and (of course) pedal organs, gives it an ability to occasionally outperform the choir on certain selections. (Norris has taken a wicked delight in this, especially when Lamartine Ramsey is the solo. Such a voice. Like a bombshell nearing its target.) In any case, the fourth makes it more of a concert organ than such a small church might be expected to need, but Norris believes Mr. Harris was right in persuading them of its virtue. With its splendid new organ, Hursley should be able to attract secular performers for the occasional weekend evening performance, and that would be a boon indeed. And, as Mr. Harris pointed out, it would have been a crime not to take advantage of the unique acoustical properties ofSt. Alphage.
    And so Norris plays now as if he has his whole life to live over. That’s it, isn’t it? he thinks. It’s made him a young man again, this love for Vida Stephen. No, better than young. Entirely reinvented, and with more sensibility this time. Staring at the glass in the mornings now as he passes the razor carefully over his cheeks, he trembles at the possibility of affront that rises in his breast, the boldness he feels stirring within him. Sometimes his hand shakes so dreadfully that he cuts himself, and he has to open the shades at the post office in the morning with bits of plaster stuck to his face to stanch the flow of blood.
    â€œSweet Jesus! What’s happened to you, Lamb?” Fergus barked out the other morning, come in for his tobacco. “Had a quarrel with your razor?”
    And Norris was self-conscious all morning after that, terrified lest Vida should drop in for something or other and see him that way, patched up like an old dog who’s been in a fight.
    So he looks himself in the eyes now of a morning and says aloud, “Steady on, Lamb. There’s nothing to be frightened of. You can do it. Just pace yourself, my boy, and think it all through.”
    In the evenings now when he takes his walk, he tries to consider his campaign, how it should progress, what special thing he might contrive for her. He might leave flowers on the bench in the lane, he thinks. Or a box of chocolates on her pillow—if he could figure out how to get to her pillow. He wants to astonish her with how wonderful it is to be alive, to have her wake one morning and discover the world marvelously altered.
    You’ve been awakened, Norris Lamb, he says to himself, after a long sleep, as it were, a sleep that might have, save for Providence’s intervention, gone on forever.
    This is it, he says. Carpe diem.
    O NE AFTERNOON N ORRIS takes a chance—he wouldn’t wish to frighten her, have her think