CHAPTER VI: CHRISTMAS MORNING
The choir at last reached their beds, and slept like the rest of the
parish. Dick's slumbers, through the three or four hours remaining
for rest, were disturbed and slight; an exhaustive variation upon
the incidents that had passed that night in connection with the
school-window going on in his brain every moment of the time.
In the morning, do what he would--go upstairs, downstairs, out of
doors, speak of the wind and weather, or what not--he could not
refrain from an unceasing renewal, in imagination, of that
interesting enactment. Tilted on the edge of one foot he stood
beside the fireplace, watching his mother grilling rashers; but
there was nothing in grilling, he thought, unless the Vision
grilled. The limp rasher hung down between the bars of the gridiron
like a cat in a child's arms; but there was nothing in similes,
unless She uttered them. He looked at the daylight shadows of a
yellow hue, dancing with the firelight shadows in blue on the
whitewashed chimney corner, but there was nothing in shadows.
"Perhaps the new young wom--sch--Miss Fancy Day will sing in church
with us this morning," he said.
The tranter looked a long time before he replied, "I fancy she will;
and yet I fancy she won't."
Dick implied that such a remark was rather to be tolerated than
admired; though deliberateness in speech was known to have, as a
rule, more to do with the machinery of the tranter's throat than
with the matter enunciated.
They made preparations for going to church as usual; Dick with
extreme alacrity, though he would not definitely consider why he was
so religious. His wonderful nicety in brushing and cleaning his
best light boots had features which elevated it to the rank of an
art. Every particle and speck of last week's mud was scraped and
brushed from toe and heel; new blacking from the packet was
carefully mixed and made use of, regardless of expense. A coat was
laid on and polished; then another coat for increased blackness; and
lastly a third, to give the perfect and mirror-like jet which the
hoped-for rencounter demanded.
It being Christmas-day, the tranter prepared himself with Sunday
particularity. Loud sousing and snorting noises were heard to
proceed from a tub in the back quarters of the dwelling, proclaiming
that he was there performing his great Sunday wash, lasting half-an-
hour, to which his washings on working-day mornings were mere
flashes in the pan. Vanishing into the outhouse with a large brown
towel, and the above-named bubblings and snortings being carried on
for about twenty minutes, the tranter would appear round the edge of
the door, smelling like a summer fog, and looking as if he had just
narrowly escaped a watery grave with the loss of much of his
clothes, having since been weeping bitterly till his eyes were red;
a crystal drop of water hanging ornamentally at the bottom of each
ear, one at the tip of his nose, and others in the form of spangles
about his hair.
After a great deal of crunching upon the sanded stone floor by the
feet of father, son, and grandson as they moved to and fro in these
preparations, the bass-viol and fiddles were taken from their nook,
and the strings examined and screwed a little above concert-pitch,
that they might keep their tone when the service began, to obviate
the awkward contingency of having to retune them at the back of the
gallery during a cough, sneeze, or amen--an inconvenience which had
been known to arise in damp wintry weather.
The three left the door and paced down Mellstock-lane and across the
ewe-lease, bearing under their arms the instruments in faded green-
baize bags, and old brown music-books in their hands; Dick
continually finding himself in advance of the other two, and the
tranter moving on with toes turned outwards to an enormous angle.
At the foot of an incline the church became visible through the
north gate, or 'church hatch,' as it was called here. Seven agile
figures in a clump were observable beyond, which proved to be the
choristers waiting; sitting on an altar-tomb to pass the time, and
letting their heels dangle against it. The musicians being now in
sight, the youthful party scampered off and rattled up the old
wooden stairs of the gallery like a regiment of cavalry; the other
boys of the parish waiting outside and observing birds, cats, and
other creatures till the vicar entered, when they suddenly subsided
into sober church-goers, and passed down the aisle with echoing
heels.
The gallery of Mellstock Church had a status and sentiment of its
own. A stranger there was regarded with a feeling altogether
differing from that of the congregation below towards him. Banished
from the nave as an intruder whom no originality could make
interesting, he was received above as a curiosity that no unfitness
could render dull. The gallery, too, looked down upon and knew the
habits of the nave to its remotest peculiarity, and had an extensive
stock of exclusive information about it; whilst the nave knew
nothing of the gallery folk, as gallery folk, beyond their loud-
sounding minims and chest notes. Such topics as that the clerk was
always chewing tobacco except at the moment of crying amen; that he
had a dust-hole in his pew; that during the sermon certain young
daughters of the village had left off caring to read anything so
mild as the marriage service for some years, and now regularly
studied the one which chronologically follows it; that a pair of
lovers touched fingers through a knot-hole between their pews in the
manner ordained by their great exemplars, Pyramus and Thisbe; that
Mrs. Ledlow, the farmer's wife, counted her money and reckoned her
week's marketing expenses during the first lesson--all news to those
below--were stale subjects here.
Old William sat in the centre of the front row, his violoncello
between his knees and two singers on each hand. Behind him, on the
left, came the treble singers and Dick; and on the right the tranter
and the tenors. Farther back was old Mail with the altos and
supernumeraries.
But before they had taken their places, and whilst they were
standing in a circle at the back of the gallery practising a psalm
or two, Dick cast his eyes over his grandfather's shoulder, and saw
the vision of the past night enter the porch-door as methodically as
if she had never been a vision at all. A new atmosphere seemed
suddenly to be puffed into the ancient edifice by her movement,
which made Dick's body and soul tingle with novel sensations.
Directed by Shiner, the churchwarden, she proceeded to the small
aisle on the north side of the chancel, a spot now allotted to a
throng of Sunday-school girls, and distinctly visible from the
gallery-front by looking under the curve of the furthermost arch on
that side.
Before this moment the church had seemed comparatively empty--now it
was thronged; and as Miss Fancy rose from her knees and looked
around her for a permanent place in which to deposit herself--
finally choosing the remotest corner--Dick began to breathe more
freely the warm new air she had brought with her; to feel rushings
of blood, and to have impressions that there was a tie between her
and himself visible to all the congregation.
Ever afterwards the young man could recollect individually each part
of the service of that bright Christmas morning, and the trifling
occurrences which took place as its minutes slowly drew along; the
duties of that day dividing themselves by a complete line from the
services of other times. The tunes they that morning essayed
remained with him for years, apart from all others; also the text;
also the appearance of the layer of dust upon the capitals of the
piers; that the holly-bough in the chancel archway was hung a little
out of the centre--all the ideas, in short, that creep into the mind
when reason is only exercising its lowest activity through the eye.
By chance or by fate, another young man who attended Mellstock
Church on that Christmas morning had towards the end of the service
the same instinctive perception of an interesting presence, in the
shape of the same bright maiden, though his emotion reached a far
less developed stage. And there was this difference, too, that the
person in question was surprised at his condition, and sedulously
endeavoured to reduce himself to his normal state of mind. He was
the young vicar, Mr. Maybold.
The music on Christmas mornings was frequently below the standard of
church-performances at other times. The boys were sleepy from the
heavy exertions of the night; the men were slightly wearied; and
now, in addition to these constant reasons, there was a dampness in
the atmosphere that still further aggravated the evil. Their
strings, from the recent long exposure to the night air, rose whole
semitones, and snapped with a loud twang at the most silent moment;
which necessitated more retiring than ever to the back of the
gallery, and made the gallery throats quite husky with the quantity
of coughing and hemming required for tuning in. The vicar looked
cross.
When the singing was in progress there was suddenly discovered to be
a strong and shrill reinforcement from some point, ultimately found
to be the school-girls' aisle. At every attempt it grew bolder and
more distinct. At the third time of singing, these intrusive
feminine voices were as mighty as those of the regular singers; in
fact, the flood of sound from this quarter assumed such an
individuality, that it had a time, a key, almost a tune of its own,
surging upwards when the gallery plunged downwards, and the reverse.
Now this had never happened before within the memory of man. The
girls, like the rest of the congregation, had always been humble and
respectful followers of the gallery; singing at sixes and sevens if
without gallery leaders; never interfering with the ordinances of
these practised artists--having no will, union, power, or proclivity
except it was given them from the established choir enthroned above
them.
A good deal of desperation became noticeable in the gallery throats
and strings, which continued throughout the musical portion of the
service. Directly the fiddles were laid down, Mr. Penny's
spectacles put in their sheath, and the text had been given out, an
indignant whispering began.
"Did ye hear that, souls?" Mr. Penny said, in a groaning breath.
"Brazen-faced hussies!" said Bowman.
"True; why, they were every note as loud as we, fiddles and all, if
not louder!"
"Fiddles and all!" echoed Bowman bitterly.
"Shall anything saucier be found than united 'ooman?" Mr. Spinks
murmured.
"What I want to know is," said the tranter (as if he knew already,
but that civilization required the form of words), "what business
people have to tell maidens to sing like that when they don't sit in
a gallery, and never have entered one in their lives? That's the
question, my sonnies."
"'Tis the gallery have got to sing, all the world knows," said Mr.
Penny. "Why, souls, what's the use o' the ancients spending scores
of pounds to build galleries if people down in the lowest depths of
the church sing like that at a moment's notice?"
"Really, I think we useless ones had better march out of church,
fiddles and all!" said Mr. Spinks, with a laugh which, to a
stranger, would have sounded mild and real. Only the initiated body
of men he addressed could understand the horrible bitterness of
irony that lurked under the quiet words 'useless ones,' and the
ghastliness of the laughter apparently so natural.
"Never mind! Let 'em sing too--'twill make it all the louder--hee,
hee!" said Leaf.
"Thomas Leaf, Thomas Leaf! Where have you lived all your life?"
said grandfather William sternly.
The quailing Leaf tried to look as if he had lived nowhere at all.
"When all's said and done, my sonnies," Reuben said, "there'd have
been no real harm in their singing if they had let nobody hear 'em,
and only jined in now and then."
"None at all," said Mr. Penny. "But though I don't wish to accuse
people wrongfully, I'd say before my lord judge that I could hear
every note o' that last psalm come from 'em as much as from us--
every note as if 'twas their own."
"Know it! ah, I should think I did know it!" Mr. Spinks was heard
to observe at this moment, without reference to his fellow players--
shaking his head at some idea he seemed to see floating before him,
and smiling as if he were attending a funeral at the time. "Ah, do
I or don't I know it!"
No one said "Know what?" because all were aware from experience that
what he knew would declare itself in process of time.
"I could fancy last night that we should have some trouble wi' that
young man," said the tranter, pending the continuance of Spinks's
speech, and looking towards the unconscious Mr. Maybold in the
pulpit.
"_I_ fancy," said old William, rather severely, "I fancy there's too
much whispering going on to be of any spiritual use to gentle or
simple." Then folding his lips and concentrating his glance on the
vicar, he implied that none but the ignorant would speak again; and
accordingly there was silence in the gallery, Mr. Spinks's telling
speech remaining for ever unspoken.
Dick had said nothing, and the tranter little, on this episode of
the morning; for Mrs. Dewy at breakfast expressed it as her
intention to invite the youthful leader of the culprits to the small
party it was customary with them to have on Christmas night--a piece
of knowledge which had given a particular brightness to Dick's
reflections since he had received it. And in the tranter's
slightly-cynical nature, party feeling was weaker than in the other
members of the choir, though friendliness and faithful partnership
still sustained in him a hearty earnestness on their account.
