through, and no notice whatever seemed to be taken of the performance.
“Good guide us, surely ’Tisn’t a’ empty house, as befell us in the year thirty-nine and forty-three!” said old Dewy.
“Perhaps she’s jist come from some musical city, and sneers at our doings?” the tranter whispered.
“’Od rabbit her!” said Mr Penny, with an annihilating look at a corner of the school chimney, “I don’t quite stomach her, if this is it. Your plain music well done is as worthy as your other sort done bad, a’ b’lieve, souls; so say I.”
“Four breaths, and then the last,” said the leader authoritatively. “‘Rejoice, ye Tenants of the Earth,’ number sixty-four.”
At the close, waiting yet another minute, he said in a clear loud voice, as he had said in the village at that hour and season for the previous forty years—
“A merry Christmas to ye!”
When the expectant stillness consequent upon the exclamation had nearly died out of them all, an increasing light made itself visible in one of the windows of the upper floor. It came so close to the blind that the exact position of the flame could be perceived from the outside. Remaining steady for an instant, the blind went upward from before it, revealing to thirty concentrated eyes a young girl, framed as a picture by the window architrave, and unconsciously illuminating her countenance to a vivid brightness by a candle she held in her left hand, close to her face, her right hand being extended to the side of the window. She was wrapped in a white robe of some kind, whilst down her shoulders fell a twining profusion of marvellously rich hair, in a wild disorder which proclaimed it to be only during the invisible hours of the night that such a condition was discoverable. Her bright eyes were looking into the grey world outside with an uncertain expression, oscillating between courage and shyness, which, as she recognized the semicircular group of dark forms gathered before her, transformed itself into pleasant resolution.
Opening the window, she said lightly and warmly—
“Thank you, singers, thank you!”
Together went the window quickly and quietly, and the blind started downward on its return to its place. Her fair forehead and eyes vanished; her little mouth; her neck and shoulders; all of her. Then the spot of candlelight shone nebulously as before; then it moved away.
“How pretty!” exclaimed Dick Dewy.
“If she’d been rale wexwork she couldn’t ha’ been comelier,” said Michael Mail.
“As near a thing to a spiritual vision as ever I wish to see!” said tranter Dewy.
“O, sich I never, never see!” said Leaf fervently.
All the rest, after clearing their throats and adjusting their hats, agreed that such a sight was worth singing for.
“Now to Farmer Shiner’s, and then replenish our insides, father?” said the tranter.
“Wi’ all my heart,” said old William, shouldering his bass-viol.
Farmer Shiner’s was a queer lump of a house, standing at the corner of a lane that ran into the principal thoroughfare. The upper windows were much wider than they were high, and this feature, together with a broad bay-window where the door might have been expected, gave it by day the aspect of a human countenance turned askance, and wearing a sly and wicked leer. To-night nothing was visible but the outline of the roof upon the sky.
The front of this building was reached, and the preliminaries arranged as usual.
“Four breaths, and number thirty-two, ‘Behold the Morning Star,’” said old William.
They had reached the end of the second verse, and the fiddlers were doing the up bow-stroke previously to pouring forth the opening chord of the third verse, when, without a light appearing or any signal being given, a roaring voice exclaimed—
“Shut up, woll ’ee! Don’t make your blaring row here! A feller wi’ a headache enough to split his skull likes a quiet night!”
Slam went the window.
“Hullo, that’s a’ ugly blow for we!” said the tranter, in a keenly appreciative voice, and turning to his companions.
“Finish the carrel, all who be friends of harmony!” commanded old William; and they continued to the end.
“Four breaths, and number nineteen!” said William firmly. “Give it him well; the quire can’t be insulted in this manner!”
A light now flashed into existence, the window opened, and the farmer stood revealed as one in a terrific passion.
“Drown en!—drown en!” the tranter cried, fiddling frantically. “Play fortissimy, and drown hisspaking!”
“Fortissimy!” said Michael Mail, and the music and singing waxed so loud that it was impossible to know what Mr Shiner had said, was saying, or was about to say; but wildly flinging his arms and body about in the forms of capital Xs and Ys, he appeared to utter enough invectives to consign the whole parish to perdition.
“Very onseemly—very!” said old William, as they retired. “Never such a dreadful scene in the whole round o’ my carrel practice—never! And he a churchwarden!”
“Only a drap o’ drink got into his head,” said the tranter. “Man’s well enough when he’s in his religious frame. He’s in his worldly frame now. Must ask en to our bit of a party to-morrow night, I suppose, and so put en in humour again. We bear no mortal man ill-will.”
They now crossed Mellstock Bridge, and went along an embowered path beside the Froom towards the church and vicarage, meeting Voss with the hot mead and bread-and-cheese as they were approaching the churchyard. This determined them to eat and drink before proceeding further, and they entered the church and ascended to the gallery. The lanterns were opened, and the whole body sat round against the walls on benches and whatever else was available, and made a hearty meal. In the pauses of conversation there could be heard through the floor overhead a little world of undertones and creaks from the halting clockwork, which never spread further than the tower they were born in, and raised in the more meditative minds a fancy that here lay the direct pathway of Time.
Having done eating and drinking, they again tuned the instruments, and once more the party emerged into the night air.
“Where’s Dick?” said old Dewy.
Every man looked round upon every other man, as if Dick might have been transmuted into one or the other; and then they said they didn’t know.
“Well, now, that’s what I call very nasty of Master Dicky, that I do,” said Michael Mail.
“He’ve clinked off home-along, depend upon’t,” another suggested, though not quite believing that he had.
“Dick!”
