"Oh, is the water sweet and cool,Gentle and brown, above the pool?And laughs the immortal river stillUnder the mill, under the mill?"Rupert Brooke.
"Oh, is the water sweet and cool,Gentle and brown, above the pool?And laughs the immortal river stillUnder the mill, under the mill?"Rupert Brooke.
"Oh, is the water sweet and cool,Gentle and brown, above the pool?And laughs the immortal river stillUnder the mill, under the mill?"Rupert Brooke.
"Oh, is the water sweet and cool,
Gentle and brown, above the pool?
And laughs the immortal river still
Under the mill, under the mill?"
Rupert Brooke.
I do not think you have ever heard of the little village of Riff in Lowshire, Reader, unless you were born and bred in it as I was. If you were, you believe of course that it is the centre of the world. But if you were not, it is possible you may have overlooked it in your scheme of life, or hurried past it in the train reading a novel, not even looking out as I have done a hundred times to catch a glimpse of it lying among its water meadows behind the willows.
But unless you know exactly where to look you can only catch a momentary glimpse, because the Rieben with its fringe of willows makes a half-circle round Riff and guards it from inquisitive eyes.
Parallel with the Rieben, but half a mile away from it on higher ground, runs the great white high road from London to Yarmouth. And between the road and the river lies thevillage of Riff. But you cannot see it or even the top of its church tower from the road, because the park of Hulver Manor comes in between, stretching in long leafy glades of oak and elm and open sward, and hiding the house in its midst, the old Tudor house which has stood closed and shuttered so long, ever since Mr. Manvers died.
When at last the park comes to an end, a deep lane breaks off from the main road, and pretending that it is going nowhere in particular and that time would be lost in following it, edges along like a homing cat beside the park wall in the direction of Riff, skirting a gate and a cluster of buildings,laiterie, barn and dovecot, which are all you can see of Red Riff Farm from the lane. I point it out to you as we pass, for we shall come back there later on. Riff is much nearer than you think, for the ground is always falling a little towards the Rieben, which is close at hand though invisible also.
And between the park and the river lies the hidden village of Riff.
You come upon it quite suddenly at the turn of the lane, with its shallow ford, and its pink-plastered cottages sprinkled among its high trees, and its thatched Vicarage, and "The Hermitage" with the honeysuckle over the porch, and the almshouses near the great Italian gates of Hulver Manor, and somewhat apart in its walled garden among its twistedpines the Dower House where Lady Louisa Manvers was living, poor soul, at the time this story was written.
I have only to close my eyes and I can see it all—can imagine myself sitting with the Miss Blinketts in their little parlour at The Hermitage, with a daguerreotype of the defunct Père Blinkett over the mantelpiece, and Miss Amy's soft voice saying, "They do say Lady Louisa's cook is leaving to be married. But they will say anything at Riff. I never believe more than half I hear."
The Hermitage stood on a little slice of ground which fell away from the lane. So close was The Hermitage to the lane, and the parlour windows were so low, and the lane beyond the palings so high, that the inmates could only guess at the identity of the passers-by by their legs. And rare guests and rarer callers, arriving in the wagonnette from the Manvers Arms, could actually look into the bedroom windows, while the Miss Blinketts' eyes, peering over the parlour muslins, were fixed upon their lower limbs.
And if I keep my eyes tightly shut and the eyes of memory open, I can see as I sit stroking Miss Blinkett's cat the legs of the new Vicar pass up the lane outlined against a lilac skirt. And Miss Amy, who is not a close observer of life, opines that the skirt belongs to Miss Janey Manvers, but Miss Blinkett senior instantly identifies it as Annette's new spotted muslin,which she had seen Mrs. Nicholls "getting up" last week.
But that was twenty years ago. I can only tell you what Riff was like then, for it is twenty years since I was there, and I am not going there any more, for I don't want to see any of the changes which time must have wrought there, and if I walked down the village street now I should feel like a ghost, for only a few of the old people would remember me. And the bright-eyed, tow-headed little lads whom I taught in Sunday school are scattered to the four winds of heaven. The Boer War took some of them, and London has engulfed more, only a few remaining at Riff as sad-looking middle-aged men, farm hands, and hedgers and ditchers, and cowmen.
And I hear that now the motors go banging along the Yarmouth high road day and night, and that Riff actually has a telegraph office of its own and that the wires go in front of The Hermitage, only the Miss Blinketts are not there to see it. A literary lady lives there now, and I hear she has changed the name to "Quill Cottage," and has made a garden in the orchard where old Nan's cottage was by the twisted pear tree: old Nan the witch, who grew mistletoe in all the trees in her domain, and cured St. Vitus' dance with it. No, I will not go to Riff any more, for I do not want to see any of these things, and least of all theliterary lady who is writing her novels in the quiet rooms where my two old friends knitted and read Thomas à Kempis.
Twenty years ago, in the days when my father was doctor at Riff and when Annette came to live there, we could not help noticing—indeed, Mrs. Nicholls often mentioned it—what a go-ahead place Riff was, far more up to date than Sweet Apple Tree, and even than Meverly Mill. We measured everything in those days by Sweet Apple Tree, and the measurement was always in our favour. We did not talk much about Riebenbridge, where the "'Sizes" were held, and the new "'Sylum" had just been built. We were somewhat awed by Riebenbridge, but poor lag-behind Sweet Apple Tree, lost amid its reeds together with the Rieben, was the subject of sincere pity to the Riff folk. The Sweet Applers, according to Mrs. Nicholls, were "that clunch they might have been brought up in a wood." At Riff everything was cast in a superior and more modern mould. Riff had a postman on a bicycle with an enormous front wheel, and if he brought a letter in the morning you could if necessary post an answer to it the same day in the red slit in the churchyard wall. Now at Sweet Apple Tree the old man in a donkey-cart blowing on a little horn who brought the Sweet Apple letters, took away directly the donkey was rested those which the inhabitants had just composed. And even he did not call if "the water was out."
Before I was born, when the Miss Blinketts were young and crinolined and their father was Vicar of Riff, Sweet Apple Tree, as they have often told me, had no choir, and the old Rector held a service once or twice a year in his Bath chair. After he took to his bed there was no service at all for twenty years. No wonder the Sweet Apple folk were "clunch"! How different from Riff, with its trombone and fiddle inviting the attention of its Creator every Sunday, and Mr. Blinkett, whose watchword was "No popery," preaching in his black gown two sermons a week to the favoured people of Riff.
It was Mr. Jones, Mr. Blinkett's successor, that lamentable person, meaning well, but according to the Miss Blinketts quite unable to perceive when a parish was worked on the right lines, it was young Mr. Jones from Oxford, who did not marry either of the Miss Blinketts, but who did put a stop to the trombone and fiddle, and actually brought the choir out of the gallery, and took away the hour-glass from the south window below the pulpit, and preached in his surplice, and made himself very unpopular by forbidding the congregation to rise to its feet when the Manvers family came into church, almost as unpopular as by stopping the fiddle. You can see the old fiddle still in the cottage of Hesketh the carrier, next the village stocks. His father had played on it, and turned "chapel" when his services were no longer required. Andit was young Mr. Jones who actually had the bad taste openly to deplore the saintly Blinkett's action in demolishing all the upper part of the ancient carved and gilded screen because at eighty he could no longer make his voice heard through it.
It was, of course, Mr. Jones who started the mixed choir sitting in the chancel behind the remains of the screen.
In the last days of the mixed choir, when first Mr. Black came to Riff (after Mr. Jones was made a bishop), Annette sang in it, with a voice that seemed to me, and not to me only, like the voice of an angel.
With the exception of Annette and the under-housemaid from the Dower House, it was mainly composed of admirable domestic characters of portly age—the élite of Riff—supplemented by a small gleaning of deeply virtuous, non-fruit-stealing little boys. We are told nowadays that heredity is nothing. But when I remember how those starched and white-collared juvenile singers were nearly all the offspring of the tenors and basses, and of Mrs. Nicholls and Mrs. Cocks who were trebles, I feel the last word still remains to be said about heredity.
Annette did not sing in it long—not more than a year, I think. It was soon after she left it that Mr. Black—so I am told—started a surpliced choir. And here am I talking about her leaving the choir when I have not yet told you of her arrival in Lowshire, or anything about Red RiffFarm where her two aunts lived, and where Aunt Maria wrote her famous novel,The Silver Cross, of which you have of course often heard, and which if you are of a serious turn of mind you have doubtless read and laid to heart.
"Nothing is so incapacitating as self-love."
Red Riff Farm stands near the lane, between the village and the high road, presenting its back to all comers with British sang-froid. To approach it you must go up the wide path between the barn and the dovecote on one side, and on the other the long, lowlaiteriestanding above its wall, just able to look at itself in the pool, where the ducks are breaking up its reflection. When you pass through the narrow iron gateway in the high wall which protects the garden on the north side, the old Jacobean house rises up above you, all built of dim rose-red and dim blue brick, looking benignly out across the meadows over its small enclosed garden which had once been the orchard, in which some of the ancient bent apple trees are still like old pensioners permitted to remain.
When Annette first passed through that gateway, the beautiful dim old building with its latticed windows peered at her through a network of apple blossom. But now the apple trees have long since dropped their petals, and you can see the house clearly, with its waveringtiled string courses, and its three rounded gables, and the vine flung half across it.
The low, square oak door studded with nails stands wide open, showing a glimpse of a small panelled hall with a carved black staircase coming down into it.
We need not peer in through the window at the Shakespeare Calendar on Aunt Maria's study table to see what time of year it is, for everything tells us: the masses of white pinks crowding up to the threshold and laying their sweet heads against the stone edging of their domain, the yellow lichen in flower on the roof, the serried ranks of Sweet William full out. It is certainly early June. And the black-faced sheep moving sedately in the long meadows in front of the house confirm us in our opinion, for they have shed their becoming woollen overalls and are straddling about, hideous to behold, in their summer tights. Only the lambs, now large and sedate, keep their pretty February coats, though by some unaccountable fatality they have all, poor dears, lost their tails.
Lowshire is a sedate place. I have never seen those solemn Lowshire lambs jump about as they do in Hampshire. A Hampshire lamb among his contemporaries with the juice of the young grass in him! Hi! Friskings and caperings! That is a sight to make an old ram young. But the Lowshire lambs seem ever to see the shadow of the blue-coated butcher in the sunshine. They move in decorous bands as ifthey were going to church, hastening suddenly all together as if they were late.
Lowshire is a sedate place. The farm lads still in their teens move as slowly as the creeping rivers, much slower than the barges. The boys early leave off scurrying in shouting bands down the lanes in the dusk. The little girls peep demurely over the garden gates, and walk slowly indoors, if spoken to.
We have ascertained that it is early June, and we need no watch to tell us what o'clock it is. It is milking-time, the hour when good little boys "whom mother can trust" are to be seen hurrying in an important manner with milk-cans. Half-past four it must be, for the red cows, sweet-breathed and soft-paced, have passed up the lane half an hour ago, looking gently to right and left with lustrous, nunlike eyes, now and then putting out a large red tongue to lick at the hedgerow. Sometimes, as to-day, the bull precedes them, hustling along, surly,affairé, making a low, continuous grunting which is not anger, for he is kind as bulls go, so much as "orkardness," the desire of the egotist to make his discontentment public, and his disillusionment with his pasture and all his gentle-tempered wives.
Annette came down the carved staircase, and stood a moment in the doorway in a pale lilac gown (the same that you will remember the Miss Blinketts saw half an hour later).
Her ear caught the sound of a manly voice mingled with Aunt Maria's dignified tones, and the somewhat agitated accompaniment of the clink of tea-things. Aunt Harriet was evidently more acutely undecided than usual which cup to fill first, and was rattling them in the way that always irritated Aunt Maria, though she made heroic efforts to dissimulate it.
Annette came to the conclusion that she should probably be late for choir practice if she went into the drawing-room. So she walked noiselessly across the hall and slipped through the garden. A dogcart was standing horseless in the courtyard, and the delighted female laughter which proceeded from the servants' hall showed that a male element in the shape of a groom had been added to the little band of women-servants.
What a fortunate occurrence that there should be a caller!—for on this particular afternoon Aunt Maria had reached a difficult place in her new book, the hero having thrown over his lady-love because she, foolish modernist that she was, toying with her life's happiness, would not promise to leave off smoking. The depressed authoress needed a change of thought. And it would be pleasant for the whole household if Aunt Harriet's mind could be diverted from the fact that her new air-cushion leaked; not the old black one, that would not have mattered so much, but the new round red society one which she used when there were visitors inthe house. Aunt Harriet's mind had brooded all day over the air-cushion as mournfully as a hart's tongue over a well.
Annette hoped it was a cheerful caller. Perhaps it was Canon Wetherby from Riebenbridge, an amiable widower, and almost as great an admirer of Aunt Maria's works as of his own stock of anecdotes.
In the meanwhile if she, Annette, missed her own lawful tea at home, to which of the little colony of neighbours in the village should she go for a cup, on her way to the church, where choir practice was held?
To the Dower House? Old Lady Louisa Manvers had ceased to come downstairs at all, and her daughter Janey, a few years older than herself, poor downtrodden Janey, would be only too glad to see her. But then her imbecile brother Harry, with his endless copy-book remarks, would be certain to be having tea with her, and Lady Louisa's trained nurse, whom Annette particularly disliked. No, she would not go to the Dower House this afternoon. She might go to tea with the Miss Blinketts, who were always kind to her, and whose cottage lay between her and the church.
The two Miss Blinketts were about the same age as the Miss Nevills, and regarded them with deep admiration, not unmixed with awe, coupled with an evident hope that a pleasant intercourse might presently be established between The Hermitage and Red Riff Farm.They were indeed quite excited at the advent among them of one so gifted as the author ofCrooks and Coronets, who they perceived from her books took a very high view of the responsibility created by genius.
Annette liked the Miss Blinketts, and her knowledge of Aunt Maria's character had led her to hope that this enthusiastic deference might prove acceptable to a wearied authoress in her hours of relaxation. But she soon found that the Miss Nevills with all the prestige of London and a literarymilieuresting upon them were indignant at the idea that they could care to associate with "a couple of provincial old maids."
Their almost ferocious attitude towards the amiable Miss Blinketts had been a great shock to Annette, who neither at that nor at any later time learned to make the social distinctions which occupied so much of her two aunts' time. The Miss Nevills' acceptance of a certain offering of ferns peeping through the meshes of a string bag brought by the Miss Blinketts, had been so frigid, so patrician, that it had made Annette more friendly than she would naturally have been. She had welcomed the ferns with enthusiasm, and before she had realized it, had become the object of a sentimental love and argus-eyed interest on the part of the inmates of The Hermitage which threatened to have its embarrassing moments.
No, now she came to think of it, she wouldnot go to tea with the Miss Blinketts this afternoon.
Of course, she might go to the Vicarage. Miss Black, the Vicar's sister who kept house for him, had often asked her to do so before choir practice. But Annette had vaguely felt of late that Miss Black, who had been very cordial to her on her arrival and was still extremely polite, did not regard her with as much favour as at first: in fact, that as Mr. Black formed a high and ever higher opinion of her, that of his sister was steadily lowered to keep the balance even.
Annette knew what was the matter with Mr. Black, though that gentleman had not yet discovered what it was that was affecting his usually placid temper and causing him on his parochial rounds so frequently to take the short cut past Red Riff Farm.
She had just decided, without emotion but with distinct regret, that she must do without tea this afternoon, when a firm step came along the lane behind her, and Mr. Black overtook her. For once he had taken that short cut to some purpose, though his face, fixed in a dignified preoccupation, gave no hint that he felt Fortune had favoured him at last.
The Miss Blinketts had heard it affirmed "by one who knew a wide sweep of clergy and was therefore competent to form an opinion," that Mr. Black was the handsomest vicar in the diocese. But possibly that was not highpraise, for the clergy had evidently deteriorated in appearance since the ancient Blinkett, that type of aristocratic beauty, had been laid to rest under the twisted yew in the Riff churchyard.
But, anyhow, Mr. Black was sufficiently good-looking to be called handsome in a countryside where young unmarried men were rare as water ousels. He was tall and erect, and being rather clumsily built, showed to great advantage in a surplice. In a procession of clergy you would probably have picked out Mr. Black at once as its most impressive figure. He was what the Miss Blinketts called "stately." When you looked closely at him you saw that his nose was a size too large, that his head and ears and hands and feet were all a size too large for him. But the general impression was pleasant, partly because he always looked as if he had that moment emerged as speckless as his surplices from Mrs. Nicholls' washtub.
It was an open secret that Mrs. Nicholls thought but little of Miss Black, "who wasn't so to call a lady, and washed her flannels at home." But she had a profound admiration for the Vicar, though I fear if the truth were known it was partly because he "set off a surplice so as never was."
Mr. Black allowed his thoughtful expression to lighten to a grave smile as he walked on beside Annette, determined that on this occasion he would not be commonplace or didactic, as he feared he had been after the boot and shoe club.He was under the illusion, because he had so often said so, that he seldom took the trouble to do himself justice socially. It might be as well to begin now.
"Are you on your way to choir practice?"
"What a question! Of course I am."
"Have you had tea?"
"No."
"Neither have I. Do come to the Vicarage first, and Angela will give us some." "Angela" was Miss Black.
Annette could not find any reason for refusing.
"Thank you. I will come with pleasure."
"I would rather go without any meal than tea."
Mr. Black felt as he said it that this sentiment wasfor himinadequate, but he was relieved that Annette did not appear to find it so. She smiled and said—
"It certainly is the pleasantest meal in the day."
At this moment, the Miss Blinketts and I saw, as I have already told you, the legs of the Vicar pass up the lane outlined against a lilac skirt. We watched them pass in silence, and then Miss Blinkett said solemnly—
"If anything should come of that, if he should eventually make up his mind to marry, I consider Annette would be in every way a worthy choice."
"Papa was always against a celibate clergy," said Miss Amy, as if that settled the question.
Annette and her possible future had nearly reached the Vicarage when a dogcart passed them which she recognized as the one she had seen at Red Riff. The man in it waved his hand to Mr. Black.
"That was Mr. Reginald Stirling, the novelist," Mr. Black volunteered.
"The man who wroteThe Magnet?"
"Yes. He has rented Noyes Court from Lady Louisa. I hear he never attends divine service at Noyes, but I am glad to say he has been to Riff several times lately. I am afraid Bartlett's sermons are not calculated to attract an educated man."
Mr. Black was human, and he was aware that he was a good preacher.
"I have often heard of him from Mrs. Stoddart," said Annette, with evident interest. "I supposed he lived in Lowshire because some of the scenes inThe Magnetare laid in this country."
"Are they? I had not noticed it," said Mr. Black frigidly.
He had often wished he could interest Annette in conversation, often wondered why he seemed unable to do so. Was it really because he did not take enough trouble, as he sometimes accused himself? But now that she was momentarily interested he stopped short at once, as at the entrance of a blind alley. What he really wanted was to talk, not about Mr. Stirling but about himself, to tell her how he found good in every one, how attracted he was to the ignorantand the simple. No. He did not exactly desire to tell her these things, but to coerce the conversation into channels which would show indubitably that he was the kind of man who could discover the good latent in every one, the kind of man who fostered the feeble aspirations of the young and the ignorant, who entered with wide-minded sympathy into the difficulties of stupid people, who was better read and more humorous than any of his clerical brethren in Lowshire, to whom little children and dogs turned intuitively as to a friend.
Now, it is not an easy thing to enter lightly into conversation if you bring with you into it so many impedimenta. There was obviously no place for all this heavy baggage in the discussion of Mr. Stirling's novels. So that eminent writer was dismissed at once, and the subject was hitched, not without a jolt, on to the effect of the Lowshire scenery on Mr. Black. It transpired that Mr. Black was the kind of man who went for inspiration to the heathery moor, and who found that the problems of life are apt to unravel themselves under a wide expanse of sky.
Annette listened dutifully and politely till the Vicarage door was reached.
It seemed doubtful afterwards, when he reviewed what he had said, whether he had attained to any really prominent conversational peaks during that circumscribed parley.
He felt with sudden exasperation that heneeded time, scope, opportunity, lots of opportunity, so that if he missed one there would be plenty more, and above all absence of interruption. He never got a chance ofreallytalking to her.
"It ain't the pews and free seats as knows what music is, nor it ain't the organist. It is thechoir. There's more in music than just ketching a tune and singing it fort here and pianner there. But Lor! Miss, what do the pews and the free seats know of the dangers? When the Vicar gives them a verse to sing by themselves it do make me swaller with embarrassment to hear 'em beller. They knows nothing, and they fears nothing."—Mrs. Nicholls.
"It ain't the pews and free seats as knows what music is, nor it ain't the organist. It is thechoir. There's more in music than just ketching a tune and singing it fort here and pianner there. But Lor! Miss, what do the pews and the free seats know of the dangers? When the Vicar gives them a verse to sing by themselves it do make me swaller with embarrassment to hear 'em beller. They knows nothing, and they fears nothing."—Mrs. Nicholls.
On this particular evening Annette was the first to take her seat in the chancel beyond the screen, where the choir practices always took place. Mrs. Nicholls presently joined her there with her battered part-book, and she and Annette went over the opening bars of the new anthem, which like the Riff bull was "orkard" in places.
Mr. Black was lighting the candles on long iron sticks, while Miss Black adjusted herself to the harmonium, which did the organ's drudgery for it, and then settled herself, notebook in hand, to watch which of the choir made an attendance.
Miss Black was constantly urging her brother to do away with the mixed choir and have a surpliced one. She became even more urgent on that head after Annette had joined it. Mr.Black was nothing loth, but his bishop, who had but recently instituted him, had implored him not to make a clean sweep ofeveryarrangement of his predecessor, Mr. Jones, that ardent reformer, whose principal reforms now needed reforming. So, with laudable obedience and zeal, Mr. Black possessed his soul in patience and sought to instil new life into the mixed choir. Annette was part of that new life, and her presence helped to reconcile him to its continued existence, and to increase Miss Black's desire for its extinction.
Miss Black was older than her brother, and had already acquired that acerb precision which lies in wait with such frequent success for middle-aged spinsters and bachelors.
She somehow gave the comfortless impression of being "ready-made" and "greatly reduced," as if there were quantities more exactly like her put away somewhere, the supply having hopelessly exceeded the demand. She looked as if she herself, as well as her fatigued elaborate clothes, had been picked up half-price but somewhat crumpled in the sales.
She glanced with disapproval at Annette whispering amicably with Mrs. Nicholls, and Annette desisted instantly.
The five little boys shuffled in in a bunch, as if roped together, and slipped into their seats under Mr. Black's eye. Mr. Chipps the grocer and principal bass followed, bringing with him an aroma of cheese. The two altoes,Miss Pontifex and Miss Spriggs, from the Infants' School, were already in position. A few latecomers seemed to have dropped noiselessly into their seats from the roof, and to become visible by clearings of throats.
Mr. Black, who was chagrined by the very frigid reception and the stale tea which his sister had accorded to Annette, said with his customary benignity, "Are we all here? I think we may as well begin."
Miss Black remarked that the choirmaster, Mr. Spillcock, was "late again," just as that gentleman was seen advancing like a ramrod up the aisle.
A certain mystery enveloped Mr. Spillcock. He was not a Riff man, nor did he hail from Noyes, or Heyke, or Swale, or even Riebenbridge. What had brought him to live at Riebenbridge no one rightly knew, not even Mrs. Nicholls. It was whispered that he had "bugled" before Royalty in outlandish parts, and when Foreign Missions were being practised he had been understood to aver that the lines,
"Where Afric's sunny fountainsRoll down their golden sand,"
"Where Afric's sunny fountainsRoll down their golden sand,"
"Where Afric's sunny fountains
Roll down their golden sand,"
put him forcibly in mind of the scenes of his earlier life. Whether he had really served in the army or not never transpired, but his grey moustache was twirled with military ferocity, and he affected the bearing and manner of a retired army man. It was also whispered thatMrs. Spillcock, a somewhat colourless, depressed mate for so vivid a personality, "was preyed upon in her mind" because another lady had a prior or church claim to the title of Mrs. Spillcock. As a child I always expected the real Mrs. Spillcock to appear, but she never did.
"Good evening all," said Mr. Spillcock urbanely, and without waiting for any remarks on the lateness of the hour, he seized out of his waistcoat pocket a tuning-fork. "We begin, I presume, with the anthem 'Now hunto 'Im.' Trebles, take your do. Do, me, sol, do. Do." Mr. Spillcock turned towards the trebles with open mouth, uttering a prolonged falsetto do, and showing all his molars on the left side, where apparently he held do in reserve.
Annette guided Mrs. Nicholls and Mrs. Cocks and the timid under-housemaid from the Dower House from circling round the note to the note itself.
"Do," sang out all the trebles with sweetness and decision.
"Now, then, boys, why don't you fall in?" said Mr. Spillcock, looking with unconcealed animosity at the line of little boys whom he ought not to have disliked, as they never made any sound in the church, reserving their voices for shouting on their homeward way in the dark.
"Now, then, boys, look alive. Take up your do from the ladies."
A faint buzzing echo like the sound in anunmusical shell could be detected by the optimists nearest to the boys. It would have been possible to know they were in tune only by holding their bodies to your ear.
"They have got it," said Mr. Black valiantly.
Mr. Spillcock looked at them with cold contempt.
"Altoes, me," he said more gently. He was gallant to the fair sex, and especially to Miss Pontifex and Miss Spriggs, one dark and one fair, and both in the dew of their cultured youth.
"Altoes, take your me."
The two altoes, their lips ready licked, burst into a plaintive bleat, which if it was not me was certainly nothing else.
The miller, the principal tenor, took his sol, supported at once by "the young chap" from the Manvers Arms, who echoed it manfully directly it had been unearthed, and by his nephew from Lowestoft, who did not belong to the choir and could not sing, but who was on a holiday and who always came to choir practices with his uncle, because he was courting either Miss Pontifex or Miss Spriggs, possibly both. I have a hazy recollection of hearing years later that he had married them both, not at the same time, but one shortly after the other, and that Miss Spriggs made a wonderful mother to Miss Pontifex's baby, orvice versa. Anyhow, they were both in love with him, and I know it ended happily for every one, and wasconsidered in Riff to be a great example to Mr. Chipps of portly years, who had been engaged for about twenty years "as you might say off and on" to Mrs. Cocks' sister (who was cook at the Dower House), but who, whenever the question of marriage was introduced, opined that "he felt no call to change his state."
Mr. Black made several ineffectual attempts to induce the basses to take their lower do. But Mr. Chipps, though he generally succumbed into singing an octave below the trebles, had conscientious scruples about starting on the downward path even if his part demanded it, and could not be persuaded to make any sound except a dignified neutral rumbling. The other basses naturally were not to be drawn on to dangerous ground while their leader held aloof.
"We shall drop into it later on," said Mr. Black hopefully, who sat with them. "We had better start."
"Pom, pom, pom, pom," said Mr. Spillcock, going slowly down the chord, and waving a little stick at trebles, altoes, tenors, and basses in turn at each pom.
Every one made a note of sorts, with such pleasing results, something so far superior to anything that Sweet Apple Tree could produce, that it was felt to be unchivalrous on the part of Mr. Spillcock to beat his stick on the form and say sternly—
"Altoes, it's Hay. Not Hay flat."
"Pommmm!" in piercing falsetto.
The altoes took up their note again, caught it as it were with a pincers from Mr. Spillcock's back molars.
"Righto," said Mr. Spillcock. "Altoes, if you find yourselves going down, keep yourselveshup. Now hunto 'Im."
And the serious business of the practice began.
"Not even in a dream hast thou known compassion ... thou knowest not even the phantom of pity; but the silver hair will remind thee of all this by and by."—Callimachus.
"Not even in a dream hast thou known compassion ... thou knowest not even the phantom of pity; but the silver hair will remind thee of all this by and by."—Callimachus.
The Dower House stands so near to the church that Janey Manvers sitting by her bedroom window in the dusk could hear fragments of the choir practice over the low ivied wall which separates the churchyard from the garden. She could detect Annette's voice taking the same passage over and over again, trying to lead the trebles stumbling after her. Presently there was a silence, and then her voice rose sweet and clear by itself—
"They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat."
The other voices surged up, and Janey heard no more.
Was it possible there really was a place somewhere where there was no more hunger and thirst, and beating, blinding heat? Or were they only pretty words to comfort where no comfort was? Janey looked out where one soft star hung low in the dusk over the windingriver and its poplars. It seemed to her that night as if she had reached the end of her strength.
For years, since her father died, she had nursed and sustained her mother, the invalid in the next room, through what endless terrible days and nights, through what scenes of anger and bitterness and despair. Janey had been loyal to one who had never been loyal to her, considerate to one who had ridden rough-shod over her, tender to one who was harsh to her, who had always been harsh. And now her mother, not content with eating up the best years of her daughter's life, had laid her cold hand upon the future, and had urged Janey to promise that after her death she would always keep Harry, her half-witted younger brother, in the same house with her, and protect him from the world on one side and a lunatic asylum on the other. Something desperate had surged up in Janey's heart, and she had refused to give the promise. She could see still her mother's look of impotent anger as she turned her face to the wall, could hear still her hysterical sobbing. She had not dared to remain with her, and Anne the old housemaid was sitting with her till the trained nurse returned from Ipswich, a clever, resourceful woman, who had made herself indispensable to Lady Louisa, and had taken Harry to the dentist—always heretofore a matter difficult of accomplishment.
Janey realized with sickening shame thisevening that she had unconsciously looked forward to her mother's death as a time when release would come from this intolerable burden which she had endured for the last seven years. Her poor mother would die some day, and a home would be found for Harry, who never missed anyone if he was a day away from them. And she would marry Roger, dear kind Roger, whom she had loved since she was a small child and he was a big boy. That had been her life, in a prison whose one window looked on a green tree: and poor manacled Janey had strained towards it as a plant strains to the light. Something fierce had stirred within her when she saw her mother's hand trying to block the window. That at any rate must not be touched. She could not endure it. She knew that if she married Roger he would never consent that Harry and his attendants should live in the house with them. What man would? She felt sure that her mother had realized that contingency and the certainty of Roger's refusal, and hence her determination to wrest a promise from Janey.
She was waiting for her cousin Roger now. He had not said whether he would dine or come in after dinner,—it depended on whether he caught the five o'clock express from Liverpool Street,—but in any case he would come in some time this evening to tell her the result of his mission to Paris. Roger lived within a hundred yards, in the pink cottage with the twirly bargeboarding almost facing the church, close by the village stocks.
Janey had put on what she believed to be a pretty gown on his account, it was at any rate a much-trimmed one, and had re-coiled her soft brown hair. The solitude and the darkness had relieved somewhat the strain upon her nerves. Perhaps Roger might after all have accomplished his mission, and her mother might be pacified. Sometimes there had been quiet intervals after these violent outbreaks, which nearly always followed opposition of any kind. Perhaps to-morrow life might seem more possible, not such a nightmare. To-morrow she would walk up to Red Riff and see Annette—lovely, kind Annette—the wonderful new friend who had come into her life. Roger ought to be here, if he were coming to dinner. The choir was leaving the church. Choir practice was never over till after eight. The steps and voices subsided. She lit a match and held it to the clock on the dressing-table. Quarter-past eight. Then Roger was certainly not coming. She went downstairs and ordered dinner to be served.
It was a relief that for once Harry was not present, that she could eat her dinner without answering the futile questions which were his staple of conversation, without hearing the vacant laugh which heralded every remark. She heard the carriage rumble out of the courtyard to meet him. His teeth must have takenlonger than usual. Perhaps even Nurse, who had him so entirely under her thumb as a rule, had found him recalcitrant.
As she was peeling her peach the door opened, and Roger came in. If there had been anyone to notice it—but no one ever noticed anything about Janey—they might have seen that as she perceived him she became a pretty woman. A soft red mounted to her cheek, her tired eyes shone, her small, erect figure became alert. He had not dined, after all. She sent for the earlier dishes, and while he ate, refrained from asking him any questions.
"You do not look as tired as I expected," she said.
Roger replied that he was not the least tired There was in his bearing some of the alertness of hers, and she noticed it with a sudden secret uprush of joy in her heart. Surely it was the same for both of them? To be together was all they needed. But oh! how she needed that! How far greater her need was than his!
They might have been taken for brother and sister as they sat together in the dining-room in the light of the four wax candles.
They were what the village people called "real Manverses," both of them, sturdy, well knit, erect, with short, straight noses, and grey, direct, wide-open eyes, and brown complexions, and crisp brown hair. Each was good-looking in a way. Janey had the advantage of youth, but her life had been more burdened thanRoger's, and at five-and-thirty he did not look much older than she did at five-and-twenty, except that he showed a tendency to be square-set, and his hair was thinning a little at the top of his honest, well-shaped head. He was, as Mrs. Nicholls often remarked, "the very statue of the old squire," his uncle and Janey's father.
"Pray don't hurry, Roger. There is plenty of time."
"I'm not hurrying, old girl," with another gulp.
It was a secret infinitesimal grief to Janey that Roger called her "old girl." A hundred little traits showed that she had seen almost nothing of the world, but he, in spite of public school and college, gave the impression of having seen even less. There were a few small tiresomenesses about Roger to which even Janey's faithful adoration could not quite shut its eyes. But they were, after all, only external foibles, such as calling her "old girl," tricks of manner, small gaucheries and gruntings and lapses into inattention, the result of living too much alone, which wise Janey knew were of no real account. The things that really mattered about Roger were his kind heart and his good business-head and his uprightness.
"Never seen Paris before, and don't care if I never see it again," he vouchsafed between enormous mouthfuls. He never listened—at least not to Janey—and his conversation consisted largely of disjointed remarks, thrown out at intervals, very much as unprofitable or wastematerial is chucked over a wall, without reference to the person whom it may strike on the other side.
"I should like to see Paris myself."
Roger informed her of the reprehensible and entirely un-British manner in which luggage was arranged for at that metropolis, and of the price of the cabs and the system ofpourboires, and how the housemaid at the hotel had been a man. Some of these details of intimate Parisian life had already reached even Janey, but she listened to them with unflagging interest. Do not antiquaries tell us that the extra rib out of which Eve was fashioned was in shape not unlike an ear trumpet? Janey was a daughter of Eve. She listened.
Presently the servants withdrew, and he leaned back in his chair and looked at her.
"It was no go," he said.
"You mean Dick was worse?"
"Yes. No. I don't know how he was. He looked to me just the same, staring straight in front of him with goggling eyes. Lady Jane said he knew me, but I didn't see that he did. I said, 'Holloa, Dick,' and he just gaped. She said he knew quite well all about the business, and that she had explained it to him. And the doctor was there, willing to witness anything: awful dapper little chap, called meChair Mussieurand held me by the arm, and tried to persuade me, but——" Roger shook his head and thrust out his under lip.
"You were right, Roger," said Janey sadly; "but poor mother will be dreadfully angry. And how are you to go on without the power of attorney, if he's not in a fit state to grant it?"
But Roger was not listening.
"I often used to wonder how Aunt Louisa got Dick to sign before about the sale of the salt marshes—that time when she went to Paris herself—on purpose. But,"—he became darkly red,—"hang it all, Janey, I see now how it was done."
"She shouldn't have sent me," he said, getting up abruptly. "Not the kind for the job. I suppose I had better go up and see her. Expect I shall catch it."
"This man smells not of books."—J. S. Blackie.
Lady Louisa Manvers was waiting for her nephew, propped up in bed, clutching the bed-clothes with leaden, corpse-pale hands. She was evidently at the last stage of some long and terrific illness, and her hold on life seemed as powerless and as convulsive as that of her hands upon the quilt. She felt that she was slipping into the grave, she the one energetic and far-seeing member of the family, and that on her exhausted shoulders lay the burden of arranging everything for the good of her children, for they were totally incapable of doing anything for themselves. In the long nights of unrest and weariness unspeakable, her mind, accustomed to undisputed dominion, revolved perpetually round the future of her children, and the means by which in her handicapped condition she could still bring about what would be best for them, what was essential for their well-being, especially Harry's. And all the while her authority was slipping from her, in spite of her desperate grasp upon it. The whole world and her stubborn children themselves were in league against her, and the leastopposition on their part aroused in her a paroxysm of anger and despair. Why did every one make her heavy task heavier? Why was she tacitly disobeyed when a swift and absolute obedience was imperative? Why did they try to soothe her, and speak smooth things to her, when they were virtually opposing her all the time? She, a paralysed old woman, only longing for rest, was forced to fight them all single-handed for their sakes.
To-night, as she lay waiting for her nephew, she touched a lower level of despair than even she had yet reached. She suspected that Roger would fail her. Janey had for the first time turned against her. Even Janey, who had always yielded to her, always, always, even she had opposed her—had actually refused to make the promise which was essential to the welfare of poor Harry after she herself was gone. And she felt that she was going, that she was being pushed daily and hourly nearer to the negation of all things, the silence, the impotence of the grave. She determined to act with strength while power to act still remained.
Roger's reluctant step came up the oak staircase, and his tap on the door.
"May I come in?"
"Come in."
He came in, and stood as if he were stuffed in the middle of the room, his eyes fixed on the cornice.
"I hope you are feeling better, Aunt Louisa?"
"I am still alive, as you see."
Deep-rooted jealousy of Roger dwelt in her, had dwelt in her ever since the early days when her husband had adopted him against her wish when he had been left an orphan. She had not wanted him in her nursery. Her husband had always been fond of him, and later in life had leaned upon him. In the depths of her bitter heart Lady Louisa believed he had preferred his nephew to the two sons she had given him, Dick the ne'er-do-well, and Harry the latecomer—the fool.
Roger moved his eyes slowly round the room, looking always away from the bed, till they fell upon the cat curled up in the arm-chair.
"Holloa, puss!" he said. "Caught a mouse lately?"
"Did you get the power of attorney?" came the voice from the bed.
"No, Aunt Louisa."
The bed-clothes trembled.
"I told you not to come back without it."
Roger was silent.
"Had not Jane arranged everything?"
"Everything."
"And the doctor! Wasn't he there ready to witness it?"
"Oh Lord! Yes. He was there."
"Then I fail to understand why you came back without it."
"Dick wasn't fit to sign," said Roger doggedly.
"Didn't I warn you before you went that hehad repeatedly told Jane that he could not attend to business, and that was why it was so important you should be empowered to act for him?—and the power of attorney was his particular wish."
"Yes, you did. But I didn't know he'd be like that. He didn't know a thing. It didn't seem as if hecouldhave had a particular wish one way or the other. Aunt Louisa, he wasn'tfit."
"And so you set up your judgment against mine, and his own doctor's? I told you before you went, what you knew already, that he was not capable of transacting business, and that you must have the power; and you said you understood. And then you come back here and inform me that he was not fit, which you knew before you started."
"No, no. You're wrong there."
How like he was to her dead husband as he said that, and how she hated him for the likeness!
"Don't contradict me. You were asked to act in Dick's own interest and in the interests of the property, and you promised to do it. And you haven't done it."
"But, Aunt Louisa, he wasn't in a state to sign anything. He's not alive. He's just breathing, that's all. Doesn't know anybody, or take any notice. If you'd seen him you'd have known youcouldn'tget his signature."
"I did get it about the marsh-lands. I went toParis on purpose last November, when I was too ill to travel. I only sent you this time because I could not leave my bed."
Roger paused, and then his honest face became plum colour, and he blurted out—
"They were actually going to guide his hand."
Lady Louisa's cold eyes met his.
"Well! And if they were?"
Roger lost his embarrassment. His face became as pale as it had been red. He came up to the bed and looked the sick woman straight in the eyes.
"I was not the right man for the job," he said. "You should have sent somebody else. I—stopped it."
"I hope when you are dying, Roger, that your son will carry out your last wishes more effectively than my nephew has carried out mine."
"But, Aunt Louisa, upon my honour he wasn't——"
"Good-night. Ask Janey to send up Nurse to me as soon as she returns."
Roger left the room clumsily, but yet with a certain dignity. His upright soul was shocked to the very core. He marched heavily downstairs to the library, where Janey was keeping his coffee hot for him over a little spirit-lamp. There was indignation in his clear grey eyes. And over his coffee and his cigarette he recounted to her exactly how everything had been, and how Dick wasn't fit, he really wasn't. AndJaney thought that when he had quite finished she would tell him of the pressure her mother was bringing to bear on her to promise to make a home for Harry after her death. But when at last Roger got off the subject, and his cigarette had soothed him, he went on to tell Janey about a man he had met on the boat, who oddly enough turned out to be a cousin of a land agent he knew in Kent. This surprising incident took so long, the approaches having been both gradual and circuitous, and primarily connected with the proffer of a paper, that when it also had been adequately dealt with and disposed of, it was getting late.
"I must be off," he said, rising. "Good-night, Janey. Keep a brave heart, old girl." He nodded slightly to the room above, which was his aunt's. "Rough on you sometimes, I'm afraid."
"You always cheer me up," she said, with perfect truthfulness. Hehadcheered her. It would be a sad world for most of us if it were by our conversational talents that we could comfort those we loved. But Roger believed it was so in his case, and complacently felt that he had broached a number of interesting Parisian subjects, and had refreshed Janey, whom Lady Louisa led a dog's life and no mistake. He was fond of her, and sorry for her beyond measure, and his voice and eyes were very kindly as he bade her good-night. She went to the door with him, and they stood a moment togetherin the moonlight under the clustering stars of the clematis. He took his hat and stick and repeated his words: "Keep a brave heart."
She said in a voice which she tried, and failed, to make as tranquil as usual—
"I had been so afraid you weren't coming, that you had missed your train."
"Oh no! I didn't miss it. But just as I got to the gate at eight o'clock I met Miss Georges coming out of the churchyard, and it was pretty dark—moon wasn't up—and I thought I ought to see her home first. That was why I was late."
Janey bade him good-night again, and slipped indoors. The moonlight and the clematis which a moment before had been so full of mysterious meaning were suddenly emptied of all significance.