"Dick!" exclaimed the tranter, and his voice rolled sonorously forth among the yews.
He suspended his muscles rigid as stone whilst listening for an answer, and finding he listened in vain, turned to the assemblage.
"The treble man too! Now if he'd been a tenor or counter chap, we might ha' contrived the rest o't without en, you see. But for a quire to lose the treble, why, my sonnies, you may so well lose your . . . " The tranter paused, unable to mention an image vast enough for the occasion.
"Your head at once," suggested Mr. Penny.
The tranter moved a pace, as if it were puerile of people to complete sentences when there were more pressing things to be done.
"Was ever heard such a thing as a young man leaving his work half done and turning tail like this!"
"Never," replied Bowman, in a tone signifying that he was the last man in the world to wish to withhold the formal finish required of him.
"I hope no fatal tragedy has overtook the had!" said his grandfather.
"O no," replied tranter Dewy placidly. "Wonder where he's put that there fiddle of his.
Why that fiddle cost thirty shillings, and good words besides. Somewhere in the damp, without doubt; that instrument will be unglued and spoilt in ten minutes--ten! ay, two."
"What in the name o' righteousness can have happened?" said old William, more uneasily. "Perhaps he's drownded!"
"Leaving their lanterns and instruments in the belfry they retraced their steps along the waterside track. "A strapping lad like Dick d'know better than let anything happen onawares," Reuben remarked. "There's sure to be some poor little scram reason for't staring us in the face all the while." He lowered his voice to a mysterious tone:
'Neighbours, have ye noticed any sign of a scornful woman in his head, or suchlike?"
"Not a glimmer of such a body. He's as clear as water yet."
"And Dicky said he should never marry," cried Jimmy, "but live at home always along wi' mother and we!"
"Ay, ay, my sonny; every had has said that in his time."
They had now again reached the precincts of Mr. Shiner's, but hearing nobody in that direction, one or two went across to the schoolhouse. A light was still burning in the bedroom, and though the blind was down, the window had been slightly opened, as if to admit the distant notes of the carollers to the ears of the occupant of the room.
Opposite the window, leaning motionless against a beech tree, was the lost man, his arms folded, his head thrown back, his eyes fixed upon the illuminated lattice.
"Why, Dick, is that thee? What b'st doing here?"
Dick's body instantly flew into a more rational attitude, and his head was seen to turn east and west in the gloom, as if endeavouring to discern some proper answer to that question; and at last he said in rather feeble accents--"Nothing, father."
"Th'st take long enough time about it then, upon my body," said the tranter, as they all turned anew towards the vicarage.
"I thought you hadn't done having snap in the gallery," said Dick.
"Why, we've been traypsing and rambling about, looking everywhere, and thinking you'd done fifty deathly things, and here have you been at nothing at all!"
"The stupidness lies in that point of it being nothing at all," murmured Mr. Spinks.
The vicarage front was their next field of operation, and Mr. Maybold, the lately-arrived incumbent, duly received his share of the night's harmonies. It was hoped that by reason of his profession he would have been led to open the window, and an extra carol in quick time was added to draw him forth. But Mr. Maybold made no stir.
"A bad sign!" said old William, shaking his head.
However, at that same instant a musical voice was heard exclaiming from inner depths of bedclothes--"Thanks, villagers!"
"What did he say?" asked Bowman, who was rather dull of hearing. Bowman's voice, being therefore loud, had been heard by the vicar within.
"I said, 'Thanks, villagers!'" cried the vicar again.
"Oh, we didn't hear 'ee the first time!" cried Bowman.
"Now don't for heaven's sake spoil the young man's temper by answering like that!" said the tranter.
"You won't do that, my friends!" the vicar shouted.
"Well to be sure, what ears!" said Mr. Penny in a whisper. "Beats any horse or dog in the parish, and depend upon't, that's a sign he's a proper clever chap."
"We shall see that in time," said the tranter.
Old William, in his gratitude for such thanks from a comparatively new inhabitant, was anxious to play all the tunes over again; but renounced his desire on being reminded by Reuben that it would be best to leave well alone.
"Now putting two and two together," the tranter continued, as they went their way over the hill, and across to the last remaining houses; "that is, in the form of that young female vision we zeed just now, and this young tenor-voiced parson, my belief is she'll wind en round her finger, and twist the pore young feller about like the figure of 8--that she will so, my sonnies."
PART I: 6. 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.