"It ain't the pews and free seats as knows what music is, nor it
ain't the organist. It is the _choir_. 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 of _every_ arrangement 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 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 that
Mrs. 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 an unmusical 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, or _vice versa_. Anyhow, they
were both in love with him, and I know it ended happily for every one,
and was considered 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 yourselves _hup_. Now hunto 'Im."
And the serious business of the practice began.