Two and two, girls and boys, the young lady's guests marched down to the
Vicarage. The school-mistress was anxious that each should carry his and
her tin mug, so as to give as little trouble as possible; but this was
resolutely declined, much to the children's satisfaction, who had their
walk with free hands, and their tea out of teacups and saucers, like
anybody else.
It was a fine day, and all went well. The children enjoyed themselves,
and behaved admirably into the bargain. There was only one suspicion of
misconduct, and the matter was so far from clear that the parson's
daughter hushed it up, and, so to speak, dismissed the case.
The children were playing at some game in which Jack March was supposed
to excel, but when they came to look for him he could nowhere be found.
At last he was discovered, high up among the branches of an old
walnut-tree at the top of the field, and though his hands were unstained
and his pockets empty, the gardener, who had been the first to spy him,
now loudly denounced him as an ungrateful young thief. Jack, with
swollen eyes and cheeks besmirched with angry tears, was vehemently
declaring that he had only climbed the tree to "have a look at Master
Darwin's pigeons," and had not picked so much as a leaf, let alone a
walnut; and the gardener, "shaking the truth out of him" by the collar
of his fustian jacket, was preaching loudly on the sin of adding
falsehood to theft, when the parson's daughter came up, and, in the end,
acquitted poor Jack, and gave him leave to amuse himself as he pleased.
It did not please Jack to play with his comrades just then. He felt
sulky and aggrieved. He would have liked to play with the terrier who
had stood by him in his troubles, and barked at the gardener; but that
little friend now trotted after his mistress, who had gone to
choir-practice.
Jack wandered about among the shrubberies. By-and-by he heard sounds of
music, and led by these he came to a gate in a wall, dividing the
Vicarage garden from the churchyard. Jack loved music, and the organ and
the voices drew him on till he reached the church porch; but there he
was startled by a voice that was not only not the voice of song, but was
the utterance of a moan so doleful that it seemed the outpouring of all
his lonely, and outcast, and injured feelings in one comprehensive howl.
It was the voice of the silver-haired terrier. He was sitting in the
porch, his nose up, his ears down, his eyes shut, his mouth open,
bewailing in bitterness of spirit the second and greater crook of his
lot.
To what purpose were all the caresses and care and indulgence of his
mistress, the daily walks, the weekly washings and combings, the
constant companionship, when she betrayed her abiding sense of his
inferiority, first, by not letting him sleep on the white quilt, and
secondly, by never allowing him to go to church?
Jack shared the terrier's mood. What were tea and plum-cake to him, when
his pauper-breeding was so stamped upon him that the gardener was free
to say--"A nice tale too! What's thou to do wi' doves, and thou a
work'us lad?"--and to take for granted that he would thieve and lie if
he got the chance?
His disabilities were not the dog's, however. The parish church was his
as well as another's, and he crept inside and leaned against one of the
stone pillars, as if it were a big, calm friend.
Far away, under the transept, a group of boys and men held their music
near to their faces in the waning light. Among them towered the burly
choirmaster, baton in hand. The parson's daughter was at the organ. Well
accustomed to produce his voice to good purpose, the choirmaster's words
were clearly to be heard throughout the building, and it was on the
subject of articulation and emphasis, and the like, that he was
speaking; now and then throwing in an extra aspirate in the energy of
that enthusiasm without which teaching is not worth the name.
"That'll not do. We must have it altogether different. You two lads are
singing like bumblebees in a pitcher--border there, boys!--it's no
laughing matter--put down those papers and keep your eyes on me--inflate
the chest--" (his own seemed to fill the field of vision) "and try and
give forth those noble words as if you'd an idea what they meant."
No satire was intended or taken here, but the two boys, who were
practicing their duet in an anthem, laid down the music, and turned
their eyes on their teacher.
"I'll run through the recitative," he added, "and take your time from
the stick. And mind that OH."
The parson's daughter struck a chord, and then the burly choirmaster
spoke with the voice of melody:
"My heart is disquieted within me. My heart--my heart is disquieted
within me. And the fear of death is fallen--is fallen upon me."
The terrier moaned without, and Jack thought no boy's voice could be
worth listening to after that of the choirmaster. But he was wrong. A
few more notes from the organ, and then, as night-stillness in a wood is
broken by the nightingale, so upon the silence of the church a
boy-alto's voice broke forth in obedience to the choirmaster's uplifted
hand:
"_Then_, I said--I said----"
Jack gasped, but even as he strained his eyes to see what such a singer
could look like, with higher, clearer notes the soprano rose above him
--"Then I sa--a--id," and the duet began:
"Oh that I had wings--O that I had wings like a dove!"
_Soprano_.--"Then would I flee away." _Alto_.--"Then would I
flee away." _Together_.--"And be at rest--flee away and be at
rest."
The clear young voices soared and chased each other among the arches, as
if on the very pinions for which they prayed. Then--swept from their
seats by an upward sweep of the choirmaster's arms--the chorus rose, as
birds rise, and carried on the strain.
It was not a very fine composition, but this final chorus had the
singular charm of fugue. And as the voices mourned like doves, "Oh that
I had wings!" and pursued each other with the plaintive passage, "Then
would I flee away--then would I flee away----," Jack's ears knew no
weariness of the repetition. It was strangely like watching the rising
and falling of Daddy Darwin's pigeons, as they tossed themselves by
turns upon their homeward flight.
After the fashion of the piece and period, the chorus was repeated, and
the singers rose to supreme effort. The choirmaster's hands flashed
hither and thither, controlling, inspiring, directing. He sang among the
tenors.
Jack's voice nearly choked him with longing to sing too. Could words of
man go more deeply home to a young heart caged within workhouse walls?
"Oh that I had wings like a dove! Then would I flee away--" the
choirmaster's white hands were fluttering downwards in the dusk, and the
chorus sank with them--"flee away and be at rest!"