第69章 A FEW CRUSTED CHARACTERS(14)

'This revealed everything;the squire's mother had Andrew turned out of the house as a vile impostor,and there was great interruption to the harmony of the proceedings,the squire declaring he should have notice to leave his cottage that day fortnight.However,when we got to the servants'hall there sat Andrew,who had been let in at the back door by the orders of the squire's wife,after being turned out at the front by the orders of the squire,and nothing more was heard about his leaving his cottage.But Andrew never performed in public as a musician after that night;and now he's dead and gone,poor man,as we all shall be!'

'I had quite forgotten the old choir,with their fiddles and bass-viols,'said the home-comer,musingly.'Are they still going on the same as of old?'

'Bless the man!'said Christopher Twink,the master-thatcher;'why,they've been done away with these twenty year.A young teetotaler plays the organ in church now,and plays it very well;though 'tis not quite such good music as in old times,because the organ is one of them that go with a winch,and the young teetotaler says he can't always throw the proper feeling into the tune without wellnigh working his arms off.'

'Why did they make the change,then?'

'Well,partly because of fashion,partly because the old musicians got into a sort of scrape.A terrible scrape 'twas too--wasn't it,John?I shall never forget it--never!They lost their character as officers of the church as complete as if they'd never had any character at all.'

'That was very bad for them.'

'Yes.'The master-thatcher attentively regarded past times as if they lay about a mile off,and went on:-ABSENT-MINDEDNESS IN A PARISH CHOIR

'It happened on Sunday after Christmas--the last Sunday ever they played in Longpuddle church gallery,as it turned out,though they didn't know it then.As you may know,sir,the players formed a very good band--almost as good as the Mellstock parish players that were led by the Dewys;and that's saying a great deal.There was Nicholas Puddingcome,the leader,with the first fiddle;there was Timothy Thomas,the bass-viol man;John Biles,the tenor fiddler;Dan'l Hornhead,with the serpent;Robert Dowdle,with the clarionet;and Mr.Nicks,with the oboe--all sound and powerful musicians,and strong-winded men--they that blowed.For that reason they were very much in demand Christmas week for little reels and dancing parties;for they could turn a jig or a hornpipe out of hand as well as ever they could turn out a psalm,and perhaps better,not to speak irreverent.In short,one half-hour they could be playing a Christmas carol in the squire's hall to the ladies and gentlemen,and drinking tay and coffee with 'em as modest as saints;and the next,at The Tinker's Arms,blazing away like wild horses with the "Dashing White Sergeant"to nine couple of dancers and more,and swallowing rum-and-cider hot as flame.

'Well,this Christmas they'd been out to one rattling randy after another every night,and had got next to no sleep at all.Then came the Sunday after Christmas,their fatal day.'Twas so mortal cold that year that they could hardly sit in the gallery;for though the congregation down in the body of the church had a stove to keep off the frost,the players in the gallery had nothing at all.So Nicholas said at morning service,when 'twas freezing an inch an hour,"Please the Lord I won't stand this numbing weather no longer:

this afternoon we'll have something in our insides to make us warm,if it cost a king's ransom."'So he brought a gallon of hot brandy and beer,ready mixed,to church with him in the afternoon,and by keeping the jar well wrapped up in Timothy Thomas's bass-viol bag it kept drinkably warm till they wanted it,which was just a thimbleful in the Absolution,and another after the Creed,and the remainder at the beginning o'the sermon.

When they'd had the last pull they felt quite comfortable and warm,and as the sermon went on--most unfortunately for 'em it was a long one that afternoon--they fell asleep,every man jack of 'em;and there they slept on as sound as rocks.

"Twas a very dark afternoon,and by the end of the sermon all you could see of the inside of the church were the pa'son's two candles alongside of him in the pulpit,and his spaking face behind 'em.The sermon being ended at last,the pa'son gie'd out the Evening Hymn.

But no choir set about sounding up the tune,and the people began to turn their heads to learn the reason why,and then Levi Limpet,a boy who sat in the gallery,nudged Timothy and Nicholas,and said,"Begin!begin!""Hey?what?"says Nicholas,starting up;and the church being so dark and his head so muddled he thought he was at the party they had played at all the night before,and away he went,bow and fiddle,at "The Devil among the Tailors,"the favourite jig of our neighbourhood at that time.The rest of the band,being in the same state of mind and nothing doubting,followed their leader with all their strength,according to custom.They poured out that there tune till the lower bass notes of "The Devil among the Tailors"made the cobwebs in the roof shiver like ghosts;then Nicholas,seeing nobody moved,shouted out as he scraped (in his usual commanding way at dances when the folk didn't know the figures),"Top couples cross hands!And when Imake the fiddle squeak at the end,every man kiss his pardner under the mistletoe!"'The boy Levi was so frightened that he bolted down the gallery stairs and out homeward like lightning.The pa'son's hair fairly stood on end when he heard the evil tune raging through the church,and thinking the choir had gone crazy he held up his hand and said:

"Stop,stop,stop!Stop,stop!What's this?"But they didn't hear 'n for the noise of their own playing,and the more he called the louder they played.