Notwithstanding Part 11

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. Spillc.o.c.k, 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 t.i.tle of Mrs. Spillc.o.c.k. As a child I always expected the real Mrs. Spillc.o.c.k to appear, but she never did.

"Good evening all," said Mr. Spillc.o.c.k 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. Spillc.o.c.k 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. c.o.c.ks 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. Spillc.o.c.k, 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 sh.e.l.l 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. Spillc.o.c.k looked at them with cold contempt.

"Altoes, me," he said more gently. He was gallant to the fair s.e.x, 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 princ.i.p.al 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. c.o.c.ks' 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 ba.s.ses to take their lower do. But Mr. Chipps, though he generally succ.u.mbed 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 ba.s.ses 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. Spillc.o.c.k, going slowly down the chord, and waving a little stick at trebles, altoes, tenors, and ba.s.ses 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. Spillc.o.c.k 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. Spillc.o.c.k's back molars.

"Righto," said Mr. Spillc.o.c.k. "Altoes, if you find yourselves going down, keep yourselves _hup_. Now hunto 'Im."

And the serious business of the practice began.

CHAPTER XII

"Not even in a dream hast thou known compa.s.sion ... 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 pa.s.sage 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 winding river 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 this evening 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 barge boarding 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 taken longer 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, st.u.r.dy, 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 than Roger'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 waste material 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."