Under the Greenwood Tree; Or, The Mellstock Quire

“I never in my life seed a quire go into a study to have it out about the playing and singing,” pleaded Leaf; “and I should like to see it just once!”

“Very well; we’ll let en come in,” said the tranter. “You’ll be like chips in porridge,[1 - This, a local expression, must be a corruption of something less questionable.] Leaf – neither good nor hurt. All right, my sonny, come along;” and immediately himself, old William, and Leaf appeared in the room.

“We took the liberty to come and see ’ee, sir,” said Reuben, letting his hat hang in his left hand, and touching with his right the brim of an imaginary one on his head. “We’ve come to see ’ee, sir, man and man, and no offence, I hope?”

“None at all,” said Mr. Maybold.

“This old aged man standing by my side is father; William Dewy by name, sir.”

“Yes; I see it is,” said the vicar, nodding aside to old William, who smiled.

“I thought you mightn’t know en without his bass-viol,” the tranter apologized. “You see, he always wears his best clothes and his bass-viol a-Sundays, and it do make such a difference in a’ old man’s look.”

“And who’s that young man?” the vicar said.

“Tell the pa’son yer name,” said the tranter, turning to Leaf, who stood with his elbows nailed back to a bookcase.

“Please, Thomas Leaf, your holiness!” said Leaf, trembling.

“I hope you’ll excuse his looks being so very thin,” continued the tranter deprecatingly, turning to the vicar again. “But ’tisn’t his fault, poor feller. He’s rather silly by nature, and could never get fat; though he’s a’ excellent treble, and so we keep him on.”

“I never had no head, sir,” said Leaf, eagerly grasping at this opportunity for being forgiven his existence.

“Ah, poor young man!” said Mr. Maybold.

“Bless you, he don’t mind it a bit, if you don’t, sir,” said the tranter assuringly. “Do ye, Leaf?”

“Not I – not a morsel – hee, hee! I was afeard it mightn’t please your holiness, sir, that’s all.”

The tranter, finding Leaf get on so very well through his negative qualities, was tempted in a fit of generosity to advance him still higher, by giving him credit for positive ones. “He’s very clever for a silly chap, good-now, sir. You never knowed a young feller keep his smock-frocks so clane; very honest too. His ghastly looks is all there is against en, poor feller; but we can’t help our looks, you know, sir.”

“True: we cannot. You live with your mother, I think, Leaf?”

The tranter looked at Leaf to express that the most friendly assistant to his tongue could do no more for him now, and that he must be left to his own resources.

“Yes, sir: a widder, sir. Ah, if brother Jim had lived she’d have had a clever son to keep her without work!”

“Indeed! poor woman. Give her this half-crown. I’ll call and see your mother.”

“Say, ‘Thank you, sir,’” the tranter whispered imperatively towards Leaf.

“Thank you, sir!” said Leaf.

“That’s it, then; sit down, Leaf,” said Mr. Maybold.

“Y-yes, sir!”

The tranter cleared his throat after this accidental parenthesis about Leaf, rectified his bodily position, and began his speech.

“Mr. Mayble,” he said, “I hope you’ll excuse my common way, but I always like to look things in the face.”

Reuben made a point of fixing this sentence in the vicar’s mind by gazing hard at him at the conclusion of it, and then out of the window.

Mr. Maybold and old William looked in the same direction, apparently under the impression that the things’ faces alluded to were there visible.

“What I have been thinking” – the tranter implied by this use of the past tense that he was hardly so discourteous as to be positively thinking it then – “is that the quire ought to be gie’d a little time, and not done away wi’ till Christmas, as a fair thing between man and man. And, Mr. Mayble, I hope you’ll excuse my common way?”

“I will, I will. Till Christmas,” the vicar murmured, stretching the two words to a great length, as if the distance to Christmas might be measured in that way. “Well, I want you all to understand that I have no personal fault to find, and that I don’t wish to change the church music by forcible means, or in a way which should hurt the feelings of any parishioners. Why I have at last spoken definitely on the subject is that a player has been brought under – I may say pressed upon – my notice several times by one of the churchwardens. And as the organ I brought with me is here waiting” (pointing to a cabinet-organ standing in the study), “there is no reason for longer delay.”

“We made a mistake I suppose then, sir? But we understood the young woman didn’t want to play particularly?” The tranter arranged his countenance to signify that he did not want to be inquisitive in the least.

“No, nor did she. Nor did I definitely wish her to just yet; for your playing is very good. But, as I said, one of the churchwardens has been so anxious for a change, that, as matters stand, I couldn’t consistently refuse my consent.”

Now for some reason or other, the vicar at this point seemed to have an idea that he had prevaricated; and as an honest vicar, it was a thing he determined not to do. He corrected himself, blushing as he did so, though why he should blush was not known to Reuben.

“Understand me rightly,” he said: “the church-warden proposed it to me, but I had thought myself of getting – Miss Day to play.”

“Which churchwarden might that be who proposed her, sir? – excusing my common way.” The tranter intimated by his tone that, so far from being inquisitive, he did not even wish to ask a single question.

“Mr. Shiner, I believe.”

“Clk, my sonny! – beg your pardon, sir, that’s only a form of words of mine, and slipped out accidental – he nourishes enmity against us for some reason or another; perhaps because we played rather hard upon en Christmas night. Anyhow ’tis certain sure that Mr. Shiner’s real love for music of a particular kind isn’t his reason. He’ve no more ear than that chair. But let that be.”

“I don’t think you should conclude that, because Mr. Shiner wants a different music, he has any ill-feeling for you. I myself, I must own, prefer organ-music to any other. I consider it most proper, and feel justified in endeavouring to introduce it; but then, although other music is better, I don’t say yours is not good.”

“Well then, Mr. Mayble, since death’s to be, we’ll die like men any day you name (excusing my common way).”

Mr. Maybold bowed his head.

“All we thought was, that for us old ancient singers to be choked off quiet at no time in particular, as now, in the Sundays after Easter, would seem rather mean in the eyes of other parishes, sir. But if we fell glorious with a bit of a flourish at Christmas, we should have a respectable end, and not dwindle away at some nameless paltry second-Sunday-after or Sunday-next-before something, that’s got no name of his own.”

“Yes, yes, that’s reasonable; I own it’s reasonable.”

“You see, Mr. Mayble, we’ve got – do I keep you inconvenient long, sir?”

“No, no.”

“We’ve got our feelings – father there especially.”

The tranter, in his earnestness, had advanced his person to within six inches of the vicar’s.

“Certainly, certainly!” said Mr. Maybold, retreating a little for convenience of seeing. “You are all enthusiastic on the subject, and I am all the more gratified to find you so. A Laodicean lukewarmness is worse than wrongheadedness itself.”

“Exactly, sir. In fact now, Mr. Mayble,” Reuben continued, more impressively, and advancing a little closer still to the vicar, “father there is a perfect figure o’ wonder, in the way of being fond of music!”

The vicar drew back a little further, the tranter suddenly also standing back a foot or two, to throw open the view of his father, and pointing to him at the same time.

Old William moved uneasily in the large chair, and with a minute smile on the mere edge of his lips, for good-manners, said he was indeed very fond of tunes.