CHAPTER VI: CHRISTMAS MORNING
The choir at last reached their beds, and slept like the rest of
the parish. Dick’s slumbers, through the three or four hours
remaining for rest, were disturbed and slight; an exhaustive variation
upon the incidents that had passed that night in connection with the
school-window going on in his brain every moment of the time.
In the morning, do what he would—go upstairs, downstairs, out
of doors, speak of the wind and weather, or what not—he could
not refrain from an unceasing renewal, in imagination, of that interesting
enactment. Tilted on the edge of one foot he stood beside the
fireplace, watching his mother grilling rashers; but there was nothing
in grilling, he thought, unless the Vision grilled. The limp rasher
hung down between the bars of the gridiron like a cat in a child’s
arms; but there was nothing in similes, unless She uttered them. He looked at the daylight shadows of a yellow hue, dancing with the firelight shadows in blue on the whitewashed chimney corner, but there was nothing in shadows. “Perhaps the new young wom—sch—Miss Fancy Day will sing in church with us this morning,” he said.
The tranter looked a long time before he replied, “I fancy
she will; and yet I fancy she won’t.”
Dick implied that such a remark was rather to be tolerated than admired; though deliberateness in speech was known to have, as a rule, more to do with the machinery of the tranter’s throat than with the matter enunciated.
They made preparations for going to church as usual; Dick with extreme
alacrity, though he would not definitely consider why he was so religious. His wonderful nicety in brushing and cleaning his best light boots had features which elevated it to the rank of an art. Every particle and speck of last week’s mud was scraped and brushed from toe and heel; new blacking from the packet was carefully mixed and made use of, regardless of expense. A coat was laid on and polished; then another coat for increased blackness; and lastly a third, to give the perfect and mirror-like jet which the hoped-for rencounter demanded.
It being Christmas-day, the tranter prepared himself with Sunday
particularity. Loud sousing and snorting noises were heard to
proceed from a tub in the back quarters of the dwelling, proclaiming
that he was there performing his great Sunday wash, lasting half-an-hour, to which his washings on working-day mornings were mere flashes in the pan. Vanishing into the outhouse with a large brown towel, and the above-named bubblings and snortings being carried on for about twenty minutes, the tranter would appear round the edge of the door, smelling like a summer fog, and looking as if he had just narrowly escaped a watery grave with the loss of much of his clothes, having since been weeping bitterly till his eyes were red; a crystal drop of water hanging ornamentally at the bottom of each ear, one at the tip of his nose, and others in the form of spangles about his hair.
After a great deal of crunching upon the sanded stone floor by the
feet of father, son, and grandson as they moved to and fro in these
preparations, the bass-viol and fiddles were taken from their nook, and the strings examined and screwed a little above concert-pitch, that they might keep their tone when the service began, to obviate the awkward contingency of having to retune them at the back of the gallery during a cough, sneeze, or amen—an inconvenience which had been known to arise in damp wintry weather.
The three left the door and paced down Mellstock-lane and across
the ewe-lease, bearing under their arms the instruments in faded green-baize
bags, and old brown music-books in their hands; Dick continually finding
himself in advance of the other two, and the tranter moving on with
toes turned outwards to an enormous angle.
At the foot of an incline the church became visible through the north
gate, or ‘church hatch,’ as it was called here. Seven
agile figures in a clump were observable beyond, which proved to be
the choristers waiting; sitting on an altar-tomb to pass the time, and
letting their heels dangle against it. The musicians being now
in sight, the youthful party scampered off and rattled up the old wooden
stairs of the gallery like a regiment of cavalry; the other boys of
the parish waiting outside and observing birds, cats, and other creatures
till the vicar entered, when they suddenly subsided into sober church-goers, and passed down the aisle with echoing heels.