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<h2>CHAPTER XI</h2> <blockquote>"It ain't the pews and free seats as knows what music is, nor it ain't the organist. It is the choir. There's more in music than just ketching a tune and singing it fort here and pianner there. But Lor! Miss, what do the pews and the free seats know of the dangers? When the Vicar gives them a verse to sing by themselves it do make me swaller with embarrassment to hear 'em beller. They knows nothing, and they fears nothing."—Mrs. Nicholls. </blockquote> On this particular evening Annette was the first to take her seat in the chancel beyond the screen, where the choir practices always took place. Mrs. Nicholls presently joined her there with her battered part-book, and she and Annette went over the opening bars of the new anthem, which like the Riff bull was "orkard" in places. Mr. Black was lighting the candles on long iron sticks, while Miss Black adjusted herself to the harmonium, which did the organ's drudgery for it, and then settled herself, notebook in hand, to watch which of the choir made an attendance. Miss Black was constantly urging her brother to do away with the mixed choir and have a surpliced one. She became even more urgent on that head after Annette had joined it. Mr.[Pg 91] Black was nothing loth, but his bishop, who had but recently instituted him, had implored him not to make a clean sweep of every arrangement of his predecessor, Mr. Jones, that ardent reformer, whose principal reforms now needed reforming. So, with laudable obedience and zeal, Mr. Black possessed his soul in patience and sought to instil new life into the mixed choir. Annette was part of that new life, and her presence helped to reconcile him to its continued existence, and to increase Miss Black's desire for its extinction. Miss Black was older than her brother, and had already acquired that acerb precision which lies in wait with such frequent success for middle-aged spinsters and bachelors. She somehow gave the comfortless impression of being "ready-made" and "greatly reduced," as if there were quantities more exactly like her put away somewhere, the supply having hopelessly exceeded the demand. She looked as if she herself, as well as her fatigued elaborate clothes, had been picked up half-price but somewhat crumpled in the sales. She glanced with disapproval at Annette whispering amicably with Mrs. Nicholls, and Annette desisted instantly. The five little boys shuffled in in a bunch, as if roped together, and slipped into their seats under Mr. Black's eye. Mr. Chipps the grocer and principal bass followed, bringing with him an aroma of cheese. The two altoes,[Pg 92] Miss Pontifex and Miss Spriggs, from the Infants' School, were already in position. A few latecomers seemed to have dropped noiselessly into their seats from the roof, and to become visible by clearings of throats. Mr. Black, who was chagrined by the very frigid reception and the stale tea which his sister had accorded to Annette, said with his customary benignity, "Are we all here? I think we may as well begin." Miss Black remarked that the choirmaster, Mr. Spillcock, was "late again," just as that gentleman was seen advancing like a ramrod up the aisle. A certain mystery enveloped Mr. Spillcock. He was not a Riff man, nor did he hail from Noyes, or Heyke, or Swale, or even Riebenbridge. What had brought him to live at Riebenbridge no one rightly knew, not even Mrs. Nicholls. It was whispered that he had "bugled" before Royalty in outlandish parts, and when Foreign Missions were being practised he had been understood to aver that the lines, <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> <div>"Where Afric's sunny fountains</div> <div>Roll down their golden sand,"</div> </div></div> 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[Pg 93] Mrs. Spillcock, 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 title of Mrs. Spillcock. As a child I always expected the real Mrs. Spillcock to appear, but she never did. "Good evening all," said Mr. Spillcock 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. Spillcock 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. Cocks 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. Spillcock, 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[Pg 94] unmusical shell 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. Spillcock looked at them with cold contempt. "Altoes, me," he said more gently. He was gallant to the fair sex, 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 principal 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 [Pg 95]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. Cocks' 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 basses to take their lower do. But Mr. Chipps, though he generally succumbed 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 basses 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. Spillcock, going slowly down the chord, and waving a little stick at trebles, altoes, tenors, and basses 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. Spillcock to beat his stick on the form and say sternly— "Altoes, it's Hay. Not Hay flat." "Pommmm!" in piercing falsetto. [Pg 96] The altoes took up their note again, caught it as it were with a pincers from Mr. Spillcock's back molars. "Righto," said Mr. Spillcock. "Altoes, if you find yourselves going down, keep yourselves hup. Now hunto 'Im." And the serious business of the practice began. <hr /> [Pg 97] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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