“Of course not; no, it is that the heath-folk have come to sing to us a welcome. This is intolerable!” He began pacing about, the men outside singing cheerily—
“He told’ her that she’ was the joy’ of his life’, And if’ she’d con-sent’ he would make her his wife’; She could’ not refuse’ him; to church’ so they went’, Young Will was forgot’, and young Sue’ was content’; And then’ was she kiss’d’ and set down’ on his knee’, No man’ in the world’ was so lov’-ing as he’!”
Mrs. Yeobright burst in from the outer room. “Thomasin, Thomasin!” she said, looking indignantly at Wildeve; “here’s a pretty exposure! Let us escape at once. Come!”
It was, however, too late to get away by the passage. A rugged knocking had begun upon the door of the front room. Wildeve, who had gone to the window, came back.
“Stop!” he said imperiously, putting his hand upon Mrs. Yeobright’s arm. “We are regularly besieged. There are fifty of them out there if there’s one. You stay in this room with Thomasin; I’ll go out and face them. You must stay now, for my sake, till they are gone, so that it may seem as if all was right. Come, Tamsie dear, don’t go making a scene—we must marry after this; that you can see as well as I. Sit still, that’s all—and don’t speak much. I’ll manage them. Blundering fools!”
He pressed the agitated girl into a seat, returned to the outer room and opened the door. Immediately outside, in the passage, appeared Grandfer Cantle singing in concert with those still standing in front of the house. He came into the room and nodded abstractedly to Wildeve, his lips still parted, and his features excruciatingly strained in the emission of the chorus. This being ended, he said heartily, “Here’s welcome to the new-made couple, and God bless ’em!”
“Thank you,” said Wildeve, with dry resentment, his face as gloomy as a thunderstorm.
At the Grandfer’s heels now came the rest of the group, which included Fairway, Christian, Sam the turf-cutter, Humphrey, and a dozen others. All smiled upon Wildeve, and upon his tables and chairs likewise, from a general sense of friendliness towards the articles as well as towards their owner.
“We be not here afore Mrs. Yeobright after all,” said Fairway, recognizing the matron’s bonnet through the glass partition which divided the public apartment they had entered from the room where the women sat. “We struck down across, d’ye see, Mr. Wildeve, and she went round by the path.”
“And I see the young bride’s little head!” said Grandfer, peeping in the same direction, and discerning Thomasin, who was waiting beside her aunt in a miserable and awkward way. “Not quite settled in yet—well, well, there’s plenty of time.”
Wildeve made no reply; and probably feeling that the sooner he treated them the sooner they would go, he produced a stone jar, which threw a warm halo over matters at once.
“That’s a drop of the right sort, I can see,” said Grandfer Cantle, with the air of a man too well-mannered to show any hurry to taste it.
“Yes,” said Wildeve, “’tis some old mead. I hope you will like it.”
“O ay!” replied the guests, in the hearty tones natural when the words demanded by politeness coincide with those of deepest feeling. “There isn’t a prettier drink under the sun.”
“I’ll take my oath there isn’t,” added Grandfer Cantle. “All that can be said against mead is that ’tis rather heady, and apt to lie about a man a good while. But tomorrow’s Sunday, thank God.”
“I feel’d for all the world like some bold soldier after I had had some once,” said Christian.
“You shall feel so again,” said Wildeve, with condescension, “Cups or glasses, gentlemen?”
“Well, if you don’t mind, we’ll have the beaker, and pass ’en round; ’tis better than heling it out in dribbles.”
“Jown the slippery glasses,” said Grandfer Cantle. “What’s the good of a thing that you can’t put down in the ashes to warm, hey, neighbours; that’s what I ask?”
“Right, Grandfer,” said Sam; and the mead then circulated.
“Well,” said Timothy Fairway, feeling demands upon his praise in some form or other, “’tis a worthy thing to be married, Mr. Wildeve; and the woman you’ve got is a dimant, so says I. Yes,” he continued, to Grandfer Cantle, raising his voice so as to be heard through the partition, “her father (inclining his head towards the inner room) was as good a feller as ever lived. He always had his great indignation ready against anything underhand.”
“Is that very dangerous?” said Christian.
“And there were few in these parts that were upsides with him,” said Sam. “Whenever a club walked he’d play the clarinet in the band that marched before ’em as if he’d never touched anything but a clarinet all his life. And then, when they got to church door he’d throw down the clarinet, mount the gallery, snatch up the bass viol, and rozum away as if he’d never played anything but a bass viol. Folk would say—folk that knowed what a true stave was—‘Surely, surely that’s never the same man that I saw handling the clarinet so masterly by now!’”
“I can mind it,” said the furze-cutter. “’Twas a wonderful thing that one body could hold it all and never mix the fingering.”
“There was Kingsbere church likewise,” Fairway recommenced, as one opening a new vein of the same mine of interest.
Wildeve breathed the breath of one intolerably bored, and glanced through the partition at the prisoners.
“He used to walk over there of a Sunday afternoon to visit his old acquaintance Andrew Brown, the first clarinet there; a good man enough, but rather screechy in his music, if you can mind?”
“’A was.”
“And neighbour Yeobright would take Andrey’s place for some part of the service, to let Andrey have a bit of a nap, as any friend would naturally do.”
“As any friend would,” said Grandfer Cantle, the other listeners expressing the same accord by the shorter way of nodding their heads.
“No sooner was Andrey asleep and the first whiff of neighbour Yeobright’s wind had got inside Andrey’s clarinet than everyone in church feeled in a moment there was a great soul among ’em. All heads would turn, and they’d say, ‘Ah, I thought ’twas he!’ One Sunday I can well mind—a bass viol day that time, and Yeobright had brought his own. ’Twas the Hundred-and-thirty-third to ‘Lydia’; and when they’d come to ‘Ran down his beard and o’er his robes its costly moisture shed’, neighbour Yeobright, who had just warmed to his work, drove his bow into them strings that glorious grand that he e’en a’most sawed the bass viol into two pieces. Every winder in church rattled as if ’twere a thunderstorm. Old Pa’son Williams lifted his hands in his great holy surplice as natural as if he’d been in common clothes, and seemed to say hisself, ‘O for such a man in our parish!’ But not a soul in Kingsbere could hold a candle to Yeobright.”
“Was it quite safe when the winder shook?” Christian inquired.
He received no answer, all for the moment sitting rapt in admiration of the performance described. As with Farinelli’s singing before the princesses, Sheridan’s renowned Begum Speech, and other such examples, the fortunate condition of its being for ever lost to the world invested the deceased Mr. Yeobright’s tour de force on that memorable afternoon with a cumulative glory which comparative criticism, had that been possible, might considerably have shorn down.
“He was the last you’d have expected to drop off in the prime of life,” said Humphrey.
“Ah, well; he was looking for the earth some months afore he went. At that time women used to run for smocks and gown-pieces at Greenhill Fair, and my wife that is now,