“It’s no good flying in the face of everything like that, Dan, it’s folly.”
“If I had my way I’d be an independent man and live by myself a hundred miles from anywheres or anybody. But that’s madness, that’s madness, the world don’t expect you to go on like that, so I do as other folks do, not because I want to, but because I a’nt the pluck to be different. You taught me a good deal, mother, but you never taught me courage and I wasn’t born with any, so I drinks with a lot of fools who drink with me for much the same reason, I expect. It’s the same with other things besides drink.”
His indignation lasted throughout the afternoon as he sat in the shed in his yard turning out his usual quantity of chair. He sang not one note, he but muttered and mumbled over all his anger. Towards evening he recovered his amiability and began to sing with a gusto that astonished even his mother. He went out into the dusk humming like a bee, taking his dog with him. In the morning the Rev. Scroope found a dead hare tied by the neck to his own door-knocker, and at night (it being Saturday) Dan Pavey was merrier than ever in “The White Hart.” If he was not drunk he was what Thasper calls “tightish,” and had never before sung so many of those ribald songs (mostly of his own composition) for which he was noted.
A few evenings later Dan attended a meeting of the Church Men’s Guild. A group of very mute countrymen sat in the village hall and were goaded into speech by the rector.
“Thasper,” declared Mr. Scroope, “has a great name for its singing. All over the six hamlets there is surprising musical genius. There’s the Buzzlebury band—it is a capital band.”
“It is that,” interrupted a maroon-faced butcher from Buzzlebury, “it can play as well at nine o’clock in the morning as it can at nine o’clock at night, and that’s a good band as can do it.”
“Now I want our choir to compete at the county musical festival next year. Thasper is going to show those highly trained choristers what a native choir is capable of. Yes, and I’m sure our friend Pavey can win the tenor solo competition. Let us all put our backs into it and work agreeably and consistently. Those are the two main springs of good human conduct—consistency and agreeability. The consistent man will always attain his legitimate ends, always. I remember a man in my last parish, Tom Turkem, known and loved throughout the county; he was not only the best cricketer in our village, he was the best for miles around. He revelled in cricket, and cricket only; he played cricket and lived for cricket. The years went on and he got old, but he never dreamed of giving up cricket. His bowling average got larger every year and his batting average got smaller, but he still went on, consistent as ever. His order of going in dropped down to No. 6 and he seldom bowled; then he got down to No. 8 and never bowled. For a season or two the once famous Tom Turkem was really the last man in! After that he became umpire, then scorer, and then he died. He had got a little money, very little, just enough to live comfortably on. No, he never married. He was a very happy, hearty, hale old man. So you see? Now there is a cricket club at Buzzlebury, and one at Trinkel. Why not a cricket club at Thasper? Shall we do that?... Good!”
The parson went on outlining his projects, and although it was plain to Dan that the Rev. Scroope had very little, if any, compassion for the weaknesses natural to mortal flesh, and attached an extravagant value to the virtues of decency, sobriety, consistency, and, above all, loyalty to all sorts of incomprehensible notions, yet his intentions were undeniably agreeable and the Guild was consistently grateful.
“One thing, Pavey,” said Scroope when the meeting had dispersed, “one thing I will not tolerate in this parish, and that is gambling.”
“Gambling? I have never gambled in my life, sir. I couldn’t tell you hardly the difference between spades and clubs.”