“Well, it’s no good to go till ’bout two o’clock, after his lunch. He won’t see me, even on parish matters, in the morning.”
The wheelwright nodded, and, without another word, Biggins went away, passing the cottage, with its drawn-down blinds, on tiptoe, and shaking his fist at a boy who was whistling as he went along the road.
Part 1, Chapter IX.
Orthodox to a Degree.
The Rev. Lawrence Paulby looked rather aghast at the changes Mr Mallow was effecting in the church, and sighed as he thought of the heart-burnings that were ever on the increase; but he said nothing, only went on with his daily routine of work, and did his best, to use his own words, “for everybody’s sake.”
Joe Biggins, as we have learned, had succeeded old Sammy Warmoth as far as a successor was wanted, and he now, in a most sheepish manner, looking appealingly at the Curate, wandered about the church as a verger, in a long black gown, and carrying a white wand, to his very great disgust and the amusement of the schoolboys, several of whom had tested its quality. The little old organ had been brought down from the loft where the singers used to sit, and placed in the chancel, where there was no room for it, so a kind of arched cupboard had been built expressly to contain it; and where the Rector’s and churchwardens’ families used to sit, close up by the communion rails, was now occupied by the surpliced choir, who weekly attempted a very bad imitation of a cathedral service. They chanted all the psalms to the Gregorian tones, item, the responses and the amens; and beginning always very flat, they gradually grew worse and worse, till, towards the close of the service, they would be singing a long way on towards a semitone beneath the organ, which always gave a toot to pitch the key for the Rector or Curate to start in intoning his part.
The very first Sunday that this was tried, Mr Lawrence Paulby broke out into a vexatious perspiration that made his head shine; for in spite of all his practice at the schoolroom, no matter how he tried to draw their attention to the coming task, dwelling as he did upon such words at the end of a prayer as “Be with us all—ever—m—o—r—e,” the chanted “Amen,” delivered out of tune by the inattentive young surpliced choir, aided and abetted by the schoolmaster Bone’s bass, was something so shocking that, if it had been anything but a sacred service, it might have been called a burlesque.
It did not matter whether he was himself intoning, or listening to Mr Mallow’s rich deep voice, the Curate always sat in agony lest any one should laugh, a horror that he could not contemplate without a shudder, and he wished in his heart that the Rector would take it into his head to go again.