“I’m glad I let ’em have them apples!”
And which, all unconsciously, caused the hot Primitive to reply—
“I’m glad you did!” It was only afterwards that she added: “The schoolmaster has arranged with Mr. Deane that we are to have them for our pulpit next week. So all’s well that ends well.”
Old Bateson glanced at his niece and felt a little annoyed—like all those who conquer seldom he objected to having a victory tarnished by compromise—but faintly across the fields, through the open church door, the last verse of the hymn came to them.
“I remember when they used to have a harvest supper in Thorpe’s big barn,” he said, turning into the house. “Oh, well—in another twenty years——”
“They used to drink too much at those harvest suppers,” said the niece. “And you needn’t talk—you’re a young man for your age, you know.”
Thus did old Bateson sum up all the regret and mystery of life, and thus did youth try to console him for it—but those remarks pass in a constant throb beneath our daily round; every minute some one speaks so, and some one answers.
Then silence fell over the dim countryside, and within the lighted church was a quiet murmur of prayer and praise until the congregation rustled up in their seats to bellow with a will, “Now thank we all our God,” in the hymn before the sermon. And the singing of that flooded the fields with sound again until the last echo reached the distant place where the Spirit of Ancient Revelry slept the long years through behind some bushes on a village green with scarcely ever a waking hour.
But this hymn awoke him, though it was badly sung, and so very far away. For there lingered in it something familiar that acted like a bugle-call—the dear sound of people bellowing through the night because the world was such a jolly place.
He was running in and out of the full pews, and laughing over Mr. Thorpe’s shoulder, before the first verse was finished—and both he and Mr. Thorpe had a full-throated, jovial sense of finding what they wanted in familiar company, which is not surprising when you remember how often the Spirit of Ancient Revelry had met Mr. Thorpe’s ancestors in the big barn and other places. He even stirred in the Werrits, who were so anxious and progressive and modern, a sense of something lost and found again, so that Mr. Will Werrit’s nose and ears went crimson with his exertions, and Mr. Tom Werrit felt a faint desire to wave something during the last line.