Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (892 page)

December 1891.

Old Andrey’s Experience as a Musician

‘I was one of the quire-boys at that time, and we and the players were to appear at the manor-house as usual that Christmas week, to play and sing in the hall to the squire’s people and visitors (among ‘em being the archdeacon, Lord and Lady Baxby, and I don’t know who); afterwards going, as we always did, to have a good supper in the servants’ hall. Andrew knew this was the custom, and meeting us when we were starting to go, he said to us: “Lord, how I should like to join in that meal of beef, and turkey, and plum-pudding, and ale, that you happy ones be going to just now! One more or less will make no difference to the squire. I am too old to pass as a singing boy, and too bearded to pass as a singing girl; can ye lend me a fiddle, neighbours, that I may come with ye as a bandsman?”

‘Well, we didn’t like to be hard upon him, and lent him an old one, though Andrew knew no more of music than the Giant o’ Cernel; and armed with the instrument he walked up to the squire’s house with the others of us at the time appointed, and went in boldly, his fiddle under his arm. He made himself as natural as he could in opening the music-books and moving the candles to the best points for throwing light upon the notes; and all went well till we had played and sung. “While shepherds watch,” and “Star, arise,” and “Hark the glad sound.” Then the squire’s mother, a tall gruff old lady, who was much interested in church-music, said quite unexpectedly to Andrew: “My man, I see you don’t play your instrument with the rest. How is that?”

‘Every one of the quire was ready to sink into the earth with concern at the fix Andrew was in. We could see that he had fallen into a cold sweat, and how he would get out of it we did not know.

‘ “I’ve had a misfortune, mem,” he says, bowing as meek as a child. “Coming along the road I fell down and broke my bow.”

‘ “O, I am sorry to hear that,” says she. “Can’t it be mended?”

‘ “O no, mem,” says Andrew. “ ‘Twas broke all to splinters.”

‘ “I’ll see what I can do for you,” says she.

‘And then it seemed all over, and we played “Rejoice, ye drowsy mortals all,” in D and two sharps. But no sooner had we got through it than she says to Andrew,

‘ “I’ve sent up into the attic, where we have some old musical instruments, and found a bow for you.” And she hands the bow to poor wretched Andrew, who didn’t even know which end to take hold of. “Now we shall have the full accompaniment,” says she.

‘Andrew’s face looked as if it were made of rotten apple as he stood in the circle of players in front of his book; for if there was one person in the parish that everybody was afraid of, ‘twas this hook-nosed old lady. However, by keeping a little behind the next man he managed to make pretence of beginning, sawing away with his bow without letting it touch the strings, so that it looked as if he were driving into the tune with heart and soul. ‘Tis a question if he wouldn’t have got through all right if one of the squire’s visitors (no other than the archdeacon) hadn’t noticed that he held the fiddle upside down, the nut under his chin, and the tail-piece in his hand; and they began to crowd round him, thinking ‘twas some new way of performing.

‘This revealed everything; the squire’s mother had Andrew turned out of the house as a vile impostor, and there was great interruption to the harmony of the proceedings, the squire declaring he should have notice to leave his cottage that day fortnight. However, when we got to the servants’ hall there sat Andrew, who had been let in at the back door by the orders of the squire’s wife, after being turned out at the front by the orders of the squire, and nothing more was heard about his leaving his cottage: But Andrew never performed in public as a musician after that night; and now he’s dead and gone, poor man, as we all shall be!’

‘I had quite forgotten the old choir, with their fiddles and bass-viols, ‘said the home-comer, musingly. Are they still going on the same as of old?’

‘Bless the man!’ said Christopher Twink, the master-thatcher; ‘why they’ve been done away with these twenty year. A young teetotaler plays the organ in church now, and plays it very well; though ‘tis not quite such good music as in old times, because the organ is one of them that go with a winch, and the young teetotaler says he can’t always throw the proper feeling into the tune without well-nigh working his arms off.’

‘Why did they make the change, then?’

‘Well, partly because of fashion, partly because the old musicians got into a sort of scrape. A terrible scrape ‘twas too – wasn’t it, John? I shall never forget it – never! They lost their character as officers of the church as complete as if they’d never had any character at all.’

‘That was very bad for them.’

‘Yes.’ The master-thatcher attentively regarded past times as if they lay about a mile off, and went on.

Our Exploits at West Poley

A Story For Boys

CHAPTER I

On a certain fine evening of early autumn — I will not say how many years ago — I alighted from a green gig, before the door of a farm house at West Poley, a village in Somersetshire. I had reached the age of thirteen, and though rather small for my age, I was robust and active.  My father was a schoolmaster, living about twenty miles off. I had arrived on a visit to my Aunt Draycot, a farmer’s widow, who, with her son Stephen, or Steve, as he was invariably called by his friends, still managed the farm, which had been left on her hands by her deceased husband.

Steve promptly came out to welcome me. He was two or three years my senior, tall, lithe, ruddy, and somewhat masterful withal. There was that force about him which was less suggestive of intellectual power than (as Carlyle said of Cromwell) “Doughtiness — the courage and faculty to do.”

When the first greetings were over, he informed me that his mother was not indoors just then, but that she would soon be home. “And, do you know, Leonard,” he continued, rather mournfully, “she wants me to be a farmer all my life, like my father.”

“And why not be a farmer all your life, like your father?” said a voice behind us.

We turned our heads, and a thoughtful man in a threadbare, yet well-fitting suit of clothes, stood near, as he paused for a moment on his way down to the village.

“The straight course is generally the best for boys,” the speaker continued, with a smile. “Be sure that professions you know little of have as many drudgeries attaching to them as those you know well — it is only their remoteness that lends them their charm.”  Saying this he nodded and went on.

“Who is he?” I asked.

“Oh — he’s nobody,” said Steve. “He’s a man who has been all over the world, and tried all sorts of lives, but he has never got rich, and now he has retired to this place for quietness.  He calls himself the Man who has Failed.”

After this explanation I thought no more of the Man who had Failed than Steve himself did; neither of us was at that time old enough to know that the losers in the world’s battle are often the very men who, too late for themselves, have the clearest perception of what constitutes success; while the successful men are frequently blinded to the same by the tumult of their own progress.

To change the subject, I said something about the village and Steve’s farm-house — that I was glad to see the latter was close under the hills, which I hoped we might climb before I returned home.  I had expected to find these hills much higher, and I told Steve so without disguise.

“They may not be very high, but there’s a good deal inside ‘em,” said my cousin, as we entered the house, as if he thought me hypercritical, “a good deal more than you think.”

“Inside ‘em?” said I, “stone and earth, I suppose.”

“More than that,” said he.  “You have heard of the Mendip Caves, haven’t you?”

“But they are nearer Cheddar,” I said.

“There are one or two in this place, likewise,” Steve answered me.  “I can show them to you to-morrow.  People say there are many more, only there is no way of getting into them.”

Being disappointed in the height of the hills, I was rather incredulous about the number of the caves; but on my saying so, Steve rejoined, “Whatever you may think, I went the other day into one of ‘em — Nick’s Pocket — that’s the cavern nearest here, and found that what was called the end was not really the end at all.  Ever since then I’ve wanted to be an explorer, and not a farmer; and in spite of that old man, I think I am right.”

At this moment my aunt came in, and soon after we were summoned to supper; and during the remainder of the evening nothing more was said about the Mendip Caves.  It would have been just as well for us two boys if nothing more had been said about them at all; but it was fated to be otherwise, as I have reason to remember.

Steve did not forget my remarks, which, to him, no doubt, seemed to show a want of appreciation for the features of his native district.  The next morning he returned to the subject, saying, as he came indoors to me suddenly, “I mean to show ye a little of what the Mendips contain, Leonard, if you’ll come with me. But we must go quietly, for my mother does not like me to prowl about such places, because I get muddy. Come here, and seethe preparations I have made.”

He took me into the stable, and showed me a goodly supply of loose candle ends; also a bit of board perforated with holes, into which the candles would fit, and shaped to a handle at one extremity. He had provided, too, some slices of bread and cheese, and several apples. I was at once convinced that caverns which demanded such preparations must be something larger than the mere gravel-pits I had imagined; but I said nothing beyond assenting to the excursion.

It being the time after harvest, while there was not much to be attended to on the farm, Steve’s mother could easily spare him, “to show me the neighbourhood,” as he expressed it, and off we went, with our provisions and candles.

A quarter of a mile, or possibly a little more — for my recollections on matters of distance are not precise — brought us to the mouth of the cave called Nick’s Pocket, the way thither being past the village houses, and the mill, and across the mill-stream, which came from a copious spring in the hillside some distance further up. I seem to hear the pattering of that mill-wheel when we walked by it, as well as if it were going now; and yet how many years have passed since the sound beat last upon my ears.

The mouth of the cave was screened by bushes, the face of the hill behind being, to the best of my remembrance, almost vertical. The spot was obviously well known to the inhabitants, and was the haunt of many boys, as I could see by footprints; though the cave, at this time, with others thereabout, had been but little examined by tourists and men of science.

We entered unobserved, and no sooner were we inside, than Steve lit a couple of candles and stuck them into the board. With these he showed the way. We walked on over a somewhat uneven floor, the novelty of the proceeding impressing me, at first, very agreeably; the light of the candles was sufficient, at first, to reveal only the nearer stalactites, remote nooks of the cavern being left in well-nigh their original mystic shadows. Steve would occasionally turn, and accuse me, in arch tones, of being afraid, which accusation I (as a boy would naturally do) steadfastly denied; though even now I can recollect that I experienced more than once some sort of misgiving.

“As for me — I have been there hundreds of times,” Steve said proudly. “We West Poley boys come here continually to play “ spy” and think nothing of running in with no light of any sort.  Come along, it is home to me.  I said I would show you the inside of the Mendips, and so I will.”

Thus we went onward.  We were now in the bowels of the Mendip hills — a range of limestone rocks stretching from the shores of the Bristol Channel into the middle of Somersetshire.  Skeletons of great extinct beasts, and the remains of prehistoric men have been found thereabouts since that time; but at the date of which I write science was not so ardent as she is now, in the pursuit of the unknown; and we boys could only conjecture on subjects in which the boys of the present generation are well-informed.

The dim sparkle of stalactite, which had continually appeared above us, now ranged lower and lower over our heads, till at last the walls of the cave seemed to bar further progress.

“There, this spot is what everybody calls the end of Nick’s Pocket,” observed Steve, halting upon a mount of stalagmite, and throwing the beams of the candles around.  “But let me tell you,” he added, “that here is a little arch, which I and some more boys found the other day.  We did not go under it, but if you are agreed we will go in now and see how far we can get, for the fun of the thing.  I brought these pieces of candle on purpose.”  Steve looked what he felt — that there was a certain grandeur in a person like himself, to whom such mysteries as caves were mere playthings, because he had been born close alongside them.  To do him justice, he was not altogether wrong, for he was a truly courageous fellow, and could look dangers in the face without flinching.

“I think we may as well leave fun out of the question,” I said, laughing; “but we will go in.”

Accordingly he went forward, stooped, and entered the low archway, which, at first sight, appeared to be no more than a slight recess.  I kept close at his heels.  The arch gave access to a narrow tunnel or gallery, sloping downwards, and presently terminating in another cave, the floor of which spread out into a beautiful level of sand and shingle, interspersed with pieces of rock.  Across the middle of this subterranean shore, as it might have been called, flowed a pellucid stream. Had my thoughts been in my books, I might have supposed we had descended to the nether regions, and had reached the Stygian shore; but it was out of sight, out of mind, with my classical studies then.

Beyond the stream, at some elevation, we could see a delightful recess in the crystallized stone work, like the apse of a Gothic church.