Clergy -- England -- Fiction; England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Families -- England -- Fiction
To Martin, who for the last two months had been accustomed to the grey
dimness and carved spaciousness of King’s Chapel, the first sight of
these staring crudenesses came with a shock of almost physical
repulsion. Why had it been done? What did it all mean? What emotions
were the ill-coloured, badly designed windows intended to arouse or what
was the affinity between pitch-pine and worship? Impressionable and
impatient as he always was, he nearly turned back after he had opened
the door and was confronted by this half-forgotten tawdry brilliance.
Then the motive which had made him forsake the cool riverside, the
desire to please his father, prevailed.
The organ was blown by a small boy with a highly polished face, who
stood directly by the player’s left-hand, and, since the bellows were
not powerful enough to supply the lungs of the organ, unless plied by an
energetic arm, was often blown too, and breathed heavily into the
organist’s ear. It was still a few minutes to eight when Martin came in,
and found the village school-master preparing to begin that series of
somewhat elementary harmonies to which is given the vague title of a
“voluntary.” But he slid quickly off the seat with a smile of welcome to
the other, and in a searching whisper told him what the hymns were going
to be, and what “Kyrie” would be sung between the commandments. This
later information was given with a self-depreciatory blush, for Mr.
Milton was not at all mute and inglorious, but composed chants and
hymn-tunes with so many accidentals that the choir quailed before them,
and garnished them with accidents.
Martin glanced at the organ-stops: there were “Bourdon” (which sounded
as if you were playing pedals when you were not, and was much in
request), “Open Diapason,” “Flute,” “Cor Anglais,” and a few others of
more doubtful import. He added “Tremolo” to certain other soft stops, in
curiosity as to what it meant, and began the first bar of the prelude to
“Lohengrin.” But as “Tremolo” seemed to convert other sounds into a
distant bleating of sheep, he hastily put it in. Five minutes later the
vestry-door in the transept opposite opened and the curate, followed by
his father, came out. Mr. Challoner looked up as he entered, saw
Martin’s head above the curtains of the organ, and a sudden warm tide of
thankfulness and love glowed in his heart. Surely the dear lad could not
go very far wrong, if he sought strength here.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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