Robert Backfield was a member of Peasmarsh choir. He had a good, ringing bass voice, which had attracted the clerk\'s notice, and though Reuben disapproved of his son\'s having any interests outside Odiam, he realised that as a good Tory he ought to support the Church—especially as the hours of the practices did not clash with Robert\'s more important engagements.

Peasmarsh choir consisted of about eighteen boys and girls, with an accompaniment of cornets, flutes, and a bass viol—the last played by an immensely aged drover from Coldblow, who, having only three fingers on his left hand, had to compromise, not always tunefully, with the score. The singing was erratic. Eighteen fresh young voices could not fail to give a certain pleasure, but various members had idiosyncrasies which did not make for the common weal—such as young Ditch, who never knew till he had begun to sing whether his voice would be bass or alto, all intermediary pitches being somehow unattainable—or Rosie Hubble from Barline, who was always four bars behind the rest—or[Pg 141] even young Robert himself, who in crises of enthusiasm was wont to sing so loud that his voice drowned everyone else\'s, or in a wild game of follow-my-leader led the whole anthem to destruction.

Robert loved these choir practices and church singings. Though he never complained of his hard work, he was unconsciously glad of a change from the materialism of Odiam. The psalms with their outbreathings of a clearer life did much to purge even his uncultured soul of its muddlings, the hymns with their sentimental farawayness opened views into which he would gaze enchanted as into a promised land. He would come in tired and throbbing from the fields, scrape as much mud as possible off his boots, put on his Sunday coat, and tramp through the dusk to the clerk\'s house ... the little golden window gleaming to him across Peasmarsh street and pond was the foretaste of the evening\'s sweetness.

The practices were held in the clerk\'s kitchen, into which the choristers would crush and huddle. On full attendance nights all elbows touched, and occasionally old Spodgram\'s bow would be jolted out of his hand, or someone would complain that Leacher was blowing his trumpet down his neck. Afterwards the choristers would wander home in clusters through the fields; the clusters generally split into small groups, and then the groups into ............