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This was one of Harry's classics, only surpassed by the fine outburst of his heaving: 'Hangels hever bright an' fair-' It was a pity, but it was inalterable. He had a good voice, and he sang with a certain lacerating fire, but his pronunciation made it all funny. And nothing could alter him. So he was never heard save at cheap concerts and in the little, poorer chapels. The others scoffed.
He hadn't a stitch o' clothes on, and his skin shone like a babby's. Look young? Why the only thing I knew about 'im was his voice! And he came a-bounding over the rocks as if he was made of injy-rubber. And his face was all a-shinin' it made me think o' pictures o' hangels to see him. "'Jim! Jim! he sings out; half a-laughing and 'alf sobbing, 'it's true! it's true! look at me I'm young agin!
Granny used to say that for me at night; only she had said "four hangels for my 'ead," at which I used to giggle into my pillows. I hadn't felt so close to Granny since I was little Sophy, in the rooms over our shop in Boston. She was somewhere around me; if I went to sleep now, she'd be there when I woke up in the morning. But the sound that was a calling voice wouldn't let me go to sleep.
To be sure, during the sermon I was suddenly brought up "all standing" by the amazing statement that the "Harch Hangels go Hup, Hup, Hup." One felt in one's bones that this was a misapprehension. The very earnest clergyman may have noticed my obvious disagreement, for at the close he announced, "We will now sing the 398th hymn" "Day of Wrath, oh!
"Is them 'ere hangels," enquired the butcher boy of his crony, Tom Drops, the pot boy at the Crown and Sceptre, just round the corner, as the two young ladies, who had acted in the character of bridesmaids in the morning, stepped from their carriage on to the Indian matting which had been stretched across the pavement to the hall steps, all tarletan and rose buds, and ascended the grand staircase leading to the ball room.
One old shell-back, coming up river on a Gravesend shrimper, listened in blank astonishment for a minute, and then confided huskily to his mate that he thought their time had come. "'Eavenly, strains! It's wot they calls 'the music o' the spears," he said mysteriously, "Hangels' music wot comes just before a bloke's time's up. We better prepare for the wust."
Occasionally, to vary the monotony, some joke would be passed around, and once a man who was above called out to those below, imitating the English pronunciation: "I say, Jim, come 'hup 'ere! 'ere's some of Macready's hangels 'haint they sweet 'uns?"
It seems that the day before the news of your uncle's death reached this place, Thomas was aroused from his slumbers by hearing what he was pleased to call 'hangels a-'arping and singing. As soon as he convinced himself that he still lingered on the earth, drawn by the sweetness of the sounds, 'just in his jacket and breeches, he followed them, until he was sure that they proceeded from your workshop, the chapel.
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