Читать книгу The Oaken Heart онлайн

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The Colonel came to dinner with us and we all walked down to the hall together afterwards in the dark, carrying his somewhat surrealist paraphernalia. The audience was waiting in its usual formation, which is to say that the front row is always left practically empty and the room gets steadily more crowded towards the back. Even as late as twenty years ago that front row was reserved, even in church, for "the gentry," and now it always seems to be avoided by nearly everybody. This is not because there are no gentlefolk left but because very few of them want to associate themselves with any society which ever took it for granted that it should get the best view without paying more at the door. It is a long time since "When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?" was first sung in the lanes, but I don't think that as a countryside we have ever entirely forgotten its biting humour, and so, whenever there is a whiff of the old tune in the air, I rather think that front row gets quietly empty again. It must have happened several times in the long centuries since John Ball.