Part 13 (1/2)
I wonder how old he is, and what he does!
CHAPTER XIII
WHITSUNTIDE EXPERIENCES
New sensations have elbowed and jostled each other to secure my special attention this Whitsuntide, until I have been positively alarmed for my mental equilibrium. The good people here seem so sedate on ordinary occasions that one fails to realise that after all there is a good deal of the peac.o.c.k and the kitten in the make-up of many of them; but Whitsuntide reveals this.
The peac.o.c.k in them manifests itself as they strut up and down in new clothing of brilliant dye, affecting an unconsciousness and unconcern which deceives n.o.body. The shocks I received during that memorable Sunday, when the village turned out in its new finery, I still experience, like the after-tremors of an earthquake.
Pray do not imagine that Windyridge knows nothing of the rule of fas.h.i.+on. Every mother's daughter, though not every daughter's mother, owns her sway and is her devoted subject. If the imperious Dame bids her votaries hobble, the Windyridge belle limps awkwardly to and fro--on Sundays and feast days--in proud and painful obedience, heedless of the unconcealed sneers and contempt of her elders. If headgear after the form of the beehive or the castle of the termite ant is decreed, she counts it a joy, like any fas.h.i.+onable lady of fortune, to suffer the eclipse of her good looks under the vilest monstrosity the milliner's ingenuity can devise. Ah, me! How fine a line, after all, divides Windyridge from Mayfair!
The kitten in them gambols and makes fun whole-heartedly for several hours at a stretch on the afternoon of Whit Monday, and with such kindliness and good humour that one cannot help feeling that the world is very young and one's self not so very old either.
I thought the rain was going to spoil everything. Day by day for a week it had come down with a steady determination that seemed to mean the ruin of holiday prospects. The foliage certainly looked all the fresher for it, and the ash took heart to burst its black buds and help to swell the harmony of the woods. But these are aesthetic considerations which do not appeal to people who are looking forward to a good time--a time of fun and frolic for some, and harvesting of shekels for others.
When I woke on the Sunday, however, old Father Sol had shaken off his lethargy, bundled the surly clouds into the store-room, locked the door and put the key into his pocket, and strolled forth to enjoy the sight of his welcome. Meadow, pasture and moor, green hedgerow and brown road were silvered over with suns.h.i.+ne, and the flowers looked up and laughed the tears away from their faces, and told themselves that everything had been for the best; and the c.o.c.ks crowed l.u.s.tily from the walls where they had flown to greet the sun, and all the birds came out from eave and tree and lowly nest, and sang their doxology in happy and tuneful notes which told how brimful they were of joy.
Long before church-time it was so hot that the fields were steaming like drying clothes before the fire, and as I walked back from Fawks.h.i.+ll after the morning service I felt sure that there need be no misgiving about the dryness of the gra.s.s for the children's treat on the morrow. Everybody was concerned for the children! Young women of eighteen and young men of the same age had no real concern or interest in the weather except in so far as it involved disappointment to the children! Well, well! How easily we deceive ourselves, and how unwilling we are to acknowledge the child within the man!
In the afternoon I went to chapel with Mother Hubbard, and saw and heard that which made me want to laugh and cry at the same time, and I really do not know why I should have done either. My emotions seem to take holiday sometimes and enjoy themselves in their own peculiar way without restraint. Let me set down my experiences.
Do you know what a ”sitting-up” is? If you live in Yorks.h.i.+re or Lancas.h.i.+re no doubt you do, but if you are a southerner or a more northern northerner the probability is that you do not. When Mother Hubbard told me that the children were to ”sit up” at the chapel on Whit Sunday I stared at her without understanding. ”Do they usually stand up or lie down?” I inquired.
Then it occurred to me that this was, perhaps, a metaphorical way of speaking, and that there was, so to speak, a ”rod in pickle” for the bairns on this special occasion, but why I could not imagine. Yet I knew that when an irate Windyridge father undertook to make his lad ”sit up,” it usually betokened some little difficulty in sitting at all until the soreness wore off.
This, however, foreboded nothing of so unpleasant a nature. When I entered the light and airy little sanctuary I found thirty or forty children ranged in rows one above the other, in front of the little pulpit. Not many boys were there, and there was nothing specially attractive about those who were, beyond the attractiveness that lurks within the face of every cleanly-washed child. But the girls were a picture; they were all in white, but most of them had coloured sashes round their waists, and coloured ribbons in their hair, and one or two were distinguished by black adornments, betokening the recent visit of that guest who is so seldom regarded as a friend.
Some of the frocks were new, but most of them were old; and it is safe to a.s.sume that the younger children were wearing what had served the turn of a past generation of ”sitters-up.” In some cases they were so inadequate to the requirements of the long-limbed, growing maidens who wore them, that it cannot be denied that the dresses ”sat up” even more than their owners, so that the white cotton stockings were taxed to the utmost to maintain conventional decency.
To listen to the children's performances, rather than to the address of the preacher, the chapel was uncomfortably crowded by what the handbills called ”parents, relatives and friends.”
The door was wide open, and my eyes often strayed to it before the service began, for it framed a picture of yellow meadows and waving trees, of brown moorland and ultramarine sky, with drowsy cattle in the pastures a hundred feet below, which seemed strangely unfamiliar, and rather reminiscent of something I had once seen or dreamed of, than of what I looked upon every day of my life. The explanation is simple enough, of course. I saw just a _panel_ of the landscape, and with limited vision the eye observed more clearly and found the beauty of the scene intensified.
But when the prayer was ended--a rather long and wearisome one, to my thinking, on such a fine day, when all nature was offering praise so cheerily--the children's part began.
They sang children's hymns, the simple hymns I had sung myself as a child, which I hope all English-speaking Christian children sing: the hymns which belong to the English language and to no one church, but are broad enough to embrace all creeds, and tender enough to move all hearts, and which must find an echo in the Higher Temple, where thousands of children stand around the throne of G.o.d.
A wee la.s.sie of five stood up to sing alone. As the thin, childish voice rose and fell my heart began to beat fast, and I looked at the fair little head through a veil of tears. They made an aureole which transformed Roger Treffit's firstborn into a heavenly cherub, and I was carried into that exalted state when imperfect speech and neglected aspirates are forgotten:
”Jesus, tender Shep'erd 'ear me: Bless Thy little lamb to-night; Through the darkness be Thou near me; Keep me safe till mornin' light.”
Was there one present who did not at that moment feel very near to the sheep-fold of the Good Shepherd? I am a Churchwoman, and by training and a.s.sociation inclined to look distrustfully upon Dissent, but that child's lispingly tuneful prayer taught me that I was in the House of G.o.d; for surely I know at the heart of me that neither in the Catholic mountain nor the Anglican Jerusalem is G.o.d solely to be wors.h.i.+pped, but wherever men seek Him in spirit and in truth; and this afternoon a little child was leading us.
”All this day Thy 'and has led me.
And I thank Thee for Thy care; Thou 'ast clothed me, warmed an' fed me; Listen to my evenin' prayer.”
It was not evening, for the sun was still high in the heavens and the shadows short upon the earth; but He with whom the night and the morning are one day heard and understood, I do not doubt.