I have said that the flocks of birds that can sometimes be heard in the quiet of October nights, passing seaward over the village, are generally silent, save for the dull, pulsating roar of their wings. As I lifted the latch of the garden-gate to-night, and stood a moment listening in the darkness, the old sound grew out of the silence of the hills, and there went swiftly by what seemed only a small flock; but now and again, as they passed, I could hear a note bandied to and fro in the company, a chuckling, voluble note, which I recognised instantly. They were fieldfares, the first-comers of their species. From now onward, I knew, their queer outlandish cry would mingle with the common sounds of the fields; and not only theirs, but the notes of all other foreign birds that winter here; for the field-fare is generally the last to come.
This cry in the darkness above me, however, was strange in a double sense; because, while the silent hosts were emigrants, only at the commencement of their long, perilous journey, this chattering company had safely arrived at its bourne, all the hazards of the voyage happilypast. And it seemed only in the way of Nature, for bird or man, to set forth mute of voice upon a difficult and dangerous enterprise; while to win through safe and sound must provoke each alike to self-congratulation. My fieldfares were halloaing because they were out of the wood.
‘No mirth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,No comfortable feel in any member;No warmth, no shine, no butterflies, no bees—November!’
‘No mirth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,No comfortable feel in any member;No warmth, no shine, no butterflies, no bees—November!’
Itwas the old vicar of Windlecombe who ironically quoted the lines, as we went along our favourite path together—the path that runs between Arun river and the woods.
The first frosts had come and gone, and left us in the midst of the usual revolutions and surprises. In a single day, the ash-trees had cast their whole weight of foliage to earth, green as in summer prime. Though as yet not a single leaf had fallen from the other forest trees, all had changed miraculously. The beech-woods looked like vast smouldering fires. Every elm stood up clothed to its finger-tips in shreds of gold-leaf. Here and there in the wood a dash of vivid scarlet showed where a sycamore had been found and struck by the frost. Larch, willow, maple, birch, each added to the glowingprospect its individual shade of tawny brown, or drab, or yellow. We walked in a land where, for once, the sunshine seemed a superfluous thing. To turn the eye away for a little while from all that intolerable radiance, and rest it on the oak-woods where alone a vestige of summer greenery endured, or on the cool grey stems of the stripped ash-trees, was a pleasure I found myself furtively snatching as we went along, although I left the sentiment discreetly unexpressed. The old vicar stopped, removed his great white panama, and mopped his forehead luxuriously.
‘No warmth, no shine!’ he repeated. ‘Now where in the world could the poor soul have lived who wrote that? And no bees! Why, I can hear them now—thousands of them!’
It was true enough, and with the bees were the November butterflies too, if he could only have seen them. In a sunny corner by the path-side stood an old pollard ash, its trunk rearing up out of the thicket high over our heads, like a huge doubled fist thrust into a green gauntlet of ivy. It was only one tree among innumerable others in the wood, and the same stirring scene was enacting round each of them. Though with everything else the season was autumn, for the ivy it was the heyday of spring. The great tree above us was smothered in golden blossom, the nectar glistening in the sunshine, a rich honeyscent burdening the still air. There were not only hive-bees and butterflies rioting at this, the last outdoor feast of the year, but bumble-bees, wasps, drone-flies, every other creature that could fly and had escaped the chills of the November nights. The air was misty with the glint of their wings, and full of a deep sweet song. As we passed along by the wood, we were always either drawing into the zone of this ivy music or leaving it behind us, and never once did it forsake our path all the morning through.
We came at last to a spot where the woods fell back from the waterside, and a stretch of wild, hillocky grassland, overgrown with brier and bramble, bordered the stream. Between the willows that stood upon the bank dipping their yellow autumn tresses in the flood, I could see the placid breadth of the river, with its topsy-turvy vision of the glowing hills beyond—hills that, by reason of the interlacing boughs above, were directly invisible. A lark broke up almost from under our feet, and went slanting aloft into the blue sky, singing as though it were April. The Reverend put a hand upon my arm.
‘Well: what do you see?’ he asked. ‘Everything must be changed since we were here last, and—’
‘I see,’ said I, rather disturbed, ‘a painter’s easel straddled in front of your favourite creek—an easel with a three-legged stool before it, but no painter. I see also, a little farther on, a big white umbrella, with the top of a sombrero just showing above it, and a great cloud of tobacco smoke drifting out of it, but here again no other sign of painter or man. Shall we go back?’
But he was for pushing on. As we approached the umbrella, a throaty tenor voice was uplifted to a weird foreign strain:—
‘En passant par Square Montholon,La digue-digue donc! la digue-digue donc!Je rencontre une jeune tendron!La digue-digue—
‘En passant par Square Montholon,La digue-digue donc! la digue-digue donc!Je rencontre une jeune tendron!La digue-digue—
‘Superb!Su-perb! If only I could excite myself to— Ah! if only that tumultuous thrill, which I know always presages—
‘la digue-digue donc!J’offre tout de suite ma main—yeLa brigue-donc-dain-ye—’
‘la digue-digue donc!J’offre tout de suite ma main—yeLa brigue-donc-dain-ye—’
Or at least so the gibberish sounded. But now it suddenly left off. A palette went rattling to the ground. The short squat figure of the owner of the caravan burst into view.
‘Grewes! I cannot do it, I really cannot! Iam not sufficiently inspired to-day! I am not great enough! I— Oh! I beg your pardon! I thought it was my friend’s step. Why! the water-bearer, to be sure! How do you do?’
It was my first glimpse of Spelthorne by light of day, and I owned to myself frankly that the night had been kind to him. A fringe of yellow-grey hair escaped in all directions beyond the brim of his hat. He had a florid, puffy, indeterminate face, eyes at once selfish and sentimental, and a week-old beard still further ostracised a chin already too retiring. Like his companion, he wore a gold watch-chain of heavy calibre, with a bunch of seals and trinkets upon it; but his clothes, that in the darkness had seemed much tattered and torn, now appeared entirely disreputable. They were, moreover, covered with finger-marks of paint, to which he was now adding, as he ceremoniously welcomed us.
‘Art—what is it?’ he cried, removing his hat, and running his fingers through his hair, when presently, at his earnest invitation, the Reverend had sat himself down before the easel, and was making a grave show of inspecting the canvas on it. ‘And the artist—where is he?’ He made a dramatic pause.
‘Where indeed?’ quoth the Reverend, grimly staring before him.
‘You see this picture?’—wagging a chrome-yellow thumb over the canvas—‘nine-tenths of it are the work of one exalted day: the rest the unilluminated toil of a week! Strange that we should be made so! At one moment, like Prometheus, stealing the very fire from heaven, and at the next— Ah! but only an artist can really comprehend!’
He filled his pipe, with a resigned, quiet sadness.
‘Now Grewes—that is my friend who is travelling with me—’ he went on; ‘Grewes, poor fellow, he never realises the difficulties in his path because—because— Let me put it in the kindest way. Because—well, the truth is, poor Grewes has mistaken his calling. No better fellow in the world, you know! A hard plodder: always trying, always doing his best; but—but— You see, that brings us back to what I said just now: art and the artist—where will you find them? and what are they?’
A slight cough sounded in our rear. Looking round, I saw that the long lean man had returned to his easel unmarked by any of us. The Reverend got abruptly to his feet.
‘Well,’ said he, ‘you have a great responsibility. Supreme gifts in a man mean that much will be required of him. So bend your back to it. Good day!’
As we passed by the other easel, its owner looked up pleasantly, but his brush kept busily to work.
‘Don’t go yet,’ he entreated, ‘I am so glad to— But you won’t mind, will you, if I go on with— You see, I have not had very long at it this morning. Spelthorne, he was getting so anxious about the stew, that I—I had to run back to the caravan and— Or else he would have— It wouldn’t have done, of course, to let him go himself. When once he has got into the mood, the slightest little thing—’
He rambled on thus, scarcely ever finishing a sentence, and all the while dabbing away industriously at his sketch. He, too, I had never yet beheld in daylight; but, unlike his friend, sunshine rather improved his appearance than otherwise. It could not fill up the gaps in his coat, nor had it a lustrating effect upon his linen; yet it revealed in his long, cadaverous face, and in his mild, sad eyes, a delicacy, a sensibility, that I had not remarked in them before. As he talked, the old vicar studied his voice attentively.
‘Spelthorne,’ he went on, in his curious, disjointed, breathless way, ‘Spelthorne, his work is so immeasurably— He has such a demand for it that— And I am always so glad, of course, to do any little thing to save him trouble.I—I really think no man in the world ever had a better friend.’
The Reverend was standing close behind him now. He laid a hand gently on Grewes’s dilapidated shoulder.
‘Don’t hurry,’ he said, ‘at least don’t hurry with your mind. Above all, don’t worry: it is all coming beautifully. When did you see your doctor last?’
The question, unexpected as it was by myself, seemed to surprise Grewes infinitely more. The blood got up into two bright points in his cheeks. His brushes rattled against his palette. He looked round at the old vicar tremulously.
‘Doctor? Why, do you— What makes you think I— Oh! I am very well indeed; never better.’
He stopped, looking up into the sightless, kindly blue eyes that appeared to be as steadily gazing down into his. There was a moment’s silence. And then, if I ever saw real untrammelled joy spring into a human face, I saw it in his.
‘Do you really think so?’ he cried. ‘You think I— Well, sometimes lately I have thought myself that—’
Spelthorne’s voice grumbled out from behind the umbrella.
‘Now, my dear Grewes, have I not frequentlytold you that, though I am willing to lend you anything I have, I always expect—’
Grewes sprang to his feet.
‘It is his cadmium,’ he whispered, horrified. ‘I borrowed it, and never— How very annoying for him!’
‘Now there is a strange thing,’ said the Reverend musingly, as we trudged on our way together. ‘A man well on in a rapid decline, and neither knowing nor caring about it; as glad, indeed, to hear the thing confirmed as if some one had left him a legacy! A month, did you say? Then he may never go out of Windlecombe by the road.’
We made a long day’s round, taking meadow, riverside, wood, and downland in our walk, and reaching home again only when the lights were beginning to star the misty combe; for we had a special object in our journey. To the townsman it may well seem as fruitless a task to seek wild flowers in November, as to go ‘gathering nuts in May.’ Well, here is a list of what we found in one November day’s ramble about a single village in highland Sussex—fifty-seven distinct species, and of many we could have gathered, not single flowers, but whole handfuls, had we willed. Nor is the list an exhaustive one either for the district or the time of year. Bringing more eyesight, leisure, and diligence tothe task, no doubt a fuller inventory could be made in any mild season.—
Dandelion.
Furze.
Red Dead-nettle.
White Dead-nettle. Knapweed.
Marguerite.
Poppy.
Musk Thistle.
Charlock.
Buttercup.
Red Clover.
White Clover.
Pimpernel.
Calamint.
Blackberry.
Mayweed.
Field Madder.
Sandwort.
White Campion.
Red Campion.
Hawkweed.
Penny Cress.
Hedge Mustard.
Dwarf Spurge.
Mallow.
Harebell.
Daisy.
Hogweed.
Yarrow.
Sheepsbit.
Marjoram.
Cudweed.
Groundsel.
Nipplewort.
Small Bindweed. Herb-Robert.
Ragwort.
Silverweed.
Persicary.
Mouse-ear.
Strawberry.
Teasel.
Sun Spurge.
Hedge Parsley.
Rock-rose.
Crane’s-bill.
Heather.
Betony.
Viper’s Bugloss.
Burnet Saxifrage.
Sow-thistle.
Wild Pansy.
Shepherd’s Purse.
Nonsuch.
Ivy.
Chickweed.
Veronica.
There has come a spell of chilly, overcast weather, and the long dark evenings have settled upon us at a stroke. At twilight to-day, as I came into this silent-floored, comfortable room, and lit the candles on my work-table, it seemed strange that I should do so, and yet the ordinary life and traffic of the village be still going onoutside. Hitherto, so it appeared, the village quiet had fallen always before the need for candlelight. I had looked out before drawing the curtains close, and heard not a step stirring, seen the windows dark in the lower storeys of the cottages, and here and there a pale light glimmering behind the drawn blinds of upper rooms, for your true Sussex villager hates to sleep in the dark. But to-night some new order of things seemed to have been suddenly ordained. Footsteps hurried or leisurely, voices old and young, the rumble of wheels, even the distant chime of Tom Clemmer’s hammer—all the sounds that go to make up the common rumour of work-a-day life in a village, were abroad in the air; though already the hills were lost in the gloaming: the white chrysanthemums by the garden-gate were nothing but a dim blotch on the murky autumn night.
I lit the candles—home-made candles of yellow beeswax—and set them on their little mats of plaited green leather. I got out a new quire of foolscap, sobering in its empty whiteness, its word-hungry look. I arranged the ruler, the old cut-glass inkpot, the painted leaden frog that serves for paperweight, the elephant that carries a penwiper as houdah, ash-tray and tobacco-jar and sheaf of favourite pipes, all in their proper stations. I drew the old oak elbow-chairsideways to the table—sideways because that was non-committal: too squarely business-like an approach in the outset, as I know of old time and cost, often scatters the fairies into the next county, and you may chew to shreds a whole quiverful of goose-quills before they again come crowding and whispering curiously about your ears.
But having made all these exact preparations, I chanced to turn to the open window for a final look down the street, and knew at once that I was lost. It was the steady far-off song from Tom Clemmer’s anvil that overcame me more than anything, and the red glow amidst the elder-boughs that overhung the forge. But all else conspired in one basilisk-like lure to get me forth. The busy wending to and fro, and the cheery commerce of tongues in the darkness, footsteps and voices that I knew as well as I knew my own; twinkling lights in cottages, the illumined windows of the little sweetstuff shop, the cobbler’s den, the inn, the village store; the church lit up for evensong, and the bell quietly tolling, as it seemed, somewhere far up in the black void of the sky; again, the smell of the night, that moist, earthy fragrance of decaying leaves, and tang of frost, and pungent scent of simmering fire-logs from stacks new-broached on these first chilly evenings in November—itall ranged itself together before me as something, ever present and constant in my life, that I too often disregarded, took for granted—the jumble of thatch and red-tiled roof and grey flint wall, sheep and lowing kine and cackling poultry, bevy of kindly human hearts, sharp tongues and willing hands, all wedged up together in one green crevice of the hills, and calling themselves collectively by the old South-Saxon name of Windlecombe.
I went first of all a few strides out over the green and looked backward, rightly to estimate, if I could, my own part in the little communal symphony. The bluff bulk of the house, with its coven roof and many gables, stood dark against the greyer darkness of the hills, and behind it rose sable elm plumes fast thinning under the recent autumn chills. From its windows shone lights of varying significance. There were my own red-shaded candles with a corner of a crammed bookcase dimly visible above them; there were naked kitchen lights with ware of polished pewter and copper glinting behind, and a pleasant clatter of crockery; there was a window where the light burnt red and low and wavering as from a spent hearth, and a quiet ripple of music from a piano keeping it congenial company; there was the window high up in the great gable, whose flickering light cast a bunchof head-shadows on the ceiling, suggestive of nursery bedtime, and fairy-tales round the fire. It was all very reassuring and enheartening. Yes: the old White House had its integral part to play in this good English game of Neighbourhood, and played it passing well.
Round Tom Clemmer’s forge a group of village lads was gathered, all looking on at the work with an interest that amounted well-nigh to fascination. As I came up, and stood unobserved in the shadow of the elder-tree, there was before me a picture in which two colours only were represented glowing crimson and deep velvety black. Young Tom stood, pincers in hand, watching the iron in the fire. Behind him his apprentice laboured at the bellows. With every wheezy puff, the furnace roared out an imprecation, and spat hot cinders upon the floor.
It was a large piece of metal that Tom had in work, something out of the ordinary run of his business, it seemed, and he turned it and shifted it with an anxious eye. No one spoke a word, for somehow we all knew that a crisis was coming, and we were expected to hold our tongues until it was victoriously past. At length the moment came. Tom thrust the pincers into the blaze and drew the white-hot iron out upon the anvil. Immediately the apprentice left the bellows,seized a great hammer, and swinging it over his head, began to let fall on the metal an unceasing rain of mighty blows. As Tom twisted and manoeuvred the glowing mass about with all the strength of his wiry arms, it lengthened, squared itself in the middle, flattened out at each end, bent into complicated curves, then turned upon itself and was united miraculously head to tail. Still gripping the writhing thing with one hand, Tom took a punch in the other, and pointed it to various parts of the work; and wherever he pointed, the hammer drove a bolt-hole clean and true through the rose-red iron. Finally Tom lifted the finished piece above his head, and came striding to the door with it. The crowd of onlookers scattered right and left. Out into the darkness he plunged, and straight to the pool by the roadside. We saw the thing poised for a moment like a mammoth fire-fly over the water; and then, with a roar and an angry splutter, it vanished into the pond.
It was scarcely six o’clock, and already the night was pitch-black, with a creeping, chilly air from the north. It was not loitering weather. People were moving briskly on their several ways. Cottage doors were shut, and windows diamonded with moisture. Roving about with no settled purpose but to humour the neighbourly fancy, and to identify myself with the evening life ofthe place, I presently came full tilt at a corner upon Farmer Coles.
‘The very man!’ said he, barring the way jovially with his stout oak stick. ‘Didn’t ye promise me that when I killed that four-year-old wether, ye’d come and take a bite along o’ us? Well, ’tis a saddle to-night, and I was on the road to fetch ye. Round about, man, and straight for the faarm!’
Now, when a South-Down flock-master—whose pedigree sheep are famous throughout the county—bids you to his table, with the announcement that the principal dish is to be mutton, there is only one thing to do, that is, if you are human, and of sane mind. I turned and went along with him without demur.
‘Jane’s sister and her man be with us,’ said Farmer Coles, as we left the village behind and mounted the steep lane that led to the farmhouse. ‘And Weaverly ’ull be there; and the gells be home, so we wunt lack for company. I don’t know as ye ever met Jane’s sister’s man?—Parrett by name. No? Wunnerful well-eddicated man, though, he be.’
We found the Rev. Mr. Weaverly, a shining gem of purest water, set in the ring of hearty country faces that surrounded the drawing-room fire. The broad-shouldered, broad-faced man, with a mat of sandy beard and a very bald head,who occupied the great armchair in the corner, I judged to be Mr. Parrett. Mrs. Coles and her sister, both comfortable of mien and rigidly ceremonious of visage, sat side by side in flowing black silk gowns, knitting as for a wager. The younger members of the household, who filled the interspaces of the circle, fidgeted in a constraint of merry silence, exchanging covert glances of boredom, and all obviously pricking ears for the first sound of the dinner-gong. This clanged out behind us almost at the moment of our entry into the room, providentially cutting short the first amenities of greeting; and before my fingers had done aching from Mr. Parrett’s grip, I found myself sitting at the loaded board with Mrs. Parrett’s voluminous drapery overflowing me on the one side, and, on the other, her husband’s great brown barricade of an elbow securely fencing me in.
‘Mutton,’ observed Mr. Weaverly presently, by way of filling up a pause in the conversation due to our all watching with secret anxiety Farmer Coles’s attack on the joint, ‘mutton, and on a Monday! You remember the little game of alliteration we played at the school treat, Mrs. Coles? Really, we could make an admirable sequence here! Mutton, and Monday, and Miss Matilda sitting by my side, and—and—if it were only March instead of—’
‘And we’ll soon all be munchin’ of it, sir!’ cried Farmer Coles. ‘Ha, ha, ha! That’s the best Hem o’ all! Gravy, George?’
At the inclusion of her name in the sequence, the eldest Miss Coles had blushed, then let her glance demurely droop upon her chrysanthemum-wreathed bosom. It was a moment of exceeding pride and satisfaction to her, for here was Mr. Weaverly beside her—an incontestable, a beautiful fact—while Miss Sweet for once was half a mile away. Now she looked up coyly.
‘I think,’ she hesitated, ‘I could suggest a— Oh! I know a lovely one!’
Mr. Weaverly laid down knife and fork, to rub his hands delightedly.
‘Do tell us!’ he murmured. ‘I am positively longing to—’
The eldest Miss Coles turned him glamorous eyes.
‘Marmaduke!’ she said.
And I think I was the only one present to realise the whole ingenuity of the manœuvre. For she had contrived here, in the open family circle, before a dozen people, yet with entire meetness and propriety, to address Mr. Weaverly by his Christian name.
As the meal progressed, and tongues became generally loosened, Mr. Parrett—whose silence, except as regarded his hearty application to hisfood, had so far remained unbroken—now essayed to contribute his share of the talk. His first effort was a startling one.
‘D-d-d’ he began, smiling over his shoulder at me, ‘d-do you l-l-l—’ He stopped, and gazed helplessly towards his wife.
‘Like, dear?’ suggested Mrs. Parrett, softly.
‘N-no! I was agoing t-t-to ask ye if ye l-l-l—’
‘Lend, then?’
‘Hur, hur! Emma, I don’t want to b-b-borrow nauthin’ o’ the gentleman! It was just to ask if he l-l-lived—there y’ are!—in W-w-w— Whatsay, Jane?’
‘’Tis apple-pie, George. Or maybe ye’d sooner try the—’
‘Pie, Jane! Pie, my d-dear! Pie, ifyouplease, mum! An’ a double dose o’ sh-sh-shuggar. They allers says—don’t they, sir?—as if a man has a sweet-t-t-t—’
‘Sweetheart, dear?’
‘Oo, ay!’ laughed Mr. Parrett, suddenly inspired. He looked across the table roguishly at Mr. Weaverly and Matilda, and all glances followed his. ‘Ah, well: n-n-never mind! We was all young once, and—’
Mrs. Coles deftly drew the fire of attention away from the absorbed, unconscious pair.
‘William, dear; Emma has nothing in her glass.And there you sit, staring at the cheese as if—as if it were only for show, and as wooden as you are! And do pray pass the old ale to Mr.—’
‘Oh, deplorably, deplorably so!’ sighed Mr. Weaverly to the rapt Matilda. ‘Over and over again I have remonstrated with her, but all in vain, I fear. Each time I have said, “Mrs. Gates, if you will feed little children on new hot bread, and red herrings, and”—only think of it!—“beer, you will find not only their physical but their moral nature entirely—”’
It is strange how, in a room full of heterogeneous talk, the attention of a quiet listener flits uncontrollably from one quarter to another. Much as I was interested in Mrs. Gates’s domestic policy, I lost it here, to find myself in the rick-yard, taking part, against my will, in some complicated sporting affray.
‘And there were three of them, father, in the trough; and I crept up and got the gun-barrel through a hole in the side of the sty, and just as the old buck-rat—’
And then it was Mr. Parrett again.
‘Emma ’ull tell ye b-b-better ’n me, Jane. It came hoot-tooting round the corner, and afore I could s-s-s—’
‘Stop, George?’
‘N-n-nonsense!—afore I could s-s-s—’
‘Seize hold o’ the—?’
‘Emma, do bide quiet!—afore I could s-s-say Jack Robinson, the ould mare, she b-b-backed upon her harnches, and she—’
And from Miss Matilda:
‘Oh! I should so love to, Mr. Weaverly! Is there a very beautiful view? And could we walk there and back in an afternoon, do you think?’
And from Farmer Coles, folding up his napkin: ‘Well, if no one wunt have no more—’
The rest was lost in the rustle of Mrs. Coles’s skirts, as she uprose.
‘And now, William dear, I think we ladies will leave you to your smoke. And when you are quite ready, we will have a rubber and a little music.’
In the drawing-room presently, the farmer and his wife, and Mr. and Mrs. Parrett, sat down to a solemn, silent game of whist. A ‘Happy Family’ party made a vortex of merriment in a far corner. At the piano stood Mr. Weaverly, translating into soft melodious trifles such songs as ‘The Wolf’ and ‘Hearts of Oak.’ As for me, I was happy in the great chair with the family portrait album, full of early Victorian photographs, which I sincerely believe to be amongst the most fascinating and informing productions of all that fertile reign. But after an hour of this inspiring occupation, I was suddenly roused tothe contemplation of a still greater wonder. One of the card-players had spoken, and that sharply.
‘Emma! Emma, my dear!’
I strolled over, and watched the play. Something had happened to disturb Mr. Parrett, for though his face was turned from me, I could see that his bald head had taken on a purple hue. And gradually, as the game progressed, the mystery became clear.
‘Emma, my d-d-dear! Emma!’
It was Mr. Parrett’s voice again, and this time with a sharper ring of warning and remonstrance. Two or three times in the next half-hour he spoke thus, and each time now I was able to detect the cause. Mrs. Parrett was cheating. Continually her neck craned for a sidelong view of her opponents’ cards. She revoked unblushingly. Once I could have sworn I saw a card-corner sticking out of a fold in her silken lap. The aces she seemed to be trying to mark with her thumb-nail. And all the time, though Mr. Parrett got momentarily redder and more wrathful, Farmer Coles and his wife sat serenely smiling, evidently well used to dear Emma and her little harmless, eccentric ways.
Here is a winter’s day already, and still November. As I looked forth at sunrise this morning, the whole village was white with frost. I could hear the ice in the wheel-ruts crackling under the tread of passers-by. A single thrush piped forlornly somewhere in the dense thicket of the churchyard. And as I leaned out into the nipping blast, a word came up to me, bandied between a trudging labourer and his friend, a word that brought with it an entire new sheaf of thoughts and memories. ‘More ’n ’aaf like Christmas, bean’t ut, Bill?’ It was said but in jest, and that unthinkingly. Yet, by the calendar, as a glance now told me, Christmas was scarce a month away.
While the sun was yet no more than a white spot in the faint gold mists of morning, I took the lane that led to the Downs. It was strange to see how the frost had missed all the bright-hued berries in the hedgerows, and how the ivy-leaves were only rimmed with white. It was the same with the prickly holly foliage. The spines were thickly encrusted, while the dark green membranes of the leaves had given no fingerhold to the frost. But the colour of the grass, and dead dry herbage, by the wayside was completely blotted out. Every blade and twig stood upstark and white against its fellow; and here it was easy to see which way the frozen air had been drifting all night long, because on the windward side the pale accretion was thicker: in the more exposed places it more than doubled the natural girth of the stems.
Where the dew-pond lay, at the top of the hill, far above the swimming lowland mists, there must have been bright sunshine from the very first; for here the veneer of frost had melted into dewdrops, that flashed back a thousand prismatic rays amidst the emerald of the grass at every step. But behind each upstanding tussock, the frost still held as white and thick as ever. The water, too, in the pond was still frozen over. As I came up to the rail, a flock of starlings rose whirring over my head. They had been waiting there on the sunny side of the bank for the ice to melt round the pond edges, and thither they would return to slake their morning thirst, as soon as I passed on.
Keen and unkindly blew the blast, so that one must keep ever moving to withstand the chill of it. Looking round me on the waste of hills, I could see that the northern slopes still retained their wintry hue, though all those facing to the sun were intensely green. Below in the valley only the oak-woods kept their bronze stain of autumn. Every other tree, the hedges thatdivided ploughlands and meadows, the winding line of thicket marking the course of the river, all looked bare and dark in the glistening pallor of the sun. The river itself, between the broad water-meadows, seemed like a river of ink.
“The Ferryman’s Cottage”
As I took in all the cheerless, void purity of what lay below me, thinking to myself that this indeed was winter, there came a sudden cawing and dawing high up in the frosty steel-blue dome of the sky; and here again was confirmation of that unenlivening fact. A great company of rooks and jackdaws was streaming by, but with none of its summer zest and purpose. The throng made a general progress towards the south, yet it was obviously doing little more than killing time, spinning out the business of a doubtful journey into the semblance of a morning’s task. Instead of going straight forward in one steady strong tide, the birds were incessantly veering back in wide circles, crossing and re-crossing each other’s paths aimlessly, and weaving a mazy dark pattern on the sky.
I watched this dubious host from the hill-top until it vanished in the eye of the sun; and then, fairly beaten at last by the razor-edged north wind, turned and went back to the village. It was winter again, in very truth; and there was little sense or profit in blinking it. I would strike my flag now, as I had struck it often before.And the flag with me was the little staging of fernery that still concealed the yawning blackness of my study hearth. I pulled it all down and stowed it away; and by and by, when the ash logs were sizzling and glowing, and the sparks were volleying up the flue, and a living warmth pervading the room, I plucked up new heart and courage:
‘No mirth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,No comfortable feel in any member;No warmth, no shine—’
‘No mirth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,No comfortable feel in any member;No warmth, no shine—’
It was all as false now as it must ever have been. And as for butterflies and bees, what but a sick fancy could crave for such delicacies out of season?
Wesat on the churchyard wall, the Reverend and I, debating many things.
It was one of those silent, gloomy afternoons that would be cold but for their exceeding stillness. A heavy grey pall of sky lowered overhead. A multitude of noisy sparrows was going to bed in the thicket of ilex and yew, denoting that the time was nearing sunset, although not a tinge of sunset colour showed in the shrouded west. The same impulse, it seemed, had brought us both out of doors, which, elementally, was nothing more than a sudden realisation of the impossibility of remaining within. In the whole year’s round, perhaps, there come only two or three days like this. You become the prey of a conviction that something cataclysmic is going to happen. There is a sense of the world slowing down in its age-long, giddy race through the pathless ether; a feeling that its momentum is almost spent, and that any instant it may cometo a final stop, to be followed by the Last Trump and dissolution of all things. The mute house seems alive about you, and full of a sort of terror and foreboding. You are seized with an apprehension that the ceilings and roof are falling in; and, hurrying forth, a like doubt comes upon you as to the stability of the sky: it looks so overburdened and unsafe. In this easeless, impotent frame of mind, I came up into the churchyard as being the most reassuring place I could think of, and found the Reverend wandering there for a like reason and in much the same mood.
‘Wind and dirty weather coming,’ said he, ‘the sort of times to make people think of home and fireside, the need for human peace on earth, and good-will towards men—the very weather for me.’
As we sat on the wall, silent awhile, the bells in far-off Stavisham began their chime, every note drifting over to us sharp and clear through the miles of torpid air.
‘Winter coming,’ he went on; ‘the winter we all need once a year to knit us closer together. Listen to Saint Barnabas practising his Christmas carillons!—forging his link in the chain of bell-ringing that in a week or two will stretch all round the world. It is my time coming, my own time. For did you ever think how littleeyesight matters at Christmas? Blindness is nothing to a man then. Christmas is all glad sound; warm heart-beats; faithful words. And, please God, when the day dawns, there shall not be a cottage-nest in Windlecombe that does not overflow with these.’
To see him so deeply moved, and hear him run on presently about his many schemes of comfort and relief, the furtherance of joy and merriment, good-will and good cheer, to be sown broadcast throughout his little domain, was yourself to take the infection irresistibly. Whatever Christmas has become in the great outer world, in Windlecombe he held us year by year to all the old ideals and traditions. As I harkened to him, the black sky, the sullen, miasmic air, lost their significance. I found myself thinking only of the golden light and undimmed azure that must eternally lie beyond and above it all. And now—though I might have heard it long ago, if I had had but the heart to look up and listen—there, high against the drab heaven, a lark soared and sang.
The dirty weather has come indeed. For many days I have not seen the tops of the hills. They have been hidden in the rain-clouds that havebeen dragging ceaselessly over the combe. The rain has not seemed to fall, but to flow horizontally from west to east, a gliding white curtain of water-drops, hiding all but the nearest houses from the view. And yet, for all the deluge and the sobbing wind, the gloom, the cold, the miry ways, I would not change this solitary, inaccessible spot in England for the best of foreign sunshine, ease, and gaiety to be found by the Tideless Sea.
Perhaps, if winter is to be given a place at all in the calendar, it must come in these few weeks leading on to Christmas. It is true that, so far as the natural outdoor world is concerned, there is no winter, in the human conception of a season of decay and death. In an hour, when the sky lightened a little and the rain ceased its rattle on the window, I went out and found next year’s corn greening the hill-side; and in all the bare dark woodland there was not a twig without its new buds ripe and ready for another spring. The year’s miracle-play was beginning all over again before its last lines were said.
Yet because, as the old vicar maintains, winter is a human necessity by reason of its heart-welding, neighbour-making qualities, winter we must all have; and so at this time I am glad to hoodwink myself into the belief that the rough-voiced, harrying weather is the very negation oflife, bringing us all together for mutual comfort, like children in the dark.
The rain is over now, seemingly for good. Last night at sundown the wind fell, and the grey cloud canopy lifted off to the northward, like the opening lid of a box. As the dense cloud pack broke away from the western horizon, the sun burst through, and poured a sudden stream of red-gold light up the combe. Before this light had paled, the whole sky was crystal clear; and in the east, just above the earth-line, shone the moon—a perfect human face, full-jowled, low-foreheaded, gazing down upon us all with a puzzled, quizzical smile upon her comfortable chops. I came up the street apostrophising her, and ran into a basket, and behind the basket was Grewes. He laid a bunch of lean bony fingers in my hand.
‘This is life again,’ he said feelingly. ‘To be weatherbound in a caravan, you know— Well, it is a little trying even for common people, but for a genius—Spelthorne, you see, cannot bear any constraint. At home he has a studio as big as a church, and when it rains he walks up and down it. But when he tries that in a caravan— Really, I have been very sorry for him, though of course I kept outside as much as I could.’
I had turned and strolled back with him underthe pale December twilight. The new quiet of things, the frosty glimmer of the moon, here and there a star beginning to show, the renovated life of the village about us—all made for peace and content. Grewes suddenly stopped and laid his basket down.
‘Spelthorne wants to move on now,’ he told me; ‘he says we have painted the place out, and I haven’t tried to persuade him, you know, but—but—I don’t want to go, and that’s a fact.’
He looked at me distressfully, his stubbly lantern jaw in his lean hand.
‘What has happened to change the place so?’ he asked. ‘Everybody you meet looks as if bound for a wedding. You are all humming carol tunes wherever you go. I haven’t seen a dirty-faced child for a week. And how the people joke and laugh with each other! It can’t be all because Christmas—’
‘Yes, it is,’ said I, ‘it is all because one old man we love insists on having it so, year by year. He has been into every home in the village, great and small, and fired each man, woman, and child with his own rejoicing spirit. If you stop for the next ten days, you will see things change more thoroughly still. Wait till you see them bringing the Christmas-tree up the hill for the children’s treat! And the committee goinground on Boxing-Day to award the prizes for the home decorations! And if you have never heard real old-fashioned carols, nor listened to a real Christmas sermon preached by a holy angel in a white beard—’
He took up his basket hurriedly.
‘If—if I must go,’ he said, as we trudged on towards the quarry where the caravan had made its pitch, ‘I shall think of you all wherever I— It seems rather selfish to press him, don’t you think? But perhaps— Oh! here we are! Do come in and talk to Spelthorne for a bit, will you? He sees so little company, and—’
‘Is that you at last, Grewes? My good fellow, what an unconscionable time to take in procuring no more than one pennyworth of pepper and just a pound of gravy beef! To say that I am excessively annoyed is wholly to understate my— Of course all my carefully-thought-out plans for the meal are entirely upset!’
I drew back into the darkness.
‘No, not to-night. There are times when you cannot stand—I mean, when a call is not convenient, and— Why on earth don’t you tell the selfish old brute to go to smithereens?’
This has been a week of undeniably hard work for us all, and one, at least, is by no means sorry that to-morrow is Christmas Eve.
Most of the time I seem to have spent on the top of a rickety step-ladder in the school-room, having tin-tacks and boughs of holly and gaily-coloured flags passed up to me by Mr. Weaverly and the mutually distrustful Miss Sweet and Miss Matilda Coles. Tom Clemmer, helped by half a dozen others, brought the great tree up from Windle Woods, and it stands now in its tub of spangled cotton-wool, a gorgeous sight, every branch weighed down with toy-shop treasures, the queen-doll at its apex brandishing her gilt-starred sceptre high up among the oaken beams of the ceiling. Every available chair or bench in the village has been confiscated, and ranged round the room. The tables at the far end fairly creak and groan under their burden of infantile good cheer. It is all ready for to-morrow. We put in the finishing touches with the last gleam of daylight this evening, Weaverly and I alone together. Then he locked the door, speechlessly tired and happy, and faded away—a black but benevolent ghost in goloshes—down the length of the darkening street.
As for me, I followed at a respectful distancewith no object definitely in view but to smoke a quiet pipe after the day’s work, and enjoy the unwonted life and bustle of the village.
Thinking it over discriminately, it seemed to be a great thing, a real advance on the true line of social progress, to be strolling about there, taking unfeigned pleasure in the sight of two small shops doubtfully illuminated with oil-lamps and candles, and in the sound made by perhaps fifty people all told, as they clattered and chattered to and fro in a single, narrow village street. There were folk, I knew, wandering just as aimlessly in the crowded thoroughfares of great cities miles away, whose ears were deafened with a prodigious uproar, and eyes blinded by a myriad superfluous lights, but who were not half so entertained, so thoroughly instilled with the sense of being one in a hustling, happy Christmas multitude, as I. Then again, of all the thousands that the city promenader meets in the crush of a London street between one electric standard and the next, how many can he rightfully greet as neighbour, or even remember to have seen before? While here was I, after a good half-hour’s loitering up and down, who had encountered none but old familiar faces, nor let one go by without the kind word or friendly glance exchanged. Truly the scale, the mere arithmetic of life goes for nothing:it is the proportional, the relative, that counts. There was not so much folly as we imagine in the grave debate of the old philosophers as to how many angels could stand upon a pin’s point.
I tarried awhile in the broad beam of light that fell from the window of the village store, and, in the company of a dozen other loiterers, feasted eyes on its Yule-tide splendour. From where I stood on the opposite side of the way, it seemed no less than a palace of glittering beauty. Candles of all colours in little tinselled sconces shone amidst the wares of everyday—bacon and worsted stockings, loaves of bread and tin saucepans, butter, neckties, bars of mottled soap, and trousers in moleskin or corduroy. The ceiling of the shop, which at ordinary times is hidden by hanging festoons of boots, basket-ware, hedging-gloves, coils of rope, was intersected now by chains of coloured paper and threadled holly-leaves. There was a suspended roasting-jack in a corner slowly twirling round a grand set-piece of Christmas knick-knacks; and there were two copper coalscuttles, the one filled with oranges, the other heaped high with bunches of green grapes that made the mouth water a dozen yards away. All these I gazed upon, and at the jostling throng of housewives, at least half a score, within, and at the red-faced, perspiring shopkeeper overdone with business; andfrom the bottom of my heart, I rejoiced that they sufficed for me, that I should go to bed that night with as complete a sense of having looked on at the great world’s Yuletide gladness as if I had tired out feet and eyes and nerves in the roaring maelstrom at the Elephant, or the Messina Strait of the Strand. For indeed life and its disciplines, its experiences, its outcomes, can be no mere matters of dimension: when we come at last to find eternity and the angels, they are as like to be on a pin’s point as out-thronging all the labyrinth of the Milky Way.
From the village store I moved on presently to the little sweetstuff shop, and stood awhile looking in through the holly-garlanded door. Susan sat in a wilderness of scalloped silver paper, presiding over a lucky tub. There was no getting near her to-night for the mob of children that surrounded her, and overflowed into the street; but she bawled me an affectionate Christmas greeting, and passed me, by half a dozen intervening hands—in exchange for a thrown halfpenny—a packet from the lucky-dip, which proved to contain a cherubim modelled out of pink scented soap. With this symbolic testimony to our old-time friendship bulging my pocket, I went rambling on again, and in course of time arrived at the Three Thatchers Inn. A tilt-cart was just driving away from the door.A numerous company was gathered outside, speeding the vehicle on its way with laugh and jest.
‘Ye’ve not fared so bad,’ roared old Daniel Dray, as he spied me in the darkness, ‘though ye didn’t come to th’ drawin’. Ye’ve got a topside, an’ a hand o’ pig-meat. Stall’ard here, he’s got wan o’ th’ turkeys, an’ young George Artlett th’ tother. A good club it ha’ been, considerin’. An’ now the lot o’ us ha’ got to bide here ’til Dan’l gets hoame from Stavisham wi’ th’ tack.’
This annual prize-drawing, and division of the Christmas Club funds, with the subsequent wait in the cosy inn parlour while the things were fetched from the town, was a great event in Windlecombe. On this one night in the year, we cultivated as a fine art the pleasure of anticipation, and each did his best to make the time go with mirth and neighbourly good-will. The occasion was also, in some degree, a kind of benefit for the landlord, to which all might contribute as a duty, if by any chance the inclination lacked. Looking round the crowded room, I could think of hardly one of the well-known faces that was missing. The old ferryman was there—how he got there was a mystery; but there he was, in the corner of the settle whence he had been absent so long. Even George Artlett had stayedto await the arrival of his turkey, and now sat at my side quaffing lemonade, his face as grave and thoughtful as ever, but his eyes twinkling with a jollity I had never seen in them before.
Young Daniel knew that no one would desire to curtail this part of the prize-drawing ceremony, and there was little fear of his wheels being heard in the sloppy street for a good two hours to come. We stretched out our legs to the cheery blaze, and felt that for once we had succeeded in wing-clipping old Father Time.
‘Beef-club drawin’ agen, Dan’l!’
‘Ay! beef-club drawin’ agen, Tom.’
In a break in the general clamour, the two veterans exchanged the thought slowly and pensively, looking down their long pipe-stems into the fire.
‘An’ no one gone, Dan’l.’
‘Ne’er a wan, Tom, thank God.’
‘How quirk ’a do hould hisself, to be sure,’ said old Tom Clemmer after a pause, and none doubted who he meant. ‘Ah! an’ how ’a do brisk along still! Another year o’ him by—’tis another blessin’. Here’s to un, wi’ all our love an’ dooty!’
It was a silent toast, but drunk deep. George Artlett’s glass was lighter than any when he set it down.
‘But ’tain’t been allers so,’ old Clemmer wenton ruminatively. ‘How many drawin’s ha’ ye seen, Dan’l, boy an’ man?—threescore belike, and I bean’t fur ahent ye. An’ many’s th’ time as summun’s money ha’ laid on th’ table wi’ only widder or poor-box to claim it; an’ he, poor soul, quiet i’ th’ litten-yard up there. Ay! ’tis a lucky drawin’ wi’ nane but livin’ hands to draw.’
Daniel Dray took up the prize-list and scanned it curiously, his white head thrown back, his spectacles straddling the extreme tip of his nose.
‘An’ what,’ said he, ‘will a single man, onmarried, do wi’ a whole gurt turkey-burd? An’ him wi’ never a wife! ’Tis wicked waste, neighbours! Him an’ th’ parrot, they’ll ha’ nought but turkey-meat i’ th’ house from now to Lady-time.’
Stallwood’s beady black eyes disappeared in a wide smile.
‘I knowed a man once,’ he said, ‘out in Utah State in Murriky, ’twur—as got a brace o’ ostriches at a Christmas drawin’; an’ when it come to carvin’ at dinner-time, th’ pore feller, he got no more ’n half a bite fer hisself because—’ He stopped, suddenly recollecting George Artlett’s lustrating presence, ‘Ah! he wur married, I tell ye, an’ never a wured o’ a lie!’
‘What’ll ’a do wi’ it, Dan’!?’ The oldferryman leant from his corner eagerly, staring at the wall as though he saw there the picture that rose in his mind. ‘What’ll ’a do wi’ it? Jest think on ’t! Nobbut hisself in a quiet kitchen o’ Christmas morning—his boots on, an’ nane to rate un for spannellin’ about—click-clack from the roastin’ jack, an’ tick-tack from th’ clock, an’ a good cuss now an’ agen from th’ ould parrot, but never a wured o’ wimmin’s wrath. Ah, life!—’tis all jest a gurt beef-club drawin’! Some on us draws peace an’ quiet an’ turkey-burds, an’ some draws—’
His lips closed on his pipe-stem with a snap. A commiserate shake of the head went round the company.
‘An’ here,’ went on old Daniel, still conning the prize-list, ‘here be Jack Farley wi’ bare money an’ fower ounces o’ tobacker—him as doan’t smoke, an’ has sixteen i’ family. Lor’, Jack! how that there deuce-ace do foller ye i’ life!’
Jack Farley sat in the draughtiest seat by the door, his invariable modest choice of station. No one had ever seen him without a smile on his emaciated, sun-blackened face; and now he was smiling more determinedly than ever.
‘I dunno’, Dan’1,’ he expostulated gently. ‘’Twur a real double-six when ’er an’ me come together all they years ago. An’ th’ chillern,they be good throws, every wan. An’ that there noo little ’un, Dan’l—nauthin’ o’ th’ deuce-ace about him, I tell ye! But them as putts to sea, Dan’l, they must look fer rough weather, time and agen.’
He squared himself and gazed about him as though his weekly carter-wage of fourteen shillings were as many pounds. Then he beat his mug upon the table jovially. ‘An’ now,’ said he, ‘I’ll sing ye “Th’ Mistletoe Bough!”’
It was the beginning of the real entertainment of the evening. Vocal music in the Three Thatchers at ordinary times was accounted a rather disreputable thing—a mere tap-room vulgarism—by the habitual parlour company; but on certain rare nights in the year, of which this was one, every man present was expected to sing. One by one now, in Jack Farley’s wake, followed the rest of the assembly, and every song had a chorus that shook the very roof-beams of the house. No man thought of looking at the clock until, in the midst of a doleful melody from the landlord, old Tom Clemmer suddenly sprang to his one available foot.
‘’Tis th’ cart!’ he cried, and made for the door. In the general stampede after him, I heard Captain Stallwood’s grumbling voice:
‘Ut bean’t right nohow fer people as caan’t use tobacker to draw un away from them as can.I means to ha’ that there fower ounces, Dan’l. An’ Jack Farley—th’ ould swab!—’a must make out as best ’a can wi’ th’ turkey-burd.’
‘Yes, I can see it,’ said the Reverend, ‘plainer than the sun in a midday sky.’
With a taper at the end of a long cane, I had just ignited the last of the candles, and the great Christmas-tree stood up before us, clad, from its bole to its highest twig, in a shimmering garment of light. We two were alone in the schoolroom, but beyond the closed door, we knew, was Mr. Weaverly; and, beyond him again, a sea of expectant faces filling the wide porch, and stretching out half across the street under the still, frost-bound night. Every child that was not whispering excitedly to its neighbour, was crooning to itself with irrepressible joy; and the sound came to us through the solid timber like the sound of a bee-hive just going to swarm.
‘Now open the door,’ said the Reverend, getting into his corner. ‘And if you miss a single thing, I’ll haunt you when I am gone to the end of your miserable life.’
I turned the key in the lock, and retreated hastily. The door flung open. I saw the black form of Mr. Weaverly flicker aside, and expectedthe whole room to be invaded in a minute by an avalanche of scrambling, vociferating mites. But it did not happen so.
‘Not one has come in yet,’ said I, over the Reverend’s shoulder. ‘They are just peering in at the door. I can see thirty faces, perhaps, with thirty mouths, and twice as many eyes, opened wide; but never a smile among the lot. How quiet they keep! But now trembling fingers are coming round the doorposts, and a boot or two has got beyond the threshold. The reluctant vanguard is being pressed forward by those behind. They are creeping in now at last. The crowd has divided, and they are edging up the room right and left, keeping their shoulders against the walls. And all the time every wide-open eye remains fixed upon the tree in awestruck delight. You hear that low whispering note? They are beginning to find their voices again, and the girls are at last venturing to let go one another’s hands. They are all in now, I think. At least the room could hardly hold another—’
And just as a failing mill-dam begins to ooze, then to trickle and spurt, and finally, in a moment gives way before the pressing tide, so the silence now broke down under the flood of child voices. Shouts and hurrahs, shrill peals of laughter, a hubbub of delighted commentary, made therafters vibrate above us, and the window-glass tremble in its quarries. Before the din had so far moderated that I could get my tongue to work again in the old vicar’s service, Weaverly and his satellites were forging ahead with the first joyful business of the night.
It all comes back to me now—as I sit alone and late by my workroom fire—clearer perhaps than when I was in the vortex of it all, with the happy voices ringing about me, and the toy-drums and trumpets, the mouth-organs and the whistle-pipes, each going to swell the already deafening chorus the moment it was cut from the tree and put into some eager, uplifted hand. I can see the great glittering pyramid of the tree slowly giving up its treasures, until it bears nothing but the queen-doll waving her star-tipped wand up among the flags and paper chains and holly garlands of the ceiling. I see Weaverly, poised on the top of the rickety ladder, gingerly dislodging her from her perch, while two overdressed and over-perfumed ladies hold the ladder firm below, and gaze up at him with fond and anxious eyes.
Now at last I see the Christmas-tree deserted, forgotten, while the tables at the end of the room are unloading themselves of their cakes and oranges and the score of other items appertaining to the feast. This is a silent time, save for theexploding crackers and occasional shrieks of fearsome delight; but it is over at last. The games begin, and with them reawakens all the old turmoil in redoubled fury. Though each of us has eaten more than is credible in any but a Downland-bred child, this in no way impairs our agility. We hunt the slipper; we sing ourselves hoarse with ‘Green Gravel’; we play ‘Blind Man’s Buff,’ and the Reverend, being caught, is allowed to go through the part of Blind Man, at his own jovial suggestion, without the handkerchief over his eyes.
And now two things come back to me more significant than all. But for this busy quarter of an hour—when he is staggering to and fro, clutching at pinafores and shock heads of hair—the Reverend has been rather a silent and deliberate figure in the midst of all the madcap business, more detached and quiet than I have known him at other Christmas gaieties bygone. He has hovered about on the fringe of the merrymaking, happy-faced as ever, yet with a certain slowness, a languor, that I have never marked in him before. This is the one thing. The other is a random glance I take over my shoulder at the Christmas-tree, when the fun and frolic are at their highest. Pathetically forlorn and deserted it looks, with bits of string clinging here and there to its drooping green fronds, a singleshining trinket hanging forgotten on one of its lower branches, and half its glory already quenched. As I look at it, every moment sees another candle gutter out and die. A few minutes more, I think, and it will be nothing but a sombre and solemn fir-tree again, ready to be carted down and set once more amidst the silent glooms of the wood. Somehow, in spite of myself, the two things, the two thoughts, blend themselves indivisibly together. I am glad now that, while through the long evening I poured into the Reverend’s patient ear much idle chatter and many feather-brained conceits, I said no word to him about the dying Christmas-tree.
While I have been sitting here, turning over these thoughts, my own candles have burned low: the wood-fire has sunk to a few waning embers: it must be growing late, how late I do not guess until I turn to look at the clock. Almost midnight! Another minute or two, and then—Christmas morning! Perhaps, as the night is so clear and still, I shall be able to hear the hour chime in far-off Stavisham. I go to the window, throw back the casement against the rustling ivy, and look forth.
There is the glimmer of a lantern over by the Seven Sisters on the green, and a sound of people talking quietly together. I think I can distinguish George Artlett’s deep tones, and hisbrother Tom’s—the Singing Plowman’s—higher, clearer speech, and an admonitory word or two that might be Weaverly’s. The clock is striking now. Before its last droning note dies on the frosty air, the darkness beneath me fills with a living, joyous music:
‘Hark! the herald angels singGlory to the new-born King,Peace on earth, and mercy mild,God and sinners reconciled.Joyful all ye nations, rise,Join the triumph of the skies;With the angelic host proclaim,“Christ is born in Bethlehem.”Hark! the herald angels singGlory to the new-born King!’
‘Hark! the herald angels singGlory to the new-born King,Peace on earth, and mercy mild,God and sinners reconciled.Joyful all ye nations, rise,Join the triumph of the skies;With the angelic host proclaim,“Christ is born in Bethlehem.”Hark! the herald angels singGlory to the new-born King!’