CHAPTER X.SUNDAY.
I was produced on Sunday before the whole settlement; more strictly speaking, they produced themselves before me. The villagers were in the village, for the first time, at my hour of rising. There was an absolute cessation from labour, but there was hardly rest. They were in a flutter of joyous excitement, and ran from cottage to cottage, as though they were spreading good news. Yet there was no news, for who could need telling that it was Sunday, and that the sky was blue? For that matter, they needed no excuse to make free of each other’s houses. Property in their own roofs seemed the merest accident among them. One man’s arm-chair was another man’s arm-chair. They walked in and out, by the open doors—often into unguarded dwellings, when the owners were ona visit elsewhere—read the books, smelt the flowers, touched the harmonium, if they could, or cared, and came away. When you sought a man, you went into the nearest cottage; you never thought of going first to his own, unless it lay in your path. There was more of this curious house to house visiting to-day, because there was more time for it, and because there was a greater intensity of childlike happiness in movement and communion—that was all.
There seemed to be much borrowing and lending of the Sabbath finery of cleanliness. If you had no better coat for the day, why, your neighbour might have one to spare, and you asked him for it. Victoria lent two loose gowns, a kind ofrobe de chambreworn on state occasions over the scanty costume of the women. At the same time, she went into a neighbour’s garden, and helped herself freely to flowers for her hair, our own stock having suffered from the movements of some four-footed intruder during the night. If Proudhon had lived here, he would have written ‘property is vanity,’ the innermost truth. Victoria was very smart—a new ribbon forthe navy button, beside the blossoms inwoven with her shining locks.
The church was a hut. I have seen St. Peter’s, too, yet I give this one the preference for majesty, taking its surroundings into account. For St. Peter’s, as the best thing in its quarter, all else meaner, leads nowhere beyond itself, while this island fane, backed first by a stately tropic grove, then by a towering cone of mountain, then by the clouds, carried the eye from height to height of beauty and of wonder, right up to Heaven.
We were rather late, and it was all the better, for now I could take in the whole population of the island at a glance. They were mostly of superb physique, men and women, and Victoria was but one finest example of them. Reuben, the young giant, who had helped me on the day of landing, was another. Among the women, however, some foolish hat, or trailing skirt, of civilisation here and there departed from the classic simplicity of Victoria’s dress. Most of the men wore shoes, in honour of the day; a few, like the Ancient, long trousers, instead of the loose knee-breeches of their working suits.Trousers seemed to be a sign of authority, or of the beginning of years. The priest, or ministrant, wore them, and indeed he might have been entitled to wear two pairs, for, I think, he was schoolmaster as well. The types varied from Victoria’s front of Western Europe to almost pure Tahiti, but always they had their point of unity in the large soft eyes.
For the service, never had I seen such fervour, such passion of prayer and praise! It was the Church of England form, I believe, but form of any kind was hardly to be recognised in the melting heat of their zeal. The poor old Litany seemed like a veritable audience at the throne of God. The Commandments came as His voice from our own mountain, thundering from the summit of the cone. Our hymns soared after Him to the very farthest heaven as He retired. One boy’s note, I think, must have got there first, so clear was it, so clean and pure and true, with nought of earth to keep it from the skies. It was a living faith, no mere specimen of what once had lived, dried for keeping, and not even dried in the sun. Here were the true Primitives, the joyous band of Galilean vagabonds,exulting in that new conception of the brotherhood of man whose secret we have for ever lost. Solemnity, as we understand it, seemed far from them; devoutness was swallowed up in joy. Often they laid their hands affectionately on each other’s shoulders as they sang: once I saw two children kiss after a prayer.
I had been completely ignored during the service, but, when it was over, my turn came. As we trooped back towards the village, I was the centre of a questioning crowd. I had come from England—that was enough, for England is their great archetype of power, wisdom, and beauty of life. Needless to say they have not seen it; I mean, of course, that circumstance has bound them to their rock. All that they know as best comes from England, from the great war ship, which they regard with almost the wonder of Indians, down to the harmonium in the cottage. It is not much to know, but a generous imagination easily does the rest. England has been good to them: England, then, is goodness. She is visibly strong: then she is strength. She has sent them Bibles; ah! she must be the Word made Flesh.
So it was one long bewildering inquisition. Would I tell them of the great churches, the great wonders manifold of that far-off Isle of the Saints? What of the rulers and statesmen, of the bishops, those captains of captains of the thousands of God, of the choirs of the faithful—five thousand strong, as they had heard—hymning Handel under a crystal dome? They seemed to see human life not at all as a mere struggle, but as a great race for a crown of virtue, in which Britain was first, and their poor island so decidedly nowhere that she could afford to sink rivalry in unqualified admiration. I winced, and winced, and winced again.
‘We are but poor things here, and we know it,’ said the schoolmaster.
‘You will improve,’ I said kindly.
‘Well, sir, we are always ready to learn; perhaps you would like to take a service yourself next Sunday? You are not in orders, but you have heard the Archbishop of Canterbury, I dare say.’
‘No, only a bishop now and then.’
‘Oh, what opportunities!’ said Victoria sadly. ‘We once had a navy-chaplain here,but it was four years ago. Though, of course, that is no excuse for our not being better than we are.’
‘They say he has fifteen thousand a year to spend on the poor,’ said the schoolmaster, returning to the Primate.
‘Yes, he has fifteen thousand a year.’
‘How much would that be in potatoes, let’s see?’ murmured Reuben, and he withdrew for an operation in mental arithmetic.
‘I’ve heard of a lady who has made fifty thousand people happy, all by herself,’ said one of the women. ‘She’s a baroness.’
‘And that’s not the highest,’ said another, ‘there’s duchesses who must be richer. Oh, what a country for the poor!’
‘It’s the big churches I’m thinking of,’ observed the schoolmaster. ‘Why, there’s one that holds six thousand people. Six thousand people, twice a day! Think of the spread of it!’
‘Them’s the things I want to see,’ said Reuben, returning, not unoppressed, I thought, by his weight of potatoes, ‘the big things—St. Paul’s, the Railway.’
‘You should use the plural form, Reuben,’ urged the schoolmaster gently, ‘the railways.There are dozens of them. Why, there are three great lines running to Birmingham! I’ve got a map of it.’
‘And how about the Parliament?’ struck in the Ancient, pre-occupied, and not unnaturally, with the question of legislation. ‘Over a thousand people to make the laws; and at it day and night, too! The moment anything goes wrong anywhere, there they are, waiting on the premises, as you may say, to put it right. We’ve nothing like that here. Not that we want it either; I only make the remark.’
This touching disposition to take us in good faith had no limits. In their quaint conception of our corporate life, all things existed to that great end of the crown of virtue. Nothing was merely neutral or indifferent. To talk of making people virtuous by Act of Parliament would, for them, have had none of the significance of a sneer. What else were Acts of Parliament for? So, churches were to promote brotherhood and love, with no reserves for a Pickwickian sense; armies, to suppress the wicked. Rank and riches, as we have just seen, were mere equivalentsfor more opportunity; if a baroness made fifty thousand people happy, what might not a duchess do? The islanders simply multiplied our means by their own yearnings, and the product was a colossal sum in good. Everything seemed to count; from a question the Ancient put to me as to the number of cabs and omnibuses in the British capital, I more than suspect that these, too, contributed to his grand total. The drivers were obliging persons whose chief concern was to give tired Righteousness a lift.
‘I want to see St. Paul’s and the railways,’ murmured Reuben again, in an amended version, as he wandered away from the group.
Victoria’s wistful gaze went after him: ‘Poor fellow!’
‘Is anything the matter with him, Victoria?’
‘Yes, but he daren’t tell anyone but me; he wants to go.’
‘To go where?’
‘Out there,’ she said, with a gesture that was meant to indicate the world at large. ‘He wants to see it all; he can never rest here. These things our people talk about withstrangers trouble him. He’s venturous; he must see and know. He was always like that: he dived two fathoms lower than anyone else—off the Point, and brought up a watch from the old ship. No one can follow him on the rocks. He discovered an island once—over there. I went to see it: I’ll take you one day. Now it’s England. He can never rest here. But, oh! how I dread it! and, besides, you know, they will never let him go.’
‘Did he find so much in the first island, then, that he longs to try the other?’
‘No; only some dry bones in a cave. But England will be different, of course.’
They prayed and praised, in the exultant fashion of the morning, all day long—with due intervals for refreshment. There were five services, I think, big and little. If there were not six, it was only because this Sunday did not happen to fall on the longest day.
‘I hope it is because we love God,’ said Victoria, ‘but I think it is just as much because we love one another. Or perhaps it is to bring Him nearer, so that we may love Him like the rest. He must not be too faroff. I think that is why some of the poor wild people we read of take so long to convert. You must show them something, and let them feel the strong arm, and see the face of human love. They always want to worship the missionary first. Why not let them; and then pass it on, when they get stronger? Do you know, in spite of all my advantages, I could sometimes just fall down and say my prayers to a child, to things even—a rose-tree? It’s the old wickedness in our blood, I suppose. But mind, don’t you dare tell anybody; I should die of shame!’
I had begged to be excused from attendance at the remaining four services, on the ground that I preferred an open-air rite; and, on my assurance that this mode of devotion had the sanction of British custom, Victoria had consented to join me. We were wandering, talking, musing in long silences, picking wild-flowers, breathing the balmy air, basking in the warm light.
In one of these reveries I caught a strange gleam in Victoria’s eyes. ‘Tell me about the blessed Sabbaths in England,’ she murmured, placing her hand in mine.
O my England, my England! why cannot I speak of a thing we all must honour so? why, rather, do I pray for strength to keep the secret of thy Sabbaths well? Dread day of the division of classes, weekly vision of the Judgment, in its utter separation of the social sheep and goats, never one flock, alas! at any time, but now so clearly two. In this dark hour of remembrance, I hear the hoarse clappers of thy meeting-houses, vainly fanning the stagnant air in cities of the spiritual dead. I see thy funereal processions of the elect, wending to or from the conventicles, past groups of coster-boys, who wait for the opening of the houses, and expectorate on the pavement in patterns of the dawn of decorative art. It is all before me, the dingy squalor of thy miles of shuttered marts, the crying contrasts of thy Sunday finery, more hurtful to the eye than thy week-day rags! I hear thy muffin-bells in the deep silences, and thy hawkers’ wail; and, amid this worst of all spiritual destitution, the destitution of beauty, I ask myself, what is it that we have lost; what is it these little ones have found?