Whitsuntide has fallen early this year, and that seems to me always the
fittest thing. It should come, as it has come now, at the full fair tide
of the spring, when the apple-blossom, last ebullition of the year’s
youth, is at the zenith of its glory, and summer is still only a promise
yet to be fulfilled.
Whitsunday in Windlecombe, to all average folk, at least, excels in
importance every other day in the year, Christmas Day alone excepted.
There is neither man, woman, nor child in the parish, with the ability to
get to church, but arrives there somehow and sometime during the day.
For the old vicar, from his early communion service to the time he gives
the benediction at close of evensong, it is a day of ceaseless action and
exaltation. Every Whitsunday—when, in fulfilment of an ancient compact
between us, I go to the vicarage to share the last light of day with him
alone—I find him sitting in the little summer-house at the foot of the
garden, radiantly happy, yet tired as a navigator, and hoarse as a crow.
What befalls the curate at the end of this arduous day no one knows; for
he is never visible after the final service. But Miss Sweet is said to
pervade the neighbourhood of his lodging like an unquiet ghost far into
the twilight, waylaying his housekeeper with offers of night-socks and
eau-de-cologne.
On this fine Whitsunday morning I got to my corner in the grey old church
earlier than my wont, before, indeed, the bell began its measured
tolling. The school children were in their places in the south aisle, a
whispering, nudging crew. The curate flitted about the chancel in his
long black cassock like a bat disturbed from its dreams. The little
organist sat at her harmonium. No one else as yet had come to church.
It was good to sit thus in the cool and quiet before the service began,
letting the heart go back over all the other Whitsuntides I had spent in
Windlecombe, and letting the eye rove here and there through the hollow,
sun-barred twilight of the old place, comparing the garlands that
beautified it now with those that, in former years, had registered the
attained prosperity of the season. For though, wherever you looked, from
the window-ledges of the sanctuary to the multi-centred arch of the west
door, there were flowers and greenery in profusion, no garden blossom
shone amongst them. They were all wildflowers. Every child, most of the
women, and many of the men, who could spare an hour from work the day
before, had been busy in the woods and fields to make this House
Beautiful. The old vicar’s ambition was known to all—that in the church
to-day every wild Maytide blossom should have its place. I looked hither
and thither, but could think of none that was missing. The altar was
golden with cowslips, primroses, buttercups, every flower that bore the
colour of gold. Bluebells hid the old oak carving of the pulpit, and
with them others that were blue or purple, violet and veronica,
forget-me-not and pimpernel. On all the window-ledges, not to vie with
the richness of the painted glass, white flowers alone were
assembled—chervil and elder, daisies that are snow-white in the mass,
sprays of silver stitchwort, wreaths of hawthorn entwining all. The
chancel screen was hung with festoons of pink herb-robert and deadnettle;
and the steps beneath it flanked with those wild growths that bear
greenish flowers as well as green leaves—the woodspurge and the paler
green of arum and bryony. No colour was crowded unthinkingly upon
another. Each blossom held by its kinsfolk of a like complexion, and a
hundred forms and shades of verdure underflowed them all. Gladly I
marked that there were no roses anywhere, and this it was that gave the
day its special meaning. Last year I remembered how the wild dog-roses
lorded it over everything, making Whitsun a summer feast, which it never
should be. But this year we are weeks in front of the roses and the may
is scarce half-blown.
Now the bell commenced its slow rhythmic chime, and in the south porch,
where the surplices hung, the choir boys began to assemble. The west
door stood open, and, mingling with the songs of the birds and the joyous
note of the wind in the trees, footsteps sounded on the churchyard path.
At first they came singly, then in twos and threes. After awhile their
shuffling note became continuous, and the church began to fill on all
sides. I could no longer look about me, but must sit straight in my pew,
contenting myself with rare side glances. I heard the stump of old Tom
Clemmer’s crutches afar off in the street, heard it grow gradually louder
and nearer, until it ceased on the floor of the pew behind me, and
Clemmer set himself to subdue the hurricane of his breath. Mrs. Runridge
fluttered up the aisle, with the tall old ferryman so close behind her,
and his head so decorously lowered, that he seemed to be regaling himself
with the smell of the roses in her new bonnet as they went. Farmer Coles
and his retinue arrived, blocking the aisle for a full minute, until hot
and flurried Mrs. Coles, by much pointing and nudging, and a hubbub of
whispered directions, had succeeded in packing all her family into the
two great pews. With astonishing suddenness the erstwhile empty church
had become a crowded building. All Windlecombe was there, every woman or
girl in her new Whitsuntide bonnet and gay new cotton frock.
And now the bell stopped; a few late stragglers came hurrying up the
path, and into the rustling silence of the church with but
half-restrained momentum; a sonorous Amen came from the south porch; the
little harmonium uplifted its voice afar off in the chancel; the
white-robed choristers began to pour up the nave, singing as they went;
the curate followed, and last of all the old vicar, as upright as any,
with his sure, unfaltering stride. No stranger, seeing him keep the true
centre of the way, and pass unhesitatingly to his desk in the chancel,
would have dreamed that he walked in almost utter darkness; nor when he
faced about, and began the service with that deep-toned serene voice of
his, did any one of us believe it, though we had known him all our lives.
Not a word halted, not a word went awry. Only when the time for the
Bible lessons came did he give place to his helper; and even at these
times we were not always delivered over to the sad-voiced, diffident
curate. How much of the Bible he knew by heart not even he himself could
say; but often he would come down to the lectern, and with a face of
inspiration turned upon us, recite the whole lesson as though he who
wrote it ages back stood whispering at his side. Many a time, as he
ceased, and turned back to his chancel seat with unerring step, and every
man fetched his breath in the silence, I have marvelled at the force of
habit that, when all hearts were inwardly exclaiming, could hold us mute
of voice.
The same thought came to me when, a little later, he stood in the pulpit,
his deep tones rumbling in the rafters over our heads; and most of all it
pressed itself upon me when, at close of the long service, I beheld him
afar off in the radiant flower-garden of the sanctuary, a towering white
figure, with arm uplifted, nebulous, uncertain, in the multitudinous
lights. But, with the thought, came always a kind of fear, a sensation
that we were all living recklessly outside our defences, going our ways
like children sheltered, aided, and irresponsible:—what would happen to
Windlecombe, and to us all, when the strong arm failed and the voice no
longer guided? At these times my comfort was always in a word of Susan
Angel’s, spoken with a cheery, quiet conviction from behind her rows of
sweetstuff bottles and knick-knack trays. With her young, almost girlish
eyes shining out of her crabbed, ancient face, she pointed a
knitting-needle at me for emphasis.
‘Depend on ’t, my dear,’ said she, ‘’a wunt goo far, when th’ call comes.
Him as has christened, an’ married, ay! an’ buried well-nigh all i’ th’
place, an’ been more ’n a faather to us, what ’ud ’a be doin’ aloane up
there i’ the skies? Na, na! Man or sperit, ’a belongs to Windlecombe.
Here ’a’s treasure be, an’ here ’a’ll bide.’