It was the Sunday before Christmas of the year 1894. No coach had come
to Bridnorth for three weeks. The snow which had fallen there was still
lying six inches deep all over the countryside and on the roads where it
had been beaten down at all, was as hard as ice. Footmarks had mottled
it. It shone in the sun like the skin of a snow leopard.
The hills around Bridnorth and all the fields as far as eye could see
were washed the purest white. Every hedge had its mantle, every tree
and every branch its sleeves of snow. The whole world seemed buried.
Scarce one dark object was to be seen. Only the sea stretched dark and
gray like ice water, the little waves in that still air there was,
falling on the beach with the brittle noises of breaking glass.
Only for this, a silence had fallen everywhere. Footsteps made no sound.
The birds were hidden in the hearts of the hedges and even when hunger
drew them forth in search of berries, it was without noise they went, in
swift, dipping flights--a dark thing flashing by, no more.
Every one put on goloshes to climb or descend the hill to church. The
Vicar and his wife came stepping over from the Vicarage close by like a
pair of storks and when the bell stopped ringing it was as though
another cloak of silence had been flung over Bridnorth village. The
Vicar felt that additional silence as acutely as any one. It seemed to
him it fell to prepare the way for worship in the house of God and the
sermon he was about to preach.
The attendance that morning was no different from what it would have
been had the roads been clear. Going to church in the country is a
comfortable habit. At their midday meal afterwards the subject of the
attendance would crop up at the Vicar's table as it always did, ever
full of interest as is the subject of the booking-office returns to a
theatrical manager. He would congratulate himself upon the numbers he
had seen below him from that eminence of the pulpit and would have been
hurt beyond degree had any one suggested it was largely habit that
brought them there.
The Throgmorton family would no more have thought of staying away
because of the weather than they would have thought of turning the two
portraits in the dining-room with their faces to the wall.
They collected in the square hall of the square, white house. They put
on their gloves and their goloshes; they held their prayer books in
their hands; they each looked for the last time to see that their
threepenny bits were safe in the palms of their gloves. Then they set
off.
The church in the country is a meeting place in a sense other than that
of worship. You may desire at most times the quietness of your own
home, but you like to see the world about you in a public place.
They worshipped God, those people in Bridnorth. Who could hope to
maintain that they did not? They were close enough to Him in all
conscience and fact on those Devon hills. But that worship was more in
the silence of their own hearts, more on the floor at their own bedside
than ever it was at the service conducted by the Vicar as so many
services are conducted by so many Vicars in so many parishes throughout
the length and breadth of the whole country.
The interest of seeing a fresh face, of even seeing an old face if it be
under a new hat; the mere interest of human contact, of exchanging a
word as they went in or mildly criticizing as they came out; the mild
necessity of listening to what the Vicar said from the pulpit, the
sterner necessity of trying to understand what he meant; the excitement
of wearing a new frock, the speculations upon the new frock worn by
another, these were more the causes of a good attendance in the worst of
weather, these and that same consciousness of being overlooked, of
having one's conduct under the gaze of all who chose to satisfy
themselves about it.
As the Vicar climbed the pulpit steps, the congregation settled
themselves down with that moving in their pews with all customary signs
of that spirit of patience every priest believes to be one of interest.
Leaning her square, strong shoulders against the upright back of the
Throgmorton pew, Mary composed her mind with mild attention. Fanny
shifted her hassock to the most restful position for her feet. That
sharp interrogative look of criticism drew itself out in the line of
Jane's lips and steadied itself in her eyes. Hannah was the only one
upon whose face a rapt expression fell. With all her gray hair and her
forty years, she was the youngest of them all, still cherishing her
ideals of the infallible priest in the man of cloth; still believing
that the voice of God could speak even through the inferior brain of a
country Vicar. Above all there were her children who the next morning
would ask her what the sermon meant. It was necessary if only for their
sakes she should not lose a word that was said.
After that pause on his knees when the Vicar's head was bent in prayer,
he rose to his feet and, as he spread out the pages of his sermon before
him, cast a significant glance around the church. This was preliminary
to every sermon he preached. It was as though he said--"I cannot have
any signs of inattention. If your minds have wandered at all during the
service, they must wander no more. I feel I have got something to say
which is vital to all of you."
All this happened that December morning, just as it had occurred every
morning for the twenty years he had been the shepherd of their souls.
It was almost as long as Mary could remember.
Having cast that glance about him, he cleared his throat--the same
sounds as Jane once caustically remarked they had heard one thousand
times, allowing two Sundays in the year for a _locum tenens_.
Then he gave out his text: "And the Angel said unto her--'Fear not,
Mary, for thou hast found favor with God.'"