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 peacock and the kitten in the make-up of many of them; but
Whitsuntide reveals this.
The peacock in them manifests itself as they strut up and down in new
clothing of brilliant dye, affecting an unconsciousness and unconcern
which deceives nobody. 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
fashion. 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 fashionable 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 sunshine, 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 cocks crowed lustily 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
Fawkshill after the morning service I felt sure that there need be no
misgiving about the dryness of the grass 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 Yorkshire or
Lancashire 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 assume 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 God.
A wee lassie 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 association inclined to look distrustfully upon Dissent, but that
child's lispingly tuneful prayer taught me that I was in the House of
God; for surely I know at the heart of me that neither in the Catholic
mountain nor the Anglican Jerusalem is God solely to be worshipped, 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.
Without a pause the sweet voice went on:
"Let my sins be all forgiven;
Bless the friends I love so well;
Take me, when I die, to 'eaven,
'Appy there with Thee to dwell."
Amen and amen, dear little Lucy! Surely no stain of sin as yet has
darkened your soul, but the thought of the good Lord who "forgiveth
iniquity, transgression and sin" cannot come to us too soon. Let it
sink into the plastic wax of your memory and your heart, and harden
into certainty, and then when the time comes for you to die--whether
the day be near or distant--it will be well with you, "happy there with
Thee to dwell!"
There were other solos, but none which moved me like this of little
Lucy's, and there were recitations by two of the boys which affected an
entirely different compartment of my emotions.
They were highly moral pieces, I know, and they exhorted us to a course
of conduct which must have been beneficial if followed; the trouble was
that the eye had so much employment that the ear was neglected and so
missed its opportunities.
Each boy licked his lips vigorously to start with, and then glued his
eyes upon one fixed spot, as if he saw the words in bold type there.
If he did, an invisible compositor had set them up in the west window
for the one lad, and on a corner of the ceiling for the other. The
swiftness with which the words came out reminded me of a brakeless
gramophone running at top speed; and it made the performers gasp for
breath, which they dared hardly stop to renew lest memory should take
wings and fly away. I am sure I was relieved when the final bob to the
congregation was reached and the contortions ended.
The address was tedious, like the prayer, but fortunately it was not
long; then the preacher came in to tea, it being Mother Hubbard's turn
to entertain him.
The chapel people take the preachers according to an arranged plan with
which they are all familiar. My old lady regards the privilege as in
the nature of a heavenly endowment, and she has more than once reminded
me that those who show hospitality to God's ministers sometimes
entertain angels unawares. No doubt that is so, but the wings were
very, very inconspicuous in the one who ate our buttered toast that
Sunday.
All the same he is, I am sure, a very good man, and a man of large and
cheerful self-sacrifice which calls for admiration and respect, and I
do sincerely honour him; and it is no fault of his that his great big
hands are deeply seamed over their entire surface, and that the
crevices are filled with black. He works, I discovered, at an
iron-foundry, and I believe his hands were really as clean as soap and
water could make them. But when all has been said, he need not have
spread them over all the plate whenever he helped himself to another
slice of bread, and he might just as well have taken the first piece he
touched. I suppose I am squeamish, but I cannot help it. I found some
amusement in pressing him to eat all he had touched, however, and
seeing that he did it.
His conversation was chiefly remarkable for the use he made of the
phrase "as it were." Mother Hubbard regards him as a genius, but I
doubt if he is anything more than an intelligent eccentric. It must
have been his flow of language which got him "on the plan" that is to
say, into the ranks of the local preachers of the Wesleyan Church--for,
like the brook, he could "go on for ever."
He is a tall, heavy man, perhaps fifty years of age, with a mass of
hair upon his head but none upon his face, except where thick eyebrows
hang like brushwood over the twin caverns of his eyes. As he speaks he
raises his right hand and holds the palm towards you, moving it slowly
to and fro for emphasis, and he measures his words as he goes along.
He was describing his experiences in a new chapel where he had recently
preached, a gothic building, "more like a church, as it were, than a
chapel."
"Ah yes, Mrs. Hubbard," he said (he never addressed me direct, perhaps
because he suspected that I was not one of the confraternity), "I
always mistrust a chapel with a spire to it; and the spirit of
Methodism, as it were, cannot dwell in transepts or chancels. There is
not the heartiness, not the freedom, which we associate with our
chapels. The air is heavy, as it were, with the spirit of
sacerdotalism. Why, ma'am, at this particular chapel--church, they
call it--they had choir stalls, filled with men and boys, and a
liturgical service, as it were. Ah yes! No sound of 'Hallelujah!' or
'Praise the Lord!' escaped the lips of the devout worshipper. They
were stifled stillborn, as it were. It was cold, ma'am, cold and
formal; John Wesley would never have found his heart strangely warmed
in such an atmosphere. No!
"And yet, ma'am, there was something in the arrangements that stirred
my feelings, as it were. Here, on my right hand, were grouped the
scholars; children in the springtime of life, as it were. Yes! it was
a moving sight, ma'am, to a man of feeling." (I wickedly thought of
his hands.) "Life was before them--spread out like a map, as it were,
with nothing but the outline; or like a copy-book which would be soiled
and disfigured with many blots, as it were, before the end was reached.
Yes!
"And on my left were the elders of the flock, gathered there, I was
told, because the acoustic properties, as it were, are excellent in the
transepts: the grey-headed sires, who had almost fought through the
battle and were now awaiting the recall, as it were. Men and women in
the late evening of life, as it were, who would soon pass behind the
sunset.
"And in front of me were the middle-aged, those who were bearing the
burden and heat of the day, as it were. Yes! labourers in life's
vineyard; earning their bread in the sweat of their brow, going forth
to their work until the evening, as it were.
"Yes! And as I looked upon them, young and middle-aged and old, I said
to myself in the language of the preacher: 'All go unto one place; all
are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.'--Ecclesiastes iii. 20,
ma'am."
I got up and went into the garden, and filled my nostrils with the
fragrance which earth was sending to heaven--as it were--and felt
better.
Whit Monday was a hard day for me. After dinner my Easter experiences
were repeated, and sitters came thick and fast. I really believe my
work is giving satisfaction, for some of my last holiday customers had
sent their friends to be "taken"; and some called themselves to say
"How d'ye do?"
Nothing eventful transpired, however, and no Cynic turned up to disturb
the serenity of my temper with sarcastic observations upon women, so I
climbed the hill at the back of the house and joined the merry throng
of school-children who were having a jolly time with their elders in a
field at the top. And there I forgot my tiredness, and romped for a
couple of hours with the wildest of them, having as much of the kitten
in me as most folk.
When the red had finally died out of the western sky the dustman came
round, and the eyes of the little ones grew heavy. But the grown-ups
were enjoying themselves far too much to think of leaving so soon, so I
gathered the infants around me and told them all the wonderful stories
which had been locked away in the dusty cabinets of my memory. Not the
ordinary nursery tales, which are as well known in Windyridge as in
Westminster, but some of the simpler records of Greek mythology, and
extracts from the lives of the saints.
Little Lucy came and laid her head upon my shoulder and asked if it was
all true. I tried to show her the truth that was hidden in the
make-believe, but I fear with small success. Her eyelids were held
open with difficulty as she continued to question me.
"Is comets true?"
"Comets?" I inquired; "what do you know of comets?" (One is about due
now, and the children are on the tip-toe of excitement.)
"Dada says they has long tails, an' runs up an' down the sky when I'se
asleep, like little mouseys."
"You are not afraid of them, are you?" I asked.
"Dunno. I think I is afraid of them, but I always asks God."
"What do you say?" I ventured.
The little head was growing heavier, and it was a very sleepy voice
that murmured:
"God bless ev'ybody ... an' don't let them be 'ungry, so they won't die
... until You makes 'em ... 'cept it be comets an' things."
Now what could anybody make of that? I carried the child home, and she
did not wake when I undressed her and put her to bed.