EASTER IN OUR VILLAGE.
WE all try to get back to our village for Easter Day. The circle of the city's lights seems imprisoning then. There is a call from the skies, from the earth—the glow of angels' wings, the colour and stir of primroses. Our gardens are in our thoughts, and we are anxious to give their flowers as lavishly as may 1* to the decoration of our church, the little village shrine of our childhood that holds our earliest memories of the year's festivals. We seek to deck with the sweetness of spring its eleventh-century stones, to put our flowers on its altar—a symbol of resurrection and life.
It is the evidence of our own gardens that helps o bring home to us the significance of Easter Day. We think of our gardens reverently enough during the hymn, but in sermon time we notice that the gardener at the "Big House" has a new tulip this year ; that the daffodils from Tweenways are quite as fine as usual ; and that our own narcissi are really finer than those on the pulpit steps sent from the Scilly Isles by a sailor son of Red Gables.
This year everything was so belated that we feared we might have to buy flowers for the church—" And that would scarcely be reverent," as Miss Sally Browne justly says. Bu. with moss spread over the window-sills, and a single vase of jonquils on each, and by leaving the font unadorned, we managed to make the chancel and the pulpit and the reading-desk beautiful, and even to find posies for the corners of the choir pews. The spring triumphed, though a shy and chilly spring.
On Easter Day our rector conducts all the services unassisted— first ringing the bell. The village is puzzled by our hermit rector. No woman's foot ever crosses his threshold, and he "does for" himself so determinedly that. the village housewives say in a dismayed whisper : "What must his kitchen be like ? " But we all admit that selfishness and neglect of duty are not his faults. This Easter Eve, it is spoken low, after a hard week of pastoral duty—broken by work in his potato-field—he went so tired to bed that he feared sleeping past the first service, and so lay awake all night—staring into moonlight and snow-covered trees.
Most of us go to an early service, and all of us, of course, at eleven o'clock. Waite the rector pulls the bell we settle down to notice the local changes that have taken place while we have been war-working in London. How delightful our flowers look, how well our organist plays the violin in a duet with the school- mistress who takes his place at the organ.
From the three hundred and ninety families in our village we have sent a hundred men to fight. We have our on Roll of Honour, and our own proud memories and hopes this day. We have our wistful longings, our desire for personal sacrifice too— for not all of us can go, and not all of us help, it seems. Roger, the publican's son, for example, eighteen and humpbacked, finds the sight of the King's uniform a bitterness he cannot bear. There is Miss Sally Browne, who comes to church in a bath-chair, and can turn her head a little from side to side, but make no other motion with her bcdy, nor hold the half-crown that she puts in the collection-box by the hand of her little niece. She can patiently endure her own lot in life—sad just a little that she cannot knit
for our soldiers—even enjoying some days ; but the thought of young Redmayne lying shot through the spine, and facing an invalid's life at twenty, is more than she can speak of. And there are one or two elderly gentlemen, not of military age or strength, who find that digging and planting to produce vegetables instead of the flowers they delight in are a poor expression of what they feel, Mr. Prothcro notwithstanding. . . . Mrs. Ryan has her V.A.D. daughter with her for the day, we are glad to see. It is just a year since her boy was killed. Mrs. Parker has a new bonnet, the gift no doubt of one of her five soldier sons. "Three of them arc officers," Mrs. Parker says, referring to the corporal and two sergeant-majors, '" and all are over six feet." The mother of two sergeant-majors ! Can human pride want further ?
All our big houses are represented : old Colonel Peters and his wife, whose great adventure was being detained for eight months at Nauheim after war broke out ; the newcomer of the place, Mrs. Morley, of Deep Dykes ; and the little Quail girls, who as they enter their pew snake a reverence to the altar that is almost Popish. Sir John married a Roman Catholic, a Frenchwoman.
We all want. to hear what the rector thinks of Mrs. Morley.
He has called first, of course. Old houses must have new owners, but we naturally have a little feeling for old Manby, who has lived fifty-one years in Deep Dykes Lodge, and is loth, but determined, to go from it now that "the Master" is dead and strangers are in possession. Mrs. Morley, elderly and in mourning, looks pleasant, but it was surely a little unnecessary of her to have had the pond drained. It never made the house too damp for "the Family." Her husband is an invalid, but she might have waited—a newcomer.
The hymn is given out, and the choir march very slowly and circumspectly up the aisle, six boys and—charming war innovation —six little girls in red cloaks and hoods, very proud and very shy ; and Widgeon, the grocer, and Banbury, a pallid London butler now in khaki, and three other men, and our rector. . . . The service is cheerful, and the rector preaches a strong sermon, we think, even if we wander from it a moment now and again.
Outside in the churchyard we agree that we have had the most delightful Easter morning that we can recall, and feel sorry for any one in London on such a fine day, even if the season is a little late, and in spite of grand music. Mrs. Parker is heard to remark that she doesn't hold with violins in church ; but Mr. Argus, poor thing, wanted to show that he could play it as well as the organ, and for once it didn't matter—Easter being a sort of holiday freer than other Sundays. Mrs. Morley passes, and we say : "Have you heard what the rector thinks of her ? She was at early service too. . . Yes, I shall call presently, of course. It was strange of her to drain the pond—at least without waiting a little. From Hertford, is she ? A daughter of R,edmayne's cousin, somebody said, or else a daughter of hers married a Red- mayne perhaps—she looks nice. I do feel sorry for Manby, poor old fellow. Of course the pond is hers now ; but it has always been there, and one regrets changes."
"I wonder if you've met Mrs. Morley ? " a neighbour says who comes in to lunch. "You have heard of her draining the pond at Deep Dykes, of course ? Old Manby is so distressed ; he says he can't stay on any longer at the Lodge. She need not have been in so great a hurry. I'm afraid I thought the violin unnecessary ; but, then, the cottag,ers like it. . . . Yes, we're putting down an extra acre of potatoes ; Ninetyfold and Wonders do best in our soil. Perhaps Mrs. Morley is going to plant potatoes in the hollow where the pond was ? It seems a little unwise to do it at once. She attended both services—seven and eleven. Have you td barley kernels for pudding ? Not very nice, so they go further. I thought the rector particularly strong this morning ; such a pity he lives alone—and what his kitchen must be like ! "
Later we look at our backward garden and pull up a nettle or two. Then we take the dogs for a walk. The sun is bright, but there is more than a touch of winter in the air. Scarcely a primrose is to be found in the copses, and we content ourselves with pussy- willow, and fall with rapture upon a single celandine by the roadside. In the woods the dogs poach unashamed, and Gulen, the West Highlander, Later has his dreams disturbed by a surfeit of rabbit. There is little colour. The trees are bare, but the hedges are quick- ening with crimson buds, and the sloping hills are faintly green.
We look at the misty distance, the fair and rolling country, the winding roads soon to be leafy and joyous with resurgent life, the peaceful farms with the smoke curling up from their chimneys. For this we fight, these happy fields, this woody hollow, yonder stream. This is the country that comes in dreams, and in the dream of death to exiled hearts ; these the sounds, dear and familiar, that in devastated France make faint the noise of battle to dying English ears. To see it once again, to love it and hold it anyhow— living or dying. . . .
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