Able
to manage it because it was so far to come and they didn't have much
money to spend; but now at last she had brought her and was showing her
everything.
Glancing at the girl who stood listening but with no sign of interest
in her face, I remarked that her daughter would perhaps hardly think
the journey had been worth taking.
"Why do you say that?" she quickly demanded.
"Oh well," I replied, "because Chilmorton can't have much to interest a
girl living in a town." Then I foolishly went on to say what I thought
of Chilmorton. The musty taste of that warm soda-water was still in my
mouth and made me use some pretty strong words.
At that she flared up and desired me to know that in spite of what I
thought it Chilmorton was the sweetest, dearest village in England;
that she was born there and hoped to be buried in its churchyard where
her parents were lying, and her grandparents and many others of her
family. She was thirty-six years old now, she said, and would perhaps
live to be an old woman, but it would make her miserable for all the
rest of her life if she thought she would have to lie in the earth at a
distance from Chilmorton.
During this speech I began to think of the soft reply it would now be
necessary for me to make, when, having finished speaking, she called
sharply to her daughter, "Come, we've others to see yet," and, followed
by the girl, walked briskly away without so much as a good-bye, or even
a glance!
Oh you poor foolish woman, thought I; why take it to heart like that!
and I was sorry and laughed a little as I went back down the street. It
was beginning to wake up now! A man in his shirt sleeves and without a
hat, a big angry man, was furiously hunting a rebellious pig all round
a small field adjoining a cottage, trying to corner it; he swore and
shouted, and out of the cottage came a frowsy-looking girl in a ragged
gown with her hair hanging all over her face, to help him with the pig.
A little further on I caught sight of yet another human being, a tall
gaunt old woman in cap and shawl, who came out of a cottage and moved
feebly towards a pile of faggots a few yards from the door. Just as she
got to the pile I passed, and she slowly turned and gazed at me out of
her dim old eyes. Her wrinkled face was the colour of ashes and was
like the face of a corpse, still bearing on it the marks of suffering
endured for many miserable years. And these three were the only
inhabitants I saw on my way down the street.
At the end of the village the street broadened to a clean white road
with high ancient hedgerow elms on either side, their upper branches
meeting and forming a green canopy over it. As soon as I got to the
trees I stopped and dismounted to enjoy the delightful sensation the
shade produced: there out of its power I could best appreciate the sun
shining in splendour on the wide green hilly earth and in the green
translucent foliage above my head. In the upper branches a blackbird
was trolling out his music in his usual careless leisurely manner; when
I stopped under it the singing was suspended for half a minute or so,
then resumed, but in a lower key, which made it seem softer, sweeter,
inexpressibly beautiful.
There are beautiful moments in our converse with nature when all the
avenues by which nature comes to our souls seem one, when hearing and
seeing and smelling and feeling are one sense, when the sweet sound
that falls from a bird, is but the blue of heaven, the green of earth,
and the golden sunshine made audible.
Such a moment was mine, as I stood under the elms listening to the
blackbird. And looking back up the village street I thought of the
woman in the churchyard, her sun-parched eager face, her questioning
eyes and friendly smile: what was the secret of its attraction? - what
did that face say to me or remind me of? - what did it suggest?
Now it was plain enough. She was still a child at heart, in spite of
those marks of time and toil on her countenance, still full of wonder
and delight at this wonderful world of Chilmorton set amidst its
limestone hills, under the wide blue sky - this poor squalid little
village where I couldn't get a cup of tea!
It was the child surviving in her which had attracted and puzzled me;
it does not often shine through the dulling veil of years so brightly.
And as she now appeared to me as a child in heart I could picture her
as a child in years, in her little cotton frock and thin bare legs, a
sunburnt little girl of eight, with the wide-eyed, eager, half-shy,
half-trustful look, asking you, as the child ever asks, what you
think? - what you feel? It was a wonderful world, and the world was the
village, its streets of gritstone houses, the people living in them,
the comedies and tragedies of their lives and deaths, and burials in
the churchyard with grass and flowers to grow over them by-and-by. And
the church; - I think its interior must have seemed vaster, more
beautiful and sublime to her wondering little soul than the greatest
cathedral can be to us. I think that our admiration for the loveliest
blooms - the orchids and roses and chrysanthemums at our great annual
shows - is a poor languid feeling compared to what she experienced at
the sight of any common flower of the field.
