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.
