The Chapel on the Hill

by Alfred Pretor

For example. To a lad who had lapsed into vice with the hot-headedness of youth, he was a kindly adviser; but hard as the nether millstone to the lad’s father, when he found he had ejected the prodigal from house and home, and then taken credit to himself for having re-adjusted his household with the wisdom of Solomon.

Of his boldness in dealing with the difficulties of his creed, I had a notable experience in the summer days that were with us.

The evening was an exceptionally warm one, and he and I were lingering till late on the terrace, watching them carry the last loads of hay from the glebe that lay beyond the Rectory stream. Everyone was working his hardest, for it was clear to the least experienced eye that the fine weather was nearing its end. Thick rain clouds were gathering in the west, and occasionally dull muffled roars, heralded by distant flashes, ran round us on the level of the horizon.

The Rector, I thought, looked perturbed and anxious. At last he spoke. “I detest more than I can say that new machine which my tenant has introduced this year.” And he pointed to what looked like a threshing-machine that was piling the hay from a huge elevator on to the rick. “Of course it saves labour, but I’m sure it’s most horribly dangerous. It gives the men not a moment of peace to secure their footing, which is never too safe. If they stop for an instant, their work overpowers them. And what with the dust and the noise, and the hay-cloud in which they are buried, I wonder we’ve got along so far without an accident. It isn’t fair to ask a man to work under such conditions. Of course with a threshing-machine it’s different. The straw delivers itself slowly, giving the men time to place and arrange it.”

All at once, and even as he was speaking, the din was suddenly hushed by the stoppage of the engine, and a silence, all the more palpable for the tumult that preceded it, fell on the crowd of busy workers.

The scene of intense unresting energy had been transformed in a moment into a still picture of arrested life. Like figures that the wand of some Arabian magician had charmed into statues, each labourer stood rigid at his post, except in the immediate neighbourhood of the rick where the nearest of them had gathered and closed round something that lay prone and motionless on the ground. Only the voice of the engine was heard through the stillness, where it stood panting under a full head of steam, as if in protest against the indignity which had so abruptly arrested its forces.

“Something of what I feared,” said the Rector, who was already leaving my side. “Pray God not the worst. Will you wait for me here? Later on you may be able to help me. But for the moment I had better go to them alone. As yet, you see, you are a stranger among us, but one, I am sure, who will soon be a friend.”

“‘The only son of his mother, and she was a widow,’” I heard him whispering on his return, “and, what is more, the best of sons.”

“It was Harry Hayman,” he added aloud, “the lad I loved most in all the village, a splendid type of what is noblest and manliest in our country rustics. And the accident has happened precisely as I had expected. The boy had his station at the edge of the rick where the pressure is keenest and most dangerous, and at the last it overpowered him. He had called to them—just one minute too late, and I’m afraid in angry words—to stop the engine. Another victim to the press and hurry of existence, which counts a life well lost to save a load of hay. But you and I must see what comfort we can give to his mother. Thank Heaven, he was a good and blameless lad, and ‘as the tree falls there it lies,’ which means, I take it, nothing more than that death has worked no violent change on him, and that he has started anew with what advantage he had gained from a useful and unselfish life.”

The cottage for which we were bound stood at the edge of the village, midway between the Rectory garden and the scene of the accident. And as we crossed the Rectory bridge, intermittent flashes from the clouds that had gathered overhead threw into strong relief the half-completed rick, the engine that still sent upwards a thin thread of smoke, with the gaunt elevator at its side, out of which the wind flung casual wisps of hay, as if in futile effort to continue its arrested task.