The Chapel on the Hill

by Alfred Pretor

I have told you, I think, something of the position of the Manor House. But of its greatest, and perhaps unique attraction, I have said nothing. In olden times a monastery of large dimensions had held possession of the ground that lay between the Manor House and the Rectory. Of this the Refectory was the only perfect fragment, a magnificent vaulted building just visible from the Manor House windows where it lay in the valley beneath. Built of some fine grey stone that had taken to itself all the colouring of which lichens are capable, it was tinted now with soft-toned yellows in every possible gradation, and, in the sunlight of an autumn evening, literally glowed in the warmth of the reflected rays. Only a barn now, and the labourers who went in and out of it, to store and stack the produce of the glebe, never bethought themselves of the glory from which it had fallen.

The river that brought us the Rectory trout lower down in its course had been arrested on its way by the monks, and formed a lake, with a tree-clad island in the midst, from which they supplied themselves with Lenten fare. On the ground that rose between the lake and the Manor, scattered fragments of ruins—here an unsupported arch, hard by a standing column or fragment of wall—with sarcophagi, at intervals, that had been removed from their niches and desecrated of their contents, all testified to the power and wide extent of the original community. These ruins lay within the precincts of the Manor House. But just outside the boundary, on the summit of an adjoining hill, there rose into the thin air the wondrous shape of a tiny chapel, beside the perfection of which even the Refectory itself looked coarse and material. Coloured by a growth of lichen of the same soft tones, and with all its delicate tracery untouched by the lapse of some five hundred years, it seemed the product of some fairy hand. But the hand must have known its business well, for, in spite of the delicate workmanship, every needless point and pinnacle had been rigidly cut down, that the gales which fell full upon it from the broad Atlantic might find no grip or holding ground. Even the buttresses and gargoyles had been allowed no useless ornamentation or finish; all the adornment had wisely been lavished on the interior. It had been fashioned in one single nave, and the fans which sprang from the columns on either side gave a lightness and delicacy to the roof that minuter decoration would have only impaired, while a tiny tower, uprising at the end that over-looked the sea and pierced by a narrow winding stair, supplied just what was needed to break the monotony of the exterior outline.

It was to this wondrous place, I found, that the birthday festivities were directed.

As evening approached, all who were to take part in the ceremonial assembled at the Refectory. In what took place within, no outsider was allowed to participate. But at eight o’clock, and just as the moon was rising, a long procession of robed and cowled monks issued from the building, and holding, each of them, a lantern in his hand, entered on the slow and winding ascent that led to the chapel on the hill. And as they wended their way round and round the grass-clad cone, their voices came to us in slow and solemn hymns for the sailors on the sea. The course of time had been reversed, and once again, as in the days when the chapel was built, we saw re-enacted before us the ritual for which it was intended. It was difficult even for ourselves, who knew well and intimately every one of those cowled monks, to believe that we were not living five centuries before our time, and assisting once again in a ceremonial that, in the early days of the monastery, must have taken place again and again when storm and tempest were raging. Only to-night there was no storm and tempest. The necessities of modern comfort and convention had so far interfered with the celebration, that it was re-enacted at a time when the chief requirements for its enactment were obtrusively wanting. And when the summit of the hill had been reached, we watched and waited till the final development came.

On a sudden from the tower that crowned the chapel a light flashed out and burned steadily from a brazier on its summit. Any sailors who were voyaging along that calm and moonlit sea must have been startled by a light that warned them they were approaching a rough and inhospitable coast, of which, in a brightness that was clear as the day, no ship could by any possibility have been ignorant, unless the look-out had been hopelessly and disgracefully incapable.

The light burned on for an hour, then vanished.

And the festivities of Gertie’s birthday were ended.

* * * * *

I was beginning to descend the hill among the more belated of the revellers, when a gentle hand was laid on my shoulder, and I turned and saw Marion.

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you, Harold,” she said, “but in all the crowd and confusion you were undiscoverable. Birthday festivities for Gertie, and birthday festivities for you and me, dear—the birthday of our love.”