Only a Cross of shame,
Two stark crosses between.
All in the April evening,
April airs were abroad;
I saw the sheep with their lambs,
And thought on the Lamb of God.”
April was in the room when she ended—April, full of the passionate hope and the heart-break that make each spring an agony of resurrection. She heard the lambs cry as they turned in at the gate of Dockerneuk fold. She heard Dixon’s call to his dog and the quick reply. The soft spring air wrapped her round; the quiet night came up; the hills sank. And still the lambs called and cried.
Christian heard the blackbird that sings every evening on Crump lawn all through the spring. Just at dusk it starts, sweet as a harp-string, and you dare not shut your ears though it tear the very heart out of you. All you have lost it tells you, and all you have hoped for and may never find.
And Deborah thought of young grass springing on the land—of the smell of the brown earth turned by the plough, of the rooks swaggering bravely in the furrows behind the horses, fearing the servitors of their spring-feast no more than a human the fingers round a sacramental cup. And later, when the plough was idle, and the ploughman gone home, they, too, would turn home to Crump.
Out on the drive, Rishwald’s chauffeur started his engine with the hardihood of despair, and Mrs. Slinker’s spell was broken. The great person bade everybody else a hurried adieu in order to spare her a long moment of farewell.