Richard had gone by the early morning train. “I am so sorry not to see you to say good-bye,” he wrote. “You must not forget your promise to write, and remember to tell me all the news of the parish.” He enclosed his address.
ELEVEN: BEFORE THE SWALLOW DARES
Easter was over, but the church at Dry Coulter was still full of the scent of flowers mingled with the odour of their corruption. A necklace of decayed marsh-mallows hung forlornly round the neck of the eagle; its brazen beak held a bunch of wilted cowslips, but the daffodils and narcissus on the altar still breathed out their perfume. Easter was over, and Mr. Dunnock heaved a sigh of relief for he had come to feel the church festivals a great strain upon him.
Easter was over; Mrs. Pattle marched up the aisle on her flat feet and began tearing down the flowers which her children had gathered three days before.
Mr. Dunnock walked by the little pathway from the vestry to his wife’s grave, and stood there looking at the headstone. He stayed there so long and stood so still that a robin, recognizing a friend in him, came to perch on his shoulder.
“The resurrection of the flesh has come to pass,” Mr. Dunnock said aloud. “These ones come to me and they commune with me; why does she alone delay?”
At last a cow lowing on the other side of the hedge, interrupted the clergyman’s reverie; he started slightly and coming to himself began to pull his beard with a gesture of despair, and the robin, who had been wondering if he could induce his wife to nest in it, flew off to a tombstone, disappointed.
“I live in two worlds,” Mr. Dunnock reflected. “Only the saints know how terrible the strain of such an experience can be. I cannot bear it much longer; something will break in me. My head aches when I am recalled from the contemplation of so much glory to the pettiness in which men live, their eyes on the ground and their ears stopped to the voices of the angels. I cannot endure it any longer; it would be better, I think, if I were to live alone.” He clutched at his head suddenly, and then walked rapidly from the churchyard towards the vicarage. But the song of a willow wren caught his ear as he passed under the elms, and he paused to listen. The clear top note was followed by a stream of softer sounds and ended with a cadence of lower notes, a touch of melancholy in which the vicar felt his own heart expressed. The bird sang, and sang again, and Mr. Dunnock, resting his shoulder against the rough bark of an elm, listened without seeing the approach of two village women, or noticing their inquisitive glances as they passed near him, or hearing their words, for, in answer to a nudge, one of them had protested to her companion: “Oh, dear me, Fanny. Don’t.”
They were silent for fear of laughing, but when they had passed the vicar, one of them said: “Maggie told me she couldn’t make anything of his sermon on Easter Sunday. It was all about Easter Eggs being the promise of glory. She didn’t know what he meant by it.”
But the women did not laugh, and soon turned to safer and more interesting topics of conversation.