III
The Shadow of the Cross
III
The churchyard of our parish lies in a deep hollow, and a little river half encircles it. In the midst of it stands the church beneath whose shadow the parish has garnered its dead for centuries. There the generations have lain down to sleep, their hearts reconciled one to another, and the beadle has drawn the coverlet of green over them. As he goes about his allotted task he pats a mound here and there gently with the back of his spade—for roadman and belted earl are at one here.
The last time I wandered down to the hollow it seemed as if eternal peace brooded over the living and the dead. The leaves, russet and gold, glowed in the sunlight. At the stirring of a gentle breeze, like the dropping of a sea-bird's feather, leaf after leaf fluttered silently down on the graves. The great bank of trees across the river glowed with rivulets of dull flames running hither and thither. In its stony bed the river sang its endless song. The immemorial yews, beneath whose branches successive generations of children have played with now and then a thrill of pleasing terror because of the overhanging graves, stood regardless of the sun. The crows, sated with the gleanings of harvest fields, fluttered in their rookeries with scarcely a caw. It seemed as if no sound of discord or strife could ever break in that enchanted hollow.
As I turned away to retrace my steps through the gate I came on a woman sitting on the mort-safe, a handkerchief moist with her tears in her hand. She had come up from the quarries and she had visited her dead. And she came because yesterday she received word that on the battlefield of Marne her son was killed. He was her eldest. The others were not old enough yet to fight. Her husband was killed in an accident, and she had reared her children, refusing all help from the parish. The pride of the blood sustained her. And now that her son was dead she came hither, driven by an irresistible instinct to visit her husband's grave. It was as if she wanted to tell him about John, and how he died a hero, trying to carry a wounded comrade through the hail of the shrapnel.
She was weary, and from her husband's grave she turned to the church. She would go and sit in the corner under the gallery, where John used to sit. He had sat with her there at his first Communion. The memories wrapped her round, and she would feel her son near her there. But the door of the church was locked and barred. With an added ache in her heart she turned away, and weariness compelled her to sit on the iron mort-safe, which the parish provided in a former century to protect their dead from sacrilegious hands. "But the church used to be open," I said. "Aye," she replied tremulously, gathering up her handkerchief into a round ball; "but some did-na like it; the boots on the week-days are na sae clean, and they dirtied the kirk. That must be why they lockit the door." It was not that she complained. Those who locked the church were wise men, and no doubt they knew best. So she sat on the mort-safe.
"I have other sons, and when they are older they will go, too," she said. "I'll no' keep them back. And if they die it'll be for God's great cause." Her lips quivered as she spoke. The moist ball in the right hand was clenched tight—there were no more tears to shed.