A perfect summer day with a strong south wind; a cloudless blue sky blown pale, a summer sun blown cool, deep draughts of refreshing air to man and horse, clear definition of red-tile roof and conical oast, perfect colour of soft ash-green trees. In the evening, fourteen black swifts rushing together through the upper atmosphere with shrill cries, sometimes aside and on the tip of one wing, with a whirl descending, a black trail, to the tiled ridge they dwell in. Fine weather after this.
A swooning August day, with a hot east wind, from which there is no escape, which gives no air to the chest—you breathe and are not satisfied with the inspiration; it does not fill; there is no life in the killed atmosphere. It is a vacuum of heat, and yet the strong hot wind bends the trees, and the tall firs wrestle with it as they did with Sinis, the Pine-bender, bowed down and rebounding as if they would whirl their cones away like a catapult. Masses of air are moving by, and yet there is none to breathe. No escape in the shadow of hedge or wood, or in the darkened room; darkness excludes the heat that comes with light, but the heat of the oven-wind cannot be shut out. Some monstrous dragon of the Chinese sky pants his fiery breath upon us, and the brown grass stalks threaten to catch flame in the field. The grain of wheat that was full of juice dries hard in the ears, and water is no more good for thirst. There is not a cloud in the sky; but at night there is heavy rain, and the flowers are beaten down. There is a thunder-wind that blows at intervals when great clouds are visibly gathering over the hayfield. It is almost a calm; but from time to time a breath comes, and a low mournful cry sounds in the hollow farmhouse—the windows and doors are open, and the men and women have gone out to make hasty help in the hay ere the storm—a mournful cry in the hollow house, as unhappy a note as if it were soaked February.
In April, six miles away in the valley, a vast cloud came down with swan-shot of hail, black as blackest smoke, overwhelming house and wood, all gone and mixed with the sky; and behind the mass there followed a white cloud, sunlit, dragging along the ground like a cumulus fallen to the earth. At sunset the sky cleared, and under the glowing rim of the sun a golden wind drove the host of vapour before it, scattering it to the right and left. Large pieces caught and tore themselves in the trees of the forest, and one curved fragment hurled from the ridge fell in the narrow coombe, lit up as it came down with golden sunset rays, standing out bright against the shadowed wood. Down it came slowly as it were with outstretched arms, both to fall, carrying the coloured light of the sky to the very surface of the earth.
[THE COUNTRY SUNDAY]
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Roses bloomed on every bush, and some of the great hawthorns up which the briars had climbed seemed all flowers. The white and pink-white petals of the June roses adhered all over them, almost as if they had been artificially gummed or papered on so as to hide the leaves. Such a profusion of wild-rose bloom is rarely seen. On the Sunday morning, as on a week-day morning, they were entirely unnoticed, and might be said in their turn to take no heed of the sanctified character of the day. With a rush like a sudden thought the white-barred eave-swallows came down the arid road and rose again into the air as easily as a man dives into the water. Dark specks beneath the white summer clouds, the swifts, the black albatross of our skies, moved on their unwearied wings. Like the albatross that floats over the ocean and sleeps on the wing, the swift's scimitar-like pinions are careless of repose. Once now and then they came down to earth, not, as might be supposed, to the mansion or the church tower, but to the low tiled roof of an ancient cottage which they fancied for their home. Kings sometimes affect to mix with their subjects; these birds that aspire to the extreme height of the air frequently nest in the roof of a despised tenement, inhabited by an old woman who never sees them. The corn was green and tall, the hops looked well, the foxglove was stirring, the delicious atmosphere of summer, sun-laden and scented, filled the deep valleys; a morning of the richest beauty and deepest repose. All things reposed but man, and man is so busy with his vulgar aims that it quite dawns upon many people as a wonderful surprise how still nature is on a Sunday morning. Nature is absolutely still every day of the week, and proceeds with the most absolute indifference to days and dates.
The sharp metallic clangour of a bell went bang, bang, bang, from one roof; not far distant a harsher and deeper note—some Tartar-like bell of universal uproar—hammered away. At intervals came the distant chimes of three distinct village churches—ding dong, dong ding, pango, frango, jango—very much jango—bang, clatter, clash—a humming vibration and dreadful stir. The country world was up in arms, I was about to say—I mean in chimney-pot hat and pomade, en route to its various creeds, some to one bell, some to another, some to ding dong, and some to dong ding; but the most of them directed their steps towards a silent chapel. This great building, plain beyond plainness, stood beside a fir copse, from which in the summer morning there floated an exquisite fragrance of pine. If all the angles of the architects could have been put together, nothing could have been designed more utterly opposite to the graceful curve of the fir tree than this red-bricked crass building. Bethel Chapel combined everything that could be imagined contrary to the spirit of nature, which undulates. The largest erection of the kind, it was evidently meant for a large congregation.
Of all the people in this country there are none so devout as the cottagers in the lanes and hamlets. They are as uncompromising as the sectaries who smashed the images and trampled on the pride of kings in the days of Charles I. The translation of the Bible cut off Charles I.'s head by letting loose such a flood of iron-fisted controversy, and to any one who has read the pamphlets of those days the resemblance is constantly suggested. John Bunyan wrote about the Pilgrim. To this chapel there came every Sunday morning a man and his wife, ten miles on foot from their cottage home in a distant village. The hottest summer day or the coldest winter Sunday made no difference; they tramped through dust, and they tramped through slush and mire; they were pilgrims every week. A grimly real religion, as concrete and as much a fact as a stone wall; a sort of horse's faith going along the furrow unquestioning. In their own village there were many chapels, and at least one church, but these did not suffice. The doctrine at Bethel was the one saving doctrine, and there they went. There were dozens who came from lesser distances quite as regularly, the men in their black coats and high hats, big fellows that did not look ungainly till they dressed themselves up; women as red as turkey-cocks, panting and puffing; crowds of children making the road odorous with the smell of pomade; the boys with their hair too long behind; the girls with vile white stockings, all out of drawing, and without a touch that could be construed into a national costume—the cheap shoddy shop in the country lane. All with an expression of Sunday goodness: 'To-day we are good, we are going to chapel, and we mean to stay till the very last word. We have got our wives and families with us, and woe be to any of them if they dare to look for a bird's nest! This is business.' Besides the foot people there come plenty in traps and pony-carriages, and some on horseback, for a certain class of farmers belong to the same persuasion, and there are well-to-do people in the crowd. It is the cast of mind that makes the worshipper, not the worldly position.
It is written, but perhaps it is not true, that in old times—not very old times—the parish clergyman had a legal right, by which every person in the parish was compelled to appear once on a Sunday in the church. Those who did not come were fined a shilling.