The usual weekly congregation being now complete, the bell stopped. The harmonium gave out one low, sonorous note, which on weekdays was the beginning and end of its share in the service. For the next twenty minutes, no other sound drifted over to me but the clucking and whistling of the starlings on the chancel roof. And then, having become again immersed in the affair of the yew and almond trees, both now alike steeped by the setting sun in the same rose-red dye, I was startled by a hand on my arm. The Reverend stood at my side, ruddy-faced, red-bearded, the very blackness of his clothes changed mysteriously to the like glowing hue. His kind eyes looked straight into mine, just as if he could see them.
‘A fine evening, isn’t it?’ he said, ‘just one rich flood of crimson without form—only a great light spreading up the sky from where the sun has disappeared; spreading up and gradually paling and changing until there is nothing but pure blue, with one silver peg of a star sticking in it—is it not so?’
‘Why, no, it is not quite that,’ said I, considering, ‘the star is there sure enough, and the great red light. But the red does not merge into blue, it melts gradually into a wonderful, luminous, metallic green, with the star, almost white, swimming in the midst of it. Far overhead the sky is blue enough, and up there more stars are blinking out every moment. But the green! If you could only see its—’
‘Snow!’ interrupted the old vicar placidly.
‘What!’
‘Snow. Wind first, a gale perhaps; and then the snow. You will see. What says the almond-tree here?’
‘It says,’ I contended, ‘but one word. Spring!—abounding new life and growth; sunshine kindling stronger and stronger every day; the winter gone and already half forgotten. With every pink bloom it promises nightingales, and white flannels and straw hats and—’
‘Ah! And you never will grow up now: you’re too old. The almond-blossom?—it lies in my memory always side by side with the snowdrop and the Christmas-rose. Snow-flowers, all three! Wait a little, and be convinced. But now look, and tell me which way the chimney-smoke is blowing.’
‘Blowing! There is not a breath of—’
There was more than a breath down there in the fair-way of the combe, although here we could feel nothing of it. Under the deep red dusk I could make out the smoke-plumes from the village chimneys all driving off at a sharp right-angle to the south. Even as I looked, there came a sudden flaw of wind overhead that set the yew boughs rocking, and its voice was the old-remembered voice. The north wind again! Somewhere in its black tangled depths the yew-tree creaked derisively. The Reverend put his arm through mine.