Adela Cathcart, vol 1 | Page 8

of Christmas Day. And no one who had
seen her at dinner on Christmas Eve, would have expected to see her at
breakfast on Christmas-morn. Yet although her absence was rather a
relief, such a gloom occupied her place, that our party was anything but
cheerful. But the world about us was happy enough, not merely at its
unseen heart of fire, but on its wintered countenance--evidently to all
men. It was not "to hide her guilty front," as Milton says, in the first
two--and the least worthy--stanzas on the Nativity, that the earth wooed
the gentle air for innocent snow, but to put on the best smile and the
loveliest dress that the cold time and her suffering state would allow, in

welcome of the Lord of the snow and the summer. I thought of the lines
from Crashaw's Hymn of the Nativity--Crashaw, who always suggested
to me Shelley turned a Catholic Priest:
"I saw the curled drops, soft and slow, Come hovering o'er the place's
head, Offering their whitest sheets of snow, To furnish the fair infant's
bed. Forbear, said I, be not too bold: Your fleece is white, but 'tis too
cold."
And as the sun shone rosy with mist, I naturally thought of the next
following stanza of the same hymn:
"I saw the obsequious seraphim Their rosy fleece of fire bestow; For
well they now can spare their wings, Since Heaven itself lies here
below. Well done! said I; but are you sure Your down, so warm, will
pass for pure?"
Adela, pale face and all, was down in time for church; and she and the
colonel and I walked to it together by the meadow path, where, on each
side, the green grass was peeping up through the glittering frost. For the
colonel, notwithstanding his last night's outbreak upon the clergy, had a
profound respect for them, and considered church-going one of those
military duties which belonged to every honest soldier and gentleman.
Percy had found employment elsewhere.
It was a blessed little church that, standing in a little meadow
church-yard, with a low strong ancient tower, and great buttresses that
put one in mind of the rock of ages, and a mighty still river that flowed
past the tower end, and a picturesque, straggling, well-to-do parsonage
at the chancel end. The church was nearly covered with ivy, and looked
as if it had grown out of the churchyard, to be ready for the poor folks,
as soon as they got up again, to praise God in. But it had stood a long
time, and none of them came, and the praise of the living must be a
poor thing to the praise of the dead, notwithstanding all that the
Psalmist says. So the church got disheartened, and drooped, and now
looked very old and grey-headed. It could not get itself filled with
praise enough.--And into this old, and quaint, and weary but
stout-hearted church, we went that bright winter morning, to hear about

a baby. My heart was full enough before I left it.
Old Mr. Venables read the service with a voice and manner far more
memorial of departed dinners than of joys to come; but I sat--little
heeding the service, I confess--with my mind full of thoughts that made
me glad.
Now all my glad thoughts came to me through a hole in the tower-door.
For the door was far in a shadowy retreat, and in the irregular
lozenge-shaped hole in it, there was a piece of coarse thick glass of a
deep yellow. And through this yellow glass the sun shone. And the cold
shine of the winter sun was changed into the warm glory of summer by
the magic of that bit of glass.
Now when I saw the glow first, I thought without thinking, that it came
from some inner place, some shrine of old, or some ancient tomb in the
chancel of the church--forgetting the points of the compass--where one
might pray as in the penetralia of the temple; and I gazed on it as the
pilgrim might gaze upon the lamp-light oozing from the cavern of the
Holy Sepulchre. But some one opened the door, and the clear light of
the Christmas morn broke upon the pavement, and swept away the
summer splendour.--The door was to the outside.--And I said to myself:
All the doors that lead inwards to the secret place of the Most High, are
doors outwards--out of self--out of smallness--out of wrong. And these
were some of the thoughts that came to me through the hole in the door,
and made me forget the service, which Mr. Venables mumbled like a
nicely cooked sweetbread.
But another voice broke the film that shrouded the ears of my brain,
and the words became inspired and alive, and