Nor, when at the conclusion of the service the Bishop and clergy, the choir and the whole congregation flocked down to the west end of the nave for the traditional singing of “Now thank we all our God,” did he know that his presence with them all was one of the chief causes of their thanksgiving. But when the Bishop had blessed them, and the clergy and choir had turned to go to their vestries, he did what no Dean had ever done before and moving to the west door stood there to greet the people as they went out. To break with tradition in this manner was unlike him, for he revered tradition, yet he found himself moving to the west door.
He had no idea that quite so many people as this came to the Cathedral on Christmas Eve. Surely nearly the whole city was here. Most of them only dared to smile at him shyly as they passed by, but some bolder spirits spoke to him, saying they were glad he was better and returning his good wishes when he wished them a happy Christmas. To his astonished delight almost all those who in the last few months had become so especially dear to him, like his own small flock of sheep, were among those who gave him a special greeting.
Bella was there, in her cherry-red outfit, clasping her doll. “She would come,” her grandmother whispered to him, “though it’s long past her bedtime, and she would bring her doll. I knew it was not right but I could not prevent it.” Mrs. Havelock was looking extremely tired and the Dean took her hand to reassure her. Bella, who had been looking as smugly solid as a stationary robin, suddenly became airborne, and darted off into the night. Mrs. Havelock, abruptly dropping the Dean’s hand, fled in pursuit.
Mr. Penny was here, not identifying the Dean in his robes with Lear’s fool, and bowing very shyly as he passed, and Ruth with her wise, calm smile and little Miss Throstle of the umbrella shop. Albert Lee was there, borne along by the crowd as an integral part of it and quite comfortable in his nonentity, and yet bold as well as comfortable, for he was one of those who paused to wish the Dean a happy Christmas. Polly and Job were there, as he had known they would be, but they smiled at him as though from a vast distance, and he was glad of it. They were in their own world. Polly wore her bonnet with the cherry-colored ribbons and her left hand lay on Job’s right arm in the traditional manner of those who are walking out. She had left her glove off on purpose that the world might see her ring.
With them was Miss Peabody, looking not so much ill as convalescent. She was one of those for whom despair, to which she had lived so near for so long, had receded during the reading of the Christmas gospel. Yet she would have slipped past the Dean unnoticed had he not stopped her and taken her hand. “A happy Christmas, Miss Peabody,” he said cheerfully, as though there had been no clock. “I am obliged to you for coming tonight. Much obliged. God bless you.”
But the one he had most wished to see, Isaac, was not there. As he walked home he was deeply unhappy. Isaac and Elaine, he feared, he had loved only to their hurt, and he prayed God to forgive him.
Back in the Deanery again there were many matters to attend to and it was not until late in the evening that he went to his study to finish writing his Christmas sermon. He turned back to the beginning of it, to refresh his mind as to what he had already written, and as he read he was in despair. It was a terrible sermon for its Christmas purpose of joy and love. It was academic, abstruse, verbose. Why was it that he could write a book but could not write a sermon? He told himself that a sermon was a thing of personal contact, and in personal contacts he had always failed most miserably. Already, as he turned the pages of this most wretched sermon, he could feel the wave of boredom and dislike that always seemed to beat up in his face when he tried to preach, and he shrank miserably within himself. Nevertheless the sermon had to be written and it had to be preached and he picked up his pen, dipped it in the ink and began to write.
But presently he found to his dismay that he could not see what he wrote. He turned back to the earlier pages and found they were as blurred as the page of the Gospels had been when he stood in the lectern. He realized that he was too tired to prepare this sermon, too tired even to sit here any longer at his desk. Fear took hold of him. This dimming of his sight had not mattered this evening, for he had known what he had to say, but in the pulpit it would be fatal. He had never been able to preach in any other way than by reading aloud from the written page. The gospel he had known by heart. “By heart.” It seemed to his bewilderment and fatigue as though a voice had spoken. A great simplicity had come into his life these last months, a grace that had been given to him with the friendship of humble people. Could he tomorrow preach from his heart and not his intellect? Could he look upon his heart with his inward eyes and speak what he found written upon it? A man’s heart was the tablet of God, who wrote upon it what He willed. He took up the manuscript of his sermon and tore it across, flinging the fragments into the wastepaper basket.
Then he lit the candle that stood upon a side table, put out the lamp and went out into the darkened hall. When there was much work to be done he often went to bed very late and by his command no servant waited up for him. He climbed the stairs slowly with his candle, and as he climbed the clamor of the bells broke out once more. It was midnight, the hour of Christ’s birth. At the top of the stairs there was a window. He put his candle down on the sill and stood for a moment in prayer. Then he opened the old casement a few inches and the sound of the bells swept in to him on a breath of cold air. He closed the window again and saw that a snowflake lay on his hand.
2.
He slept deeply that night, a thing he had not done for months past, then woke at his usual early hour, dressed and made his meditation. Then he left the house for the first service of Christmas Day. As he closed the garden door behind him he stood in amazement. He had stepped not into the expected darkness but into light. It was neither the sun nor moon but of the snow. The sky was a cold clear green behind the dark mass of the Cathedral, the wind had dropped and the stillness was absolute. The snow was not deep but it covered the garden with light. He moved forward a few steps and looked about him. The roof of the Cathedral, every parapet and ledge, the roofs of the houses and the boughs of the trees all bore their glory of snow. He walked slowly through the garden in awe and joy, thinking of the myriad of snowflakes under his feet, each one a cluster of beautiful shapes of stars and flowers and leaves, all too small to be seen by any eye except that of their Creator, yet each giving light. That was why he always wanted a white Christmas. Almighty God had been so small, as small as the crystal of a snowflake in comparison with the universe that He had made. “Such light!” murmured the Dean as he opened the door into the Cathedral. “Such light!”
In the Cathedral it was still dark, for he was very early, as he liked to be, and only the lights in the sanctuary were as yet lit, but he could have found his way about the Cathedral blindfold. He went into the chantry of the Duchess Blanche and knelt down and as he began his prayer he found that light was in his mind and spirit. The darkness of yesterday had been taken from him.
3.
After breakfast Elaine stood in the drawing room, one hand on the mantelpiece, looking down into the fire, steeling herself for the moment between breakfast and matins, when she and Adam always gave each other their Christmas presents. She never knew what to give him, for he had no hobbies apart from this recent rather ridiculous one of horology, and he was indifferent to what he ate. This year she had a book of travel for him which she had chosen at Joshua Appleby’s bookshop. If he did not like the reading matter it was at least a book, and she believed that he liked books not only for their contents but for their shape and feel. She had seen him touch and turn their pages as though each one were a unique thing of beauty, like the petal of a flower. She had only noticed this just lately, during his illness. There were many things about him that she had not noticed until just lately. But even more difficult than her gift to him was his to her. Once again she would have to simulate pleasure at sight of some trinket that she would never be able to wear. Her beauty being her raison d’être it was
impossible for her to desecrate it by some jewel that was not in keeping with its perfection. Adam’s taste in clothes and jewels was atrocious.
He came in and she gave him his book and saw that she had truly pleased him. “The Isles of Greece, Elaine,” he said as he turned the pages. “You have remembered how I went there as a young man. My dear, I love you for it.” She had not remembered but she smiled very sweetly at him and accepted his tribute. When sensitive apprehensions were attributed to her she was always able to appropriate them quickly. It was part of her charm.
Adam laid the book aside and now it was her turn. Her heart sank. But he produced no jeweler’s velvet case from his pocket, instead he said to her, “My dear, I have no real gift for you this year. I must tell you why.” Then he told her about the celestial clock, describing its beauty, telling her that by some mischance it had fallen and been broken. “There is only the fret left,” he said. “I am so sorry that it is all I have to give you.”
He put it into her hands and she carried it to the window and gave an exclamation of pleasure, so delighted was she to find it was nothing she might be expected to wear. The Dean was startled. She stood in the wonderful snowlight, which could not dim her beauty but only enhance it, and on her face was the look of pleasure he had longed to see, called there by the fragment of a broken clock. Truly there was no understanding women. He did not try to understand. She was pleased and he was content to love her beauty and her pleasure.
“I am so sorry the clock was broken, Adam,” she said, “but I like this fret. I shall use it as a paperweight.” She looked at him with a smile. “It will help me not to lose my letters as I did Ruth’s. The bells have started. I must put on my things.”
“I’ll wait here for you, my dear,” said the Dean. “We will go together.”
Waiting for her he had a moment of panic about his sermon but he put it from him. What a peculiar thing the mind was. Yesterday had been full of darkness and distress, both pressing sorely upon him, but today he was happy and at peace, and though physical malaise never left him now it seemed pleasantly relaxed, like a hand that has relinquished its grip though not its hold.
Elaine came back wrapped in her furs and this time, instead of going through the garden, they went out into the Close, to look at the wonder of the live avenue under snow. The sun shone now in a cloudless blue sky and the splendor of the white world awed even Elaine. All over the city the bells were ringing and the shining silence of the white snow seemed to answer them. They walked slowly toward the south door along a path swept clear of snow. On either side it was piled in miniature snow mountains, silver-crested and pooled with azure. “We used to have white Christmases like this when I was a boy,” said the Dean with satisfaction.
“How do you feel today, Adam?” asked Elaine. She was already beginning to dread his sermon and there was genuine anxiety in her voice.
“I feel very well,” he answered. “Do you remember our walking through the garden together yesterday evening? You gave me strength, my dear, when you put your hand in mine. It is so, through every touch of love, that God strengthens us.”
They had reached the south door and Hochicorn was beaming and bowing beside his brazier. The Dean stopped to speak to him and Elaine went on into the Cathedral. Although she was looking superbly beautiful in her sables and holly-green velvet her progress to her seat lacked something of its usual dramatic perfection. It was graceful but unstudied and Mary Montague, in her usual place in her Bath chair, noticed it. “Did she feel Adam’s illness at all?” she wondered. “Can the wells have broken? No, not yet, but the wind has changed.”
The congregation in the Cathedral on Christmas morning at matins was not the large one of Christmas Eve, when the carol service was the only one in the city. It was the usual Sunday congregation, but larger than was customary because it was Christmas Day. It was a distinguished congregation, containing all the elite of the city. As the Dean walked in procession to his stall past the long rows of well-dressed, well-fed people, his nose was assailed by delicate perfumes, the scent of rich furs and shoe polish, and in spite of his happiness panic rose in him again, and this time he could not subdue it. How could he have imagined that he could preach a simple extempore sermon to people such as these? They would be outraged. He would bring shame upon the Bishop and his learned brethren of the chapter, upon the Cathedral and upon Elaine. He did not know how to preach extempore. Nervous and anxious as he always was when he had to speak in public, he had never attempted such a thing. He was so dismayed that by the time he reached the choir his hands were clammy and trembling. Then, as he settled into the Dean’s stall like a statue into its niche, reassurance came to him from the great joyous Cathedral. He was as much a humble part of it as the shepherd under the miserere seat, as the knights on their tombs and the saints and angels in the windows, as the very stones and beams of its structure. They all had their function to perform in its Christmas adoration and not the humblest or the least would be allowed to fall.
As the Te Deum soared to the roof, to the sky, and took wings to the four corners of the earth, he felt himself built into the fabric of the singing stones and the shouting exulting figures all about him. The stamping of the unicorns, the roaring of the lions and the noise the angels made with their trumpets and cymbals almost drowned the thunder of the organ. The knights sang on their tombs and the saints in their windows, and the men and boys and birds were singing under the miserere seats. Adam Ayscough was not surprised. He had had a similar experience long ago as a child, although until this moment he had forgotten it. The human brain was an organ of limitation. It restricted a grown man’s consciousness of the exterior world to what was practically useful to him. It was like prison walls. Without them possibly he could not have concentrated sufficiently upon the task he had to do. But in childhood and old age the prison walls were of cloudy stuff and there were occasional rents in them.
The tremendous music sang on in him after the Te Deum had ended but it did not prevent him from doing efficiently all that he had to do. He made the right responses, he walked to the lectern to read the second lesson and returned to his stall again, and during the hymn before the sermon he knelt in his stall to pray as he always did. But today he did not pray for strength to mount the huge pulpit under the sounding board, for he hardly remembered it. He prayed for the city.
Yet when he was in the pulpit he instinctively steeled himself against that wave of boredom and resignation that always rose and broke over him when he stood above the distant congregation like Punch on his stage. It did not come. There was no distance. They were all as close to him as his own body. His sight was better today and he looked down at them for a moment; at Elaine in her pew, her head bent and her hands in her muff, at Mary Montague in her Bath chair, at Mr. Penny over to his right, quite close to him. The knot in Mr. Penny’s handkerchief had done all that was asked of it and Mr. Penny sat in the midst of his flock, Miss Peabody on his right and Job and Polly on his left. He was looking up at the Dean in a state of rapture and bland attention. He had not had to preach himself this morning. It was years since he had had the pleasure of listening to another man’s sermon and he was enjoying himself. The Dean forgot all about the well-dressed critical men and women who had so alarmed him while he walked past them. He suddenly remembered Letitia and it was to this old shepherd that he preached his last Christmas sermon.
He took his text from Dean Rollard’s psalm, the sixty-eighth, “God is the Lord by whom we escape death.” He spoke of love, and a child could have understood him. He said that only in the manger and upon the cross is love seen in its maturity, for upon earth the mighty strength of love has been unveiled once only. On earth, among men, it is seldom more than a seed in the hearts of those who choose it. If it grows at all it is no more than a stunted and sometimes harmful thing, for its true growth and purging are beyond death. There it learns to pour itself out until it has no self left to pour. Then, in the hollow of God’s hand into which it has
emptied itself, it is His own to all eternity. If there were no life beyond death, argued the Dean, there could be no perfecting of love, and no God, since He is Himself that life and love. It is by love alone that we escape death, and love alone is our surety for eternal life. If there were no springtime there would be no seeds. The small brown shell, the seed of an apple tree in bloom, is evidence for the sunshine and the singing of the birds.
He came down from the pulpit and walked back to his stall and fitted comfortably into his niche in the fabric. Presently, when the last hymn had been sung, he went up to the altar and blessed the people.
4.
All over the city men and women and children poured out of the chapels and churches exclaiming at the beauty of the day. It all looked as pretty as a picture, they said. The frost kept the sparkling snow from slipping away from roofs and chimney pots, but it was not too cold to spoil the sunshine. There was no wind. On their way home, whenever a distant view opened out, they could pause and enjoy it without having to shiver. The stretch of the snow-covered fen almost took their breath away, it was so beautiful under the blue arc of the sky. It was like the sea when it turns to silver under the dazzle of the sun. When they turned and looked up at the Cathedral its snow-covered towers seemed to rise to an immeasurable height. Then a wonderful fragrance assailed their nostrils. In steam-filled kitchen the windows had been opened now that the day was warming up. The turkey and baked potatoes and plum puddings were also warming up and in another forty minutes would have reached the peak of their perfection. Abruptly Christmas Day swung over like a tossed coin. The silver and blue of bells and hymns and angels went down with a bang and was replaced by the red and gold of flaming plum puddings and candled trees. Everyone hurried home as quickly as he could.