... Forty years ago the
life of this church was rising on this very night, with a hum as of an
approaching multitude, from hour to hour, brightening and quickening as
it came, up to the glory of the Midnight Mass, the crowded church,
alight from end to end, the smell of bog and bay in the air, soon to be
met and crowned by the savour of incense-smoke; and the world of spirit,
too, quickened about them; and the angels (she thought) came down from
Heaven, as men up from the City round about, to greet Him who is King of
both angels and men.
And now, in this new England, the church, empty of the Divine Presence,
was emptying, too, of its human visitors. She could hear great doors
somewhere crash together, and the reverberation roll beneath the stone
vaulting. It would empty soon, desolate and dark; and so it would be
all night.... Why did not the very stones cry out?
Mistress Alice touched her on the arm.
"We must be going," she said. "They are closing the church."
IV
She had a long talk with Robin on Christmas night.
The day had passed, making strange impressions on her, which she could
not understand. Partly it was the contrast between the homely
associations of the Feast, begun, as it was for her, with the mass
before dawn--the room at the top of the widow's house was crowded all
the while she was there--between these associations and the
unfamiliarity of the place. She had felt curiously apart from all that
she saw that day in the streets--the patrolling groups, the singers, the
monstrous-headed mummers (of whom companies went about all day), two or
three glimpses of important City festivities, the garlands that
decorated many of the houses.
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