(Long, but worth it.)
They were at the door to the Merryweather pew, exactly underneath the pulpit, and Sir Benjamin was motioning to her to follow Miss Heliotrope inside. He followed her and shut the door with a click, and now she couldn't see anything of the church any more, except the roof and the tops of the arches and the upper part of the pulpit, for so high were its walls that the pew was like a little room.
There was space on the cushioned seat that ran along the back wall for quite a family; a father and mother and ten children could have sat upon it in a row quite easily, Maria thought, so long as some of the children were quite tiny. And when she came to count the hassocks that stood in a row in front of the seat, she noted that there were twelve of them in order of size -- a great big one for the father of the family, and a tiny one, hardly bigger than a toadstool, for the youngest child. A broad shelf ran the length of the wall opposite the seat, broad enough for the father and the sons to put their hats on and the mother and daughters their reticules and parasols.
It was all, in fact, most comfortable and homelike, and kneeling down upon a medium-sized hassock, letting her muff swing on its chain, and laying her prayer-book upon the shelf in front of her, she covered her face with her mittened hands and was glad, because in this pew, as well as in the manor-house, she felt that she had come home.
"All people that on earth do dwell, sing to the Lord with cheerful voice.'
The tremendous voice pealing out over her head nearly made her jump out of her skin. It sounded like a great trumpet annoucing the end of the world, and she scrambled up from her knees in alarm, almost expecting to see the roof of the church splitting open like a peapod and the blue sky above rolling up like a scroll to let the angels down. But it wasn't anything of that sort. It was only the Parson announcing the first hymn.
But what a noise! She had thought Sir Benjamin had a powerful voice, but it was nothing to the Parson's. And at first sight she had thought Sir Benjamin an odd-looking elderly gentleman, but in oddness he couldn't hold a candle to the old man in the pulpit. Standing just below him, quite collected and demure again now, her muff still swinging on its chain, and her mittened hands holding her prayer-book, she looked straight up into his face and he looked straight down into hers with a keen searching look rather like Sir Benjamin's when they had first met. He gave a flashing smile, and she smiled back, and from that moment Maria Merryweather and the Parson of Silverydew were firm friends.
But there was no doubt about it, he was a very extraordinary old man, more like a scarecrow than anything else. He was very tall and very thin, and he had a brown clean-shaven weatherbeaten face, fine and keen and proud, and beautifully shaped brown hands with very long fingers, and snow-white hair that nearly touched his shoulders. He wore a black cassock and white bands beneath his chin.
He must have been very old, yet the dark eyes beneath his busy white eyebrows flashed fire, and his voice -- well, for power and volume it was enough to waken the dead. It was wonderfully clear-cut and articulate too, with just the faintest trace of some foreign intonation that gave it charm and originality. He gesticulated with his hands when he spoke, so that they seemed speaking too.
'Now then, good people of Silverydew,' he cried, his flashing eyes passing over the packed congregation, 'with all your hearts and souls and voices sing praises.' Then he raised his head and glanced at the choir in the gallery. 'And you up there, keep in tune for the love of God.'
Then he suddenly whisked up a fiddle from somewhere inside the pulpit, tucked it under his chin, raised his right arm with the bow claped in his thin brown fingers, brought it down upon the strings with super artistry, and swung his people into the winging splendour of the Old Hundredth, with something of the dash and fire of a cavalry officer leading his men to the charge.
What a row! Up in the gallery the fiddlers and the cellists and Digweed played like men possessed. Though she could not see them, Maria could picture their red perspiring faces, and their arms sawing back and forth, and their shining eyes almost popping out of their heads with eagerness and joy. And every man and woman and child in the congregation was singing at the top of his or her voice.
Maria herself sang till her throat ached, with Sir Benjamin upon one side of her bellowing like a foghorn and Miss Heliotripe upon the other trilling like a nightingale. Miss Heliotrope's trilling astonished Maria. She had never heard Miss Heliotrope trill before. She hadn't even known she could trill.
And it seemed to Maria, her imagination running riot to a shocking extent, that beyond the walls of the church she could hear all the birds in the valley singing, and the flowers singing, and the sheep and deer and rabbits singing in the park and woods and fields, and up on the slopes of the great hills. And somewhere the waves of the sea that she had not seen yet were rolling into Merryweather Bay, and crying Amen as they broke upon the shore.
And up there in the tall pulpit stood the Parson playing the fiddle as Maria had never heard a fiddle played before, and never would again, because no one in all the world ever had, or ever would, play the fiddle as superbly as the Parson of Silverydew.
The hymn ended and, with a soft rustling of the Sunday skirts and petticoats and a creaking of the seams of Sunday coats that were a bit too tight, the congregation sank upon its knees, with the Old Parson, laying aside his violin and standing very straight with his lean brown hands clasped upon his chest, closed his eyes, lifted his head and began to pray, his tremendous voice slightly lowered now, but so clear and true that if any members of his congregation missed a word here and there no excuse could be made for them unless they were stone deaf.
Maria had never heard anyone pray like this Old Parson, and the way that he did it made her tremble all over with awe and joy. For he talked to God as if he were not only up in heaven, but standing beside him in the pulpit. And not only standing beside him but beside every man, woman, and child in the church -- God came alive for Maria as he prayed, and she was so excited and so happy that she could hardly draw her breath.
And when the Old Parson read the Bible to his people, he did not read it in the sing-song sort of way that the parsons in London had read it, a way that made one want to go to sleep. He read it as though it were tremendously exciting; dispatches dictated on a battlefield, or a letter written only yesterday and bringing great news. And when he preached, taking as his subject the glorious beauty of the world, and the necessity for praising God for it every moment of the day or else standing convicted of an ingratitude so deep that it was too dreadful even to be spoken of, it was as thrilling as a thunderstorm. In London Maria had always thought about her clothes in the sermon or taken an interest in other members of the congregation, but today she only patted the pleats in her pelisse and stroked her muff a very few times, and only once craned her neck in a futile attempt to see a little something over the top of the pew door.
Maria listenend spellbound. And when they sang the last hymn, in a way that almost lifted the roof off, she found that she was not tired at all, but feeling as fresh as when the service had started.
After the last Amen had died away, the Old Parson climbed down from the pulpit, and went striding down the aisle, to stand at the west porch and greet his people as they filed out past him. Maria had never seen a parson do this before. But then she had never seen any parson in the least like this old man, or attended any service in the least like this one. Nothing in this enchanted valley seemed in the least like anything anywhere else.
