"True as true, dear. Some day I shall take you to see for yourself."
We know a dip in a dingle where the woodcutters have left a log among
the hazels, and here, having wheeled Guy into a dappling of sunny discs
and leaf-shadows in a grassy bay, we sat down on the log, and talked in
an undertone. Our failure to find the Oak-men's church reminded me of
the old legends of lost and invisible churches, the bells of which are
heard ringing under the snow, or in the depths of the woods, or far
away in burning deserts, or fathom-deep beneath the blue sea; but the
pilgrim or the chance wayfarer who has heard the music of the bells has
never succeeded in discovering the way that leads to the lost church.
It is on the clear night of St. John's Day, the longest day of the
year, or on the last hour of Christmas Eve, that these bells are heard
pealing most sweet and clear.
It was in this way that we came to tell Christian legends and to talk
of saints and hermits, of old abbeys and minsters, of visions and
miracles and the ministry of Angels. Guy, W. V. thought, might be
able, if only he could speak, to tell us much about heaven and the
Angels; it was so short a time since he left them. She herself had
quite forgotten, but, then--deprecatingly--it was so long and long and
long ago; "eight years, a long time for me."
The faith and the strange vivid daydreams of the Middle Ages were a new
world into which she was being led along enchanted footpaths; quite
different from the worldly world of the "Old Romans," and of English
history; more real it seemed and more credible, for all its wonders,
than the world of elves and water-maidens. Delightful as it was, it
was scarce believable that fairies ever carried a little girl up above
the tree-tops and swung her in the air from one to another; but when
St. Catherine of Siena was a little child, and went to be a hermit in
the woods, and got terribly frightened, and lost her way, and sat down
to cry, the Angels, you know, did really and truly waft her up on their
wings and carried her to the valley of Fontebranda, which was very near
home. And when she was quite a little thing and used to say her
prayers going up to bed, the Angels would come to her and just "whip"
her right up the stairs in an instant!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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