I shall never forget my first Sunday in the country.
Sundays at home had been rather miserable. Mrs. Moody went to a meeting somewhere, wearing a big black hat, and came back in a bad mood. Mummy nearly always stayed in bed all the morning and went out after tea. I had often found it a long, lonely, boring day.
But here everyone dressed up in their brightest and best clothes, and I learned to my surprise that we were all going to church. We set out at a quarter to eleven along a muddy footpath that led through fields, with the birds singing in the mist. Peter had gone ahead with his father, and I was glad of that for I really disliked him very much indeed. Janet skipped nearly all the way, and Johnny and Frances clung to their mother’s hands, both talking hard all the time but not expecting any answer.
I walked apart on my own, wishing I didn’t have to go to church. I was sure it would be really boring. We soon reached the wooden gate where people were waiting to greet Mrs. Owen, whom they all knew and loved. While they were chatting, I noticed something that made me gasp.
The old churchyard was covered with masses of snowdrops. I moved off to see them more closely, and forgetting everyone, I bent down to examine them. They were spotlessly white and so beautiful. They were clumped particularly thick around an old gravestone, and I started reading the words on it:
“David Davies—1810–1880. In . . .”
But the next words were completely worn away. Only with difficulty could I make out the end:
“. . . is fullness of joy.”
I had heard those words before! They were like the verse Mr. Owen had read at the tea table. What could the missing words be? Where could this “fullness of joy” be found?
But as I stood there dreaming, Janet suddenly gave me a friendly thump on the back. “Come on, Elaine,” she said. “We’re going in.”
We marched to our pew and Johnny smiled at everyone. After a certain amount of shoving and scuffling, we all settled down, and the service began.
I didn’t even try to listen. I kept repeating over to myself the words I had read in the churchyard—“fullness of joy . . . fullness of joy.”
I felt that these words held some tremendous secret, and perhaps the missing words were the key. In where, or in what, could “fullness of joy” be found? And what was “fullness of joy” anyway? Nothing I had ever known in my dull, lonely little life, and yet something I was crying out to know. Then, as I stood there, something happened. The sun pierced the mist outside, and the church was suddenly filled with a golden light, warming and blessing us all. Everyone lifted their faces in amazement at this miracle of sunlight, and I glanced at Janet, who was singing at the top of her voice.
Just for a moment I thought I knew what “fullness of joy” must be like. It would change everything, even the ugly things, and make all the ordinary things precious and beautiful. But just as I made that discovery, a cloud blew across the sun, and the church was plunged into shadow again.
By the time we came out, it was raining again, and we raced home at top speed. Cadwaller came bounding to meet us and tried to leap up and greet us with muddy paws on our best coats, and we were all very warm and rosy by the time we reached home.
After dinner it was still raining, so we settled in front of the fire to play games or read until we went out again to Sunday school at a quarter past three. The box of chocolates I had brought were handed around, and I was glad to see it, for at home my mother was always giving me sweets and chocolates, and I ate them whenever I liked. But here they seemed to appear only after Sunday dinner or around the fire after supper, and seemed a special treat.
It took a long time to decide who was to have which chocolate, but at last quiet settled over the room. I was at a table writing to Mummy, but I couldn’t think of much to say. “Dear Mummy,” I started, “please come and take me home again. I don’t like it here, and the children don’t want to play with me, and it’s horribly cold.” I sat biting my pen and gazing out into the garden, wondering what to put next. The rain was still falling, but it was a bright, thin rain with the promise of sunshine behind it. As I watched I suddenly noticed one of the brightest rainbows I’d ever seen in my life. The children round the fire with their backs to the window noticed nothing, and I did not say anything. It was my rainbow, and I wanted it to myself.
I had read stories about treasures hidden at the foot of rainbows, and the foot of this rainbow was just up the hill. It seemed to touch the earth behind an old stone wall, and although I no longer believed in fairy stories and hidden treasure, I thought it would be fun to run and stand in the light with the colors breaking all over me.
I got up quietly, shut my writing pad, and walked to the door. To my great relief, no one asked me where I was going—they were not very interested in me. My coat was hanging in the hall and I slipped it on, turned the front door handle very softly, and escaped.
I trotted up the hill feeling the soft rain on my face, with the rainbow, which was fading a little now, still ahead. By the time I reached the wall where its foot had rested, it had disappeared altogether and the sun had come out.
I stood still, looking up at the wall where the foot of the rainbow had been. It had ivy hanging over it like green curtains, and it looked secret and exciting. I followed it until it turned a corner, and then again around another corner, and this time I found a green wooden gate. By peering through the cracks in the boards, I could see a little gray stone house set in a garden, and the windows of the house were all shut tightly with dark blinds drawn down over them.
I pressed down the latch of the gate very carefully, but it was locked. The house seemed quite empty, and perhaps no one lived here. The garden where the rainbow had rested was a secret, deserted garden, and I suddenly wanted to get inside more than anything else in the world.
There were tall trees growing all around the inside of the wall with branches trailing over it. Peter and Janet would have clambered over in a minute, but to me it looked almost impossible. I wandered along, searching for footholds, and very soon I came to a hawthorn bush with a broken bit of wall behind it, and there were easy footholds. I scrambled to the top quite easily, swung on an apple bough that seemed stretched out to welcome me, and landed with a thud on the muddy lawn. It was the first time in my life I had ever tried to do anything like that, and if anyone had been watching me I wouldn’t have even dared to try.
I stood very still, rather frightened by what I had done and at first hardly dared to move. But the voices of the birds encouraged me, for the garden was full of them. It was an untidy garden covered with dead leaves. The flower beds were choked with weeds, but the snowdrops grew in clumps everywhere.
I stepped forward cautiously and examined the house. Yes, it was quite empty. The windows were locked and dark, and there were great dusty cobwebs clinging across the front door. It seemed no one had lived there for a long time.
Then I turned to the garden again, wondering just where the foot of the rainbow had rested, and suddenly I knew—there, on a rising mound of lawn, clear of leaves, where a few yellow buttercups were still curled in tight balls.
I had often seen snowdrops for sale on street carts and around the roots of trees in the parks, but I had never seen them like this. I doubted if they grew anywhere else in the world except in “my garden,” and I sat there for a long time, with the pale January sun warming my damp hair and turning the flowers a brighter gold. Never, never had I been in such a wonderful place.
Gradually I grew bolder, and I explored my kingdom from end to end. I decided to tell no one; I would come here and play all alone, and then it wouldn’t matter that I couldn’t climb trees or play their silly games. And one thing I had discovered helped me a great deal. Lying against the back of the house was a half-rotten piece of ladder, which I dragged across the lawn and propped against the wall. It took my light weight quite well, and I was able to get out of the garden quite easily.
I had no idea how long I’d been there, or what would be said about where I had been, but the sun was beginning to set behind the western hills and the birds had nearly all stopped singing. Only a late blackbird, perched on an apple tree, sang on.
“Fullness of joy” it seemed to sing, “fullness of joy . . . fullness of joy.”