A Book of Quaker Saints. L. V. Hodgkin
to an end. For, to tell the truth, she did not enjoy the Meeting that followed it at all.
Long before the hour was over she used to grow very tired of the silence and of the quiet room, tired of kicking her blue footstool (gently of course, but still kicking it) and of counting her boot buttons up and down, or else watching the hands of the clock move slowly round its big calm face. 'Church' was a more interesting place than Meeting, certainly; but then 'Church' had disadvantages of its own. Everything there was strange to Lois. It had almost frightened her, this first time. She did not know when she ought to stand up, or when she ought to kneel, and when she might sit down. Then, when the organ played and everybody stood up and sang a hymn, Lois found to her surprise that her throat was beginning to feel tight and choky. For some reason she began to wonder if father and mother were sitting in Meeting alone, and if they had quite forgotten their little girl. Two small tears gathered. In another minute they might have slipped out of the corners of her eyes, and have run down her cheeks. They might even have fallen upon the page of the hymn-book she was carefully holding upside down. And that would have been dreadful!
Happily, just in time, she looked up and saw something so beautiful above her that the two tears ran back to wherever it was they came from, in less time than it takes to tell.
For there, above her head, was a tall, pointed, glass window, high up on the wall. The glass in the window was of wonderful colours, like a rainbow:—deep purple and blue, shining gold, rich, soft red, and glowing crimson, with here and there a green that twinkled like young beech-leaves in the woods in spring. Best of all, there was one bit of purest white, with sunlight streaming through it, that shone like dazzling snow. At first Lois only noticed the colours, and the ugly black lines that separated them. She wondered why the beautiful glass was divided up into such queer shapes. There are no black lines between the colours in a real rainbow.
Gradually, however, she discovered that all the different colours meant something, that they were all part of a picture on the window, that a tall figure was standing there, looking down upon her—upon her, fidgety little Lois, kicking her scarlet hassock in the pew. But Lois was not kicking her hassock any longer. She was looking up into the grave, kind face above her on the window. 'Whoever was it? Who could it be? Was it a man or a woman? A man,' Lois thought at first, until she saw that he was wearing a robe that fell into glowing folds at his feet. 'Men never wear robes, do they? unless they are dressing-gowns. This certainly was not a dressing-gown. And what was the flat thing like a plate behind his head?' Lois had never seen either a man or a woman wear anything like that before. 'If it was a plate, how could it be fastened on? It would be sure to fall off and break. … '
The busy little mind had so much to wonder about, that Lois found it easy to sit still, until the sermon was over, as she watched the sunlight pour through the different colours in turn, making each one more beautiful and full of light as it passed.
At length the organ stopped, and the last long 'AH-MEN' had been sung. 'Church sings "AH-MEN" out loud, and Meeting says "Amen" quite gently; p'raps that's what makes the difference between them,' Lois thought to herself wisely. As soon as the last notes of music had died away, she nestled close to Aunt Isabel's side and said in an eager voice, 'What is that lovely window up there? Who is that beautiful person? I do like his face. And is it a He or a She?'
'Hush, darling!' her aunt whispered. 'Speak lower. That is a Saint, of course.'
'But what is a Saint and how do you know it is one?' the little girl whispered earnestly, pointing upwards to the tall figure through which the sunshine streamed. Aunt Isabel was busy collecting her books and she only whispered back, 'Don't you see the halo?' 'I don't know what a halo can be, but a Saint is a kind of glass window, I suppose,' thought Lois, as she followed her aunt down the aisle. Afterwards on her way home, and at dinner, and all the afternoon, there had been so many other things to see and to think about, that it was not until the rosy patch of cloud sailed past the nursery window-pane at sunset that she was reminded of the beautiful colours in church, and of the puzzle about Saints and haloes that till then she had forgotten.
'At least, no, I didn't exactly forget', she said to herself, 'but I think p'raps I sort of disremembered—till the sunset colours reminded me. Only I haven't found out what a Saint is yet, or a halo. And why don't we have them on our Sunday windows in Meeting?'
Just at that moment the door opened, and nurse, who had been enjoying a long talk downstairs in the kitchen, came in with the tea-tray. 'How dark you are up here!' nurse exclaimed in her cheerful voice. 'We shall have to light the lamp after all, or you will never find the way to your mouth.'
So the lamp was lighted. The curtains were drawn. The sunset sky, fast fading now, was hidden. And Lois' questions remained unanswered.
A few days later, the visit came to an end. The next Sunday, Lois was at home again, 'chattering like a little magpie,' as her mother said, about everything she had seen and done. She had so much to think about, that even Meeting did not seem as long as usual, though she thought the walls looked plainer than ever, and the glass windows very empty, till the sight of them reminded her that she could find out more about Saints now. At home in the afternoon she began. Drawing her footstool close to the big arm-chair, she put her elbows on her father's knee and looked up searchingly into his face. 'Father, please tell me, if you possibly can,' pleaded an earnest little voice, 'for I do very badly want to find out. Do you know what a Saint is?' Her father laughed. 'Know what a Saint is? I should think I did! No man better!' he answered. Lois wondered why he glanced across to the other side of the fire where her mother was sitting; and why she glanced back at him and shook her head, meeting his eyes with a happy smile. Then her father jumped up, and from the lowest shelf of one of his book-cases he fetched a fat, square volume, bound in brown leather and gold. This he put carefully on a table, and drawing Lois on to his knee and putting his arm round her, he showed her a number of photographs. Lambs were there, and running fountains, and spangly stars, and peacocks, and doves. But those pages he turned over quickly, until he came to others: photographs of men and women dressed in white, carrying palms and holding crowns in their hands.
He told Lois that these people were 'Saints,' that they formed a long procession on the walls of a big church at Ravenna, far away in Italy; and that they were made of little pieces of a sort of shining glass called 'mosaic.' 'Saints have something to do with glass then. But these photographs are not a bit like my beautiful window,' Lois thought to herself, rather sadly. 'There are no colours here.' She turned over the photographs without much interest, until her father, exclaiming, 'There, that is the one I want!' showed her one portrait of a little girl standing among all the grown-up people, carrying just as big a palm and crown as any of the others. He told Lois that these crowns and palms were to show that the people who carried them had all been put to death or 'martyred,' because they would not worship heathen gods. He made Lois spell out the letters 'SCA. EULALIA' written on the halo around the little girl's head, 'That is Saint Eulalia,' her father explained. 'She was offered her freedom and her life if she would sacrifice to idols just one tiny grain of corn, to show that she renounced her allegiance to Jesus Christ; but when the corn was put into her hands she threw it all back into the Judge's face. After that, there was no escape for her. She was condemned to die, and she did die, Lois, very bravely, though she was only a little girl, not much older than you.' Here Lois hid her face against her father's coat and shivered. 'But after that cruel death, when her little body was lying unburied, a white dove hovered over it, until a fall of snowflakes came and hid it from people's sight. So you see, Lois, though Eulalia was only twelve years old when she was put to death, she has been called Saint Eulalia ever since, though it all happened hundreds of years ago. Children can be Saints as well as grown-up people, if they are brave enough and faithful enough.'
'Saints must be brave, and Saints must be faithful,' Lois repeated, as she shut up the big book and helped to carry it back to its shelf. 'But lots of other children have died since Sancta Eulalia was killed and her body was covered by the snow. Surely some of those children must have been brave and faithful too, even though they are not called Saints? They don't stand on glass windows, or wear those things that father calls haloes, and that I call plates, round their heads, with their names written on them. So Saints really are rather puzzling sort of people still. I do hope I shall find out more about them