A stirring sermon, everyone agreed; as they agreed that their minister was tired, and might do well to rest for the summer. He was undergoing a severe trial, and they gave him credit for that, as practicing Christians magnanimously sharing their sins approve the suffering of another.
Janet's jaw dropped with concentration, — Listen. When the seed began to blow, 'Twas like a garden full of snow, I… didn't. mean. Father? A safe-conduct from the Emperor Sigismund, but you see how they betrayed him? Keeping the road to Paradise littered with filth, to deceive good people. Limited atonement, total depravity, wait. Unconditional election, limited atonement, total depravity, ah… ahhm. irresistibility of grace, I didn't mean. Father? I… what was it? Listen…
— The power of God to guide me, Janet whispered, — the might of God.
— If you want proof, if you want proof, listen Father. That. and that wren, I didn't mean. Father? Father?.
— The wisdom of God to teach me, the eye of God to watch over me, Janet went on, leaving the bedside to run down the stairs and pound on the study door, a thing she had never done, but this time she brought Reverend Gwyon bounding back up after her, to listen to his son's broken disjointed confession of killing the wren that day, a confession which broke off and left the boy sitting bolt upright in the bed, his teeth chattering, blazing green eyes fixed on his father. Gwyon started to put a hand out, but withdrew it, saying, — A wren though, a wren? My boy, that. why, a wren, you know, the missionaries themselves, the early Christian missionaries used to have it hunted down, hunted down and killed, they. the wren was looked on as a king, and that. they couldn't have that, around Christmas. they couldn't have that, he finished, withdrawing slowly, his voice trailing off as his son sank back on the bed, and Gwyon turned abruptly and hurried back downstairs to his study, where he bolted the door and reached to a bookshelf for the works of Saint John of the Cross.
— The ear of God to hear me, the word of God to speak for me. Janet paused, at the bedside, to listen to the church bell ringing the hour. But like those on the pillow before her, her lips kept moving.
Hidden from people and the declining sun by the heavy green of the yew trees, Gwyon kept to his study. He was reaching back.
The longest day of the year was passed, and long past the annual Midsummer Day magic of bonfires to impel the sun on its suddenly flagging course, a measure despaired of, when religion took the reins, faith the ritual, and the day was turned over to Saint John Baptist who, in return for these same bonfires, rid cattle of sickness and banished the witches who caused it, raised splendid harvests, and even brought rain in Russia to the families of women who bathed on his day there (though faith had not quite won the day there: if drought continued, rain could certainly be brought by tossing into the nearest lake the corpse of a villager who had drunk himself to death). But in New England rain fell according to the caprice of a Divine who was to be propitiated only by making good use of it, and feast days, such as this Sunday, were best spent in the reverent complacency of sitting still. The outdoors was still light after suppertime, though Gwyon had refused supper from behind his study door, and Wyatt ate scarcely a bite before he lay back, whispering at the ceiling, leaving Janet contorted in prayer beside him. All day she had moved through the halls, on the stairs, to the kitchen in near silence, the only sounds to betray her to man the slavering lisps of her higher devotion which she exercised now: —The hand of God to protect me, the way of God to lie before me, the shield of God to shelter me, the host of God to defend me, Christ with me Christ before me Christ behind me Christ within me.
Birds ran on the empty lawns of the parsonage pecking at fallen irregular shapes of unripe crab apples. Swallows cut silent erratic courses above the carriage barn. The only clear sound was the sound of the sleighbells.
— Christ beneath me Christ above me Christ at my right Christ at my left Christ in breadth Christ in length Christ in height. Wyatt lay full length on his back, listening without hearing, staring without seeing at the familiar lines on the ceiling, a network of cracks which had formed an Arabian camel in childhood, since become Bactrian and grown a long tail. The windows were opened, and the whole house so silent that the warmth of day seemed even to have penetrated the dim corridors and set at rest the creaking contention among those dark angles of woodwork. Thus the sound from the carriage barn came inside interrupted only by its own impatient pauses. It was these clinking splinters of sound which suddenly seemed to penetrate Janet, raise her from her bedside attitude and lift her away to her own room, where no one but she had entered bodily since she first entered it herself. Her door closed, closeting the stifled sound which escaped her as she sank to the floor.