THE PICNIC
Reg led the way on to the green, and there, in sight of the sea, a great crowd of people had gathered. From the wood the children were coming with arms full of fruit and bread-stems. Others were carrying jugs of fruit-juice. The children, we were told, had already had their feast, and now they waited on us charmingly.
Just as I picked up a fine, golden apple and set my teeth to it I saw Greig and Rose coming shyly up the beach. Janet and I sprang to meet the radiant ones and there was a great commotion of hugging and congratulations before we settled again. Greig was full of their adventures and told us of all the Halls they had visited on their Terms of Reparation. Rose, as usual, sat smiling serenely through it all. Later, when I offered her a bowl of strawberries, her eyes met mine and I caught my breath at the rapture in them.
“To have come home,” she whispered. “To have come home to the King of Love!”
We all found a keen pleasure in the feast. It was a long time since we had tasted the fruits and the delicious juice. Once more I held my glass up to the light, watching the mingling of the colours. Once more I broke a crisp bread-stem and was reminded of new-baked rolls.
We had so much to talk about, too, that the picnic became a very lengthy affair, but no-one minded, least of all the children, who looked very important. They did a great deal of whispering among themselves.
“It is a secret,” Rose told me presently. “I have been speaking to Elizabeth who is one of the teachers of the kiddies who come here in sleep. She tells me they are going to give some sort of performance. See how thrilled they are.
After a while the children melted unobtrusively into the wood. They had gone to prepare, of course, but we pretended we had noticed nothing! There were vague sounds – scamperings, whisperings and the like, and then at last we were bidden to the play.
We all rose obediently and trooped into the wood. The children who were not acting were already sitting in rows before a stage, and then we saw what their teacher had ingeniously devised. Instead of having one stage and altering the scenery as required, she had acquired a number of stages, each with the appropriate scenery built up from the products of the wood.
Some of the play was to be acted under the trees, and here little adaptation was necessary. In one scene a country lane was required and a path among the trees had been selected. Where an inside scene was necessary, the children had built a “room” with overhanging boughs, pulling them low to form the walls and roof.
It all looked enchanting and we were told we should be required to move from one “stage” to another as the play proceeded. Elizabeth, who came up to us, said that the play that was to be acted was designed to give the children some secrets of wisdom to use in their lives on earth.
“Of course,” she explained, “they will not remember the details for they come from the earth-plane in sleep, but they will carry some of its teaching all their lives.”
I asked her if she had written the play herself, but at this she smiled.
“Could I write the play?”
“Well, you used to write on earth,” I insisted.
“I think this play was already written-at the beginning of time,” was all she said, but I think I understood.
At this moment we were called to take our places and the play began.
First of all we saw a young girl sitting down with cheek on hand. Her dreamy eyes gazed into the distance and her very stillness spoke of peace.
To this one came an angel and we watched the light of joy break over the young face as she heard the whispered message. Janet and I were reminded irresistibly of the Fifteen Secrets, then. Did the angel, we wondered, tell her one of these – or all?
Presently we saw the young girl traveling along the country road, and later still we found her in a low room, cave-like and dim, with a tiny babe in her arms. A tall young boy (made to look like a man) leant over them devotedly.
The play went on in all its simple beauty. The little actors were most reverent, and as each scene ended we moved silently to the next “stage”. The children of the audience were entranced. What struck me as being a sweet variation to this age-old play, was the fact that angels were in the audience, too I looked now and then at their rapt faces and wondered what was in their hearts.
As the play neared its end, a faint bugle-note sounded in the distance but we were all so interested that we did not heed it at the time. Then suddenly the air was filled with fragrance and the light gleamed with a mellow shining. Swiftly the whisper flew from mind to mind: ”It is the Lord…”