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diff --git a/705-0.txt b/705-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6f0aaf2 --- /dev/null +++ b/705-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2867 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Roadmender, by Michael Fairless + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Roadmender + + +Author: Michael Fairless + + + +Release Date: February 5, 2013 [eBook #705] +[This file was first posted on November 6, 1996] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ROADMENDER*** + + +Transcribed from the 1911 Duckworth and Co. edition by David Price, email +ccx074@pglaf.org + + + + + + The Roadmender + + + By + + Michael Fairless + + Author of + “The Gathering of Brother Hilarius” + + [Picture: Decorative graphic] + + * * * * * + + London + + Duckworth & Co. + + 3 Henrietta Street, W.C. + 1911 + + * * * * * + +This series of papers appeared in _The Pilot_ and is now republished by +permission of the Editor. + + * * * * * + + A. M. D. G. + + * * * * * + + TO + MY MOTHER: + AND TO EARTH, MY MOTHER, + WHOM I LOVE. + + + + +CONTENTS + + PAGE +THE ROADMENDER 1 +OUT OF THE SHADOW 61 +AT THE WHITE GATE 119 + +The Roadmender + + +CHAPTER I + + +I HAVE attained my ideal: I am a roadmender, some say stonebreaker. Both +titles are correct, but the one is more pregnant than the other. All day +I sit by the roadside on a stretch of grass under a high hedge of +saplings and a tangle of traveller’s joy, woodbine, sweetbrier, and late +roses. Opposite me is a white gate, seldom used, if one may judge from +the trail of honeysuckle growing tranquilly along it: I know now that +whenever and wherever I die my soul will pass out through this white +gate; and then, thank God, I shall not have need to undo that trail. + +In our youth we discussed our ideals freely: I wonder how many beside +myself have attained, or would understand my attaining. After all, what +do we ask of life, here or indeed hereafter, but leave to serve, to live, +to commune with our fellowmen and with ourselves; and from the lap of +earth to look up into the face of God? All these gifts are mine as I sit +by the winding white road and serve the footsteps of my fellows. There +is no room in my life for avarice or anxiety; I who serve at the altar +live of the altar: I lack nothing but have nothing over; and when the +winter of life comes I shall join the company of weary old men who sit on +the sunny side of the workhouse wall and wait for the tender mercies of +God. + +Just now it is the summer of things; there is life and music +everywhere—in the stones themselves, and I live to-day beating out the +rhythmical hammer-song of The Ring. There is real physical joy in the +rise and swing of the arm, in the jar of a fair stroke, the split and +scatter of the quartz: I am learning to be ambidextrous, for why should +Esau sell his birthright when there is enough for both? Then the +rest-hour comes, bringing the luxurious ache of tired but not weary +limbs; and I lie outstretched and renew my strength, sometimes with my +face deep-nestled in the cool green grass, sometimes on my back looking +up into the blue sky which no wise man would wish to fathom. + +The birds have no fear of me; am I not also of the brown brethren in my +sober fustian livery? They share my meals—at least the little dun-coated +Franciscans do; the blackbirds and thrushes care not a whit for such +simple food as crumbs, but with legs well apart and claws tense with +purchase they disinter poor brother worm, having first mocked him with +sound of rain. The robin that lives by the gate regards my heap of +stones as subject to his special inspection. He sits atop and practises +the trill of his summer song until it shrills above and through the +metallic clang of my strokes; and when I pause he cocks his tail, with a +humorous twinkle of his round eye which means—“What! shirking, big +brother?”—and I fall, ashamed, to my mending of roads. + +The other day, as I lay with my face in the grass, I heard a gentle +rustle, and raised my head to find a hedge-snake watching me fearless, +unwinking. I stretched out my hand, picked it up unresisting, and put it +in my coat like the husbandman of old. Was he so ill-rewarded, I wonder, +with the kiss that reveals secrets? My snake slept in peace while I +hammered away with an odd quickening of heart as I thought how to me, as +to Melampus, had come the messenger—had come, but to ears deafened by +centuries of misrule, blindness, and oppression; so that, with all my +longing, I am shut out of the wondrous world where walked Melampus and +the Saint. To me there is no suggestion of evil in the little silent +creatures, harmless, or deadly only with the Death which is Life. The +beasts who turn upon us, as a rule maul and tear unreflectingly; with the +snake there is the swift, silent strike, the tiny, tiny wound, then sleep +and a forgetting. + +My brown friend, with its message unspoken, slid away into the grass at +sundown to tell its tale in unstopped ears; and I, my task done, went +home across the fields to the solitary cottage where I lodge. It is old +and decrepit—two rooms, with a quasi-attic over them reached by a ladder +from the kitchen and reached only by me. It is furnished with the +luxuries of life, a truckle bed, table, chair, and huge earthenware pan +which I fill from the ice-cold well at the back of the cottage. Morning +and night I serve with the Gibeonites, their curse my blessing, as no +doubt it was theirs when their hearts were purged by service. Morning +and night I send down the moss-grown bucket with its urgent message from +a dry and dusty world; the chain tightens through my hand as the liquid +treasure responds to the messenger, and then with creak and jangle—the +welcome of labouring earth—the bucket slowly nears the top and disperses +the treasure in the waiting vessels. The Gibeonites were servants in the +house of God, ministers of the sacrament of service even as the High +Priest himself; and I, sharing their high office of servitude, thank God +that the ground was accursed for my sake, for surely that curse was the +womb of all unborn blessing. + +The old widow with whom I lodge has been deaf for the last twenty years. +She speaks in the strained high voice which protests against her own +infirmity, and her eyes have the pathetic look of those who search in +silence. For many years she lived alone with her son, who laboured on +the farm two miles away. He met his death rescuing a carthorse from its +burning stable; and the farmer gave the cottage rent free and a weekly +half-crown for life to the poor old woman whose dearest terror was the +workhouse. With my shilling a week rent, and sharing of supplies, we +live in the lines of comfort. Of death she has no fears, for in the long +chest in the kitchen lie a web of coarse white linen, two pennies covered +with the same to keep down tired eyelids, decent white stockings, and a +white cotton sun-bonnet—a decorous death-suit truly—and enough money in +the little bag for self-respecting burial. The farmer buried his servant +handsomely—good man, he knew the love of reticent grief for a ‘kind’ +burial—and one day Harry’s mother is to lie beside him in the little +churchyard which has been a cornfield, and may some day be one again. + + + +CHAPTER II + + +ON Sundays my feet take ever the same way. First my temple service, and +then five miles tramp over the tender, dewy fields, with their ineffable +earthy smell, until I reach the little church at the foot of the +grey-green down. Here, every Sunday, a young priest from a neighbouring +village says Mass for the tiny hamlet, where all are very old or very +young—for the heyday of life has no part under the long shadow of the +hills, but is away at sea or in service. There is a beautiful seemliness +in the extreme youth of the priest who serves these aged children of God. +He bends to communicate them with the reverent tenderness of a son, and +reads with the careful intonation of far-seeing love. To the old people +he is the son of their old age, God-sent to guide their tottering +footsteps along the highway of foolish wayfarers; and he, with his youth +and strength, wishes no better task. Service ended, we greet each other +friendly—for men should not be strange in the acre of God; and I pass +through the little hamlet and out and up on the grey down beyond. Here, +at the last gate, I pause for breakfast; and then up and on with +quickening pulse, and evergreen memory of the weary war-worn Greeks who +broke rank to greet the great blue Mother-way that led to home. I stand +on the summit hatless, the wind in my hair, the smack of salt on my +cheek, all round me rolling stretches of cloud-shadowed down, no sound +but the shrill mourn of the peewit and the gathering of the sea. + +The hours pass, the shadows lengthen, the sheep-bells clang; and I lie in +my niche under the stunted hawthorn watching the to and fro of the sea, +and Æolus shepherding his white sheep across the blue. I love the sea +with its impenetrable fathoms, its wash and undertow, and rasp of shingle +sucked anew. I love it for its secret dead in the Caverns of Peace, of +which account must be given when the books are opened and earth and +heaven have fled away. Yet in my love there is a paradox, for as I watch +the restless, ineffective waves I think of the measureless, reflective +depths of the still and silent Sea of Glass, of the dead, small and +great, rich or poor, with the works which follow them, and of the Voice +as the voice of many waters, when the multitude of one mind rends heaven +with alleluia: and I lie so still that I almost feel the kiss of White +Peace on my mouth. Later still, when the flare of the sinking sun has +died away and the stars rise out of a veil of purple cloud, I take my way +home, down the slopes, through the hamlet, and across miles of sleeping +fields; over which night has thrown her shifting web of mist—home to the +little attic, the deep, cool well, the kindly wrinkled face with its +listening eyes—peace in my heart and thankfulness for the rhythm of the +road. + +Monday brings the joy of work, second only to the Sabbath of rest, and I +settle to my heap by the white gate. Soon I hear the distant stamp of +horsehoofs, heralding the grind and roll of the wheels which reaches me +later—a heavy flour-waggon with a team of four great gentle horses, gay +with brass trappings and scarlet ear-caps. On the top of the craftily +piled sacks lies the white-clad waggoner, a pink in his mouth which he +mumbles meditatively, and the reins looped over the inactive whip—why +should he drive a willing team that knows the journey and responds as +strenuously to a cheery chirrup as to the well-directed lash? We greet +and pass the time of day, and as he mounts the rise he calls back a +warning of coming rain. I am already white with dust as he with flour, +sacramental dust, the outward and visible sign of the stir and beat of +the heart of labouring life. + +Next to pass down the road is an anxious ruffled hen, her speckled breast +astir with maternal troubles. She walks delicately, lifting her feet +high and glancing furtively from side to side with comb low dressed. The +sight of man, the heartless egg-collector, from whose haunts she has +fled, wrings from her a startled cluck, and she makes for the white gate, +climbs through, and disappears. I know her feelings too well to intrude. +Many times already has she hidden herself, amassed four or five precious +treasures, brooding over them with anxious hope; and then, after a brief +desertion to seek the necessary food, she has returned to find her +efforts at concealment vain, her treasures gone. At last, with the +courage of despair she has resolved to brave the terrors of the unknown +and seek a haunt beyond the tyranny of man. I will watch over her from +afar, and when her mother-hope is fulfilled I will marshal her and her +brood back to the farm where she belongs; for what end I care not to +think, it is of the mystery which lies at the heart of things; and we are +all God’s beasts, says St Augustine. + +Here is my stone-song, a paraphrase of the Treasure Motif. + + [Picture: Music score: F# dotted crotchet, F# quaver, F# quaver, F# + dotted crotchet, D crotchet, E crotchet. This bar is then repeated once + more] + +What a wonderful work Wagner has done for humanity in translating the +toil of life into the readable script of music! For those who seek the +tale of other worlds his magic is silent; but earth-travail under his +wand becomes instinct with rhythmic song to an accompaniment of the +elements, and the blare and crash of the bottomless pit itself. The +Pilgrim’s March is the sad sound of footsore men; the San Graal the +tremulous yearning of servitude for richer, deeper bondage. The yellow, +thirsty flames lick up the willing sacrifice, the water wails the secret +of the river and the sea; the birds and beasts, the shepherd with his +pipe, the underground life in rocks and caverns, all cry their message to +this nineteenth-century toiling, labouring world—and to me as I mend my +road. + +Two tramps come and fling themselves by me as I eat my noonday meal. The +one, red-eyed, furtive, lies on his side with restless, clutching hands +that tear and twist and torture the living grass, while his lips mutter +incoherently. The other sits stooped, bare-footed, legs wide apart, his +face grey, almost as grey as his stubbly beard; and it is not long since +Death looked him in the eyes. He tells me querulously of a two hundred +miles tramp since early spring, of search for work, casual jobs with more +kicks than halfpence, and a brief but blissful sojourn in a hospital bed, +from which he was dismissed with sentence passed upon him. For himself, +he is determined to die on the road under a hedge, where a man can see +and breathe. His anxiety is all for his fellow; _he_ has said he will +“do for a man”; he wants to “swing,” to get out of his “dog’s life.” I +watch him as he lies, this Ishmael and would-be Lamech. Ignorance, +hunger, terror, the exhaustion of past generations, have done their work. +The man is mad, and would kill his fellowman. + +Presently we part, and the two go, dogged and footsore, down the road +which is to lead them into the great silence. + + + +CHAPTER III + + +YESTERDAY was a day of encounters. + +First, early in the morning, a young girl came down the road on a +bicycle. Her dressguard was loose, and she stopped to ask for a piece of +string. When I had tied it for her she looked at me, at my worn dusty +clothes and burnt face; and then she took a Niphetos rose from her belt +and laid it shyly in my dirty disfigured palm. I bared my head, and +stood hat in hand looking after her as she rode away up the hill. Then I +took my treasure and put it in a nest of cool dewy grass under the hedge. +_Ecce ancilla Domini_. + +My next visitor was a fellow-worker on his way to a job at the +cross-roads. He stood gazing meditatively at my heap of stones. + +“Ow long ’ave yer bin at this job that y’ere in such a hurry?” + +I stayed my hammer to answer—“Four months.” + +“Seen better days?” + +“Never,” I said emphatically, and punctuated the remark with a stone +split neatly in four. + +The man surveyed me in silence for a moment; then he said slowly, “Mean +ter say yer like crackin’ these blamed stones to fill ’oles some other +fool’s made?” + +I nodded. + +“Well, that beats everything. Now, I ’_ave_ seen better days; worked in +a big brewery over near Maidstone—a town that, and something doing; and +now, ’ere I am, ’ammering me ’eart out on these blasted stones for a bit +o’ bread and a pipe o’ baccy once a week—it ain’t good enough.” He +pulled a blackened clay from his pocket and began slowly filling it with +rank tobacco; then he lit it carefully behind his battered hat, put the +spent match back in his pocket, rose to his feet, hitched his braces, +and, with a silent nod to me, went on to his job. + +Why do we give these tired children, whose minds move slowly, whose eyes +are holden that they cannot read the Book, whose hearts are full of sore +resentment against they know not what, such work as this to do—hammering +their hearts out for a bit of bread? All the pathos of unreasoning +labour rings in these few words. We fit the collar on unwilling necks; +and when their service is over we bid them go out free; but we break the +good Mosaic law and send them away empty. What wonder there is so little +willing service, so few ears ready to be thrust through against the +master’s door. + +The swift stride of civilisation is leaving behind individual effort, and +turning man into the Dæmon of a machine. To and fro in front of the long +loom, lifting a lever at either end, paces he who once with painstaking +intelligence drove the shuttle. _Then_ he tasted the joy of completed +work, that which his eye had looked upon, and his hands had handled; now +his work is as little finished as the web of Penelope. Once the reaper +grasped the golden corn stems, and with dexterous sweep of sickle set +free the treasure of the earth. Once the creatures of the field were +known to him, and his eye caught the flare of scarlet and blue as the +frail poppies and sturdy corn-cockles laid down their beauty at his feet; +now he sits serene on Juggernaut’s car, its guiding Dæmon, and the field +is silent to him. + +As with the web and the grain so with the wood and stone in the +treasure-house of our needs. The ground was accursed _for our sake_ that +in the sweat of our brow we might eat bread. Now the many live in the +brain-sweat of the few; and it must be so, for as little as great King +Cnut could stay the sea until it had reached the appointed place, so +little can we raise a barrier to the wave of progress, and say, “Thus far +and no further shalt thou come.” + +What then? This at least; if we live in an age of mechanism let us see +to it that we are a race of intelligent mechanics; and if man is to be +the Dæmon of a machine let him know the setting of the knives, the rise +of the piston, the part that each wheel and rod plays in the economy of +the whole, the part that he himself plays, co-operating with it. Then, +when he has lived and served intelligently, let us give him of our flocks +and of our floor that he may learn to rest in the lengthening shadows +until he is called to his work above. + +So I sat, hammering out my thoughts, and with them the conviction that +stonebreaking should be allotted to minor poets or vagrant children of +nature like myself, never to such tired folk as my poor mate at the +cross-roads and his fellows. + +At noon, when I stopped for my meal, the sun was baking the hard white +road in a pitiless glare. Several waggons and carts passed, the horses +sweating and straining, with drooping, fly-tormented ears. The men for +the most part nodded slumberously on the shaft, seeking the little +shelter the cart afforded; but one shuffled in the white dust, with an +occasional chirrup and friendly pressure on the tired horse’s neck. + +Then an old woman and a small child appeared in sight, both with enormous +sun-bonnets and carrying baskets. As they came up with me the woman +stopped and swept her face with her hand, while the child, depositing the +basket in the dust with great care, wiped her little sticky fingers on +her pinafore. Then the shady hedge beckoned them and they came and sat +down near me. The woman looked about seventy, tall, angular, dauntless, +good for another ten years of hard work. The little maid—her only +grandchild, she told me—was just four, her father away soldiering, and +the mother died in childbed, so for four years the child had known no +other guardian or playmate than the old woman. She was not the least +shy, but had the strange self-possession which comes from associating +with one who has travelled far on life’s journey. + +“I couldn’t leave her alone in the house,” said her grandmother, “and she +wouldn’t leave the kitten for fear it should be lonesome”—with a +humorous, tender glance at the child—“but it’s a long tramp in the heat +for the little one, and we’ve another mile to go.” + +“Will you let her bide here till you come back?” I said. “She’ll be all +right by me.” + +The old lady hesitated. + +“Will ’ee stay by him, dearie?” she said. + +The small child nodded, drew from her miniature pocket a piece of +sweetstuff, extracted from the basket a small black cat, and settled in +for the afternoon. Her grandmother rose, took her basket, and, with a +nod and “Thank ’ee kindly, mister,” went off down the road. + +I went back to my work a little depressed—why had I not white hair?—for a +few minutes had shown me that I was not old enough for the child despite +my forty years. She was quite happy with the little black cat, which lay +in the small lap blinking its yellow eyes at the sun; and presently an +old man came by, lame and bent, with gnarled twisted hands, leaning +heavily on his stick. + +He greeted me in a high, piping voice, limped across to the child, and +sat down. “Your little maid, mister?” he said. + +I explained. + +“Ah,” he said, “I’ve left a little darlin’ like this at ’ome. It’s ’ard +on us old folks when we’re one too many; but the little mouths must be +filled, and my son, ’e said ’e didn’t see they could keep me on the +arf-crown, with another child on the way; so I’m tramping to N—, to the +House; but it’s a ’ard pinch, leavin’ the little ones.” + +I looked at him—a typical countryman, with white hair, mild blue eyes, +and a rosy, childish, unwrinkled face. + +“I’m eighty-four,” he went on, “and terrible bad with the rheumatics and +my chest. Maybe it’ll not be long before the Lord remembers me.” + +The child crept close and put a sticky little hand confidingly into the +tired old palm. The two looked strangely alike, for the world seems much +the same to those who leave it behind as to those who have but taken the +first step on its circular pathway. + +“’Ook at my kitty,” she said, pointing to the small creature in her lap. +Then, as the old man touched it with trembling fingers she went on—“’Oo +isn’t my grandad; he’s away in the sky, but I’ll kiss ’oo.” + +I worked on, hearing at intervals the old piping voice and the +child-treble, much of a note; and thinking of the blessings vouchsafed to +the simple old age which crowns a harmless working-life spent in the +fields. The two under the hedge had everything in common and were +boundlessly content together, the sting of the knowledge of good and evil +past for the one, and for the other still to come; while I stood on the +battlefield of the world, the flesh, and the devil, though, thank God, +with my face to the foe. + +The old man sat resting: I had promised him a lift with my friend the +driver of the flour-cart, and he was almost due when the child’s +grandmother came down the road. + +When she saw my other visitor she stood amazed. + +“What, Richard Hunton, that worked with my old man years ago up at +Ditton, whatever are you doin’ all these miles from your own place?” + +“Is it Eliza Jakes?” + +He looked at her dazed, doubtful. + +“An’ who else should it be? Where’s your memory gone, Richard Hunton, +and you not such a great age either? Where are you stayin’?” + +Shame overcame him; his lips trembled, his mild blue eyes filled with +tears. I told the tale as I had heard it, and Mrs Jakes’s indignation +was good to see. + +“Not keep you on ’alf a crown! Send you to the House! May the Lord +forgive them! You wouldn’t eat no more than a fair-sized cat, and not +long for this world either, that’s plain to see. No, Richard Hunton, you +don’t go to the House while I’m above ground; it’d make my good man turn +to think of it. You’ll come ’ome with me and the little ’un there. I’ve +my washin’, and a bit put by for a rainy day, and a bed to spare, and the +Lord and the parson will see I don’t come to want.” + +She stopped breathless, her defensive motherhood in arms. + +The old man said quaveringly, in the pathetic, grudging phrase of the +poor, which veils their gratitude while it testifies their independence, +“Maybe I might as well.” He rose with difficulty, picked up his bundle +and stick, the small child replaced the kitten in its basket, and thrust +her hand in her new friend’s. + +“Then ’oo _is_ grandad tum back,” she said. + +Mrs Jakes had been fumbling in her pocket, and extracted a penny, which +she pressed on me. + +“It’s little enough, mister,” she said. + +Then, as I tried to return it: “Nay, I’ve enough, and yours is poor paid +work.” + +I hope I shall always be able to keep that penny; and as I watched the +three going down the dusty white road, with the child in the middle, I +thanked God for the Brotherhood of the Poor. + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +YESTERDAY a funeral passed, from the work-house at N—, a quaint sepulture +without solemnities. The rough, ungarnished coffin of stained deal lay +bare and unsightly on the floor of an old market-cart; a woman sat +beside, steadying it with her feet. The husband drove; and the most +depressed of the three was the horse, a broken-kneed, flea-bitten grey. +It was pathetic, this bringing home in death of the old father whom, +while he lived, they had been too poor to house; it was at no small +sacrifice that they had spared him that terror of old age, a pauper’s +grave, and brought him to lie by his wife in our quiet churchyard. They +felt no emotion, this husband and wife, only a dull sense of filial duty +done, respectability preserved; and above and through all, the bitter but +necessary counting the cost of this last bed. + +It is strange how pagan many of us are in our beliefs. True, the funeral +libations have made way for the comfortable bake-meats; still, to the +large majority Death is Pluto, king of the dark Unknown whence no +traveller returns, rather than Azrael, brother and friend, lord of this +mansion of life. Strange how men shun him as he waits in the shadow, +watching our puny straining after immortality, sending his comrade sleep +to prepare us for himself. When the hour strikes he comes—very gently, +very tenderly, if we will but have it so—folds the tired hands together, +takes the way-worn feet in his broad strong palm; and lifting us in his +wonderful arms he bears us swiftly down the valley and across the waters +of Remembrance. + +Very pleasant art thou, O Brother Death, thy love is wonderful, passing +the love of women. + + * * * * * + +To-day I have lived in a whirl of dust. To-morrow is the great annual +Cattle Fair at E—, and through the long hot hours the beasts from all the +district round have streamed in broken procession along my road, to +change hands or to die. Surely the lordship over creation implies wise +and gentle rule for intelligent use, not the pursuit of a mere immediate +end, without any thought of community in the great sacrament of life. + +For the most part mystery has ceased for this working Western world, and +with it reverence. Coventry Patmore says: “God clothes Himself actually +and literally with His whole creation. Herbs take up and assimilate +minerals, beasts assimilate herbs, and God, in the Incarnation and its +proper Sacrament, assimilates us, who, says St Augustine, ‘are God’s +beasts.’” It is man in his blind self-seeking who separates woof from +weft in the living garment of God, and loses the more as he neglects the +outward and visible signs of a world-wide grace. + +In olden days the herd led his flock, going first in the post of danger +to defend the creatures he had weaned from their natural habits for his +various uses. Now that good relationship has ceased for us to exist, man +drives the beasts before him, means to his end, but with no harmony +between end and means. All day long the droves of sheep pass me on their +lame and patient way, no longer freely and instinctively following a +protector and forerunner, but _driven_, impelled by force and resistless +will—the same will which once went before without force. They are all +trimmed as much as possible to one pattern, and all make the same sad +plaint. It is a day on which to thank God for the unknown tongue. The +drover and his lad in dusty blue coats plod along stolidly, deaf and +blind to all but the way before them; no longer wielding the crook, +instrument of deliverance, or at most of gentle compulsion, but armed +with a heavy stick and mechanically dealing blows on the short thick +fleeces; without evil intent because without thought—it is the ritual of +the trade. + +Of all the poor dumb pilgrims of the road the bullocks are the most +terrible to see. They are not patient, but go most unwillingly with +lowered head and furtive sideways motion, in their eyes a horror of great +fear. The sleek cattle, knee deep in pasture, massed at the gate, and +stared mild-eyed and with inquiring bellow at the retreating drove; but +these passed without answer on to the Unknown, and for them it spelt +death. + +Behind a squadron of sleek, well-fed cart-horses, formed in fours, with +straw braid in mane and tail, came the ponies, for the most part a merry +company. Long strings of rusty, shaggy two-year-olds, unbroken, unkempt, +the short Down grass still sweet on their tongues; full of fun, frolic, +and wickedness, biting and pulling, casting longing eyes at the +hedgerows. The boys appear to recognise them as kindred spirits, and are +curiously forbearing and patient. Soon both ponies and boys vanish in a +white whirl, and a long line of carts, which had evidently waited for the +dust to subside, comes slowly up the incline. For the most part they +carry the pigs and fowls, carriage folk of the road. The latter are hot, +crowded, and dusty under the open netting; the former for the most part +cheerfully remonstrative. + +I drew a breath of relief as the noise of wheels died away and my road +sank into silence. The hedgerows are no longer green but white and +choked with dust, a sight to move good sister Rain to welcome tears. The +birds seem to have fled before the noisy confusion. I wonder whether my +snake has seen and smiled at the clumsy ruling of the lord he so little +heeds? I turned aside through the gate to plunge face and hands into the +cool of the sheltered grass that side the hedge, and then rested my eyes +on the stretch of green I had lacked all day. The rabbits had apparently +played and browsed unmindful of the stir, and were still flirting their +white tails along the hedgerows; a lark rose, another and another, and I +went back to my road. Peace still reigned, for the shadows were +lengthening, and there would be little more traffic for the fair. I +turned to my work, grateful for the stillness, and saw on the white +stretch of road a lone old man and a pig. Surely I knew that tall figure +in the quaint grey smock, surely I knew the face, furrowed like nature’s +face in springtime, and crowned by a round, soft hat? And the pig, the +black pig walking decorously free? Ay, I knew them. + +In the early spring I took a whole holiday and a long tramp; and towards +afternoon, tired and thirsty, sought water at a little lonely cottage +whose windows peered and blinked under overhanging brows of thatch. I +had, not the water I asked for, but milk and a bowl of sweet porridge for +which I paid only thanks; and stayed for a chat with my kindly hosts. +They were a quaint old couple of the kind rarely met with nowadays. They +enjoyed a little pension from the Squire and a garden in which vegetables +and flowers lived side by side in friendliest fashion. Bees worked and +sang over the thyme and marjoram, blooming early in a sunny nook; and in +a homely sty lived a solemn black pig, a pig with a history. + +It was no common utilitarian pig, but the honoured guest of the old +couple, and it knew it. A year before, their youngest and only surviving +child, then a man of five-and-twenty, had brought his mother the result +of his savings in the shape of a fine young pig: a week later he lay dead +of the typhoid that scourged Maidstone. Hence the pig was sacred, cared +for and loved by this Darby and Joan. + +“Ee be mos’ like a child to me and the mother, an’ mos’ as sensible as a +Christian, ee be,” the old man had said; and I could hardly credit my +eyes when I saw the tall bent figure side by side with the black pig, +coming along my road on such a day. + +I hailed the old man, and both turned aside; but he gazed at me without +remembrance. + +I spoke of the pig and its history. He nodded wearily. “Ay, ay, lad, +you’ve got it; ’tis poor Dick’s pig right enow.” + +“But you’re never going to take it to E—?” + +“Ay, but I be, and comin’ back alone, if the Lord be marciful. The +missus has been terrible bad this two mouths and more; Squire’s in +foreign parts; and food-stuffs such as the old woman wants is hard buying +for poor folks. The stocking’s empty, now ’tis the pig must go, and I +believe he’d be glad for to do the missus a turn; she were terrible good +to him, were the missus, and fond, too. I dursn’t tell her he was to go; +she’d sooner starve than lose poor Dick’s pig. Well, we’d best be +movin’; ’tis a fairish step.” + +The pig followed comprehending and docile, and as the quaint couple +passed from sight I thought I heard Brother Death stir in the shadow. He +is a strong angel and of great pity. + + + +CHAPTER V + + +THERE is always a little fire of wood on the open hearth in the kitchen +when I get home at night; the old lady says it is “company” for her, and +sits in the lonely twilight, her knotted hands lying quiet on her lap, +her listening eyes fixed on the burning sticks. + +I wonder sometimes whether she hears music in the leap and lick of the +fiery tongues, music such as he of Bayreuth draws from the violins till +the hot energy of the fire spirit is on us, embodied in sound. + +Surely she hears some voice, that lonely old woman on whom is set the +seal of great silence? + +It is a great truth tenderly said that God builds the nest for the blind +bird; and may it not be that He opens closed eyes and unstops deaf ears +to sights and sounds from which others by these very senses are debarred? + +Here the best of us see through a mist of tears men as trees walking; it +is only in the land which is very far off and yet very near that we shall +have fulness of sight and see the King in His beauty; and I cannot think +that any listening ears listen in vain. + +The coppice at our back is full of birds, for it is far from the road and +they nest there undisturbed year after year. Through the still night I +heard the nightingales calling, calling, until I could bear it no longer +and went softly out into the luminous dark. + +The little wood was manifold with sound, I heard my little brothers who +move by night rustling in grass and tree. A hedgehog crossed my path +with a dull squeak, the bats shrilled high to the stars, a white owl +swept past me crying his hunting note, a beetle boomed suddenly in my +face; and above and through it all the nightingales sang—and sang! + +The night wind bent the listening trees, and the stars yearned earthward +to hear the song of deathless love. Louder and louder the wonderful +notes rose and fell in a passion of melody; and then sank to rest on that +low thrilling call which it is said Death once heard, and stayed his +hand. + +They will scarcely sing again this year, these nightingales, for they are +late on the wing as it is. It seems as if on such nights they sang as +the swan sings, knowing it to be the last time—with the lavish note of +one who bids an eternal farewell. + +At last there was silence. Sitting under the big beech tree, the giant +of the coppice, I rested my tired self in the lap of mother earth, +breathed of her breath and listened to her voice in the quickening +silence until my flesh came again as the flesh of a little child, for it +is true recreation to sit at the footstool of God wrapped in a fold of +His living robe, the while night smoothes our tired face with her healing +hands. + +The grey dawn awoke and stole with trailing robes across earth’s floor. +At her footsteps the birds roused from sleep and cried a greeting; the +sky flushed and paled conscious of coming splendour; and overhead a file +of swans passed with broad strong flight to the reeded waters of the +sequestered pool. + +Another hour of silence while the light throbbed and flamed in the east; +then the larks rose harmonious from a neighbouring field, the rabbits +scurried with ears alert to their morning meal, the day had begun. + +I passed through the coppice and out into the fields beyond. The dew lay +heavy on leaf and blade and gossamer, a cool fresh wind swept clear over +dale and down from the sea, and the clover field rippled like a silvery +lake in the breeze. + +There is something inexpressibly beautiful in the unused day, something +beautiful in the fact that it is still untouched, unsoiled; and town and +country share alike in this loveliness. At half-past three on a June +morning even London has not assumed her responsibilities, but smiles and +glows lighthearted and smokeless under the caresses of the morning sun. + +Five o’clock. The bell rings out crisp and clear from the monastery +where the Bedesmen of St Hugh watch and pray for the souls on this +labouring forgetful earth. Every hour the note of comfort and warning +cries across the land, tells the Sanctus, the Angelus, and the Hours of +the Passion, and calls to remembrance and prayer. + +When the wind is north, the sound carries as far as my road, and +companies me through the day; and if to His dumb children God in His +mercy reckons work as prayer, most certainly those who have forged +through the ages an unbroken chain of supplication and thanksgiving will +be counted among the stalwart labourers of the house of the Lord. + +Sun and bell together are my only clock: it is time for my water drawing; +and gathering a pile of mushrooms, children of the night, I hasten home. + +The cottage is dear to me in its quaint untidiness and want of rectitude, +dear because we are to be its last denizens, last of the long line of +toilers who have sweated and sown that others might reap, and have passed +away leaving no trace. + +I once saw a tall cross in a seaboard churchyard, inscribed, “To the +memory of the unknown dead who have perished in these waters.” There +might be one in every village sleeping-place to the unhonoured many who +made fruitful the land with sweat and tears. It is a consolation to +think that when we look back on this stretch of life’s road from beyond +the first milestone, which, it is instructive to remember, is always a +grave, we may hope to see the work of this world with open eyes, and to +judge of it with a due sense of proportion. + +A bee with laden honey-bag hummed and buzzed in the hedge as I got ready +for work, importuning the flowers for that which he could not carry, and +finally giving up the attempt in despair fell asleep on a buttercup, the +best place for his weary little velvet body. In five minutes—they may +have been five hours to him—he awoke a new bee, sensible and +clear-sighted, and flew blithely away to the hive with his sufficiency—an +example this weary world would be wise to follow. + +My road has been lonely to-day. A parson came by in the afternoon, a +stranger in the neighbourhood, for he asked his way. He talked awhile, +and with kindly rebuke said it was sad to see a man of my education +brought so low, which shows how the outside appearance may mislead the +prejudiced observer. “Was it misfortune?” “Nay, the best of good luck,” +I answered, gaily. + +The good man with beautiful readiness sat down on a heap of stones and +bade me say on. “Read me a sermon in stone,” he said, simply; and I +stayed my hand to read. + +He listened with courteous intelligence. + +“You hold a roadmender has a vocation?” he asked. + +“As the monk or the artist, for, like both, he is universal. The world +is his home; he serves all men alike, ay, and for him the beasts have +equal honour with the men. His soul is ‘bound up in the bundle of life’ +with all other souls, he sees his father, his mother, his brethren in the +children of the road. For him there is nothing unclean, nothing common; +the very stones cry out that they serve.” + +Parson nodded his head. + +“It is all true,” he said; “beautifully true. But need such a view of +life necessitate the work of roadmending? Surely all men should be +roadmenders.” + +O wise parson, so to read the lesson of the road! + +“It is true,” I answered; “but some of us find our salvation in the +actual work, and earn our bread better in this than in any other way. No +man is dependent on our earning, all men on our work. We are ‘rich +beyond the dreams of avarice’ because we have all that we need, and yet +we taste the life and poverty of the very poor. We are, if you will, +uncloistered monks, preaching friars who speak not with the tongue, +disciples who hear the wise words of a silent master.” + +“Robert Louis Stevenson was a roadmender,” said the wise parson. + +“Ay, and with more than his pen,” I answered. “I wonder was he ever so +truly great, so entirely the man we know and love, as when he inspired +the chiefs to make a highway in the wilderness. Surely no more fitting +monument could exist to his memory than the Road of Gratitude, cut, laid, +and kept by the pure-blooded tribe kings of Samoa.” + +Parson nodded. + +“He knew that the people who make no roads are ruled out from intelligent +participation in the world’s brotherhood.” He filled his pipe, thinking +the while, then he held out his pouch to me. + +“Try some of this baccy,” he said; “Sherwood of Magdalen sent it me from +some outlandish place.” + +I accepted gratefully. It was such tobacco as falls to the lot of few +roadmenders. + +He rose to go. + +“I wish I could come and break stones,” he said, a little wistfully. + +“Nay,” said I, “few men have such weary roadmending as yours, and perhaps +you need my road less than most men, and less than most parsons.” + +We shook hands, and he went down the road and out of my life. + +He little guessed that I knew Sherwood, ay, and knew him too, for had not +Sherwood told me of the man he delighted to honour. + +Ah, well! I am no Browning Junior, and Sherwood’s name is not Sherwood. + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +AWHILE ago I took a holiday; mouched, played truant from my road. Jem +the waggoner hailed me as he passed—he was going to the mill—would I ride +with him and come back atop of the full sacks? + +I hid my hammer in the hedge, climbed into the great waggon white and +fragrant with the clean sweet meal, and flung myself down on the empty +flour bags. The looped-back tarpaulin framed the long vista of my road +with the downs beyond; and I lay in the cool dark, caressed by the fresh +breeze in its thoroughfare, soothed by the strong monotonous tramp of the +great grey team and the music of the jangling harness. + +Jem walked at the leaders’ heads; it is his rule when the waggon is +empty, a rule no “company” will make him break. At first I regretted it, +but soon discovered I learnt to know him better so, as he plodded along, +his thickset figure slightly bent, his hands in his pockets, his whip +under one arm, whistling hymn tunes in a low minor, while the great +horses answered to his voice without touch of lash or guiding rein. + +I lay as in a blissful dream and watched my road unfold. The sun set the +pine-boles aflare where the hedge is sparse, and stretched the long +shadows of the besom poplars in slanting bars across the white highway; +the roadside gardens smiled friendly with their trim-cut laurels and rows +of stately sunflowers—a seemly proximity this, Daphne and Clytie, sisters +in experience, wrapped in the warm caress of the god whose wooing they +need no longer fear. Here and there we passed little groups of women and +children off to work in the early cornfields, and Jem paused in his fond +repetition of “The Lord my pasture shall prepare” to give them good-day. + +It is like Life, this travelling backwards—that which has been, alone +visible—like Life, which is after all, retrospective with a steady moving +on into the Unknown, Unseen, until Faith is lost in Sight and experience +is no longer the touchstone of humanity. The face of the son of Adam is +set on the road his brothers have travelled, marking their landmarks, +tracing their journeyings; but with the eyes of a child of God he looks +forward, straining to catch a glimpse of the jewelled walls of his future +home, the city “Eternal in the Heavens.” + +Presently we left my road for the deep shade of a narrow country way +where the great oaks and beeches meet overhead and no hedge-clipper sets +his hand to stay nature’s profusion; and so by pleasant lanes scarce the +waggon’s width across, now shady, now sunny, here bordered by thickset +coverts, there giving on fruitful fields, we came at length to the mill. + +I left Jem to his business with the miller and wandered down the flowery +meadow to listen to the merry clack of the stream and the voice of the +waters on the weir. The great wheel was at rest, as I love best to see +it in the later afternoon; the splash and churn of the water belong +rather to the morning hours. It is the chief mistake we make in +portioning out our day that we banish rest to the night-time, which is +for sleep and recreating, instead of setting apart the later afternoon +and quiet twilight hours for the stretching of weary limbs and repose of +tired mind after a day’s toil that should begin and end at five. + +The little stone bridge over the mill-stream is almost on a level with +the clear running water, and I lay there and gazed at the huge wheel +which, under multitudinous forms and uses, is one of the world’s wonders, +because one of the few things we imitative children have not learnt from +nature. Is it perchance a memory out of that past when Adam walked +clear-eyed in Paradise and talked with the Lord in the cool of the day? +Did he see then the flaming wheels instinct with service, wondrous +messengers of the Most High vouchsafed in vision to the later prophets? + +Maybe he did, and going forth from before the avenging sword of his own +forging to the bitterness of an accursed earth, took with him this bright +memory of perfect, ceaseless service, and so fashioned our labouring +wheel—pathetic link with the time of his innocency. It is one of many +unanswered questions, good to ask because it has no answer, only the +suggestion of a train of thought: perhaps we are never so receptive as +when with folded hands we say simply, “This is a great mystery.” I +watched and wondered until Jem called, and I had to leave the rippling +weir and the water’s side, and the wheel with its untold secret. + +The miller’s wife gave me tea and a crust of home-made bread, and the +miller’s little maid sat on my knee while I told the sad tale of a little +pink cloud separated from its parents and teazed and hunted by +mischievous little airs. To-morrow, if I mistake not, her garden will be +wet with its tears, and, let us hope, point a moral; for the tale had its +origin in a frenzied chicken driven from the side of an anxious mother, +and pursued by a sturdy, relentless figure in a white sun-bonnet. + +The little maid trotted off, greatly sobered, to look somewhat +prematurely for the cloud’s tears; and I climbed to my place at the top +of the piled-up sacks, and thence watched twilight pass to starlight +through my narrow peep, and, so watching, slept until Jem’s voice hailed +me from Dreamland, and I went, only half awake, across the dark fields +home. + +Autumn is here and it is already late. He has painted the hedges russet +and gold, scarlet and black, and a tangle of grey; now he has damp brown +leaves in his hair and frost in his finger-tips. + +It is a season of contrasts; at first all is stir and bustle, the +ingathering of man and beast; barn and rickyard stand filled with golden +treasure; at the farm the sound of threshing; in wood and copse the +squirrels busied ’twixt tree and storehouse, while the ripe nuts fall +with thud of thunder rain. When the harvesting is over, the fruit +gathered, the last rick thatched, there comes a pause. Earth strips off +her bright colours and shows a bare and furrowed face; the dead leaves +fall gently and sadly through the calm, sweet air; grey mists drape the +fields and hedges. The migratory birds have left, save a few late +swallows; and as I sit at work in the soft, still rain, I can hear the +blackbird’s melancholy trill and the thin pipe of the redbreast’s winter +song—the air is full of the sound of farewell. + +Forethought and preparation for the Future which shall be; farewell, +because of the Future which may never be—for us; “Man, thou hast goods +laid up for many years, and it is well; but, remember, this night _thy_ +soul may be required”; is the unvoiced lesson of autumn. There is +growing up among us a great fear; it stares at us white, wide-eyed, from +the faces of men and women alike—the fear of pain, mental and bodily +pain. For the last twenty years we have waged war with suffering—a noble +war when fought in the interest of the many, but fraught with great +danger to each individual man. It is the fear which should not be, +rather than the ‘hope which is in us,’ that leads men in these days to +drape Death in a flowery mantle, to lay stress on the shortness of +parting, the speedy reunion, to postpone their good-byes until the last +moment, or avoid saying them altogether; and this fear is a poor, ignoble +thing, unworthy of those who are as gods, knowing good and evil. We are +still paying the price of that knowledge; suffering in both kinds is a +substantial part of it, and brings its own healing. Let us pay like men, +our face to the open heaven, neither whimpering like children in the +dark, nor lulled to unnecessary oblivion by some lethal drug; for it is +manly, not morbid, to dare to taste the pungent savour of pain, the +lingering sadness of farewell which emphasises the aftermath of life; it +should have its place in all our preparation as a part of our inheritance +we dare not be without. + +There is an old couple in our village who are past work. The married +daughter has made shift to take her mother and the parish half-crown, but +there is neither room nor food for the father, and he must go to N—. If +husband and wife went together, they would be separated at the workhouse +door. The parting had to come; it came yesterday. I saw them stumbling +lamely down the road on their last journey together, walking side by side +without touch or speech, seeing and heeding nothing but a blank future. +As they passed me the old man said gruffly, “’Tis far eno’; better be +gettin’ back”; but the woman shook her head, and they breasted the hill +together. At the top they paused, shook hands, and separated; one went +on, the other turned back; and as the old woman limped blindly by I +turned away, for there are sights a man dare not look upon. She passed; +and I heard a child’s shrill voice say, “I come to look for you, gran”; +and I thanked God that there need be no utter loneliness in the world +while it holds a little child. + +Now it is my turn, and I must leave the wayside to serve in the +sheepfolds during the winter months. It is scarcely a farewell, for my +road is ubiquitous, eternal; there are green ways in Paradise and golden +streets in the beautiful City of God. Nevertheless, my heart is heavy; +for, viewed by the light of the waning year, roadmending seems a great +and wonderful work which I have poorly conceived of and meanly performed: +yet I have learnt to understand dimly the truths of three great +paradoxes—the blessing of a curse, the voice of silence, the +companionship of solitude—and so take my leave of this stretch of road, +and of you who have fared along the white highway through the medium of a +printed page. + +Farewell! It is a roadmender’s word; I cry you Godspeed to the next +milestone—and beyond. + + + + +OUT OF THE SHADOW + + +CHAPTER I + + +I AM no longer a roadmender; the stretch of white highway which leads to +the end of the world will know me no more; the fields and hedgerows, +grass and leaf stiff with the crisp rime of winter’s breath, lie beyond +my horizon; the ewes in the folding, their mysterious eyes quick with the +consciousness of coming motherhood, answer another’s voice and hand; +while I lie here, not in the lonely companionship of my expectations, but +where the shadow is bright with kindly faces and gentle hands, until one +kinder and gentler still carries me down the stairway into the larger +room. + +But now the veil was held aside and one went by crowned with the majesty +of years, wearing the ermine of an unstained rule, the purple of her +people’s loyalty. Nations stood with bated breath to see her pass in the +starlit mist of her children’s tears; a monarch—greatest of her time; an +empress—conquered men called mother; a woman—Englishmen cried queen; +still the crowned captive of her people’s heart—the prisoner of love. + +The night-goers passed under my window in silence, neither song nor shout +broke the welcome dark; next morning the workmen who went by were +strangely quiet. + + ‘VICTORIA DEI GRATIA BRITANNIARUM REGINA.’ + +Did they think of how that legend would disappear, and of all it meant, +as they paid their pennies at the coffee-stall? The feet rarely know the +true value and work of the head; but all Englishmen have been and will be +quick to acknowledge and revere Victoria by the grace of God a wise +woman, a great and loving mother. + +Years ago, I, standing at a level crossing, saw her pass. The train +slowed down and she caught sight of the gatekeeper’s little girl who had +climbed the barrier. Such a smile as she gave her! And then I caught a +quick startled gesture as she slipped from my vision; I thought +afterwards it was that she feared the child might fall. Mother first, +then Queen; even so rest came to her—not in one of the royal palaces, but +in her own home, surrounded by the immediate circle of her nearest and +dearest, while the world kept watch and ward. + +I, a shy lover of the fields and woods, longed always, should a painless +passing be vouchsafed me, to make my bed on the fragrant pine needles in +the aloneness of a great forest; to lie once again as I had lain many a +time, bathed in the bitter sweetness of the sun-blessed pines, lapped in +the manifold silence; my ear attuned to the wind of Heaven with its call +from the Cities of Peace. In sterner mood, when Love’s hand held a +scourge, I craved rather the stress of the moorland with its bleaker mind +imperative of sacrifice. To rest again under the lee of Rippon Tor swept +by the strong peat-smelling breeze; to stare untired at the long +cloud-shadowed reaches, and watch the mist-wraiths huddle and shrink +round the stones of blood; until my sacrifice too was accomplished, and +my soul had fled. A wild waste moor; a vast void sky; and naught between +heaven and earth but man, his sin-glazed eyes seeking afar the distant +light of his own heart. + +With years came counsels more profound, and the knowledge that man was no +mere dweller in the woods to follow the footsteps of the piping god, but +an integral part of an organised whole, in which Pan too has his +fulfilment. The wise Venetians knew; and read pantheism into +Christianity when they set these words round Ezekiel’s living creatures +in the altar vault of St Mark’s:— + + QUAEQUE SUB OBSCURIS DE CRISTO DICTA FIGURIS + HIS APERIRE DATUR ET IN HIS, DEUS IPSE NOTATUR. + +“Thou shalt have none other gods but me.” If man had been able to keep +this one commandment perfectly the other nine would never have been +written; instead he has comprehensively disregarded it, and perhaps never +more than now in the twentieth century. Ah, well! this world, in spite +of all its sinning, is still the Garden of Eden where the Lord walked +with man, not in the cool of evening, but in the heat and stress of the +immediate working day. There is no angel now with flaming sword to keep +the way of the Tree of Life, but tapers alight morning by morning in the +Hostel of God to point us to it; and we, who are as gods knowing good and +evil, partake of that fruit “whereof whoso eateth shall never die”; the +greatest gift or the most awful penalty—Eternal Life. + +I then, with my craving for tree and sky, held that a great capital with +its stir of life and death, of toil and strife and pleasure, was an ill +place for a sick man to wait in; a place to shrink from as a child +shrinks from the rude blow of one out of authority. Yet here, far from +moor and forest, hillside and hedgerow, in the family sitting-room of the +English-speaking peoples, the London much misunderstood, I find the +fulfilment by antithesis of all desire. For the loneliness of the +moorland, there is the warmth and companionship of London’s swift beating +heart. For silence there is sound—the sound and stir of service—for the +most part far in excess of its earthly equivalent. Against the fragrant +incense of the pines I set the honest sweat of the man whose lifetime is +the measure of his working day. “He that loveth not his brother whom he +hath seen, how shall he love God whom he hath not seen?” wrote Blessed +John, who himself loved so much that he beheld the Lamb as it had been +slain from the beginning when Adam fell, and the City of God with light +most precious. The burden of corporate sin, the sword of corporate +sorrow, the joy of corporate righteousness; thus we become citizens in +the Kingdom of God, and companions of all his creatures. “It is not good +that the man should be alone,” said the Lord God. + +I live now as it were in two worlds, the world of sight, and the world of +sound; and they scarcely ever touch each other. I hear the grind of +heavy traffic, the struggle of horses on the frost-breathed ground, the +decorous jolt of omnibuses, the jangle of cab bells, the sharp warning of +bicycles at the corner, the swift rattle of costers’ carts as they go +south at night with their shouting, goading crew. All these things I +hear, and more; but I see no road, only the silent river of my heart with +its tale of wonder and years, and the white beat of seagulls’ wings in +strong inquiring flight. + +Sometimes there is naught to see on the waterway but a solitary black +hull, a very Stygian ferry-boat, manned by a solitary figure, and moving +slowly up under the impulse of the far-reaching sweeps. Then the great +barges pass with their coffined treasure, drawn by a small self-righteous +steam-tug. Later, lightened of their load, and waiting on wind and tide, +I see them swooping by like birds set free; tawny sails that mind me of +red-roofed Whitby with its northern fleet; black sails as of some +heedless Theseus; white sails that sweep out of the morning mist “like +restless gossameres.” They make the bridge, which is just within my +vision, and then away past Westminster and Blackfriars where St Paul’s +great dome lifts the cross high over a self-seeking city; past Southwark +where England’s poet illuminates in the scroll of divine wisdom the sign +of the Tabard; past the Tower with its haunting ghosts of history; past +Greenwich, fairy city, caught in the meshes of riverside mist; and then +the salt and speer of the sea, the companying with great ships, the fresh +burden. + +At night I see them again, silent, mysterious; searching the darkness +with unwinking yellow stare, led by a great green light. They creep up +under the bridge which spans the river with its watching eyes, and +vanish, crying back a warning note as they make the upper reach, or +strident hail, as a chain of kindred phantoms passes, ploughing a +contrary tide. + +Throughout the long watches of the night I follow them; and in the early +morning they slide by, their eyes pale in the twilight; while the stars +flicker and fade, and the gas lamps die down into a dull yellow blotch +against the glory and glow of a new day. + + + +CHAPTER II + + +FEBRUARY is here, February fill-dyke; the month of purification, of +cleansing rains and pulsing bounding streams, and white mist clinging +insistent to field and hedgerow so that when her veil is withdrawn +greenness may make us glad. + +The river has been uniformly grey of late, with no wind to ruffle its +surface or to speed the barges dropping slowly and sullenly down with the +tide through a blurring haze. I watched one yesterday, its useless sails +half-furled and no sign of life save the man at the helm. It drifted +stealthily past, and a little behind, flying low, came a solitary +seagull, grey as the river’s haze—a following bird. + +Once again I lay on my back in the bottom of the tarry old fishing smack, +blue sky above and no sound but the knock, knock of the waves, and the +thud and curl of falling foam as the old boat’s blunt nose breasted the +coming sea. Then Daddy Whiddon spoke. + +“A follerin’ bürrd,” he said. + +I got up, and looked across the blue field we were ploughing into white +furrows. Far away a tiny sail scarred the great solitude, and astern +came a gull flying slowly close to the water’s breast. + +Daddy Whiddon waved his pipe towards it. + +“A follerin’ bürrd,” he said, again; and again I waited; questions were +not grateful to him. + +“There be a carpse there, sure enough, a carpse driftin’ and shiftin’ on +the floor of the sea. There be those as can’t rest, poor sawls, and +her’ll be mun, her’ll be mun, and the sperrit of her is with the bürrd.” + +The clumsy boom swung across as we changed our course, and the water ran +from us in smooth reaches on either side: the bird flew steadily on. + +“What will the spirit do?” I said. + +The old man looked at me gravely. + +“Her’ll rest in the Lard’s time, in the Lard’s gude time—but now her’ll +just be follerin’ on with the bürrd.” + +The gull was flying close to us now, and a cold wind swept the sunny sea. +I shivered: Daddy looked at me curiously. + +“There be reason enough to be cawld if us did but knaw it, but I he mos’ +used to ’em, poor sawls.” He shaded his keen old blue eyes, and looked +away across the water. His face kindled. “There be a skule comin’, and +by my sawl ’tis mackerel they be drivin’.” + +I watched eagerly, and saw the dark line rise and fall in the trough of +the sea, and, away behind, the stir and rush of tumbling porpoises as +they chased their prey. + +Again we changed our tack, and each taking an oar, pulled lustily for the +beach. + +“Please God her’ll break inshore,” said Daddy Whiddon; and he shouted the +news to the idle waiting men who hailed us. + +In a moment all was stir, for the fishing had been slack. Two boats put +out with the lithe brown seine. The dark line had turned, but the school +was still behind, churning the water in clumsy haste; they were coming +in. + +Then the brit broke in silvery leaping waves on the shelving beach. The +threefold hunt was over; the porpoises turned out to sea in search of +fresh quarry; and the seine, dragged by ready hands, came slowly, +stubbornly in with its quivering treasure of fish. They had sought a +haven and found none; the brit lay dying in flickering iridescent heaps +as the bare-legged babies of the village gathered them up; and far away +over the water I saw a single grey speck; it was the following bird. + + * * * * * + +The curtain of river haze falls back; barge and bird are alike gone, and +the lamplighter has lit the first gas-lamp on the far side of the bridge. +Every night I watch him come, his progress marked by the great yellow +eyes that wake the dark. Sometimes he walks quickly; sometimes he +loiters on the bridge to chat, or stare at the dark water; but he always +comes, leaving his watchful deterrent train behind him to police the +night. + +Once Demeter in the black anguish of her desolation searched for lost +Persephone by the light of Hecate’s torch; and searching all in vain, +spurned beneath her empty feet an earth barren of her smile; froze with +set brows the merry brooks and streams; and smote forest, and plain, and +fruitful field, with the breath of her last despair, until even Iambe’s +laughing jest was still. And then when the desolation was complete, +across the wasted valley where the starveling cattle scarcely longed to +browse, came the dreadful chariot—and Persephone. The day of the +prisoner of Hades had dawned; and as the sun flamed slowly up to light +her thwarted eyes the world sprang into blossom at her feet. + +We can never be too Pagan when we are truly Christian, and the old myths +are eternal truths held fast in the Church’s net. Prometheus fetched +fire from Heaven, to be slain forever in the fetching; and lo, a Greater +than Prometheus came to fire the cresset of the Cross. Demeter waits now +patiently enough. Persephone waits, too, in the faith of the sun she +cannot see: and every lamp lit carries on the crusade which has for its +goal a sunless, moonless, city whose light is the Light of the world. + + “Lume è lassù, che visibile face + lo creatore a quella creatura, + che solo in lui vedere ha la sua pace.” + +Immediately outside my window is a lime tree—a little black skeleton of +abundant branches—in which sparrows congregate to chirp and bicker. +Farther away I have a glimpse of graceful planes, children of moonlight +and mist; their dainty robes, still more or less unsullied, gleam ghostly +in the gaslight athwart the dark. They make a brave show even in winter +with their feathery branches and swinging tassels, whereas my little tree +stands stark and uncompromising, with its horde of sooty sparrows cockney +to the last tail feather, and a pathetic inability to look anything but +black. Rain comes with strong caressing fingers, and the branches seem +no whit the cleaner for her care; but then their glistening blackness +mirrors back the succeeding sunlight, as a muddy pavement will sometimes +lap our feet in a sea of gold. The little wet sparrows are for the +moment equally transformed, for the sun turns their dun-coloured coats to +a ruddy bronze, and cries Chrysostom as it kisses each shiny beak. They +are dumb Chrysostoms; but they preach a golden gospel, for the sparrows +are to London what the rainbow was to eight saved souls out of a waste of +waters—a perpetual sign of the remembering mercies of God. + +Last night there was a sudden clatter of hoofs, a shout, and then +silence. A runaway cab-horse, a dark night, a wide crossing, and a heavy +burden: so death came to a poor woman. People from the house went out to +help; and I heard of her, the centre of an unknowing curious crowd, as +she lay bonnetless in the mud of the road, her head on the kerb. A rude +but painless death: the misery lay in her life; for this woman—worn, +white-haired, and wrinkled—had but fifty years to set against such a +condition. The policeman reported her respectable, hard-working, living +apart from her husband with a sister; but although they shared rooms, +they “did not speak,” and the sister refused all responsibility; so the +parish buried the dead woman, and thus ended an uneventful tragedy. + +Was it her own fault? If so, the greater pathos. The lonely souls that +hold out timid hands to an unheeding world have their meed of interior +comfort even here, while the sons of consolation wait on the thresh-hold +for their footfall: but God help the soul that bars its own door! It is +kicking against the pricks of Divine ordinance, the ordinance of a triune +God; whether it be the dweller in crowded street or tenement who is proud +to say, “I keep myself to myself,” or Seneca writing in pitiful +complacency, “Whenever I have gone among men, I have returned home less +of a man.” Whatever the next world holds in store, we are bidden in this +to seek and serve God in our fellow-men, and in the creatures of His +making whom He calls by name. + +It was once my privilege to know an old organ-grinder named Gawdine. He +was a hard swearer, a hard drinker, a hard liver, and he fortified +himself body and soul against the world: he even drank alone, which is an +evil sign. + +One day to Gawdine sober came a little dirty child, who clung to his +empty trouser leg—he had lost a limb years before—with a persistent +unintelligible request. He shook the little chap off with a blow and a +curse; and the child was trotting dismally away, when it suddenly turned, +ran back, and held up a dirty face for a kiss. + +Two days later Gawdine fell under a passing dray which inflicted terrible +internal injuries on him. They patched him up in hospital, and he went +back to his organ-grinding, taking with him two friends—a pain which fell +suddenly upon him to rack and rend with an anguish of crucifixion, and +the memory of a child’s upturned face. Outwardly he was the same save +that he changed the tunes of his organ, out of long-hoarded savings, for +the jigs and reels which children hold dear, and stood patiently playing +them in child-crowded alleys, where pennies are not as plentiful as +elsewhere. + +He continued to drink; it did not come within his new code to stop, since +he could “carry his liquor well;” but he rarely, if ever, swore. He told +me this tale through the throes of his anguish as he lay crouched on a +mattress on the floor; and as the grip of the pain took him he tore and +bit at his hands until they were maimed and bleeding, to keep the ready +curses off his lips. + +He told the story, but he gave no reason, offered no explanation: he has +been dead now many a year, and thus would I write his epitaph:— + +He saw the face of a little child and looked on God. + + + +CHAPTER III + + +“TWO began, in a low voice, ‘Why, the fact is, you see, Miss, this here +ought to have been a _red_ rose-tree, and we put a white one in by +mistake.’” + +As I look round this room I feel sure Two, and Five, and Seven, have all +been at work on it, and made no mistakes, for round the walls runs a +frieze of squat standard rose-trees, red as red can be, and just like +those that Alice saw in the Queen’s garden. In between them are +Chaucer’s name-children, prim little daisies, peering wideawake from +green grass. This same grass has a history which I have heard. In the +original stencil for the frieze it was purely conventional like the rest, +and met in spikey curves round each tree; the painter, however, who was +doing the work, was a lover of the fields; and feeling that such grass +was a travesty, he added on his own account dainty little tussocks, and +softened the hard line into a tufted carpet, the grass growing +irregularly, bent at will by the wind. + +The result from the standpoint of conventional art is indeed disastrous; +but my sympathy and gratitude are with the painter. I see, as he saw, +the far-reaching robe of living ineffable green, of whose brilliance the +eye never has too much, and in whose weft no two threads are alike; and +shrink as he did from the conventionalising of that windswept glory. + +The sea has its crested waves of recognisable form; the river its eddy +and swirl and separate vortices; but the grass! The wind bloweth where +it listeth and the grass bows as the wind blows—“thou canst not tell +whither it goeth.” It takes no pattern, it obeys no recognised law; it +is like a beautiful creature of a thousand wayward moods, and its voice +is like nothing else in the wide world. It bids you rest and bury your +tired face in the green coolness, and breathe of its breath and of the +breath of the good earth from which man was taken and to which he will +one day return. Then, if you lend your ear and are silent minded, you +may hear wondrous things of the deep places of the earth; of life in +mineral and stone as well as in pulsing sap; of a green world as the +stars saw it before man trod it under foot—of the emerald which has its +place with the rest in the City of God. + + “What if earth + Be but the shadow of heaven, and things therein, + Each to each other like, more than on earth to thought?” + +It is a natural part of civilisation’s lust of re-arrangement that we +should be so ready to conventionalise the beauty of this world into +decorative patterns for our pilgrim tents. It is a phase, and will melt +into other phases; but it tends to the increase of artificiality, and +exists not only in art but in everything. It is no new thing for jaded +sentiment to crave the spur of the unnatural, to prefer the clever +imitation, to live in a Devachan where the surroundings appear that which +we would have them to be; but it is an interesting record of the pulse of +the present day that ‘An Englishwoman’s Love Letters’ should have taken +society by storm in the way it certainly has. + +It is a delightful book to leave about, with its vellum binding, dainty +ribbons, and the hallmark of a great publisher’s name. But when we seek +within we find love with its thousand voices and wayward moods, its shy +graces and seemly reticences, love which has its throne and robe of state +as well as the garment of the beggar maid, love which is before time was, +which knew the world when the stars took up their courses, presented to +us in gushing outpourings, the appropriate language of a woman’s heart to +the boor she delights to honour. + +“It is woman who is the glory of man,” says the author of ‘The House of +Wisdom and Love,’ “_Regina mundi_, greater, because so far the less; and +man is her head, but only as he serves his queen.” Set this sober +aphorism against the school girl love-making which kisses a man’s feet +and gaily refuses him the barren honour of having loved her first. + +There is scant need for the apologia which precedes the letters; a few +pages dispels the fear that we are prying into another’s soul. As for +the authorship, there is a woman’s influence, an artist’s poorly +concealed bias in the foreign letters; and for the rest a man’s +blunders—so much easier to see in another than to avoid oneself—writ +large from cover to cover. King Cophetua, who sends “profoundly grateful +remembrances,” has most surely written the letters he would wish to +receive. + +“Mrs Meynell!” cries one reviewer, triumphantly. Nay, the saints be good +to us, what has Mrs Meynell in common with the “Englishwoman’s” language, +style, or most unconvincing passion? Men can write as from a woman’s +heart when they are minded to do so in desperate earnestness—there is +Clarissa Harlowe and Stevenson’s Kirstie, and many more to prove it; but +when a man writes as the author of the “Love Letters” writes, I feel, as +did the painter of the frieze, that pattern-making has gone too far and +included that which, like the grass, should be spared such a convention. + +“I quite agree with you,” said the Duchess, “and the moral of that is—‘Be +what you would seem to be’—or, if you’d like to put it more simply—‘never +imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others +that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had +been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.’” And so by way of the +Queen’s garden I come back to my room again. + +My heart’s affections are still centred on my old attic, with boarded +floor and white-washed walls, where the sun blazoned a frieze of red and +gold until he travelled too far towards the north, the moon streamed in +to paint the trees in inky wavering shadows, and the stars flashed their +glory to me across the years. But now sun and moon greet me only +indirectly, and under the red roses hang pictures, some of them the dear +companions of my days. Opposite me is the Arundel print of the +Presentation, painted by the gentle “Brother of the Angels.” Priest +Simeon, a stately figure in green and gold, great with prophecy, gazes +adoringly at the Bambino he holds with fatherly care. Our Lady, in robe +of red and veil of shadowed purple, is instinct with light despite the +sombre colouring, as she stretches out hungering, awe-struck hands for +her soul’s delight. St Joseph, dignified guardian and servitor, stands +behind, holding the Sacrifice of the Poor to redeem the First-begotten. + +St Peter Martyr and the Dominican nun, gazing in rapt contemplation at +the scene, are not one whit surprised to find themselves in the presence +of eternal mysteries. In the Entombment, which hangs on the opposite +wall, St Dominic comes round the corner full of grievous amaze and +tenderest sympathy, but with no sense of shock or intrusion, for was he +not “famigliar di Cristo”? And so he takes it all in; the stone bed +empty and waiting; the Beloved cradled for the last time on His mother’s +knees to be washed, lapped round, and laid to rest as if He were again +the Babe of Bethlehem. He sees the Magdalen anointing the Sacred Feet; +Blessed John caring for the living and the Dead; and he, Dominic—hound of +the Lord—having his real, living share in the anguish and hope, the +bedding of the dearest Dead, who did but leave this earth that He might +manifest Himself more completely. + +Underneath, with a leap across the centuries, is Rossetti’s picture; +Dante this time the onlooker, Beatrice, in her pale beauty, the +death-kissed one. The same idea under different representations; the one +conceived in childlike simplicity, the other recalling, even in the +photograph, its wealth of colour and imagining; the one a world-wide +ideal, the other an individual expression of it. + +Beatrice was to Dante the inclusion of belief. She was more to him than +he himself knew, far more to him after her death than before. And, +therefore, the analogy between the pictures has at core a common reality. +“It is expedient for you that I go away,” is constantly being said to us +as we cling earthlike to the outward expression, rather than to the +inward manifestation—and blessed are those who hear and understand, for +it is spoken only to such as have been with Him from the beginning. The +eternal mysteries come into time for us individually under widely +differing forms. The tiny child mothers its doll, croons to it, spends +herself upon it, why she cannot tell you; and we who are here in our +extreme youth, never to be men and women grown in this world, nurse our +ideal, exchange it, refashion it, call it by many names; and at last in +here or hereafter we find in its naked truth the Child in the manger, +even as the Wise Men found Him when they came from the East to seek a +great King. There is but one necessary condition of this finding; we +must follow the particular manifestation of light given us, never resting +until it rests—over the place of the Child. And there is but one +insurmountable hindrance, the extinction of or drawing back from the +light truly apprehended by us. We forget this, and judge other men by +the light of our own soul. + +I think the old bishop must have understood it. He is my friend of +friends as he lies opposite my window in his alabaster sleep, clad in +pontifical robes, with unshod feet, a little island of white peace in a +many-coloured marble sea. The faithful sculptor has given every line and +wrinkle, the heavy eyelids and sunken face of tired old age, but withal +the smile of a contented child. + +I do not even know my bishop’s name, only that the work is of the +thirteenth century; but he is good to company with through the day, for +he has known darkness and light and the minds of many men; most surely, +too, he has known that God fulfils Himself in strange ways, so with the +shadow of his feet upon the polished floor he rests in peace. + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +ON Sunday my little tree was limned in white and the sparrows were +craving shelter at my window from the blizzard. Now the mild thin air +brings a breath of spring in its wake and the daffodils in the garden +wait the kisses of the sun. Hand-in-hand with memory I slip away down +the years, and remember a day when I awoke at earliest dawn, for across +my sleep I had heard the lusty golden-throated trumpeters heralding the +spring. + +The air was sharp-set; a delicate rime frosted roof and road; the sea lay +hazy and still like a great pearl. Then as the sky stirred with flush +upon flush of warm rosy light, it passed from misty pearl to opal with +heart of flame, from opal to gleaming sapphire. The earth called, the +fields called, the river called—that pied piper to whose music a man +cannot stop his ears. It was with me as with the Canterbury pilgrims:— + + “So priketh hem nature in hir corages; + Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages.” + +Half an hour later I was away by the early train that carries the branch +mails and a few workmen, and was delivered at the little wayside station +with the letters. The kind air went singing past as I swung along the +reverberating road between the high tree-crowned banks which we call +hedges in merry Devon, with all the world to myself and the Brethren. A +great blackbird flew out with a loud “chook, chook,” and the red of the +haw on his yellow bill. A robin trilled from a low rose-bush; two wrens +searched diligently on a fallen tree for breakfast, quite unconcerned +when I rested a moment beside them; and a shrewmouse slipped across the +road followed directly by its mate. March violets bloomed under the +sheltered hedge with here and there a pale primrose; a frosted bramble +spray still held its autumn tints clinging to the semblance of the past; +and great branches of snowy blackthorn broke the barren hedgeway as if +spring made a mock of winter’s snows. + +Light of heart and foot with the new wine of the year I sped on again, +stray daffodils lighting the wayside, until I heard the voice of the +stream and reached the field gate which leads to the lower meadows. +There before me lay spring’s pageant; green pennons waving, dainty maids +curtseying, and a host of joyous yellow trumpeters proclaiming ‘Victory’ +to an awakened earth. They range in serried ranks right down to the +river, so that a man must walk warily to reach the water’s edge where +they stand gazing down at themselves in fairest semblance like their most +tragic progenitor, and, rising from the bright grass in their thousands, +stretch away until they melt in a golden cloud at the far end of the +misty mead. Through the field gate and across the road I see them, +starring the steep earth bank that leads to the upper copse, gleaming +like pale flames against the dark tree-boles. There they have but frail +tenure; here, in the meadows, they reign supreme. + +At the upper end of the field the river provides yet closer sanctuary for +these children of the spring. Held in its embracing arms lies an island +long and narrow, some thirty feet by twelve, a veritable untrod Eldorado, +glorious in gold from end to end, a fringe of reeds by the water’s edge, +and save for that—daffodils. A great oak stands at the meadow’s neck, an +oak with gnarled and wandering roots where a man may rest, for it is bare +of daffodils save for a group of three, and a solitary one apart growing +close to the old tree’s side. I sat down by my lonely little sister, +blue sky overhead, green grass at my feet decked, like the pastures of +the Blessèd, in glorious sheen; a sea of triumphant, golden heads tossing +blithely back as the wind swept down to play with them at his pleasure. + +It was all mine to have and to hold without severing a single slender +stem or harbouring a thought of covetousness; mine, as the whole earth +was mine, to appropriate to myself without the burden and bane of worldly +possession. “Thou sayest that I am—a King,” said the Lord before Pilate, +and “My kingdom is not of this world.” We who are made kings after His +likeness possess all things, not after this world’s fashion but in +proportion to our poverty; and when we cease to toil and spin, are +arrayed as the lilies, in a glory transcending Solomon’s. Bride +Poverty—she who climbed the Cross with Christ—stretched out eager hands +to free us from our chains, but we flee from her, and lay up treasure +against her importunity, while Amytas on his seaweed bed weeps tears of +pure pity for crave-mouth Cæsar of great possessions. + +Presently another of spring’s lovers cried across the water “Cuckoo, +cuckoo,” and the voice of the stream sang joyously in unison. It is free +from burden, this merry little river, and neither weir nor mill bars its +quick way to the sea as it completes the eternal circle, lavishing gifts +of coolness and refreshment on the children of the meadows. + +It has its birth on the great lone moor, cradled in a wonderful +peat-smelling bog, with a many-hued coverlet of soft mosses—pale gold, +orange, emerald, tawny, olive and white, with the red stain of sun-dew +and tufted cotton-grass. Under the old grey rocks which watch it rise, +yellow-eyed tormantil stars the turf, and bids “Godspeed” to the little +child of earth and sky. Thus the journey begins; and with +ever-increasing strength the stream carves a way through the dear brown +peat, wears a fresh wrinkle on the patient stones, and patters merrily +under a clapper bridge which spanned its breadth when the mistletoe +reigned and Bottor, the grim rock idol, exacted the toll of human life +that made him great. On and on goes the stream, for it may not stay; +leaving of its freshness with the great osmunda that stretches eager +roots towards the running water; flowing awhile with a brother stream, to +part again east and west as each takes up his separate burden of +service—my friend to cherish the lower meadows in their flowery +joyance—and so by the great sea-gate back to sky and earth again. + +The river of God is full of water. The streets of the City are pure +gold. Verily, here also having nothing we possess all things. + + * * * * * + +The air was keen and still as I walked back in the early evening, and a +daffodil light was in the sky as if Heaven mirrored back earth’s +radiance. Near the station some children flitted past, like little white +miller moths homing through the dusk. As I climbed the hill the moon +rode high in a golden field—it was daffodils to the last. + + + +CHAPTER V + + +THE seagulls from the upper reaches pass down the river in sober steady +flight seeking the open sea. I shall miss the swoop and circle of silver +wings in the sunlight and the plaintive call which sounds so strangely +away from rock and shore, but it is good to know that they have gone from +mudbank and murky town back to the free airs of their inheritance, to the +shadow of sun-swept cliffs and the curling crest of the wind-beaten +waves, to brood again over the great ocean of a world’s tears. + +My little tree is gemmed with buds, shy, immature, but full of promise. +The sparrows busied with nest-building in the neighbouring pipes and +gutters use it for a vantage ground, and crowd there in numbers, each +little beak sealed with long golden straw or downy feather. + +The river is heavy with hay barges, the last fruits of winter’s +storehouse; the lengthening days slowly and steadily oust the dark; the +air is loud with a growing clamour of life: spring is not only +proclaimed, but on this Feast she is crowned, and despite the warring +wind the days bring their meed of sunshine. We stand for a moment at the +meeting of the ways, the handclasp of Winter and Spring, of Sleep and +Wakening, of Life and Death; and there is between them not even the thin +line which Rabbi Jochanan on his death-bed beheld as all that divided +hell from heaven. + +“_Sphæra cujus centrum ubique_, _circumferentia nullibus_,” was said of +Mercury, that messenger of the gods who marshalled reluctant spirits to +the Underworld; and for Mercury we may write Life with Death as its great +sacrament of brotherhood and release, to be dreaded only as we dread to +partake unworthily of great benefits. Like all sacraments it has its +rightful time and due solemnities; the horror and sin of suicide lie in +the presumption of free will, the forestalling of a gift,—the sin of Eve +in Paradise, who took that which might only be given at the hand of the +Lord. It has too its physical pains, but they are those of a woman in +travail, and we remember them no more for joy that a child-man is born +into the world naked and not ashamed: beholding ourselves as we are we +shall see also the leaves of the Tree of Life set for the healing of the +nations. + +We are slowly, very slowly, abandoning our belief in sudden and violent +transitions for a surer and fuller acceptance of the doctrine of +evolution; but most of us still draw a sharp line of demarcation between +this world and the next, and expect a radical change in ourselves and our +surroundings, a break in the chain of continuity entirely contrary to the +teaching of nature and experience. In the same way we cling to the +specious untruth that we can begin over and over again in this world, +forgetting that while our sorrow and repentance bring sacramental gifts +of grace and strength, God Himself cannot, by His own limitation, rewrite +the Past. We are in our sorrow that which we have made ourselves in our +sin; our temptations are there as well as the way of escape. We are in +the image of God. We create our world, our undying selves, our heaven, +or our hell. “_Qui creavit te sine te non salvabit te sine te_.” It is +stupendous, magnificent, and most appalling. A man does not change as he +crosses the threshold of the larger room. His personality remains the +same, although the expression of it may be altered. Here we have +material bodies in a material world—there, perhaps, ether bodies in an +ether world. There is no indecency in reasonable speculation and +curiosity about the life to come. One end of the thread is between our +fingers, but we are haunted for the most part by the snap of Atropos’ +shears. + +Socrates faced death with the magnificent calm bred of dignified +familiarity. He had built for himself a desired heaven of colour, light, +and precious stones—the philosophic formula of those who set the +spiritual above the material, and worship truth in the beauty of +holiness. He is not troubled by doubts or regrets, for the path of the +just lies plain before his face. He forbids mourning and lamentations as +out of place, obeys minutely and cheerily the directions of his +executioner, and passes with unaffected dignity to the apprehension of +that larger truth for which he had constantly prepared himself. His +friends may bury him provided they will remember they are not burying +Socrates; and that all things may be done decently and in order, a cock +must go to Æsculapius. + +Long before, in the days of the Captivity, there lived in godless, +blood-shedding Nineveh an exiled Jew whose father had fallen from the +faith. He was a simple man, child-like and direct; living the careful, +kindly life of an orthodox Jew, suffering many persecutions for +conscience’ sake, and in constant danger of death. He narrates the story +of his life and of the blindness which fell on him, with gentle +placidity, and checks the exuberance of his more emotional wife with the +assurance of untroubled faith. Finally, when his pious expectations are +fulfilled, his sight restored, and his son prosperously established +beside him, he breaks into a prayer of rejoicing which reveals the secret +of his confident content. He made use of two great faculties: the sense +of proportion, which enabled him to apprise life and its accidents +justly, and the gift of in-seeing, which led Socrates after him, and +Blessed John in lonely exile on Patmos, to look through the things +temporal to the hidden meanings of eternity. + +“Let my soul bless God the great King,” he cries; and looks away past the +present distress; past the Restoration which was to end in fresh +scattering and confusion; past the dream of gold, and porphyry, and +marble defaced by the eagles and emblems of the conqueror; until his eyes +are held by the Jerusalem of God, “built up with sapphires, and emeralds, +and precious stones,” with battlements of pure gold, and the cry of +‘Alleluia’ in her streets. + +Many years later, when he was very aged, he called his son to him and +gave him as heritage his own simple rule of life, adding but one request: +“Keep thou the law and the commandments, and shew thyself merciful and +just, that it may go well with thee. . . . Consider what alms doeth, and +how righteousness doth deliver. . . . And bury me decently, and thy +mother with me.” Having so said, he went his way quietly and contentedly +to the Jerusalem of his heart. + +It is the simple note of familiarity that is wanting in us; that by which +we link world with world. Once, years ago, I sat by the bedside of a +dying man in a wretched garret in the East End. He was entirely +ignorant, entirely quiescent, and entirely uninterested. The minister of +a neighbouring chapel came to see him and spoke to him at some length of +the need for repentance and the joys of heaven. After he had gone my +friend lay staring restlessly at the mass of decrepit broken chimney pots +which made his horizon. At last he spoke, and there was a new note in +his voice:— + +“Ee said as ’ow there were golding streets in them parts. I ain’t no +ways particler wot they’re made of, but it’ll feel natral like if there’s +chimleys too.” + +The sun stretched a sudden finger and painted the chimney pots red and +gold against the smoke-dimmed sky, and with his face alight with +surprised relief my friend died. + +We are one with the earth, one in sin, one in redemption. It is the +fringe of the garment of God. “If I may but touch the hem,” said a +certain woman. + +On the great Death-day which shadows the early spring with a shadow of +which it may be said _Umbra Dei est Lux_, the earth brought gifts of +grief, the fruit of the curse, barren thorns, hollow reed, and the wood +of the cross; the sea made offering of Tyrian purple; the sky veiled her +face in great darkness, while the nation of priests crucified for the +last time their Paschal lamb. “I will hear, saith the Lord; I will hear +the heavens, and they shall hear the earth, and the earth shall hear the +corn and wine and oil, and they shall hear Jezreel, and I will sow her +unto me in the earth; and I will have mercy upon her that had not +obtained mercy, and I will say unto them which were not my people, ‘Thou +art my people,’ and they shall say ‘Thou art my God.’” + +The second Adam stood in the garden with quickening feet, and all the +earth pulsed and sang for joy of the new hope and the new life quickening +within her, to be hers through the pains of travail, the pangs of +dissolution. The Tree of Life bears Bread and Wine—food of the wayfaring +man. The day of divisions is past, the day of unity has dawned. One has +risen from the dead, and in the Valley of Achor stands wide the Door of +Hope—the Sacrament of Death. + + Scio Domine, et vere scio . . . quia non sum dignus accedere ad + tantum mysterium propter nimia peccata mea et infinitas negligentias + meas. Sed scio . . . quia tu potes me facere dignum. + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +“ANYTUS and Meletus can kill me, but they cannot hurt me,” said Socrates; +and Governor Sancho, with all the itch of newly-acquired authority, could +not make the young weaver of steel-heads for lances sleep in prison. In +the Vision of Er the souls passed straight forward under the throne of +necessity, and out into the plains of forgetfulness, where they must +severally drink of the river of unmindfulness whose waters cannot be held +in any vessel. The throne, the plain, and the river are still here, but +in the distance rise the great lone heavenward hills, and the wise among +us no longer ask of the gods Lethe, but rather remembrance. Necessity +can set me helpless on my back, but she cannot keep me there; nor can +four walls limit my vision. I pass out from under her throne into the +garden of God a free man, to my ultimate beatitude or my exceeding shame. +All day long this world lies open to me; ay, and other worlds also, if I +will but have it so; and when night comes I pass into the kingdom and +power of the dark. + +I lie through the long hours and watch my bridge, which is set with +lights across the gloom; watch the traffic which is for me but so many +passing lamps telling their tale by varying height and brightness. I +hear under my window the sprint of over-tired horses, the rattle of +uncertain wheels as the street-sellers hasten south; the jangle of cab +bells as the theatre-goers take their homeward way; the gruff altercation +of weary men, the unmelodious song and clamorous laugh of women whose +merriment is wearier still. Then comes a time of stillness when the +light in the sky waxes and wanes, when the cloud-drifts obscure the +stars, and I gaze out into blackness set with watching eyes. No sound +comes from without but the voice of the night-wind and the cry of the +hour. The clock on the mantelpiece ticks imperatively, for a check has +fallen on the familiarity which breeds a disregard of common things, and +a reason has to be sought for each sound which claims a hearing. The +pause is wonderful while it lasts, but it is not for long. The working +world awakes, the poorer brethren take up the burden of service; the dawn +lights the sky; remembrance cries an end to forgetting. + +Sometimes in the country on a night in early summer you may shut the +cottage door to step out into an immense darkness which palls heaven and +earth. Going forward into the embrace of the great gloom, you are as a +babe swaddled by the hands of night into helpless quiescence. Your feet +tread an unseen path, your hands grasp at a void, or shrink from the +contact they cannot realise; your eyes are holden; your voice would die +in your throat did you seek to rend the veil of that impenetrable +silence. + +Shut in by the intangible dark, we are brought up against those worlds +within worlds blotted out by our concrete daily life. The working of the +great microcosm at which we peer dimly through the little window of +science; the wonderful, breathing earth; the pulsing, throbbing sap; the +growing fragrance shut in the calyx of to-morrow’s flower; the heart-beat +of a sleeping world that we dream that we know; and around, above, and +interpenetrating all, the world of dreams, of angels and of spirits. + +It was this world which Jacob saw on the first night of his exile, and +again when he wrestled in Peniel until the break of day. It was this +world which Elisha saw with open eyes; which Job knew when darkness fell +on him; which Ezekiel gazed into from his place among the captives; which +Daniel beheld as he stood alone by the great river, the river Hiddekel. + +For the moment we have left behind the realm of question and explanation, +of power over matter and the exercise of bodily faculties; and passed +into darkness alight with visions we cannot see, into silence alive with +voices we cannot hear. Like helpless men we set our all on the one thing +left us, and lift up our hearts, knowing that we are but a mere speck +among a myriad worlds, yet greater than the sum of them; having our roots +in the dark places of the earth, but our branches in the sweet airs of +heaven. + +It is the material counterpart of the ‘Night of the Soul.’ We have left +our house and set forth in the darkness which paralyses those faculties +that make us men in the world of men. But surely the great mystics, with +all their insight and heavenly love, fell short when they sought freedom +in complete separateness from creation instead of in perfect unity with +it. The Greeks knew better when they flung Ariadne’s crown among the +stars, and wrote Demeter’s grief on a barren earth, and Persephone’s joy +in the fruitful field. For the earth is gathered up in man; he is the +whole which is greater than the sum of its parts. Standing in the image +of God, and clothed in the garment of God, he lifts up priestly hands and +presents the sacrifice of redeemed earth before the throne of the +All-Father. “Dust and ashes and a house of devils,” he cries; and there +comes back for answer, “_Rex concupiscet decorem tuam_.” + +The Angel of Death has broad wings of silence and mystery with which he +shadows the valley where we need fear no evil, and where the voice which +speaks to us is as the “voice of doves, tabering upon their breasts.” It +is a place of healing and preparation, of peace and refreshing after the +sharply-defined outlines of a garish day. Walking there we learn to use +those natural faculties of the soul which are hampered by the familiarity +of bodily progress, to apprehend the truths which we have intellectually +accepted. It is the place of secrets where the humility which embraces +all attainable knowledge cries “I know not”; and while we proclaim from +the house-tops that which we have learnt, the manner of our learning lies +hid for each one of us in the sanctuary of our souls. + +The Egyptians, in their ancient wisdom, act in the desert a great +androsphinx, image of mystery and silence, staring from under level brows +across the arid sands of the sea-way. The Greeks borrowed and debased +the image, turning the inscrutable into a semi-woman who asked a foolish +riddle, and hurled herself down in petulant pride when Œdipus answered +aright. So we, marring the office of silence, question its mystery; +thwart ourselves with riddles of our own suggesting; and turn away, +leaving our offering but half consumed on the altar of the unknown god. +It was not the theft of fire that brought the vengeance of heaven upon +Prometheus, but the mocking sacrifice. Orpheus lost Eurydice because he +must see her face before the appointed time. Persephone ate of the +pomegranate and hungered in gloom for the day of light which should have +been endless. + +The universe is full of miracle and mystery; the darkness and silence are +set for a sign we dare not despise. The pall of night lifts, leaving us +engulphed in the light of immensity under a tossing heaven of stars. The +dawn breaks, but it does not surprise us, for we have watched from the +valley and seen the pale twilight. Through the wondrous Sabbath of +faithful souls, the long day of rosemary and rue, the light brightens in +the East; and we pass on towards it with quiet feet and opening eyes, +bearing with us all of the redeemed earth that we have made our own, +until we are fulfilled in the sunrise of the great Easter Day, and the +peoples come from north and south and east and west to the City which +lieth foursquare—the Beatific Vision of God. + + Vere Ierusalem est illa civitas + Cuius pax iugis et summa iucunditas; + Ubi non prævenit rem desiderium, + Nec desiderio minus est præmium. + + + + +AT THE WHITE GATE + + +CHAPTER I + + +A GREAT joy has come to me; one of those unexpected gifts which life +loves to bestow after we have learnt to loose our grip of her. I am back +in my own place very near my road—the white gate lies within my distant +vision; near the lean grey Downs which keep watch and ward between the +country and the sea; very near, nay, in the lap of Mother Earth, for as I +write I am lying on a green carpet, powdered yellow and white with the +sun’s own flowers; overhead a great sycamore where the bees toil and +sing; and sighing shimmering poplars golden grey against the blue. The +day of Persephone has dawned for me, and I, set free like Demeter’s +child, gladden my eyes with this foretaste of coming radiance, and rest +my tired sense with the scent and sound of home. Away down the meadow I +hear the early scythe song, and the warm air is fragrant with the fallen +grass. It has its own message for me as I lie here, I who have obtained +yet one more mercy, and the burden of it is life, not death. + +I remember when, taking a grace from my road, I helped to mow Farmer +Marler’s ten-acre field, rich in ripe upstanding grass. The mechanism of +the ancient reaper had given way under the strain of the home meadows, +and if this crop was to be saved it must be by hand. I have kept the +record of those days of joyous labour under a June sky. Men were hard to +get in our village; old Dodden, who was over seventy, volunteered his +services—he had done yeoman work with the scythe in his youth—and two of +the farm hands with their master completed our strength. + +We took our places under a five o’clock morning sky, and the larks cried +down to us as we stood knee-deep in the fragrant dew-steeped grass, each +man with his gleaming scythe poised ready for its sweeping swing. Old +Dodden led by right of age and ripe experience; bent like a sickle, brown +and dry as a nut, his face a tracery of innumerable wrinkles, he has +never ailed a day, and the cunning of his craft was still with him. At +first we worked stiffly, unreadily, but soon the monotonous motion +possessed us with its insistent rhythm, and the grass bowed to each +sibilant swish and fell in sweet-smelling swathes at our feet. Now and +then a startled rabbit scurried through the miniature forest to vanish +with white flick of tail in the tangled hedge; here and there a mother +lark was discovered sitting motionless, immovable upon her little brood; +but save for these infrequent incidents we paced steadily on with no +speech save the cry of the hone on the steel and the swish of the falling +swathes. The sun rose high in the heaven and burnt on bent neck and bare +and aching arms, the blood beat and drummed in my veins with the unwonted +posture and exercise; I worked as a man who sees and hears in a mist. +Once, as I paused to whet my scythe, my eye caught the line of the +untroubled hills strong and still in the broad sunshine; then to work +again in the labouring, fertile valley. + +Rest time came, and wiping the sweat from brow and blade we sought the +welcome shadow of the hedge and the cool sweet oatmeal water with which +the wise reaper quenches his thirst. Farmer Marler hastened off to see +with master-eye that all went well elsewhere; the farm men slept +tranquilly, stretched at full length, clasped hands for pillow; and old +Dodden, sitting with crooked fingers interlaced to check their trembling +betrayal of old age, told how in his youth he had “swep” a four-acre +field single-handed in three days—an almost impossible feat—and of the +first reaping machine in these parts, and how it brought, to his +thinking, the ruin of agricultural morals with it. “’Tis again nature,” +he said, “the Lard gave us the land an’ the seed, but ’Ee said that a man +should sweat. Where’s the sweat drivin’ round wi’ two horses cuttin’ the +straw down an’ gatherin’ it again, wi’ scarce a hand’s turn i’ the day’s +work?” + +Old Dodden’s high-pitched quavering voice rose and fell, mournful as he +surveyed the present, vehement as he recorded the heroic past. He spoke +of the rural exodus and shook his head mournfully. “We old ’uns were +content wi’ earth and the open sky like our feythers before us, but wi’ +the children ’tis first machines to save doin’ a hand’s turn o’ honest +work, an’ then land an’ sky ain’t big enough seemin’ly, nor grand enough; +it must be town an’ a paved street, an’ they sweat their lives out atwixt +four walls an’ call it seein’ life—’tis death an’ worse comes to the most +of ’em. Ay, ’tis better to stay by the land, as the Lard said, till time +comes to lie under it.” I looked away across the field where the hot air +throbbed and quivered, and the fallen grass, robbed already of its +freshness, lay prone at the feet of its upstanding fellows. It is quite +useless to argue with old Dodden; he only shakes his head and says +firmly, “An old man, seventy-five come Martinmass knows more o’ life than +a young chap, stands ter reason”; besides, his epitome of the town life +he knows nothing of was a just one as far as it went; and his own son is +the sweeper of a Holborn crossing, and many other things that he should +not be; but that is the parson’s secret and mine. + +We took rank again and swept steadily on through the hot still hours into +the evening shadows, until the sinking sun set a _Gloria_ to the psalm of +another working day. Only a third of the field lay mown, for we were not +skilled labourers to cut our acre a day; I saw it again that night under +the moonlight and the starlight, wrapped in a shroud of summer’s mist. + +The women joined us on the third day to begin haymaking, and the air was +fragrant of tossed and sun-dried grass. One of them walked apart from +the rest, without interest or freedom of movement; her face, sealed and +impassive, was aged beyond the vigour of her years. I knew the woman by +sight, and her history by hearsay. We have a code of morals here—not +indeed peculiar to this place or people—that a wedding is ‘respectable’ +if it precedes child-birth by a bare month, tolerable, and to be +recognised, should it succeed the same by less than a year (provided the +pair are not living in the same village); but the child that has never +been ‘fathered’ and the wife without a ring are ‘anathema,’ and such in +one was Elizabeth Banks. She went away a maid and came back a year ago +with a child and without a name. Her mother was dead, her father and the +village would have none of her: the homing instinct is very strong, or +she would scarcely have returned, knowing the traditions of the place. +Old Dodden, seeing her, grumbled to me in the rest-time.—“Can’t think +what the farmer wants wi’ Lizzie Banks in ’is field.” “She must live,” I +said, “and by all showing her life is a hard one.” “She ’ad the makin’ +of ’er bed,” he went on, obstinately. “What for do she bring her +disgrace home, wi’ a fatherless brat for all folks to see? We don’t want +them sort in our village. The Lord’s hand is heavy, an’ a brat’s a curse +that cannot be hid.” + +When tea-time came I crossed the field to look for a missing hone, and +saw Elizabeth Banks far from the other women, busied with a bundle under +the hedge. I passed close on my search, and lo! the bundle was a little +boy. He lay smiling and stretching, fighting the air with his small pink +fists, while the wind played with his curls. “A curse that cannot be +hid,” old Dodden had said. The mother knelt a moment, devouring him with +her eyes, then snatched him to her with aching greed and covered him with +kisses. I saw the poor, plain face illumined, transfigured, alive with a +mother’s love, and remembered how the word came once to a Hebrew +prophet:— + + Say unto your brethren Ammi, and to your sisters Ruhamah. + +The evening sky was clouding fast, the sound of rain was in the air; +Farmer Marler shook his head as he looked at the grass lying in ordered +rows. I was the last to leave, and as I lingered at the gate drinking in +the scent of the field and the cool of the coming rain, the first drops +fell on my upturned face and kissed the poor dry swathes at my feet, and +I was glad. + +David, child of the fields and the sheepfolds, his kingship laid aside, +sees through the parted curtain of the years the advent of his greater +Son, and cries in his psalm of the hilltops, his last prophetic prayer:— + + He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass. + +Even so He came, and shall still come. Three days ago the field, in its +pageant of fresh beauty, with shimmering blades and tossing banners, +greeted sun and shower alike with joy for the furtherance of its life and +purpose; now, laid low, it hears the young grass whisper the splendour of +its coming green; and the poor swathes are glad at the telling, but full +of grief for their own apparent failure. Then in great pity comes the +rain, the rain of summer, gentle, refreshing, penetrating, and the +swathes are comforted, for they know that standing to greet or prostrate +to suffer, the consolations of the former and the latter rain are still +their own, with tender touch and cool caress. Then, once more parched by +the sun, they are borne away to the new service their apparent failure +has fitted them for; and perhaps as they wait in the dark for the unknown +that is still to come they hear sometimes the call of the distant rain, +and at the sound the dry sap stirs afresh—they are not forgotten and can +wait. + +“_Say unto your sisters Ruhamah_,” cries the prophet. + +“_He shall come down like rain on the mown grass_,” sang the poet of the +sheepfolds. + +“_My ways are not your ways_, _saith the Lord_.” + + * * * * * + +I remember how I went home along the damp sweet-scented lanes through the +grey mist of the rain, thinking of the mown field and Elizabeth Banks and +many, many more; and that night, when the sky had cleared and the +nightingale sang, I looked out at the moon riding at anchor, a silver +boat in a still blue sea ablaze with the headlights of the stars, and the +saying of the herdsman of Tekoa came to me—as it has come oftentimes +since:— + + Seek Him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the + shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night; + that calleth for the waters of the sea and poureth them out upon the + face of earth; the Lord is His name. + + + +CHAPTER II + + +THIS garden is an epitome of peace; sun and wind, rain, flowers, and +birds gather me into the blessedness of their active harmony. The world +holds no wish for me, now that I have come home to die with my own +people, for verify I think that the sap of grass and trees must run in my +veins, so steady is their pull upon my heart-strings. London claimed all +my philosophy, but the country gives all, and asks of me only the warm +receptivity of a child in its mother’s arms. + +When I lie in my cool light room on the garden level, I look across the +bright grass—_il verde smalto_—to a great red rose bush in lavish +disarray against the dark cypress. Near by, amid a tangle of many-hued +corn-flowers I see the promise of coming lilies, the sudden crimson of a +solitary pæony; and in lowlier state against the poor parched earth glow +the golden cups of the eschseholtzias. Beyond the low hedge lies pasture +bright with buttercups, where the cattle feed. Farther off, where the +scythe has been busy, are sheep, clean and shorn, with merry, well-grown +lambs; and in the farthest field I can see the great horses moving in +slow steady pace as the farmer turns his furrow. + +The birds are noisy comrades and old friends, from the lark which chants +the dew-steeped morning, to the nightingale that breaks the silence of +the most wonderful nights. I hear the wisdom of the rooks in the great +elms; the lifting lilt of the linnet, and the robin’s quaint little +summer song. The starlings chatter ceaselessly, their queer strident +voices harsh against the melodious gossip of the other birds; the martins +shrill softly as they swoop to and fro busied with their nesting under +the caves; thrush and blackbird vie in friendly rivalry like the +Meister-singer of old; sometimes I hear the drawling cry of a peacock +strayed from the great house, or the laugh of the woodpecker; and at +night the hunting note of the owl reaches me as he sweeps by in search of +prey. + +To-day I am out again; and the great sycamore showers honey and flowers +on me as I lie beneath it. Sometimes a bee falls like an over-ripe +fruit, and waits awhile to clean his pollen-coated legs ere he flies home +to discharge his burden. He is too busy to be friendly, but his great +velvety cousin is much more sociable, and stays for a gentle rub between +his noisy shimmering wings, and a nap in the hollow of my hand, for he is +an idle friendly soul with plenty of time at his own disposal and no +responsibilities. Looking across I can watch the martins at work; they +have a starling and a sparrow for near neighbours in the wooden gutter. +One nest is already complete all but the coping, the other two are +a-building: I wonder whether I or they will be first to go south through +the mist. + +This great tree is a world in itself, and the denizens appear full of +curiosity as to the Gulliver who has taken up his abode beneath it. Pale +green caterpillars and spiders of all sizes come spinning down to visit +me, and have to be persuaded with infinite difficulty to ascend their +threads again. There are flies with beautiful iridescent wings, beetles +of all shapes, some of them like tiny jewels in the sunlight. Their +nomenclature is a sealed book to me; of their life and habits I know +nothing; yet this is but a little corner of the cosmos I am leaving, and +I feel not so much desire for the beauty to come, as a great longing to +open my eyes a little wider during the time which remains to me in this +beautiful world of God’s making, where each moment tells its own tale of +active, progressive life in which there is no undoing. Nature knows +naught of the web of Penelope, that acme of anxious pathetic waiting, but +goes steadily on in ever widening circle towards the fulfilment of the +mystery of God. + +There are, I take it, two master-keys to the secrets of the universe, +viewed _sub specie æternitatis_, the Incarnation of God, and the +Personality of Man; with these it is true for us as for the pantheistic +little man of contemptible speech, that “all things are ours,” yea, even +unto the third heaven. + +I have lost my voracious appetite for books; their language is less plain +than scent and song and the wind in the trees; and for me the clue to the +next world lies in the wisdom of earth rather than in the learning of +men. “_Libera me ab fuscina Hophni_,” prayed the good Bishop fearful of +religious greed. I know too much, not too little; it is realisation that +I lack, wherefore I desire these last days to confirm in myself the +sustaining goodness of God, the love which is our continuing city, the +New Jerusalem whose length, breadth, and height are all one. It is a +time of exceeding peace. There is a place waiting for me under the firs +in the quiet churchyard; thanks to my poverty I have no worldly anxieties +or personal dispositions; and I am rich in friends, many of them unknown +to me, who lavishly supply my needs and make it ideal to live on the +charity of one’s fellow-men. I am most gladly in debt to all the world; +and to Earth, my mother, for her great beauty. + +I can never remember the time when I did not love her, this mother of +mine with her wonderful garments and ordered loveliness, her tender care +and patient bearing of man’s burden. In the earliest days of my lonely +childhood I used to lie chin on hand amid the milkmaids, red sorrel, and +heavy spear-grass listening to her many voices, and above all to the +voice of the little brook which ran through the meadows where I used to +play: I think it has run through my whole life also, to lose itself at +last, not in the great sea but in the river that maketh glad the City of +God. Valley and plain, mountain and fruitful field; the lark’s song and +the speedwell in the grass; surely a man need not sigh for greater +loveliness until he has read something more of this living letter, and +knelt before that earth of which he is the only confusion. + +It is a grave matter that the word religion holds such away among us, +making the very gap seem to yawn again which the Incarnation once and for +ever filled full. We have banished the protecting gods that ruled in +river and mountain, tree and grove; we have gainsayed for the most part +folk-lore and myth, superstition and fairy-tale, evil only in their +abuse. We have done away with mystery, or named it deceit. All this we +have done in an enlightened age, but despite this policy of destruction +we have left ourselves a belief, the grandest and most simple the world +has ever known, which sanctifies the water that is shed by every passing +cloud; and gathers up in its great central act vineyard and cornfield, +proclaiming them to be that Life of the world without which a man is dead +while he liveth. Further, it is a belief whose foundations are the most +heavenly mystery of the Trinity, but whose centre is a little Child: it +sets a price upon the head of the sparrow, and reckons the riches of this +world at their true value; it points to a way of holiness where the fool +shall not err, and the sage may find the realisation of his far-seeking; +and yet, despite its inclusiveness, it is a belief which cannot save the +birds from destruction, the silent mountains from advertisement, or the +stream from pollution, in an avowedly Christian land. John Ruskin +scolded and fought and did yeoman service, somewhat hindered by his +over-good conceit of himself; but it is not the worship of beauty we need +so much as the beauty of holiness. Little by little the barrier grows +and ‘religion’ becomes a _rule_ of life, not life itself, although the +Bride stands ready to interpret, likened in her loveliness to the chief +treasures of her handmaid-Earth. There is more truth in the believing +cry, “Come from thy white cliffs, O Pan!” than in the religion that +measures a man’s life by the letter of the Ten Commandments, and erects +itself as judge and ruler over him, instead of throwing open the gate of +the garden where God walks with man from morning until morning. + +As I write the sun is setting; in the pale radiance of the sky above his +glory there dawns the evening star; and earth like a tired child turns +her face to the bosom of the night. + + + +CHAPTER III + + +ONCE again I have paid a rare visit to my tree to find many things +changed since my last sojourn there. The bees are silent, for the +honey-laden flowers of the sycamore are gone and in their place hang +dainty two-fold keys. The poplar has lost its metallic shimmer, the +chestnut its tall white candles; and the sound of the wind in the +fully-leaved branches is like the sighing of the sea. The martins’ nests +are finished, and one is occupied by a shrill-voiced brood; but for the +most part the birds’ parental cares are over, and the nestlings in bold +flight no longer flutter on inefficient wings across the lawn with +clamorous, open bill. The robins show promise of their ruddy vests, the +slim young thrush is diligently practising maturer notes, and soon Maid +June will have fled. + +It is such a wonderful world that I cannot find it in my heart to sigh +for fresh beauty amid these glories of the Lord on which I look, seeing +men as trees walking, in my material impotence which awaits the final +anointing. The marigolds with their orange suns, the lilies’ white +flame, the corncockle’s blue crown of many flowers, the honeysuckle’s +horn of fragrance—I can paraphrase them, name, class, dissect them; and +then, save for the purposes of human intercourse, I stand where I stood +before, my world bounded by my capacity, the secret of colour and +fragrance still kept. It is difficult to believe that the second lesson +will not be the sequence of the first, and death prove a “feast of +opening eyes” to all these wonders, instead of the heavy-lidded slumber +to which we so often liken it. “Earth to earth?” Yes, “dust thou art, +and unto dust thou shalt return,” but what of the rest? What of the +folded grave clothes, and the Forty Days? If the next state be, as it +well might, space of four dimensions, and the first veil which will lift +for me be the material one, then the “other” world which is hidden from +our grosser material organism will lie open, and declare still further to +my widening eyes and unstopped ears the glory and purpose of the manifold +garment of God. Knowledge will give place to understanding in that +second chamber of the House of Wisdom and Love. Revelation is always +measured by capacity: “Open thy mouth wide,” and it shall be filled with +a satisfaction that in itself is desire. + +There is a child here, a happy quiet little creature holding gently to +its two months of life. Sometimes they lay it beside me, I the more +helpless of the two—perhaps the more ignorant—and equally dependent for +the supply of my smallest need. I feel indecently large as I survey its +minute perfections and the tiny balled fist lying in my great palm. The +little creature fixes me with the wise wide stare of a soul in advance of +its medium of expression; and I, gazing back at the mystery in those +eyes, feel the thrill of contact between my worn and sustained self and +the innocence of a little white child. It is wonderful to watch a +woman’s rapturous familiarity with these newcomers. A man’s love has far +more awe in it, and the passionate animal instinct of defence is wanting +in him. “A woman shall be saved through the child-bearing,” said St +Paul; not necessarily her own, but by participation in the great act of +motherhood which is the crown and glory of her sex. She is the “prisoner +of love,” caught in a net of her own weaving; held fast by little hands +which rule by impotence, pursued by feet the swifter for their faltering. + +It seems incredible that this is what a woman will barter for the right +to “live her own life”—surely the most empty of desires. Man—_vir_, +woman—_femina_, go to make up _the_ man—_homo_. There can be no +comparison, no rivalry between them; they are the complement of each +other, and a little child shall lead them. It is easy to understand that +desire to shelter under the dear mantle of motherhood which has led to +one of the abuses of modern Romanism. I met an old peasant couple at +Bornhofen who had tramped many weary miles to the famous shrine of Our +Lady to plead for their only son. They had a few pence saved for a +candle, and afterwards when they told me their tale the old woman heaved +a sigh of relief, “Es wird bald gut gehen: Die da, Sie versteht,” and I +saw her later paying a farewell visit to the great understanding Mother +whom she could trust. Superstitious misapprehension if you will, but +also the recognition of a divine principle. + +It was Behmen, I believe, who cried with the breath of inspiration, “Only +when I know God shall I know myself”; and so man remains the last of all +the riddles, to be solved it may be only in Heaven’s perfection and the +light of the Beatific Vision. “Know thyself” is a vain legend, the more +so when emphasised by a skull; and so I company with a friend and a +stranger, and looking across at the white gate I wonder concerning the +quiet pastures and still waters that lie beyond, even as Brother Ambrose +wondered long years ago in the monastery by the forest. + + The Brother Ambrose was ever a saintly man approved of God and + beloved by the Brethren. To him one night, as he lay abed in the + dormitory, came the word of the Lord, saying, “Come, and I will show + thee the Bride, the Lamb’s wife.” And Brother Ambrose arose and was + carried to a great and high mountain, even as in the Vision of + Blessed John. ’Twas a still night of many stars, and Brother + Ambrose, looking up, saw a radiant path in the heavens; and lo! the + stars gathered themselves together on either side until they stood as + walls of light, and the four winds lapped him about as in a mantle + and bore him towards the wondrous gleaming roadway. Then between the + stars came the Holy City with roof and pinnacle aflame, and walls + aglow with such colours as no earthly limner dreams of, and much + gold. Brother Ambrose beheld the Gates of Pearl, and by every gate + an angel with wings of snow and fire, and a face no man dare look on + because of its exceeding radiance. + + Then as Brother Ambrose stretched out his arms because of his great + longing, a little grey cloud came out of the north and hung between + the walls of light, so that he no longer beheld the Vision, but only + heard a sound as of a great multitude crying ‘Alleluia’; and suddenly + the winds came about him again, and lo! he found himself in his bed + in the dormitory, and it was midnight, for the bell was ringing to + Matins; and he rose and went down with the rest. But when the + Brethren left the choir Brother Ambrose stayed fast in his place, + hearing and seeing nothing because of the Vision of God; and at Lauds + they found him and told the Prior. + + He questioned Brother Ambrose of the matter, and when he heard the + Vision bade him limn the Holy City even as he had seen it; and the + Precentor gave him uterine vellum and much fine gold and what colours + he asked for the work. Then Brother Ambrose limned a wondrous fair + city of gold with turrets and spires; and he inlaid blue for the + sapphire, and green for the emerald, and vermilion where the city + seemed aflame with the glory of God; but the angels he could not + limn, nor could he set the rest of the colours as he saw them, nor + the wall of stars on either hand; and Brother Ambrose fell sick + because of the exceeding great longing he had to limn the Holy City, + and was very sad; but the Prior bade him thank God, and remember the + infirmity of the flesh, which, like the little grey cloud, veiled + Jerusalem to his sight. + +As I write the monastery bell hard by rings out across the lark’s song. +They still have time for visions behind those guarding walls, but for +most of us it is not so. We let slip the ideal for what we call the +real, and the golden dreams vanish while we clutch at phantoms: we speed +along life’s pathway, counting to the full the sixty minutes of every +hour, yet the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong. +Lying here in this quiet backwater it is hard to believe that the world +without is turbulent with storm and stress and the ebb and flow of +uncertain tides. The little yellow cat rolling on its back among the +daisies, the staid tortoise making a stately meal off the buttercups near +me, these are great events in this haven of peace. And yet, looking back +to the working days, I know how much goodness and loving kindness there +is under the froth and foam. If we do not know ourselves we most +certainly do not know our brethren: that revelation awaits us, it may be, +first in Heaven. To have faith is to create; to have hope is to call +down blessing; to have love is to work miracles. Above all let us see +visions, visions of colour and light, of green fields and broad rivers, +of palaces laid with fair colours, and gardens where a place is found for +rosemary and rue. + +It is our prerogative to be dreamers, but there will always be men ready +to offer us death for our dreams. And if it must be so let us choose +death; it is gain, not loss, and the gloomy portal when we reach it is +but a white gate, the white gate maybe we have known all our lives barred +by the tendrils of the woodbine. + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +RAIN, rain, rain: the little flagged path outside my window is a +streaming way, where the coming raindrops meet again the grey clouds +whose storehouse they have but just now left. The grass grows greener as +I watch it, the burnt patches fade, a thousand thirsty beads are uplifted +for the cooling draught. + +The great thrush that robs the raspberry canes is busy; yesterday he had +little but dust for his guerdon, but now fresh, juicy fruit repays him as +he swings to and fro on the pliant branches. The blackbirds and +starlings find the worms an easy prey—poor brother worm ever ready for +sacrifice. I can hear the soft expectant chatter of the family of +martins under the roof; there will be good hunting, and they know it, for +the flies are out when the rain is over, and there are clamorous mouths +awaiting. My little brown brothers, the sparrows, remain my chief +delight. Of all the birds these nestle closest to my heart, be they +grimy little cockneys or their trim and dainty country cousins. They +come day by day for their meed of crumbs spread for them outside my +window, and at this season they eat leisurely and with good appetite, for +there are no hungry babies pestering to be fed. Very early in the +morning I hear the whirr and rustle of eager wings, and the tap, tap, of +little beaks upon the stone. The sound carries me back, for it was the +first to greet me when I rose to draw water and gather kindling in my +roadmender days; and if I slip back another decade they survey me, +reproving my laziness, from the foot of the narrow bed in my little attic +overseas. + +Looking along the roadway that we have travelled we see the landmarks, +great and small, which have determined the direction of our feet. For +some those of childhood stand out above all the rest; but I remember few +notable ones, and those few the emphatic chord of the universe, rather +than any commerce with my fellows. There was the night of my great +disappointment, when I was borne from my comfortable bed to see the +wonders of the moon’s eclipse. Disappointment was so great that it +sealed my lips; but, once back on my pillow, I sobbed for grief that I +had seen a wonder so far below my expectation. Then there was a night at +Whitby, when the wind made speech impossible, and the seas rushed up and +over the great lighthouse like the hungry spirits of the deep. I like +better to remember the scent of the first cowslip field under the warm +side of the hedge, when I sang to myself for pure joy of their colour and +fragrance. Again, there were the bluebells in the deserted quarry like +the backwash of a southern sea, and below them the miniature forest of +sheltering bracken with its quaint conceits; and, crowned above all, the +day I stood on Watcombe Down, and looked across a stretch of golden gorse +and new-turned blood-red field, the green of the headland, and beyond, +the sapphire sea. + +Time sped, and there came a day when I first set foot on German soil and +felt the throb of its paternity, the beat of our common Life. England is +my mother, and most dearly do I love her swelling breasts and wind-swept, +salt-strewn hair. Scotland gave me my name, with its haunting derivation +handed down by brave men; but Germany has always been to me the +Fatherland _par excellence_. True, my love is limited to the southern +provinces, with their medieval memories; for the progressive guttural +north I have little sympathy, but the Rhine claimed me from the first, +calling, calling, with that wonderful voice which speaks of death and +life, of chivalry and greed of gold. If you would have the river’s +company you should wander, a happy solitary, along its banks, watching +its gleaming current in the early morning, its golden glory as it answers +the farewell of parting day. Then, in the silence of the night, you can +hear the wash and eddy calling one to another, count the heart-beats of +the great bearer of burdens, and watch in the moonlight the sisters of +the mist as they lament with wringing hands the days that are gone. + +The forests, too, are ready with story hid in the fastness of their +solitude, and it is a joy to think that those great pines, pointing ever +upwards, go for the most part to carry the sails of great ships seeking +afar under open sky. The forest holds other wonders still. It seems but +last night that I wandered down the road which led to the little unheeded +village where I had made my temporary home. The warm-scented breath of +the pines and the stillness of the night wrapped me in great content; the +summer lightning leapt in a lambent arch across the east, and the stars, +seen dimly through the sombre tree crests, were outrivalled by the +glow-worms which shone in countless points of light from bank and hedge; +even two charcoal-burners, who passed with friendly greeting, had +wreathed their hats with the living flame. The tiny shifting lamps were +everywhere; pale yellow, purely white, or green as the underside of a +northern wave. By day but an ugly, repellent worm; but darkness comes, +and lo, a star alight. Nature is full for us of seeming inconsistencies +and glad surprises. The world’s asleep, say you; on your ear falls the +nightingale’s song and the stir of living creatures in bush and brake. +The mantle of night falls, and all unattended the wind leaps up and +scatters the clouds which veil the constant stars; or in the hour of the +great dark, dawn parts the curtain with the long foregleam of the coming +day. It is hard to turn one’s back on night with her kiss of peace for +tired eye-lids, the kiss which is not sleep but its neglected forerunner. +I made my way at last down to the vine-girt bridge asleep under the stars +and up the winding stairs of the old grey tower; and a stone’s-throw away +the Rhine slipped quietly past in the midsummer moonlight. Switzerland +came in its turn, unearthly in its white loveliness and glory of lake and +sky. But perhaps the landmark which stands out most clearly is the +solitary blue gentian which I found in the short slippery grass of the +Rigi, gazing up at the sky whose blue could not hope to excel it. It was +my first; and what need of another, for finding one I had gazed into the +mystery of all. This side the Pass, snow and the blue of heaven; later I +entered Italy through fields of many-hued lilies, her past glories +blazoned in the flowers of the field. + +Now it is a strangely uneventful road that leads to my White Gate. Each +day questions me as it passes; each day makes answer for me “not yet.” +There is no material preparation to be made for this journey of mine into +a far country—a simple fact which adds to the ‘unknowableness’ of the +other side. Do I travel alone, or am I one of a great company, swift yet +unhurried in their passage? The voices of Penelope’s suitors shrilled on +the ears of Ulysses, as they journeyed to the nether-world, like +nocturnal birds and bats in the inarticulateness of their speech. They +had abused the gift, and fled self-condemned. Maybe silence commends +itself as most suitable for the wayfarers towards the sunrise—silence +because they seek the Word—but for those hastening towards the confusion +they have wrought there falls already the sharp oncoming of the curse. + +While we are still here the language of worship seems far, and yet lies +very nigh; for what better note can our frail tongues lisp than the voice +of wind and sea, river and stream, those grateful servants giving all and +asking nothing, the soft whisper of snow and rain eager to replenish, or +the thunder proclaiming a majesty too great for utterance? Here, too, +stands the angel with the censer gathering up the fragrance of teeming +earth and forest-tree, of flower and fruit, and sweetly pungent herb +distilled by sun and rain for joyful use. Here, too, come acolytes +lighting the dark with tapers—sun, moon, and stars—gifts of the Lord that +His sanctuary may stand ever served. + +It lies here ready to our hand, this life of adoration which we needs +must live hand in hand with earth, for has she not borne the curse with +us? But beyond the white gate and the trail of woodbine falls the +silence greater than speech, darkness greater than light, a pause of “a +little while”; and then the touch of that healing garment as we pass to +the King in His beauty, in a land from which there is no return. + +At the gateway then I cry you farewell. + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ROADMENDER*** + + +******* This file should be named 705-0.txt or 705-0.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/7/0/705 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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