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diff --git a/old/rmend10h.htm b/old/rmend10h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a9a5191 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/rmend10h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,2935 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII"> +<title>The Roadmender</title> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">The Roadmender, by Michael Fairless</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Roadmender, by Michael Fairless +(#1 in our series by Michael Fairless) + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: The Roadmender + +Author: Michael Fairless + +Release Date: November, 1996 [EBook #705] +[This file was first posted on November 6, 1996] +[Most recently updated: September 8, 2002] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII +</pre> +<p> +<a name="startoftext"></a> +Transcribed from the 1911 Duckworth and Co. edition by David Price, +email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE ROADMENDER<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER II<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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 AEolus 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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +Here is my stone-song, a paraphrase of the Treasure Motif.<br> +<br> +[Music score which cannot be reproduced. It is F# dotted crotchet, +F# quaver, F# quaver, F# dotted crotchet, D crotchet, E crotchet. +This bar is then repeated once more.]<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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; <i>he</i> 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.<br> +<br> +Presently we part, and the two go, dogged and footsore, down the road +which is to lead them into the great silence.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER III<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Yesterday was a day of encounters.<br> +<br> +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. <i>Ecce ancilla Domini</i>.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“Ow long ’ave yer bin at this job that y’ere in such +a hurry?”<br> +<br> +I stayed my hammer to answer - “Four months.”<br> +<br> +“Seen better days?”<br> +<br> +“Never,” I said emphatically, and punctuated the remark +with a stone split neatly in four.<br> +<br> +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?”<br> +<br> +I nodded.<br> +<br> +“Well, that beats everything. Now, I ’<i>ave</i> 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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +The swift stride of civilisation is leaving behind individual effort, +and turning man into the Daemon 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. <i>Then</i> 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 Daemon, and the field is silent to him.<br> +<br> +As with the web and the grain so with the wood and stone in the treasure-house +of our needs. The ground was accursed <i>for our sake</i> 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.”<br> +<br> +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 Daemon 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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“Will you let her bide here till you come back?” I said. +“She’ll be all right by me.”<br> +<br> +The old lady hesitated.<br> +<br> +“Will ’ee stay by him, dearie?” she said.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +He greeted me in a high, piping voice, limped across to the child, and +sat down. “Your little maid, mister?” he said.<br> +<br> +I explained.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +I looked at him - a typical countryman, with white hair, mild blue eyes, +and a rosy, childish, unwrinkled face.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“’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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +When she saw my other visitor she stood amazed.<br> +<br> +“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?”<br> +<br> +“Is it Eliza Jakes?”<br> +<br> +He looked at her dazed, doubtful.<br> +<br> +“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’?”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +She stopped breathless, her defensive motherhood in arms.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“Then ’oo <i>is</i> grandad tum back,” she said.<br> +<br> +Mrs Jakes had been fumbling in her pocket, and extracted a penny, which +she pressed on me.<br> +<br> +“It’s little enough, mister,” she said.<br> +<br> +Then, as I tried to return it: “Nay, I’ve enough, and yours +is poor paid work.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER IV<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +Very pleasant art thou, O Brother Death, thy love is wonderful, passing +the love of women.<br> +<br> +* * * * * *<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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 <i>driven</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +I hailed the old man, and both turned aside; but he gazed at me without +remembrance.<br> +<br> +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.”<br> +<br> +“But you’re never going to take it to E - ?”<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER V<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +Surely she hears some voice, that lonely old woman on whom is set the +seal of great silence?<br> +<br> +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?<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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!<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +He listened with courteous intelligence.<br> +<br> +“You hold a roadmender has a vocation?” he asked.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +Parson nodded his head.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +O wise parson, so to read the lesson of the road!<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +“Robert Louis Stevenson was a roadmender,” said the wise +parson.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +Parson nodded.<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +“Try some of this baccy,” he said; “Sherwood of Magdalen +sent it me from some outlandish place.”<br> +<br> +I accepted gratefully. It was such tobacco as falls to the lot +of few roadmenders.<br> +<br> +He rose to go.<br> +<br> +“I wish I could come and break stones,” he said, a little +wistfully.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +We shook hands, and he went down the road and out of my life.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +Ah, well! I am no Browning Junior, and Sherwood’s name is +not Sherwood.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER VI<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +A while 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?<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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?<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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 <i>thy</i> 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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +Farewell! It is a roadmender’s word; I cry you Godspeed +to the next milestone - and beyond.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +OUT OF THE SHADOW<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER I<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +‘VICTORIA DEI GRATIA BRITANNIARUM REGINA.’<br> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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:-<br> +<br> +<br> +QUAEQUE SUB OBSCURIS DE CRISTO DICTA FIGURIS HIS APERIRE DATUR ET IN +HIS, DEUS IPSE NOTATUR.<br> +<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER II<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“A follerin’ bürrd,” he said.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +Daddy Whiddon waved his pipe towards it.<br> +<br> +“A follerin’ bürrd,” he said, again; and again +I waited; questions were not grateful to him.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“What will the spirit do?” I said.<br> +<br> +The old man looked at me gravely.<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +The gull was flying close to us now, and a cold wind swept the sunny +sea. I shivered: Daddy looked at me curiously.<br> +<br> +“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’.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +Again we changed our tack, and each taking an oar, pulled lustily for +the beach.<br> +<br> +“Please God her’ll break inshore,” said Daddy Whiddon; +and he shouted the news to the idle waiting men who hailed us.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +“Lume è lassù, che visibile face<br> +lo creatore a quella creatura,<br> +che solo in lui vedere ha la sua pace.”<br> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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:-<br> +<br> +He saw the face of a little child and looked on God.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER III<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +“Two began, in a low voice, ‘Why, the fact is, you see, +Miss, this here ought to have been a <i>red</i> rose-tree, and we put +a white one in by mistake.’”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +“What if earth<br> +Be but the shadow of heaven, and things therein,<br> +Each to each other like, more than on earth to thought?”<br> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“It is woman who is the glory of man,” says the author of +‘The House of Wisdom and Love,’ “<i>Regina</i> <i>mundi</i>, +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER IV<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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:-<br> +<br> +<br> +“So priketh hem nature in hir corages;<br> +Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages.”<br> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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 Caesar of +great possessions.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER V<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“<i>Sphaera cujus centrum ubique, circumferentia nullibus</i>,” +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.<br> +<br> +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. “<i>Qui creavit te sine te non +salvabit te sine</i> <i>te</i>.” 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.<br> +<br> +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 AEsculapius.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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:-<br> +<br> +“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.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +On the great Death-day which shadows the early spring with a shadow +of which it may be said <i>Umbra Dei est Lux</i>, 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.’”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER VI<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +“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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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, “<i>Rex concupiscet decorem tuam</i>.”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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 OEdipus 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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +Vere Ierusalem est illa civitas<br> +Cuius pax iugis et summa iucunditas;<br> +Ubi non praevenit rem desiderium,<br> +Nec desiderio minus est praemium.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +AT THE WHITE GATE<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER I<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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?”<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +We took rank again and swept steadily on through the hot still hours +into the evening shadows, until the sinking sun set a <i>Gloria</i> +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.<br> +<br> +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.”<br> +<br> +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:-<br> +<br> +<br> +Say unto your brethren Ammi, and to your sisters Ruhamah.<br> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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:-<br> +<br> +<br> +He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass.<br> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +“<i>Say unto your sisters Ruhamah</i>,” cries the prophet.<br> +<br> +“<i>He shall come down like rain on the mown grass</i>,” +sang the poet of the sheepfolds.<br> +<br> +“<i>My ways are not your ways, saith the Lord</i>.”<br> +<br> +<br> +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:-<br> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER II<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +When I lie in my cool light room on the garden level, I look across +the bright grass - <i>il verde smalto</i> - 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 paeony; 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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +There are, I take it, two master-keys to the secrets of the universe, +viewed <i>sub specie</i> <i>aeternitatis</i>, 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.<br> +<br> +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. “<i>Libera me ab fuscina Hophni</i>,” +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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 <i>rule</i> 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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER III<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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 - <i>vir</i>, woman - <i>femina</i>, go to make up <i>the</i> man +- <i>homo</i>. 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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER IV<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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 <i>par</i> <i>excellence</i>. 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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +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.<br> +<br> +At the gateway then I cry you farewell.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE ROADMENDER ***<br> +<pre> + +******This file should be named rmend10h.htm or rmend10h.zip****** +Corrected EDITIONS of our EBooks get a new NUMBER, rmend11h.htm +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, rmend10ah.htm + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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