{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_705/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_705","id":"gutenberg_705","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/705","summary":null,"tags":["Category: British Literature","Category: Novels","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Fiction","Short stories"],"text":"Transcribed from the 1911 Duckworth and Co. edition by David Price, email\nccx074@pglaf.org\n\n\n\n\n\n                              The Roadmender\n\n\n                                    By\n\n                             Michael Fairless\n\n                                Author of\n                   \u201cThe Gathering of Brother Hilarius\u201d\n\n                      [Picture: Decorative graphic]\n\n                                * * * * *\n\n                                  London\n\n                             Duckworth & Co.\n\n                         3 Henrietta Street, W.C.\n                                   1911\n\n                                * * * * *\n\nThis series of papers appeared in _The Pilot_ and is now republished by\npermission of the Editor.\n\n                                * * * * *\n\n                               A. M. D. G.\n\n                                * * * * *\n\n                                    TO\n                                MY MOTHER:\n                         AND TO EARTH, MY MOTHER,\n                               WHOM I LOVE.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n                             PAGE\nTHE ROADMENDER                  1\nOUT OF THE SHADOW              61\nAT THE WHITE GATE             119\n\nThe Roadmender\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\n\nI HAVE attained my ideal: I am a roadmender, some say stonebreaker.  Both\ntitles are correct, but the one is more pregnant than the other.  All day\nI sit by the roadside on a stretch of grass under a high hedge of\nsaplings and a tangle of traveller\u2019s joy, woodbine, sweetbrier, and late\nroses.  Opposite me is a white gate, seldom used, if one may judge from\nthe trail of honeysuckle growing tranquilly along it: I know now that\nwhenever and wherever I die my soul will pass out through this white\ngate; and then, thank God, I shall not have need to undo that trail.\n\nIn our youth we discussed our ideals freely: I wonder how many beside\nmyself have attained, or would understand my attaining.  After all, what\ndo we ask of life, here or indeed hereafter, but leave to serve, to live,\nto commune with our fellowmen and with ourselves; and from the lap of\nearth to look up into the face of God?  All these gifts are mine as I sit\nby the winding white road and serve the footsteps of my fellows.  There\nis no room in my life for avarice or anxiety; I who serve at the altar\nlive of the altar: I lack nothing but have nothing over; and when the\nwinter of life comes I shall join the company of weary old men who sit on\nthe sunny side of the workhouse wall and wait for the tender mercies of\nGod.\n\nJust now it is the summer of things; there is life and music\neverywhere\u2014in the stones themselves, and I live to-day beating out the\nrhythmical hammer-song of The Ring.  There is real physical joy in the\nrise and swing of the arm, in the jar of a fair stroke, the split and\nscatter of the quartz: I am learning to be ambidextrous, for why should\nEsau sell his birthright when there is enough for both?  Then the\nrest-hour comes, bringing the luxurious ache of tired but not weary\nlimbs; and I lie outstretched and renew my strength, sometimes with my\nface deep-nestled in the cool green grass, sometimes on my back looking\nup into the blue sky which no wise man would wish to fathom.\n\nThe birds have no fear of me; am I not also of the brown brethren in my\nsober fustian livery?  They share my meals\u2014at least the little dun-coated\nFranciscans do; the blackbirds and thrushes care not a whit for such\nsimple food as crumbs, but with legs well apart and claws tense with\npurchase they disinter poor brother worm, having first mocked him with\nsound of rain.  The robin that lives by the gate regards my heap of\nstones as subject to his special inspection.  He sits atop and practises\nthe trill of his summer song until it shrills above and through the\nmetallic clang of my strokes; and when I pause he cocks his tail, with a\nhumorous twinkle of his round eye which means\u2014\u201cWhat! shirking, big\nbrother?\u201d\u2014and I fall, ashamed, to my mending of roads.\n\nThe other day, as I lay with my face in the grass, I heard a gentle\nrustle, and raised my head to find a hedge-snake watching me fearless,\nunwinking.  I stretched out my hand, picked it up unresisting, and put it\nin my coat like the husbandman of old.  Was he so ill-rewarded, I wonder,\nwith the kiss that reveals secrets?  My snake slept in peace while I\nhammered away with an odd quickening of heart as I thought how to me, as\nto Melampus, had come the messenger\u2014had come, but to ears deafened by\ncenturies of misrule, blindness, and oppression; so that, with all my\nlonging, I am shut out of the wondrous world where walked Melampus and\nthe Saint.  To me there is no suggestion of evil in the little silent\ncreatures, harmless, or deadly only with the Death which is Life.  The\nbeasts who turn upon us, as a rule maul and tear unreflectingly; with the\nsnake there is the swift, silent strike, the tiny, tiny wound, then sleep\nand a forgetting.\n\nMy brown friend, with its message unspoken, slid away into the grass at\nsundown to tell its tale in unstopped ears; and I, my task done, went\nhome across the fields to the solitary cottage where I lodge.  It is old\nand decrepit\u2014two rooms, with a quasi-attic over them reached by a ladder\nfrom the kitchen and reached only by me.  It is furnished with the\nluxuries of life, a truckle bed, table, chair, and huge earthenware pan\nwhich I fill from the ice-cold well at the back of the cottage.  Morning\nand night I serve with the Gibeonites, their curse my blessing, as no\ndoubt it was theirs when their hearts were purged by service.  Morning\nand night I send down the moss-grown bucket with its urgent message from\na dry and dusty world; the chain tightens through my hand as the liquid\ntreasure responds to the messenger, and then with creak and jangle\u2014the\nwelcome of labouring earth\u2014the bucket slowly nears the top and disperses\nthe treasure in the waiting vessels.  The Gibeonites were servants in the\nhouse of God, ministers of the sacrament of service even as the High\nPriest himself; and I, sharing their high office of servitude, thank God\nthat the ground was accursed for my sake, for surely that curse was the\nwomb of all unborn blessing.\n\nThe old widow with whom I lodge has been deaf for the last twenty years.\nShe speaks in the strained high voice which protests against her own\ninfirmity, and her eyes have the pathetic look of those who search in\nsilence.  For many years she lived alone with her son, who laboured on\nthe farm two miles away.  He met his death rescuing a carthorse from its\nburning stable; and the farmer gave the cottage rent free and a weekly\nhalf-crown for life to the poor old woman whose dearest terror was the\nworkhouse.  With my shilling a week rent, and sharing of supplies, we\nlive in the lines of comfort.  Of death she has no fears, for in the long\nchest in the kitchen lie a web of coarse white linen, two pennies covered\nwith the same to keep down tired eyelids, decent white stockings, and a\nwhite cotton sun-bonnet\u2014a decorous death-suit truly\u2014and enough money in\nthe little bag for self-respecting burial.  The farmer buried his servant\nhandsomely\u2014good man, he knew the love of reticent grief for a \u2018kind\u2019\nburial\u2014and one day Harry\u2019s mother is to lie beside him in the little\nchurchyard which has been a cornfield, and may some day be one again.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\n\nON Sundays my feet take ever the same way.  First my temple service, and\nthen five miles tramp over the tender, dewy fields, with their ineffable\nearthy smell, until I reach the little church at the foot of the\ngrey-green down.  Here, every Sunday, a young priest from a neighbouring\nvillage says Mass for the tiny hamlet, where all are very old or very\nyoung\u2014for the heyday of life has no part under the long shadow of the\nhills, but is away at sea or in service.  There is a beautiful seemliness\nin the extreme youth of the priest who serves these aged children of God.\nHe bends to communicate them with the reverent tenderness of a son, and\nreads with the careful intonation of far-seeing love.  To the old people\nhe is the son of their old age, God-sent to guide their tottering\nfootsteps along the highway of foolish wayfarers; and he, with his youth\nand strength, wishes no better task.  Service ended, we greet each other\nfriendly\u2014for men should not be strange in the acre of God; and I pass\nthrough the little hamlet and out and up on the grey down beyond.  Here,\nat the last gate, I pause for breakfast; and then up and on with\nquickening pulse, and evergreen memory of the weary war-worn Greeks who\nbroke rank to greet the great blue Mother-way that led to home.  I stand\non the summit hatless, the wind in my hair, the smack of salt on my\ncheek, all round me rolling stretches of cloud-shadowed down, no sound\nbut the shrill mourn of the peewit and the gathering of the sea.\n\nThe hours pass, the shadows lengthen, the sheep-bells clang; and I lie in\nmy niche under the stunted hawthorn watching the to and fro of the sea,\nand \u00c6olus shepherding his white sheep across the blue.  I love the sea\nwith its impenetrable fathoms, its wash and undertow, and rasp of shingle\nsucked anew.  I love it for its secret dead in the Caverns of Peace, of\nwhich account must be given when the books are opened and earth and\nheaven have fled away.  Yet in my love there is a paradox, for as I watch\nthe restless, ineffective waves I think of the measureless, reflective\ndepths of the still and silent Sea of Glass, of the dead, small and\ngreat, rich or poor, with the works which follow them, and of the Voice\nas the voice of many waters, when the multitude of one mind rends heaven\nwith alleluia: and I lie so still that I almost feel the kiss of White\nPeace on my mouth.  Later still, when the flare of the sinking sun has\ndied away and the stars rise out of a veil of purple cloud, I take my way\nhome, down the slopes, through the hamlet, and across miles of sleeping\nfields; over which night has thrown her shifting web of mist\u2014home to the\nlittle attic, the deep, cool well, the kindly wrinkled face with its\nlistening eyes\u2014peace in my heart and thankfulness for the rhythm of the\nroad.\n\nMonday brings the joy of work, second only to the Sabbath of rest, and I\nsettle to my heap by the white gate.  Soon I hear the distant stamp of\nhorsehoofs, heralding the grind and roll of the wheels which reaches me\nlater\u2014a heavy flour-waggon with a team of four great gentle horses, gay\nwith brass trappings and scarlet ear-caps.  On the top of the craftily\npiled sacks lies the white-clad waggoner, a pink in his mouth which he\nmumbles meditatively, and the reins looped over the inactive whip\u2014why\nshould he drive a willing team that knows the journey and responds as\nstrenuously to a cheery chirrup as to the well-directed lash?  We greet\nand pass the time of day, and as he mounts the rise he calls back a\nwarning of coming rain.  I am already white with dust as he with flour,\nsacramental dust, the outward and visible sign of the stir and beat of\nthe heart of labouring life.\n\nNext to pass down the road is an anxious ruffled hen, her speckled breast\nastir with maternal troubles.  She walks delicately, lifting her feet\nhigh and glancing furtively from side to side with comb low dressed.  The\nsight of man, the heartless egg-collector, from whose haunts she has\nfled, wrings from her a startled cluck, and she makes for the white gate,\nclimbs through, and disappears.  I know her feelings too well to intrude.\nMany times already has she hidden herself, amassed four or five precious\ntreasures, brooding over them with anxious hope; and then, after a brief\ndesertion to seek the necessary food, she has returned to find her\nefforts at concealment vain, her treasures gone.  At last, with the\ncourage of despair she has resolved to brave the terrors of the unknown\nand seek a haunt beyond the tyranny of man.  I will watch over her from\nafar, and when her mother-hope is fulfilled I will marshal her and her\nbrood back to the farm where she belongs; for what end I care not to\nthink, it is of the mystery which lies at the heart of things; and we are\nall God\u2019s beasts, says St Augustine.\n\nHere is my stone-song, a paraphrase of the Treasure Motif.\n\n   [Picture: Music score: F# dotted crotchet, F# quaver, F# quaver, F#\n dotted crotchet, D crotchet, E crotchet.  This bar is then repeated once\n                                  more]\n\nWhat a wonderful work Wagner has done for humanity in translating the\ntoil of life into the readable script of music!  For those who seek the\ntale of other worlds his magic is silent; but earth-travail under his\nwand becomes instinct with rhythmic song to an accompaniment of the\nelements, and the blare and crash of the bottomless pit itself.  The\nPilgrim\u2019s March is the sad sound of footsore men; the San Graal the\ntremulous yearning of servitude for richer, deeper bondage.  The yellow,\nthirsty flames lick up the willing sacrifice, the water wails the secret\nof the river and the sea; the birds and beasts, the shepherd with his\npipe, the underground life in rocks and caverns, all cry their message to\nthis nineteenth-century toiling, labouring world\u2014and to me as I mend my\nroad.\n\nTwo tramps come and fling themselves by me as I eat my noonday meal.  The\none, red-eyed, furtive, lies on his side with restless, clutching hands\nthat tear and twist and torture the living grass, while his lips mutter\nincoherently.  The other sits stooped, bare-footed, legs wide apart, his\nface grey, almost as grey as his stubbly beard; and it is not long since\nDeath looked him in the eyes.  He tells me querulously of a two hundred\nmiles tramp since early spring, of search for work, casual jobs with more\nkicks than halfpence, and a brief but blissful sojourn in a hospital bed,\nfrom which he was dismissed with sentence passed upon him.  For himself,\nhe is determined to die on the road under a hedge, where a man can see\nand breathe.  His anxiety is all for his fellow; _he_ has said he will\n\u201cdo for a man\u201d; he wants to \u201cswing,\u201d to get out of his \u201cdog\u2019s life.\u201d  I\nwatch him as he lies, this Ishmael and would-be Lamech.  Ignorance,\nhunger, terror, the exhaustion of past generations, have done their work.\nThe man is mad, and would kill his fellowman.\n\nPresently we part, and the two go, dogged and footsore, down the road\nwhich is to lead them into the great silence.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\n\nYESTERDAY was a day of encounters.\n\nFirst, early in the morning, a young girl came down the road on a\nbicycle.  Her dressguard was loose, and she stopped to ask for a piece of\nstring.  When I had tied it for her she looked at me, at my worn dusty\nclothes and burnt face; and then she took a Niphetos rose from her belt\nand laid it shyly in my dirty disfigured palm.  I bared my head, and\nstood hat in hand looking after her as she rode away up the hill.  Then I\ntook my treasure and put it in a nest of cool dewy grass under the hedge.\n_Ecce ancilla Domini_.\n\nMy next visitor was a fellow-worker on his way to a job at the\ncross-roads.  He stood gazing meditatively at my heap of stones.\n\n\u201cOw long \u2019ave yer bin at this job that y\u2019ere in such a hurry?\u201d\n\nI stayed my hammer to answer\u2014\u201cFour months.\u201d\n\n\u201cSeen better days?\u201d\n\n\u201cNever,\u201d I said emphatically, and punctuated the remark with a stone\nsplit neatly in four.\n\nThe man surveyed me in silence for a moment; then he said slowly, \u201cMean\nter say yer like crackin\u2019 these blamed stones to fill \u2019oles some other\nfool\u2019s made?\u201d\n\nI nodded.\n\n\u201cWell, that beats everything.  Now, I \u2019_ave_ seen better days; worked in\na big brewery over near Maidstone\u2014a town that, and something doing; and\nnow, \u2019ere I am, \u2019ammering me \u2019eart out on these blasted stones for a bit\no\u2019 bread and a pipe o\u2019 baccy once a week\u2014it ain\u2019t good enough.\u201d  He\npulled a blackened clay from his pocket and began slowly filling it with\nrank tobacco; then he lit it carefully behind his battered hat, put the\nspent match back in his pocket, rose to his feet, hitched his braces,\nand, with a silent nod to me, went on to his job.\n\nWhy do we give these tired children, whose minds move slowly, whose eyes\nare holden that they cannot read the Book, whose hearts are full of sore\nresentment against they know not what, such work as this to do\u2014hammering\ntheir hearts out for a bit of bread?  All the pathos of unreasoning\nlabour rings in these few words.  We fit the collar on unwilling necks;\nand when their service is over we bid them go out free; but we break the\ngood Mosaic law and send them away empty.  What wonder there is so little\nwilling service, so few ears ready to be thrust through against the\nmaster\u2019s door.\n\nThe swift stride of civilisation is leaving behind individual effort, and\nturning man into the D\u00e6mon of a machine.  To and fro in front of the long\nloom, lifting a lever at either end, paces he who once with painstaking\nintelligence drove the shuttle.  _Then_ he tasted the joy of completed\nwork, that which his eye had looked upon, and his hands had handled; now\nhis work is as little finished as the web of Penelope.  Once the reaper\ngrasped the golden corn stems, and with dexterous sweep of sickle set\nfree the treasure of the earth.  Once the creatures of the field were\nknown to him, and his eye caught the flare of scarlet and blue as the\nfrail poppies and sturdy corn-cockles laid down their beauty at his feet;\nnow he sits serene on Juggernaut\u2019s car, its guiding D\u00e6mon, and the field\nis silent to him.\n\nAs with the web and the grain so with the wood and stone in the\ntreasure-house of our needs.  The ground was accursed _for our sake_ that\nin the sweat of our brow we might eat bread.  Now the many live in the\nbrain-sweat of the few; and it must be so, for as little as great King\nCnut could stay the sea until it had reached the appointed place, so\nlittle can we raise a barrier to the wave of progress, and say, \u201cThus far\nand no further shalt thou come.\u201d\n\nWhat then?  This at least; if we live in an age of mechanism let us see\nto it that we are a race of intelligent mechanics; and if man is to be\nthe D\u00e6mon of a machine let him know the setting of the knives, the rise\nof the piston, the part that each wheel and rod plays in the economy of\nthe whole, the part that he himself plays, co-operating with it.  Then,\nwhen he has lived and served intelligently, let us give him of our flocks\nand of our floor that he may learn to rest in the lengthening shadows\nuntil he is called to his work above.\n\nSo I sat, hammering out my thoughts, and with them the conviction that\nstonebreaking should be allotted to minor poets or vagrant children of\nnature like myself, never to such tired folk as my poor mate at the\ncross-roads and his fellows.\n\nAt noon, when I stopped for my meal, the sun was baking the hard white\nroad in a pitiless glare.  Several waggons and carts passed, the horses\nsweating and straining, with drooping, fly-tormented ears.  The men for\nthe most part nodded slumberously on the shaft, seeking the little\nshelter the cart afforded; but one shuffled in the white dust, with an\noccasional chirrup and friendly pressure on the tired horse\u2019s neck.\n\nThen an old woman and a small child appeared in sight, both with enormous\nsun-bonnets and carrying baskets.  As they came up with me the woman\nstopped and swept her face with her hand, while the child, depositing the\nbasket in the dust with great care, wiped her little sticky fingers on\nher pinafore.  Then the shady hedge beckoned them and they came and sat\ndown near me.  The woman looked about seventy, tall, angular, dauntless,\ngood for another ten years of hard work.  The little maid\u2014her only\ngrandchild, she told me\u2014was just four, her father away soldiering, and\nthe mother died in childbed, so for four years the child had known no\nother guardian or playmate than the old woman.  She was not the least\nshy, but had the strange self-possession which comes from associating\nwith one who has travelled far on life\u2019s journey.\n\n\u201cI couldn\u2019t leave her alone in the house,\u201d said her grandmother, \u201cand she\nwouldn\u2019t leave the kitten for fear it should be lonesome\u201d\u2014with a\nhumorous, tender glance at the child\u2014\u201cbut it\u2019s a long tramp in the heat\nfor the little one, and we\u2019ve another mile to go.\u201d\n\n\u201cWill you let her bide here till you come back?\u201d I said.  \u201cShe\u2019ll be all\nright by me.\u201d\n\nThe old lady hesitated.\n\n\u201cWill \u2019ee stay by him, dearie?\u201d she said.\n\nThe small child nodded, drew from her miniature pocket a piece of\nsweetstuff, extracted from the basket a small black cat, and settled in\nfor the afternoon.  Her grandmother rose, took her basket, and, with a\nnod and \u201cThank \u2019ee kindly, mister,\u201d went off down the road.\n\nI went back to my work a little depressed\u2014why had I not white hair?\u2014for a\nfew minutes had shown me that I was not old enough for the child despite\nmy forty years.  She was quite happy with the little black cat, which lay\nin the small lap blinking its yellow eyes at the sun; and presently an\nold man came by, lame and bent, with gnarled twisted hands, leaning\nheavily on his stick.\n\nHe greeted me in a high, piping voice, limped across to the child, and\nsat down.  \u201cYour little maid, mister?\u201d he said.\n\nI explained.\n\n\u201cAh,\u201d he said, \u201cI\u2019ve left a little darlin\u2019 like this at \u2019ome.  It\u2019s \u2019ard\non us old folks when we\u2019re one too many; but the little mouths must be\nfilled, and my son, \u2019e said \u2019e didn\u2019t see they could keep me on the\narf-crown, with another child on the way; so I\u2019m tramping to N\u2014, to the\nHouse; but it\u2019s a \u2019ard pinch, leavin\u2019 the little ones.\u201d\n\nI looked at him\u2014a typical countryman, with white hair, mild blue eyes,\nand a rosy, childish, unwrinkled face.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m eighty-four,\u201d he went on, \u201cand terrible bad with the rheumatics and\nmy chest.  Maybe it\u2019ll not be long before the Lord remembers me.\u201d\n\nThe child crept close and put a sticky little hand confidingly into the\ntired old palm.  The two looked strangely alike, for the world seems much\nthe same to those who leave it behind as to those who have but taken the\nfirst step on its circular pathway.\n\n\u201c\u2019Ook at my kitty,\u201d she said, pointing to the small creature in her lap.\nThen, as the old man touched it with trembling fingers she went on\u2014\u201c\u2019Oo\nisn\u2019t my grandad; he\u2019s away in the sky, but I\u2019ll kiss \u2019oo.\u201d\n\nI worked on, hearing at intervals the old piping voice and the\nchild-treble, much of a note; and thinking of the blessings vouchsafed to\nthe simple old age which crowns a harmless working-life spent in the\nfields.  The two under the hedge had everything in common and were\nboundlessly content together, the sting of the knowledge of good and evil\npast for the one, and for the other still to come; while I stood on the\nbattlefield of the world, the flesh, and the devil, though, thank God,\nwith my face to the foe.\n\nThe old man sat resting: I had promised him a lift with my friend the\ndriver of the flour-cart, and he was almost due when the child\u2019s\ngrandmother came down the road.\n\nWhen she saw my other visitor she stood amazed.\n\n\u201cWhat, Richard Hunton, that worked with my old man years ago up at\nDitton, whatever are you doin\u2019 all these miles from your own place?\u201d\n\n\u201cIs it Eliza Jakes?\u201d\n\nHe looked at her dazed, doubtful.\n\n\u201cAn\u2019 who else should it be?  Where\u2019s your memory gone, Richard Hunton,\nand you not such a great age either?  Where are you stayin\u2019?\u201d\n\nShame overcame him; his lips trembled, his mild blue eyes filled with\ntears.  I told the tale as I had heard it, and Mrs Jakes\u2019s indignation\nwas good to see.\n\n\u201cNot keep you on \u2019alf a crown!  Send you to the House!  May the Lord\nforgive them!  You wouldn\u2019t eat no more than a fair-sized cat, and not\nlong for this world either, that\u2019s plain to see.  No, Richard Hunton, you\ndon\u2019t go to the House while I\u2019m above ground; it\u2019d make my good man turn\nto think of it.  You\u2019ll come \u2019ome with me and the little \u2019un there.  I\u2019ve\nmy washin\u2019, and a bit put by for a rainy day, and a bed to spare, and the\nLord and the parson will see I don\u2019t come to want.\u201d\n\nShe stopped breathless, her defensive motherhood in arms.\n\nThe old man said quaveringly, in the pathetic, grudging phrase of the\npoor, which veils their gratitude while it testifies their independence,\n\u201cMaybe I might as well.\u201d  He rose with difficulty, picked up his bundle\nand stick, the small child replaced the kitten in its basket, and thrust\nher hand in her new friend\u2019s.\n\n\u201cThen \u2019oo _is_ grandad tum back,\u201d she said.\n\nMrs Jakes had been fumbling in her pocket, and extracted a penny, which\nshe pressed on me.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s little enough, mister,\u201d she said.\n\nThen, as I tried to return it: \u201cNay, I\u2019ve enough, and yours is poor paid\nwork.\u201d\n\nI hope I shall always be able to keep that penny; and as I watched the\nthree going down the dusty white road, with the child in the middle, I\nthanked God for the Brotherhood of the Poor.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\n\nYESTERDAY a funeral passed, from the work-house at N\u2014, a quaint sepulture\nwithout solemnities.  The rough, ungarnished coffin of stained deal lay\nbare and unsightly on the floor of an old market-cart; a woman sat\nbeside, steadying it with her feet.  The husband drove; and the most\ndepressed of the three was the horse, a broken-kneed, flea-bitten grey.\nIt was pathetic, this bringing home in death of the old father whom,\nwhile he lived, they had been too poor to house; it was at no small\nsacrifice that they had spared him that terror of old age, a pauper\u2019s\ngrave, and brought him to lie by his wife in our quiet churchyard.  They\nfelt no emotion, this husband and wife, only a dull sense of filial duty\ndone, respectability preserved; and above and through all, the bitter but\nnecessary counting the cost of this last bed.\n\nIt is strange how pagan many of us are in our beliefs.  True, the funeral\nlibations have made way for the comfortable bake-meats; still, to the\nlarge majority Death is Pluto, king of the dark Unknown whence no\ntraveller returns, rather than Azrael, brother and friend, lord of this\nmansion of life.  Strange how men shun him as he waits in the shadow,\nwatching our puny straining after immortality, sending his comrade sleep\nto prepare us for himself.  When the hour strikes he comes\u2014very gently,\nvery tenderly, if we will but have it so\u2014folds the tired hands together,\ntakes the way-worn feet in his broad strong palm; and lifting us in his\nwonderful arms he bears us swiftly down the valley and across the waters\nof Remembrance.\n\nVery pleasant art thou, O Brother Death, thy love is wonderful, passing\nthe love of women.\n\n                                * * * * *\n\nTo-day I have lived in a whirl of dust.  To-morrow is the great annual\nCattle Fair at E\u2014, and through the long hot hours the beasts from all the\ndistrict round have streamed in broken procession along my road, to\nchange hands or to die.  Surely the lordship over creation implies wise\nand gentle rule for intelligent use, not the pursuit of a mere immediate\nend, without any thought of community in the great sacrament of life.\n\nFor the most part mystery has ceased for this working Western world, and\nwith it reverence.  Coventry Patmore says: \u201cGod clothes Himself actually\nand literally with His whole creation.  Herbs take up and assimilate\nminerals, beasts assimilate herbs, and God, in the Incarnation and its\nproper Sacrament, assimilates us, who, says St Augustine, \u2018are God\u2019s\nbeasts.\u2019\u201d  It is man in his blind self-seeking who separates woof from\nweft in the living garment of God, and loses the more as he neglects the\noutward and visible signs of a world-wide grace.\n\nIn olden days the herd led his flock, going first in the post of danger\nto defend the creatures he had weaned from their natural habits for his\nvarious uses.  Now that good relationship has ceased for us to exist, man\ndrives the beasts before him, means to his end, but with no harmony\nbetween end and means.  All day long the droves of sheep pass me on their\nlame and patient way, no longer freely and instinctively following a\nprotector and forerunner, but _driven_, impelled by force and resistless\nwill\u2014the same will which once went before without force.  They are all\ntrimmed as much as possible to one pattern, and all make the same sad\nplaint.  It is a day on which to thank God for the unknown tongue.  The\ndrover and his lad in dusty blue coats plod along stolidly, deaf and\nblind to all but the way before them; no longer wielding the crook,\ninstrument of deliverance, or at most of gentle compulsion, but armed\nwith a heavy stick and mechanically dealing blows on the short thick\nfleeces; without evil intent because without thought\u2014it is the ritual of\nthe trade.\n\nOf all the poor dumb pilgrims of the road the bullocks are the most\nterrible to see.  They are not patient, but go most unwillingly with\nlowered head and furtive sideways motion, in their eyes a horror of great\nfear.  The sleek cattle, knee deep in pasture, massed at the gate, and\nstared mild-eyed and with inquiring bellow at the retreating drove; but\nthese passed without answer on to the Unknown, and for them it spelt\ndeath.\n\nBehind a squadron of sleek, well-fed cart-horses, formed in fours, with\nstraw braid in mane and tail, came the ponies, for the most part a merry\ncompany.  Long strings of rusty, shaggy two-year-olds, unbroken, unkempt,\nthe short Down grass still sweet on their tongues; full of fun, frolic,\nand wickedness, biting and pulling, casting longing eyes at the\nhedgerows.  The boys appear to recognise them as kindred spirits, and are\ncuriously forbearing and patient.  Soon both ponies and boys vanish in a\nwhite whirl, and a long line of carts, which had evidently waited for the\ndust to subside, comes slowly up the incline.  For the most part they\ncarry the pigs and fowls, carriage folk of the road.  The latter are hot,\ncrowded, and dusty under the open netting; the former for the most part\ncheerfully remonstrative.\n\nI drew a breath of relief as the noise of wheels died away and my road\nsank into silence.  The hedgerows are no longer green but white and\nchoked with dust, a sight to move good sister Rain to welcome tears.  The\nbirds seem to have fled before the noisy confusion.  I wonder whether my\nsnake has seen and smiled at the clumsy ruling of the lord he so little\nheeds?  I turned aside through the gate to plunge face and hands into the\ncool of the sheltered grass that side the hedge, and then rested my eyes\non the stretch of green I had lacked all day.  The rabbits had apparently\nplayed and browsed unmindful of the stir, and were still flirting their\nwhite tails along the hedgerows; a lark rose, another and another, and I\nwent back to my road.  Peace still reigned, for the shadows were\nlengthening, and there would be little more traffic for the fair.  I\nturned to my work, grateful for the stillness, and saw on the white\nstretch of road a lone old man and a pig.  Surely I knew that tall figure\nin the quaint grey smock, surely I knew the face, furrowed like nature\u2019s\nface in springtime, and crowned by a round, soft hat?  And the pig, the\nblack pig walking decorously free?  Ay, I knew them.\n\nIn the early spring I took a whole holiday and a long tramp; and towards\nafternoon, tired and thirsty, sought water at a little lonely cottage\nwhose windows peered and blinked under overhanging brows of thatch.  I\nhad, not the water I asked for, but milk and a bowl of sweet porridge for\nwhich I paid only thanks; and stayed for a chat with my kindly hosts.\nThey were a quaint old couple of the kind rarely met with nowadays.  They\nenjoyed a little pension from the Squire and a garden in which vegetables\nand flowers lived side by side in friendliest fashion.  Bees worked and\nsang over the thyme and marjoram, blooming early in a sunny nook; and in\na homely sty lived a solemn black pig, a pig with a history.\n\nIt was no common utilitarian pig, but the honoured guest of the old\ncouple, and it knew it.  A year before, their youngest and only surviving\nchild, then a man of five-and-twenty, had brought his mother the result\nof his savings in the shape of a fine young pig: a week later he lay dead\nof the typhoid that scourged Maidstone.  Hence the pig was sacred, cared\nfor and loved by this Darby and Joan.\n\n\u201cEe be mos\u2019 like a child to me and the mother, an\u2019 mos\u2019 as sensible as a\nChristian, ee be,\u201d the old man had said; and I could hardly credit my\neyes when I saw the tall bent figure side by side with the black pig,\ncoming along my road on such a day.\n\nI hailed the old man, and both turned aside; but he gazed at me without\nremembrance.\n\nI spoke of the pig and its history.  He nodded wearily.  \u201cAy, ay, lad,\nyou\u2019ve got it; \u2019tis poor Dick\u2019s pig right enow.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut you\u2019re never going to take it to E\u2014?\u201d\n\n\u201cAy, but I be, and comin\u2019 back alone, if the Lord be marciful.  The\nmissus has been terrible bad this two mouths and more; Squire\u2019s in\nforeign parts; and food-stuffs such as the old woman wants is hard buying\nfor poor folks.  The stocking\u2019s empty, now \u2019tis the pig must go, and I\nbelieve he\u2019d be glad for to do the missus a turn; she were terrible good\nto him, were the missus, and fond, too.  I dursn\u2019t tell her he was to go;\nshe\u2019d sooner starve than lose poor Dick\u2019s pig.  Well, we\u2019d best be\nmovin\u2019; \u2019tis a fairish step.\u201d\n\nThe pig followed comprehending and docile, and as the quaint couple\npassed from sight I thought I heard Brother Death stir in the shadow.  He\nis a strong angel and of great pity.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\n\nTHERE is always a little fire of wood on the open hearth in the kitchen\nwhen I get home at night; the old lady says it is \u201ccompany\u201d for her, and\nsits in the lonely twilight, her knotted hands lying quiet on her lap,\nher listening eyes fixed on the burning sticks.\n\nI wonder sometimes whether she hears music in the leap and lick of the\nfiery tongues, music such as he of Bayreuth draws from the violins till\nthe hot energy of the fire spirit is on us, embodied in sound.\n\nSurely she hears some voice, that lonely old woman on whom is set the\nseal of great silence?\n\nIt is a great truth tenderly said that God builds the nest for the blind\nbird; and may it not be that He opens closed eyes and unstops deaf ears\nto sights and sounds from which others by these very senses are debarred?\n\nHere the best of us see through a mist of tears men as trees walking; it\nis only in the land which is very far off and yet very near that we shall\nhave fulness of sight and see the King in His beauty; and I cannot think\nthat any listening ears listen in vain.\n\nThe coppice at our back is full of birds, for it is far from the road and\nthey nest there undisturbed year after year.  Through the still night I\nheard the nightingales calling, calling, until I could bear it no longer\nand went softly out into the luminous dark.\n\nThe little wood was manifold with sound, I heard my little brothers who\nmove by night rustling in grass and tree.  A hedgehog crossed my path\nwith a dull squeak, the bats shrilled high to the stars, a white owl\nswept past me crying his hunting note, a beetle boomed suddenly in my\nface; and above and through it all the nightingales sang\u2014and sang!\n\nThe night wind bent the listening trees, and the stars yearned earthward\nto hear the song of deathless love.  Louder and louder the wonderful\nnotes rose and fell in a passion of melody; and then sank to rest on that\nlow thrilling call which it is said Death once heard, and stayed his\nhand.\n\nThey will scarcely sing again this year, these nightingales, for they are\nlate on the wing as it is.  It seems as if on such nights they sang as\nthe swan sings, knowing it to be the last time\u2014with the lavish note of\none who bids an eternal farewell.\n\nAt last there was silence.  Sitting under the big beech tree, the giant\nof the coppice, I rested my tired self in the lap of mother earth,\nbreathed of her breath and listened to her voice in the quickening\nsilence until my flesh came again as the flesh of a little child, for it\nis true recreation to sit at the footstool of God wrapped in a fold of\nHis living robe, the while night smoothes our tired face with her healing\nhands.\n\nThe grey dawn awoke and stole with trailing robes across earth\u2019s floor.\nAt her footsteps the birds roused from sleep and cried a greeting; the\nsky flushed and paled conscious of coming splendour; and overhead a file\nof swans passed with broad strong flight to the reeded waters of the\nsequestered pool.\n\nAnother hour of silence while the light throbbed and flamed in the east;\nthen the larks rose harmonious from a neighbouring field, the rabbits\nscurried with ears alert to their morning meal, the day had begun.\n\nI passed through the coppice and out into the fields beyond.  The dew lay\nheavy on leaf and blade and gossamer, a cool fresh wind swept clear over\ndale and down from the sea, and the clover field rippled like a silvery\nlake in the breeze.\n\nThere is something inexpressibly beautiful in the unused day, something\nbeautiful in the fact that it is still untouched, unsoiled; and town and\ncountry share alike in this loveliness.  At half-past three on a June\nmorning even London has not assumed her responsibilities, but smiles and\nglows lighthearted and smokeless under the caresses of the morning sun.\n\nFive o\u2019clock.  The bell rings out crisp and clear from the monastery\nwhere the Bedesmen of St Hugh watch and pray for the souls on this\nlabouring forgetful earth.  Every hour the note of comfort and warning\ncries across the land, tells the Sanctus, the Angelus, and the Hours of\nthe Passion, and calls to remembrance and prayer.\n\nWhen the wind is north, the sound carries as far as my road, and\ncompanies me through the day; and if to His dumb children God in His\nmercy reckons work as prayer, most certainly those who have forged\nthrough the ages an unbroken chain of supplication and thanksgiving will\nbe counted among the stalwart labourers of the house of the Lord.\n\nSun and bell together are my only clock: it is time for my water drawing;\nand gathering a pile of mushrooms, children of the night, I hasten home.\n\nThe cottage is dear to me in its quaint untidiness and want of rectitude,\ndear because we are to be its last denizens, last of the long line of\ntoilers who have sweated and sown that others might reap, and have passed\naway leaving no trace.\n\nI once saw a tall cross in a seaboard churchyard, inscribed, \u201cTo the\nmemory of the unknown dead who have perished in these waters.\u201d  There\nmight be one in every village sleeping-place to the unhonoured many who\nmade fruitful the land with sweat and tears.  It is a consolation to\nthink that when we look back on this stretch of life\u2019s road from beyond\nthe first milestone, which, it is instructive to remember, is always a\ngrave, we may hope to see the work of this world with open eyes, and to\njudge of it with a due sense of proportion.\n\nA bee with laden honey-bag hummed and buzzed in the hedge as I got ready\nfor work, importuning the flowers for that which he could not carry, and\nfinally giving up the attempt in despair fell asleep on a buttercup, the\nbest place for his weary little velvet body.  In five minutes\u2014they may\nhave been five hours to him\u2014he awoke a new bee, sensible and\nclear-sighted, and flew blithely away to the hive with his sufficiency\u2014an\nexample this weary world would be wise to follow.\n\nMy road has been lonely to-day.  A parson came by in the afternoon, a\nstranger in the neighbourhood, for he asked his way.  He talked awhile,\nand with kindly rebuke said it was sad to see a man of my education\nbrought so low, which shows how the outside appearance may mislead the\nprejudiced observer.  \u201cWas it misfortune?\u201d  \u201cNay, the best of good luck,\u201d\nI answered, gaily.\n\nThe good man with beautiful readiness sat down on a heap of stones and\nbade me say on.  \u201cRead me a sermon in stone,\u201d he said, simply; and I\nstayed my hand to read.\n\nHe listened with courteous intelligence.\n\n\u201cYou hold a roadmender has a vocation?\u201d he asked.\n\n\u201cAs the monk or the artist, for, like both, he is universal.  The world\nis his home; he serves all men alike, ay, and for him the beasts have\nequal honour with the men.  His soul is \u2018bound up in the bundle of life\u2019\nwith all other souls, he sees his father, his mother, his brethren in the\nchildren of the road.  For him there is nothing unclean, nothing common;\nthe very stones cry out that they serve.\u201d\n\nParson nodded his head.\n\n\u201cIt is all true,\u201d he said; \u201cbeautifully true.  But need such a view of\nlife necessitate the work of roadmending?  Surely all men should be\nroadmenders.\u201d\n\nO wise parson, so to read the lesson of the road!\n\n\u201cIt is true,\u201d I answered; \u201cbut some of us find our salvation in the\nactual work, and earn our bread better in this than in any other way.  No\nman is dependent on our earning, all men on our work.  We are \u2018rich\nbeyond the dreams of avarice\u2019 because we have all that we need, and yet\nwe taste the life and poverty of the very poor.  We are, if you will,\nuncloistered monks, preaching friars who speak not with the tongue,\ndisciples who hear the wise words of a silent master.\u201d\n\n\u201cRobert Louis Stevenson was a roadmender,\u201d said the wise parson.\n\n\u201cAy, and with more than his pen,\u201d I answered.  \u201cI wonder was he ever so\ntruly great, so entirely the man we know and love, as when he inspired\nthe chiefs to make a highway in the wilderness.  Surely no more fitting\nmonument could exist to his memory than the Road of Gratitude, cut, laid,\nand kept by the pure-blooded tribe kings of Samoa.\u201d\n\nParson nodded.\n\n\u201cHe knew that the people who make no roads are ruled out from intelligent\nparticipation in the world\u2019s brotherhood.\u201d  He filled his pipe, thinking\nthe while, then he held out his pouch to me.\n\n\u201cTry some of this baccy,\u201d he said; \u201cSherwood of Magdalen sent it me from\nsome outlandish place.\u201d\n\nI accepted gratefully.  It was such tobacco as falls to the lot of few\nroadmenders.\n\nHe rose to go.\n\n\u201cI wish I could come and break stones,\u201d he said, a little wistfully.\n\n\u201cNay,\u201d said I, \u201cfew men have such weary roadmending as yours, and perhaps\nyou need my road less than most men, and less than most parsons.\u201d\n\nWe shook hands, and he went down the road and out of my life.\n\nHe little guessed that I knew Sherwood, ay, and knew him too, for had not\nSherwood told me of the man he delighted to honour.\n\nAh, well!  I am no Browning Junior, and Sherwood\u2019s name is not Sherwood.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\n\nAWHILE ago I took a holiday; mouched, played truant from my road.  Jem\nthe waggoner hailed me as he passed\u2014he was going to the mill\u2014would I ride\nwith him and come back atop of the full sacks?\n\nI hid my hammer in the hedge, climbed into the great waggon white and\nfragrant with the clean sweet meal, and flung myself down on the empty\nflour bags.  The looped-back tarpaulin framed the long vista of my road\nwith the downs beyond; and I lay in the cool dark, caressed by the fresh\nbreeze in its thoroughfare, soothed by the strong monotonous tramp of the\ngreat grey team and the music of the jangling harness.\n\nJem walked at the leaders\u2019 heads; it is his rule when the waggon is\nempty, a rule no \u201ccompany\u201d will make him break.  At first I regretted it,\nbut soon discovered I learnt to know him better so, as he plodded along,\nhis thickset figure slightly bent, his hands in his pockets, his whip\nunder one arm, whistling hymn tunes in a low minor, while the great\nhorses answered to his voice without touch of lash or guiding rein.\n\nI lay as in a blissful dream and watched my road unfold.  The sun set the\npine-boles aflare where the hedge is sparse, and stretched the long\nshadows of the besom poplars in slanting bars across the white highway;\nthe roadside gardens smiled friendly with their trim-cut laurels and rows\nof stately sunflowers\u2014a seemly proximity this, Daphne and Clytie, sisters\nin experience, wrapped in the warm caress of the god whose wooing they\nneed no longer fear.  Here and there we passed little groups of women and\nchildren off to work in the early cornfields, and Jem paused in his fond\nrepetition of \u201cThe Lord my pasture shall prepare\u201d to give them good-day.\n\nIt is like Life, this travelling backwards\u2014that which has been, alone\nvisible\u2014like Life, which is after all, retrospective with a steady moving\non into the Unknown, Unseen, until Faith is lost in Sight and experience\nis no longer the touchstone of humanity.  The face of the son of Adam is\nset on the road his brothers have travelled, marking their landmarks,\ntracing their journeyings; but with the eyes of a child of God he looks\nforward, straining to catch a glimpse of the jewelled walls of his future\nhome, the city \u201cEternal in the Heavens.\u201d\n\nPresently we left my road for the deep shade of a narrow country way\nwhere the great oaks and beeches meet overhead and no hedge-clipper sets\nhis hand to stay nature\u2019s profusion; and so by pleasant lanes scarce the\nwaggon\u2019s width across, now shady, now sunny, here bordered by thickset\ncoverts, there giving on fruitful fields, we came at length to the mill.\n\nI left Jem to his business with the miller and wandered down the flowery\nmeadow to listen to the merry clack of the stream and the voice of the\nwaters on the weir.  The great wheel was at rest, as I love best to see\nit in the later afternoon; the splash and churn of the water belong\nrather to the morning hours.  It is the chief mistake we make in\nportioning out our day that we banish rest to the night-time, which is\nfor sleep and recreating, instead of setting apart the later afternoon\nand quiet twilight hours for the stretching of weary limbs and repose of\ntired mind after a day\u2019s toil that should begin and end at five.\n\nThe little stone bridge over the mill-stream is almost on a level with\nthe clear running water, and I lay there and gazed at the huge wheel\nwhich, under multitudinous forms and uses, is one of the world\u2019s wonders,\nbecause one of the few things we imitative children have not learnt from\nnature.  Is it perchance a memory out of that past when Adam walked\nclear-eyed in Paradise and talked with the Lord in the cool of the day?\nDid he see then the flaming wheels instinct with service, wondrous\nmessengers of the Most High vouchsafed in vision to the later prophets?\n\nMaybe he did, and going forth from before the avenging sword of his own\nforging to the bitterness of an accursed earth, took with him this bright\nmemory of perfect, ceaseless service, and so fashioned our labouring\nwheel\u2014pathetic link with the time of his innocency.  It is one of many\nunanswered questions, good to ask because it has no answer, only the\nsuggestion of a train of thought: perhaps we are never so receptive as\nwhen with folded hands we say simply, \u201cThis is a great mystery.\u201d  I\nwatched and wondered until Jem called, and I had to leave the rippling\nweir and the water\u2019s side, and the wheel with its untold secret.\n\nThe miller\u2019s wife gave me tea and a crust of home-made bread, and the\nmiller\u2019s little maid sat on my knee while I told the sad tale of a little\npink cloud separated from its parents and teazed and hunted by\nmischievous little airs.  To-morrow, if I mistake not, her garden will be\nwet with its tears, and, let us hope, point a moral; for the tale had its\norigin in a frenzied chicken driven from the side of an anxious mother,\nand pursued by a sturdy, relentless figure in a white sun-bonnet.\n\nThe little maid trotted off, greatly sobered, to look somewhat\nprematurely for the cloud\u2019s tears; and I climbed to my place at the top\nof the piled-up sacks, and thence watched twilight pass to starlight\nthrough my narrow peep, and, so watching, slept until Jem\u2019s voice hailed\nme from Dreamland, and I went, only half awake, across the dark fields\nhome.\n\nAutumn is here and it is already late.  He has painted the hedges russet\nand gold, scarlet and black, and a tangle of grey; now he has damp brown\nleaves in his hair and frost in his finger-tips.\n\nIt is a season of contrasts; at first all is stir and bustle, the\ningathering of man and beast; barn and rickyard stand filled with golden\ntreasure; at the farm the sound of threshing; in wood and copse the\nsquirrels busied \u2019twixt tree and storehouse, while the ripe nuts fall\nwith thud of thunder rain.  When the harvesting is over, the fruit\ngathered, the last rick thatched, there comes a pause.  Earth strips off\nher bright colours and shows a bare and furrowed face; the dead leaves\nfall gently and sadly through the calm, sweet air; grey mists drape the\nfields and hedges.  The migratory birds have left, save a few late\nswallows; and as I sit at work in the soft, still rain, I can hear the\nblackbird\u2019s melancholy trill and the thin pipe of the redbreast\u2019s winter\nsong\u2014the air is full of the sound of farewell.\n\nForethought and preparation for the Future which shall be; farewell,\nbecause of the Future which may never be\u2014for us; \u201cMan, thou hast goods\nlaid up for many years, and it is well; but, remember, this night _thy_\nsoul may be required\u201d; is the unvoiced lesson of autumn.  There is\ngrowing up among us a great fear; it stares at us white, wide-eyed, from\nthe faces of men and women alike\u2014the fear of pain, mental and bodily\npain.  For the last twenty years we have waged war with suffering\u2014a noble\nwar when fought in the interest of the many, but fraught with great\ndanger to each individual man.  It is the fear which should not be,\nrather than the \u2018hope which is in us,\u2019 that leads men in these days to\ndrape Death in a flowery mantle, to lay stress on the shortness of\nparting, the speedy reunion, to postpone their good-byes until the last\nmoment, or avoid saying them altogether; and this fear is a poor, ignoble\nthing, unworthy of those who are as gods, knowing good and evil.  We are\nstill paying the price of that knowledge; suffering in both kinds is a\nsubstantial part of it, and brings its own healing.  Let us pay like men,\nour face to the open heaven, neither whimpering like children in the\ndark, nor lulled to unnecessary oblivion by some lethal drug; for it is\nmanly, not morbid, to dare to taste the pungent savour of pain, the\nlingering sadness of farewell which emphasises the aftermath of life; it\nshould have its place in all our preparation as a part of our inheritance\nwe dare not be without.\n\nThere is an old couple in our village who are past work.  The married\ndaughter has made shift to take her mother and the parish half-crown, but\nthere is neither room nor food for the father, and he must go to N\u2014.  If\nhusband and wife went together, they would be separated at the workhouse\ndoor.  The parting had to come; it came yesterday.  I saw them stumbling\nlamely down the road on their last journey together, walking side by side\nwithout touch or speech, seeing and heeding nothing but a blank future.\nAs they passed me the old man said gruffly, \u201c\u2019Tis far eno\u2019; better be\ngettin\u2019 back\u201d; but the woman shook her head, and they breasted the hill\ntogether.  At the top they paused, shook hands, and separated; one went\non, the other turned back; and as the old woman limped blindly by I\nturned away, for there are sights a man dare not look upon.  She passed;\nand I heard a child\u2019s shrill voice say, \u201cI come to look for you, gran\u201d;\nand I thanked God that there need be no utter loneliness in the world\nwhile it holds a little child.\n\nNow it is my turn, and I must leave the wayside to serve in the\nsheepfolds during the winter months.  It is scarcely a farewell, for my\nroad is ubiquitous, eternal; there are green ways in Paradise and golden\nstreets in the beautiful City of God.  Nevertheless, my heart is heavy;\nfor, viewed by the light of the waning year, roadmending seems a great\nand wonderful work which I have poorly conceived of and meanly performed:\nyet I have learnt to understand dimly the truths of three great\nparadoxes\u2014the blessing of a curse, the voice of silence, the\ncompanionship of solitude\u2014and so take my leave of this stretch of road,\nand of you who have fared along the white highway through the medium of a\nprinted page.\n\nFarewell!  It is a roadmender\u2019s word; I cry you Godspeed to the next\nmilestone\u2014and beyond.\n\n\n\n\nOUT OF THE SHADOW\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\n\nI AM no longer a roadmender; the stretch of white highway which leads to\nthe end of the world will know me no more; the fields and hedgerows,\ngrass and leaf stiff with the crisp rime of winter\u2019s breath, lie beyond\nmy horizon; the ewes in the folding, their mysterious eyes quick with the\nconsciousness of coming motherhood, answer another\u2019s voice and hand;\nwhile I lie here, not in the lonely companionship of my expectations, but\nwhere the shadow is bright with kindly faces and gentle hands, until one\nkinder and gentler still carries me down the stairway into the larger\nroom.\n\nBut now the veil was held aside and one went by crowned with the majesty\nof years, wearing the ermine of an unstained rule, the purple of her\npeople\u2019s loyalty.  Nations stood with bated breath to see her pass in the\nstarlit mist of her children\u2019s tears; a monarch\u2014greatest of her time; an\nempress\u2014conquered men called mother; a woman\u2014Englishmen cried queen;\nstill the crowned captive of her people\u2019s heart\u2014the prisoner of love.\n\nThe night-goers passed under my window in silence, neither song nor shout\nbroke the welcome dark; next morning the workmen who went by were\nstrangely quiet.\n\n    \u2018VICTORIA DEI GRATIA BRITANNIARUM REGINA.\u2019\n\nDid they think of how that legend would disappear, and of all it meant,\nas they paid their pennies at the coffee-stall?  The feet rarely know the\ntrue value and work of the head; but all Englishmen have been and will be\nquick to acknowledge and revere Victoria by the grace of God a wise\nwoman, a great and loving mother.\n\nYears ago, I, standing at a level crossing, saw her pass.  The train\nslowed down and she caught sight of the gatekeeper\u2019s little girl who had\nclimbed the barrier.  Such a smile as she gave her!  And then I caught a\nquick startled gesture as she slipped from my vision; I thought\nafterwards it was that she feared the child might fall.  Mother first,\nthen Queen; even so rest came to her\u2014not in one of the royal palaces, but\nin her own home, surrounded by the immediate circle of her nearest and\ndearest, while the world kept watch and ward.\n\nI, a shy lover of the fields and woods, longed always, should a painless\npassing be vouchsafed me, to make my bed on the fragrant pine needles in\nthe aloneness of a great forest; to lie once again as I had lain many a\ntime, bathed in the bitter sweetness of the sun-blessed pines, lapped in\nthe manifold silence; my ear attuned to the wind of Heaven with its call\nfrom the Cities of Peace.  In sterner mood, when Love\u2019s hand held a\nscourge, I craved rather the stress of the moorland with its bleaker mind\nimperative of sacrifice.  To rest again under the lee of Rippon Tor swept\nby the strong peat-smelling breeze; to stare untired at the long\ncloud-shadowed reaches, and watch the mist-wraiths huddle and shrink\nround the stones of blood; until my sacrifice too was accomplished, and\nmy soul had fled.  A wild waste moor; a vast void sky; and naught between\nheaven and earth but man, his sin-glazed eyes seeking afar the distant\nlight of his own heart.\n\nWith years came counsels more profound, and the knowledge that man was no\nmere dweller in the woods to follow the footsteps of the piping god, but\nan integral part of an organised whole, in which Pan too has his\nfulfilment.  The wise Venetians knew; and read pantheism into\nChristianity when they set these words round Ezekiel\u2019s living creatures\nin the altar vault of St Mark\u2019s:\u2014\n\n    QUAEQUE SUB OBSCURIS DE CRISTO DICTA FIGURIS\n    HIS APERIRE DATUR ET IN HIS, DEUS IPSE NOTATUR.\n\n\u201cThou shalt have none other gods but me.\u201d  If man had been able to keep\nthis one commandment perfectly the other nine would never have been\nwritten; instead he has comprehensively disregarded it, and perhaps never\nmore than now in the twentieth century.  Ah, well! this world, in spite\nof all its sinning, is still the Garden of Eden where the Lord walked\nwith man, not in the cool of evening, but in the heat and stress of the\nimmediate working day.  There is no angel now with flaming sword to keep\nthe way of the Tree of Life, but tapers alight morning by morning in the\nHostel of God to point us to it; and we, who are as gods knowing good and\nevil, partake of that fruit \u201cwhereof whoso eateth shall never die\u201d; the\ngreatest gift or the most awful penalty\u2014Eternal Life.\n\nI then, with my craving for tree and sky, held that a great capital with\nits stir of life and death, of toil and strife and pleasure, was an ill\nplace for a sick man to wait in; a place to shrink from as a child\nshrinks from the rude blow of one out of authority.  Yet here, far from\nmoor and forest, hillside and hedgerow, in the family sitting-room of the\nEnglish-speaking peoples, the London much misunderstood, I find the\nfulfilment by antithesis of all desire.  For the loneliness of the\nmoorland, there is the warmth and companionship of London\u2019s swift beating\nheart.  For silence there is sound\u2014the sound and stir of service\u2014for the\nmost part far in excess of its earthly equivalent.  Against the fragrant\nincense of the pines I set the honest sweat of the man whose lifetime is\nthe measure of his working day.  \u201cHe that loveth not his brother whom he\nhath seen, how shall he love God whom he hath not seen?\u201d wrote Blessed\nJohn, who himself loved so much that he beheld the Lamb as it had been\nslain from the beginning when Adam fell, and the City of God with light\nmost precious.  The burden of corporate sin, the sword of corporate\nsorrow, the joy of corporate righteousness; thus we become citizens in\nthe Kingdom of God, and companions of all his creatures.  \u201cIt is not good\nthat the man should be alone,\u201d said the Lord God.\n\nI live now as it were in two worlds, the world of sight, and the world of\nsound; and they scarcely ever touch each other.  I hear the grind of\nheavy traffic, the struggle of horses on the frost-breathed ground, the\ndecorous jolt of omnibuses, the jangle of cab bells, the sharp warning of\nbicycles at the corner, the swift rattle of costers\u2019 carts as they go\nsouth at night with their shouting, goading crew.  All these things I\nhear, and more; but I see no road, only the silent river of my heart with\nits tale of wonder and years, and the white beat of seagulls\u2019 wings in\nstrong inquiring flight.\n\nSometimes there is naught to see on the waterway but a solitary black\nhull, a very Stygian ferry-boat, manned by a solitary figure, and moving\nslowly up under the impulse of the far-reaching sweeps.  Then the great\nbarges pass with their coffined treasure, drawn by a small self-righteous\nsteam-tug.  Later, lightened of their load, and waiting on wind and tide,\nI see them swooping by like birds set free; tawny sails that mind me of\nred-roofed Whitby with its northern fleet; black sails as of some\nheedless Theseus; white sails that sweep out of the morning mist \u201clike\nrestless gossameres.\u201d  They make the bridge, which is just within my\nvision, and then away past Westminster and Blackfriars where St Paul\u2019s\ngreat dome lifts the cross high over a self-seeking city; past Southwark\nwhere England\u2019s poet illuminates in the scroll of divine wisdom the sign\nof the Tabard; past the Tower with its haunting ghosts of history; past\nGreenwich, fairy city, caught in the meshes of riverside mist; and then\nthe salt and speer of the sea, the companying with great ships, the fresh\nburden.\n\nAt night I see them again, silent, mysterious; searching the darkness\nwith unwinking yellow stare, led by a great green light.  They creep up\nunder the bridge which spans the river with its watching eyes, and\nvanish, crying back a warning note as they make the upper reach, or\nstrident hail, as a chain of kindred phantoms passes, ploughing a\ncontrary tide.\n\nThroughout the long watches of the night I follow them; and in the early\nmorning they slide by, their eyes pale in the twilight; while the stars\nflicker and fade, and the gas lamps die down into a dull yellow blotch\nagainst the glory and glow of a new day.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\n\nFEBRUARY is here, February fill-dyke; the month of purification, of\ncleansing rains and pulsing bounding streams, and white mist clinging\ninsistent to field and hedgerow so that when her veil is withdrawn\ngreenness may make us glad.\n\nThe river has been uniformly grey of late, with no wind to ruffle its\nsurface or to speed the barges dropping slowly and sullenly down with the\ntide through a blurring haze.  I watched one yesterday, its useless sails\nhalf-furled and no sign of life save the man at the helm.  It drifted\nstealthily past, and a little behind, flying low, came a solitary\nseagull, grey as the river\u2019s haze\u2014a following bird.\n\nOnce again I lay on my back in the bottom of the tarry old fishing smack,\nblue sky above and no sound but the knock, knock of the waves, and the\nthud and curl of falling foam as the old boat\u2019s blunt nose breasted the\ncoming sea.  Then Daddy Whiddon spoke.\n\n\u201cA follerin\u2019 b\u00fcrrd,\u201d he said.\n\nI got up, and looked across the blue field we were ploughing into white\nfurrows.  Far away a tiny sail scarred the great solitude, and astern\ncame a gull flying slowly close to the water\u2019s breast.\n\nDaddy Whiddon waved his pipe towards it.\n\n\u201cA follerin\u2019 b\u00fcrrd,\u201d he said, again; and again I waited; questions were\nnot grateful to him.\n\n\u201cThere be a carpse there, sure enough, a carpse driftin\u2019 and shiftin\u2019 on\nthe floor of the sea.  There be those as can\u2019t rest, poor sawls, and\nher\u2019ll be mun, her\u2019ll be mun, and the sperrit of her is with the b\u00fcrrd.\u201d\n\nThe clumsy boom swung across as we changed our course, and the water ran\nfrom us in smooth reaches on either side: the bird flew steadily on.\n\n\u201cWhat will the spirit do?\u201d I said.\n\nThe old man looked at me gravely.\n\n\u201cHer\u2019ll rest in the Lard\u2019s time, in the Lard\u2019s gude time\u2014but now her\u2019ll\njust be follerin\u2019 on with the b\u00fcrrd.\u201d\n\nThe gull was flying close to us now, and a cold wind swept the sunny sea.\nI shivered: Daddy looked at me curiously.\n\n\u201cThere be reason enough to be cawld if us did but knaw it, but I he mos\u2019\nused to \u2019em, poor sawls.\u201d  He shaded his keen old blue eyes, and looked\naway across the water.  His face kindled.  \u201cThere be a skule comin\u2019, and\nby my sawl \u2019tis mackerel they be drivin\u2019.\u201d\n\nI watched eagerly, and saw the dark line rise and fall in the trough of\nthe sea, and, away behind, the stir and rush of tumbling porpoises as\nthey chased their prey.\n\nAgain we changed our tack, and each taking an oar, pulled lustily for the\nbeach.\n\n\u201cPlease God her\u2019ll break inshore,\u201d said Daddy Whiddon; and he shouted the\nnews to the idle waiting men who hailed us.\n\nIn a moment all was stir, for the fishing had been slack.  Two boats put\nout with the lithe brown seine.  The dark line had turned, but the school\nwas still behind, churning the water in clumsy haste; they were coming\nin.\n\nThen the brit broke in silvery leaping waves on the shelving beach.  The\nthreefold hunt was over; the porpoises turned out to sea in search of\nfresh quarry; and the seine, dragged by ready hands, came slowly,\nstubbornly in with its quivering treasure of fish.  They had sought a\nhaven and found none; the brit lay dying in flickering iridescent heaps\nas the bare-legged babies of the village gathered them up; and far away\nover the water I saw a single grey speck; it was the following bird.\n\n                                * * * * *\n\nThe curtain of river haze falls back; barge and bird are alike gone, and\nthe lamplighter has lit the first gas-lamp on the far side of the bridge.\nEvery night I watch him come, his progress marked by the great yellow\neyes that wake the dark.  Sometimes he walks quickly; sometimes he\nloiters on the bridge to chat, or stare at the dark water; but he always\ncomes, leaving his watchful deterrent train behind him to police the\nnight.\n\nOnce Demeter in the black anguish of her desolation searched for lost\nPersephone by the light of Hecate\u2019s torch; and searching all in vain,\nspurned beneath her empty feet an earth barren of her smile; froze with\nset brows the merry brooks and streams; and smote forest, and plain, and\nfruitful field, with the breath of her last despair, until even Iambe\u2019s\nlaughing jest was still.  And then when the desolation was complete,\nacross the wasted valley where the starveling cattle scarcely longed to\nbrowse, came the dreadful chariot\u2014and Persephone.  The day of the\nprisoner of Hades had dawned; and as the sun flamed slowly up to light\nher thwarted eyes the world sprang into blossom at her feet.\n\nWe can never be too Pagan when we are truly Christian, and the old myths\nare eternal truths held fast in the Church\u2019s net.  Prometheus fetched\nfire from Heaven, to be slain forever in the fetching; and lo, a Greater\nthan Prometheus came to fire the cresset of the Cross.  Demeter waits now\npatiently enough.  Persephone waits, too, in the faith of the sun she\ncannot see: and every lamp lit carries on the crusade which has for its\ngoal a sunless, moonless, city whose light is the Light of the world.\n\n    \u201cLume \u00e8 lass\u00f9, che visibile face\n    lo creatore a quella creatura,\n    che solo in lui vedere ha la sua pace.\u201d\n\nImmediately outside my window is a lime tree\u2014a little black skeleton of\nabundant branches\u2014in which sparrows congregate to chirp and bicker.\nFarther away I have a glimpse of graceful planes, children of moonlight\nand mist; their dainty robes, still more or less unsullied, gleam ghostly\nin the gaslight athwart the dark.  They make a brave show even in winter\nwith their feathery branches and swinging tassels, whereas my little tree\nstands stark and uncompromising, with its horde of sooty sparrows cockney\nto the last tail feather, and a pathetic inability to look anything but\nblack.  Rain comes with strong caressing fingers, and the branches seem\nno whit the cleaner for her care; but then their glistening blackness\nmirrors back the succeeding sunlight, as a muddy pavement will sometimes\nlap our feet in a sea of gold.  The little wet sparrows are for the\nmoment equally transformed, for the sun turns their dun-coloured coats to\na ruddy bronze, and cries Chrysostom as it kisses each shiny beak.  They\nare dumb Chrysostoms; but they preach a golden gospel, for the sparrows\nare to London what the rainbow was to eight saved souls out of a waste of\nwaters\u2014a perpetual sign of the remembering mercies of God.\n\nLast night there was a sudden clatter of hoofs, a shout, and then\nsilence.  A runaway cab-horse, a dark night, a wide crossing, and a heavy\nburden: so death came to a poor woman.  People from the house went out to\nhelp; and I heard of her, the centre of an unknowing curious crowd, as\nshe lay bonnetless in the mud of the road, her head on the kerb.  A rude\nbut painless death: the misery lay in her life; for this woman\u2014worn,\nwhite-haired, and wrinkled\u2014had but fifty years to set against such a\ncondition.  The policeman reported her respectable, hard-working, living\napart from her husband with a sister; but although they shared rooms,\nthey \u201cdid not speak,\u201d and the sister refused all responsibility; so the\nparish buried the dead woman, and thus ended an uneventful tragedy.\n\nWas it her own fault?  If so, the greater pathos.  The lonely souls that\nhold out timid hands to an unheeding world have their meed of interior\ncomfort even here, while the sons of consolation wait on the thresh-hold\nfor their footfall: but God help the soul that bars its own door!  It is\nkicking against the pricks of Divine ordinance, the ordinance of a triune\nGod; whether it be the dweller in crowded street or tenement who is proud\nto say, \u201cI keep myself to myself,\u201d or Seneca writing in pitiful\ncomplacency, \u201cWhenever I have gone among men, I have returned home less\nof a man.\u201d  Whatever the next world holds in store, we are bidden in this\nto seek and serve God in our fellow-men, and in the creatures of His\nmaking whom He calls by name.\n\nIt was once my privilege to know an old organ-grinder named Gawdine.  He\nwas a hard swearer, a hard drinker, a hard liver, and he fortified\nhimself body and soul against the world: he even drank alone, which is an\nevil sign.\n\nOne day to Gawdine sober came a little dirty child, who clung to his\nempty trouser leg\u2014he had lost a limb years before\u2014with a persistent\nunintelligible request.  He shook the little chap off with a blow and a\ncurse; and the child was trotting dismally away, when it suddenly turned,\nran back, and held up a dirty face for a kiss.\n\nTwo days later Gawdine fell under a passing dray which inflicted terrible\ninternal injuries on him.  They patched him up in hospital, and he went\nback to his organ-grinding, taking with him two friends\u2014a pain which fell\nsuddenly upon him to rack and rend with an anguish of crucifixion, and\nthe memory of a child\u2019s upturned face.  Outwardly he was the same save\nthat he changed the tunes of his organ, out of long-hoarded savings, for\nthe jigs and reels which children hold dear, and stood patiently playing\nthem in child-crowded alleys, where pennies are not as plentiful as\nelsewhere.\n\nHe continued to drink; it did not come within his new code to stop, since\nhe could \u201ccarry his liquor well;\u201d but he rarely, if ever, swore.  He told\nme this tale through the throes of his anguish as he lay crouched on a\nmattress on the floor; and as the grip of the pain took him he tore and\nbit at his hands until they were maimed and bleeding, to keep the ready\ncurses off his lips.\n\nHe told the story, but he gave no reason, offered no explanation: he has\nbeen dead now many a year, and thus would I write his epitaph:\u2014\n\nHe saw the face of a little child and looked on God.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\n\n\u201cTWO began, in a low voice, \u2018Why, the fact is, you see, Miss, this here\nought to have been a _red_ rose-tree, and we put a white one in by\nmistake.\u2019\u201d\n\nAs I look round this room I feel sure Two, and Five, and Seven, have all\nbeen at work on it, and made no mistakes, for round the walls runs a\nfrieze of squat standard rose-trees, red as red can be, and just like\nthose that Alice saw in the Queen\u2019s garden.  In between them are\nChaucer\u2019s name-children, prim little daisies, peering wideawake from\ngreen grass.  This same grass has a history which I have heard.  In the\noriginal stencil for the frieze it was purely conventional like the rest,\nand met in spikey curves round each tree; the painter, however, who was\ndoing the work, was a lover of the fields; and feeling that such grass\nwas a travesty, he added on his own account dainty little tussocks, and\nsoftened the hard line into a tufted carpet, the grass growing\nirregularly, bent at will by the wind.\n\nThe result from the standpoint of conventional art is indeed disastrous;\nbut my sympathy and gratitude are with the painter.  I see, as he saw,\nthe far-reaching robe of living ineffable green, of whose brilliance the\neye never has too much, and in whose weft no two threads are alike; and\nshrink as he did from the conventionalising of that windswept glory.\n\nThe sea has its crested waves of recognisable form; the river its eddy\nand swirl and separate vortices; but the grass!  The wind bloweth where\nit listeth and the grass bows as the wind blows\u2014\u201cthou canst not tell\nwhither it goeth.\u201d  It takes no pattern, it obeys no recognised law; it\nis like a beautiful creature of a thousand wayward moods, and its voice\nis like nothing else in the wide world.  It bids you rest and bury your\ntired face in the green coolness, and breathe of its breath and of the\nbreath of the good earth from which man was taken and to which he will\none day return.  Then, if you lend your ear and are silent minded, you\nmay hear wondrous things of the deep places of the earth; of life in\nmineral and stone as well as in pulsing sap; of a green world as the\nstars saw it before man trod it under foot\u2014of the emerald which has its\nplace with the rest in the City of God.\n\n                \u201cWhat if earth\n    Be but the shadow of heaven, and things therein,\n    Each to each other like, more than on earth to thought?\u201d\n\nIt is a natural part of civilisation\u2019s lust of re-arrangement that we\nshould be so ready to conventionalise the beauty of this world into\ndecorative patterns for our pilgrim tents.  It is a phase, and will melt\ninto other phases; but it tends to the increase of artificiality, and\nexists not only in art but in everything.  It is no new thing for jaded\nsentiment to crave the spur of the unnatural, to prefer the clever\nimitation, to live in a Devachan where the surroundings appear that which\nwe would have them to be; but it is an interesting record of the pulse of\nthe present day that \u2018An Englishwoman\u2019s Love Letters\u2019 should have taken\nsociety by storm in the way it certainly has.\n\nIt is a delightful book to leave about, with its vellum binding, dainty\nribbons, and the hallmark of a great publisher\u2019s name.  But when we seek\nwithin we find love with its thousand voices and wayward moods, its shy\ngraces and seemly reticences, love which has its throne and robe of state\nas well as the garment of the beggar maid, love which is before time was,\nwhich knew the world when the stars took up their courses, presented to\nus in gushing outpourings, the appropriate language of a woman\u2019s heart to\nthe boor she delights to honour.\n\n\u201cIt is woman who is the glory of man,\u201d says the author of \u2018The House of\nWisdom and Love,\u2019 \u201c_Regina mundi_, greater, because so far the less; and\nman is her head, but only as he serves his queen.\u201d  Set this sober\naphorism against the school girl love-making which kisses a man\u2019s feet\nand gaily refuses him the barren honour of having loved her first.\n\nThere is scant need for the apologia which precedes the letters; a few\npages dispels the fear that we are prying into another\u2019s soul.  As for\nthe authorship, there is a woman\u2019s influence, an artist\u2019s poorly\nconcealed bias in the foreign letters; and for the rest a man\u2019s\nblunders\u2014so much easier to see in another than to avoid oneself\u2014writ\nlarge from cover to cover.  King Cophetua, who sends \u201cprofoundly grateful\nremembrances,\u201d has most surely written the letters he would wish to\nreceive.\n\n\u201cMrs Meynell!\u201d cries one reviewer, triumphantly.  Nay, the saints be good\nto us, what has Mrs Meynell in common with the \u201cEnglishwoman\u2019s\u201d language,\nstyle, or most unconvincing passion?  Men can write as from a woman\u2019s\nheart when they are minded to do so in desperate earnestness\u2014there is\nClarissa Harlowe and Stevenson\u2019s Kirstie, and many more to prove it; but\nwhen a man writes as the author of the \u201cLove Letters\u201d writes, I feel, as\ndid the painter of the frieze, that pattern-making has gone too far and\nincluded that which, like the grass, should be spared such a convention.\n\n\u201cI quite agree with you,\u201d said the Duchess, \u201cand the moral of that is\u2014\u2018Be\nwhat you would seem to be\u2019\u2014or, if you\u2019d like to put it more simply\u2014\u2018never\nimagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others\nthat what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had\nbeen would have appeared to them to be otherwise.\u2019\u201d  And so by way of the\nQueen\u2019s garden I come back to my room again.\n\nMy heart\u2019s affections are still centred on my old attic, with boarded\nfloor and white-washed walls, where the sun blazoned a frieze of red and\ngold until he travelled too far towards the north, the moon streamed in\nto paint the trees in inky wavering shadows, and the stars flashed their\nglory to me across the years.  But now sun and moon greet me only\nindirectly, and under the red roses hang pictures, some of them the dear\ncompanions of my days.  Opposite me is the Arundel print of the\nPresentation, painted by the gentle \u201cBrother of the Angels.\u201d  Priest\nSimeon, a stately figure in green and gold, great with prophecy, gazes\nadoringly at the Bambino he holds with fatherly care.  Our Lady, in robe\nof red and veil of shadowed purple, is instinct with light despite the\nsombre colouring, as she stretches out hungering, awe-struck hands for\nher soul\u2019s delight.  St Joseph, dignified guardian and servitor, stands\nbehind, holding the Sacrifice of the Poor to redeem the First-begotten.\n\nSt Peter Martyr and the Dominican nun, gazing in rapt contemplation at\nthe scene, are not one whit surprised to find themselves in the presence\nof eternal mysteries.  In the Entombment, which hangs on the opposite\nwall, St Dominic comes round the corner full of grievous amaze and\ntenderest sympathy, but with no sense of shock or intrusion, for was he\nnot \u201cfamigliar di Cristo\u201d?  And so he takes it all in; the stone bed\nempty and waiting; the Beloved cradled for the last time on His mother\u2019s\nknees to be washed, lapped round, and laid to rest as if He were again\nthe Babe of Bethlehem.  He sees the Magdalen anointing the Sacred Feet;\nBlessed John caring for the living and the Dead; and he, Dominic\u2014hound of\nthe Lord\u2014having his real, living share in the anguish and hope, the\nbedding of the dearest Dead, who did but leave this earth that He might\nmanifest Himself more completely.\n\nUnderneath, with a leap across the centuries, is Rossetti\u2019s picture;\nDante this time the onlooker, Beatrice, in her pale beauty, the\ndeath-kissed one.  The same idea under different representations; the one\nconceived in childlike simplicity, the other recalling, even in the\nphotograph, its wealth of colour and imagining; the one a world-wide\nideal, the other an individual expression of it.\n\nBeatrice was to Dante the inclusion of belief.  She was more to him than\nhe himself knew, far more to him after her death than before.  And,\ntherefore, the analogy between the pictures has at core a common reality.\n\u201cIt is expedient for you that I go away,\u201d is constantly being said to us\nas we cling earthlike to the outward expression, rather than to the\ninward manifestation\u2014and blessed are those who hear and understand, for\nit is spoken only to such as have been with Him from the beginning.  The\neternal mysteries come into time for us individually under widely\ndiffering forms.  The tiny child mothers its doll, croons to it, spends\nherself upon it, why she cannot tell you; and we who are here in our\nextreme youth, never to be men and women grown in this world, nurse our\nideal, exchange it, refashion it, call it by many names; and at last in\nhere or hereafter we find in its naked truth the Child in the manger,\neven as the Wise Men found Him when they came from the East to seek a\ngreat King.  There is but one necessary condition of this finding; we\nmust follow the particular manifestation of light given us, never resting\nuntil it rests\u2014over the place of the Child.  And there is but one\ninsurmountable hindrance, the extinction of or drawing back from the\nlight truly apprehended by us.  We forget this, and judge other men by\nthe light of our own soul.\n\nI think the old bishop must have understood it.  He is my friend of\nfriends as he lies opposite my window in his alabaster sleep, clad in\npontifical robes, with unshod feet, a little island of white peace in a\nmany-coloured marble sea.  The faithful sculptor has given every line and\nwrinkle, the heavy eyelids and sunken face of tired old age, but withal\nthe smile of a contented child.\n\nI do not even know my bishop\u2019s name, only that the work is of the\nthirteenth century; but he is good to company with through the day, for\nhe has known darkness and light and the minds of many men; most surely,\ntoo, he has known that God fulfils Himself in strange ways, so with the\nshadow of his feet upon the polished floor he rests in peace.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\n\nON Sunday my little tree was limned in white and the sparrows were\ncraving shelter at my window from the blizzard.  Now the mild thin air\nbrings a breath of spring in its wake and the daffodils in the garden\nwait the kisses of the sun.  Hand-in-hand with memory I slip away down\nthe years, and remember a day when I awoke at earliest dawn, for across\nmy sleep I had heard the lusty golden-throated trumpeters heralding the\nspring.\n\nThe air was sharp-set; a delicate rime frosted roof and road; the sea lay\nhazy and still like a great pearl.  Then as the sky stirred with flush\nupon flush of warm rosy light, it passed from misty pearl to opal with\nheart of flame, from opal to gleaming sapphire.  The earth called, the\nfields called, the river called\u2014that pied piper to whose music a man\ncannot stop his ears.  It was with me as with the Canterbury pilgrims:\u2014\n\n    \u201cSo priketh hem nature in hir corages;\n    Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages.\u201d\n\nHalf an hour later I was away by the early train that carries the branch\nmails and a few workmen, and was delivered at the little wayside station\nwith the letters.  The kind air went singing past as I swung along the\nreverberating road between the high tree-crowned banks which we call\nhedges in merry Devon, with all the world to myself and the Brethren.  A\ngreat blackbird flew out with a loud \u201cchook, chook,\u201d and the red of the\nhaw on his yellow bill.  A robin trilled from a low rose-bush; two wrens\nsearched diligently on a fallen tree for breakfast, quite unconcerned\nwhen I rested a moment beside them; and a shrewmouse slipped across the\nroad followed directly by its mate.  March violets bloomed under the\nsheltered hedge with here and there a pale primrose; a frosted bramble\nspray still held its autumn tints clinging to the semblance of the past;\nand great branches of snowy blackthorn broke the barren hedgeway as if\nspring made a mock of winter\u2019s snows.\n\nLight of heart and foot with the new wine of the year I sped on again,\nstray daffodils lighting the wayside, until I heard the voice of the\nstream and reached the field gate which leads to the lower meadows.\nThere before me lay spring\u2019s pageant; green pennons waving, dainty maids\ncurtseying, and a host of joyous yellow trumpeters proclaiming \u2018Victory\u2019\nto an awakened earth.  They range in serried ranks right down to the\nriver, so that a man must walk warily to reach the water\u2019s edge where\nthey stand gazing down at themselves in fairest semblance like their most\ntragic progenitor, and, rising from the bright grass in their thousands,\nstretch away until they melt in a golden cloud at the far end of the\nmisty mead.  Through the field gate and across the road I see them,\nstarring the steep earth bank that leads to the upper copse, gleaming\nlike pale flames against the dark tree-boles.  There they have but frail\ntenure; here, in the meadows, they reign supreme.\n\nAt the upper end of the field the river provides yet closer sanctuary for\nthese children of the spring.  Held in its embracing arms lies an island\nlong and narrow, some thirty feet by twelve, a veritable untrod Eldorado,\nglorious in gold from end to end, a fringe of reeds by the water\u2019s edge,\nand save for that\u2014daffodils.  A great oak stands at the meadow\u2019s neck, an\noak with gnarled and wandering roots where a man may rest, for it is bare\nof daffodils save for a group of three, and a solitary one apart growing\nclose to the old tree\u2019s side.  I sat down by my lonely little sister,\nblue sky overhead, green grass at my feet decked, like the pastures of\nthe Bless\u00e8d, in glorious sheen; a sea of triumphant, golden heads tossing\nblithely back as the wind swept down to play with them at his pleasure.\n\nIt was all mine to have and to hold without severing a single slender\nstem or harbouring a thought of covetousness; mine, as the whole earth\nwas mine, to appropriate to myself without the burden and bane of worldly\npossession.  \u201cThou sayest that I am\u2014a King,\u201d said the Lord before Pilate,\nand \u201cMy kingdom is not of this world.\u201d  We who are made kings after His\nlikeness possess all things, not after this world\u2019s fashion but in\nproportion to our poverty; and when we cease to toil and spin, are\narrayed as the lilies, in a glory transcending Solomon\u2019s.  Bride\nPoverty\u2014she who climbed the Cross with Christ\u2014stretched out eager hands\nto free us from our chains, but we flee from her, and lay up treasure\nagainst her importunity, while Amytas on his seaweed bed weeps tears of\npure pity for crave-mouth C\u00e6sar of great possessions.\n\nPresently another of spring\u2019s lovers cried across the water \u201cCuckoo,\ncuckoo,\u201d and the voice of the stream sang joyously in unison.  It is free\nfrom burden, this merry little river, and neither weir nor mill bars its\nquick way to the sea as it completes the eternal circle, lavishing gifts\nof coolness and refreshment on the children of the meadows.\n\nIt has its birth on the great lone moor, cradled in a wonderful\npeat-smelling bog, with a many-hued coverlet of soft mosses\u2014pale gold,\norange, emerald, tawny, olive and white, with the red stain of sun-dew\nand tufted cotton-grass.  Under the old grey rocks which watch it rise,\nyellow-eyed tormantil stars the turf, and bids \u201cGodspeed\u201d to the little\nchild of earth and sky.  Thus the journey begins; and with\never-increasing strength the stream carves a way through the dear brown\npeat, wears a fresh wrinkle on the patient stones, and patters merrily\nunder a clapper bridge which spanned its breadth when the mistletoe\nreigned and Bottor, the grim rock idol, exacted the toll of human life\nthat made him great.  On and on goes the stream, for it may not stay;\nleaving of its freshness with the great osmunda that stretches eager\nroots towards the running water; flowing awhile with a brother stream, to\npart again east and west as each takes up his separate burden of\nservice\u2014my friend to cherish the lower meadows in their flowery\njoyance\u2014and so by the great sea-gate back to sky and earth again.\n\nThe river of God is full of water.  The streets of the City are pure\ngold.  Verily, here also having nothing we possess all things.\n\n                                * * * * *\n\nThe air was keen and still as I walked back in the early evening, and a\ndaffodil light was in the sky as if Heaven mirrored back earth\u2019s\nradiance.  Near the station some children flitted past, like little white\nmiller moths homing through the dusk.  As I climbed the hill the moon\nrode high in a golden field\u2014it was daffodils to the last.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\n\nTHE seagulls from the upper reaches pass down the river in sober steady\nflight seeking the open sea.  I shall miss the swoop and circle of silver\nwings in the sunlight and the plaintive call which sounds so strangely\naway from rock and shore, but it is good to know that they have gone from\nmudbank and murky town back to the free airs of their inheritance, to the\nshadow of sun-swept cliffs and the curling crest of the wind-beaten\nwaves, to brood again over the great ocean of a world\u2019s tears.\n\nMy little tree is gemmed with buds, shy, immature, but full of promise.\nThe sparrows busied with nest-building in the neighbouring pipes and\ngutters use it for a vantage ground, and crowd there in numbers, each\nlittle beak sealed with long golden straw or downy feather.\n\nThe river is heavy with hay barges, the last fruits of winter\u2019s\nstorehouse; the lengthening days slowly and steadily oust the dark; the\nair is loud with a growing clamour of life: spring is not only\nproclaimed, but on this Feast she is crowned, and despite the warring\nwind the days bring their meed of sunshine.  We stand for a moment at the\nmeeting of the ways, the handclasp of Winter and Spring, of Sleep and\nWakening, of Life and Death; and there is between them not even the thin\nline which Rabbi Jochanan on his death-bed beheld as all that divided\nhell from heaven.\n\n\u201c_Sph\u00e6ra cujus centrum ubique_, _circumferentia nullibus_,\u201d was said of\nMercury, that messenger of the gods who marshalled reluctant spirits to\nthe Underworld; and for Mercury we may write Life with Death as its great\nsacrament of brotherhood and release, to be dreaded only as we dread to\npartake unworthily of great benefits.  Like all sacraments it has its\nrightful time and due solemnities; the horror and sin of suicide lie in\nthe presumption of free will, the forestalling of a gift,\u2014the sin of Eve\nin Paradise, who took that which might only be given at the hand of the\nLord.  It has too its physical pains, but they are those of a woman in\ntravail, and we remember them no more for joy that a child-man is born\ninto the world naked and not ashamed: beholding ourselves as we are we\nshall see also the leaves of the Tree of Life set for the healing of the\nnations.\n\nWe are slowly, very slowly, abandoning our belief in sudden and violent\ntransitions for a surer and fuller acceptance of the doctrine of\nevolution; but most of us still draw a sharp line of demarcation between\nthis world and the next, and expect a radical change in ourselves and our\nsurroundings, a break in the chain of continuity entirely contrary to the\nteaching of nature and experience.  In the same way we cling to the\nspecious untruth that we can begin over and over again in this world,\nforgetting that while our sorrow and repentance bring sacramental gifts\nof grace and strength, God Himself cannot, by His own limitation, rewrite\nthe Past.  We are in our sorrow that which we have made ourselves in our\nsin; our temptations are there as well as the way of escape.  We are in\nthe image of God.  We create our world, our undying selves, our heaven,\nor our hell.  \u201c_Qui creavit te sine te non salvabit te sine te_.\u201d  It is\nstupendous, magnificent, and most appalling.  A man does not change as he\ncrosses the threshold of the larger room.  His personality remains the\nsame, although the expression of it may be altered.  Here we have\nmaterial bodies in a material world\u2014there, perhaps, ether bodies in an\nether world.  There is no indecency in reasonable speculation and\ncuriosity about the life to come.  One end of the thread is between our\nfingers, but we are haunted for the most part by the snap of Atropos\u2019\nshears.\n\nSocrates faced death with the magnificent calm bred of dignified\nfamiliarity.  He had built for himself a desired heaven of colour, light,\nand precious stones\u2014the philosophic formula of those who set the\nspiritual above the material, and worship truth in the beauty of\nholiness.  He is not troubled by doubts or regrets, for the path of the\njust lies plain before his face.  He forbids mourning and lamentations as\nout of place, obeys minutely and cheerily the directions of his\nexecutioner, and passes with unaffected dignity to the apprehension of\nthat larger truth for which he had constantly prepared himself.  His\nfriends may bury him provided they will remember they are not burying\nSocrates; and that all things may be done decently and in order, a cock\nmust go to \u00c6sculapius.\n\nLong before, in the days of the Captivity, there lived in godless,\nblood-shedding Nineveh an exiled Jew whose father had fallen from the\nfaith.  He was a simple man, child-like and direct; living the careful,\nkindly life of an orthodox Jew, suffering many persecutions for\nconscience\u2019 sake, and in constant danger of death.  He narrates the story\nof his life and of the blindness which fell on him, with gentle\nplacidity, and checks the exuberance of his more emotional wife with the\nassurance of untroubled faith.  Finally, when his pious expectations are\nfulfilled, his sight restored, and his son prosperously established\nbeside him, he breaks into a prayer of rejoicing which reveals the secret\nof his confident content.  He made use of two great faculties: the sense\nof proportion, which enabled him to apprise life and its accidents\njustly, and the gift of in-seeing, which led Socrates after him, and\nBlessed John in lonely exile on Patmos, to look through the things\ntemporal to the hidden meanings of eternity.\n\n\u201cLet my soul bless God the great King,\u201d he cries; and looks away past the\npresent distress; past the Restoration which was to end in fresh\nscattering and confusion; past the dream of gold, and porphyry, and\nmarble defaced by the eagles and emblems of the conqueror; until his eyes\nare held by the Jerusalem of God, \u201cbuilt up with sapphires, and emeralds,\nand precious stones,\u201d with battlements of pure gold, and the cry of\n\u2018Alleluia\u2019 in her streets.\n\nMany years later, when he was very aged, he called his son to him and\ngave him as heritage his own simple rule of life, adding but one request:\n\u201cKeep thou the law and the commandments, and shew thyself merciful and\njust, that it may go well with thee. . . . Consider what alms doeth, and\nhow righteousness doth deliver. . . . And bury me decently, and thy\nmother with me.\u201d  Having so said, he went his way quietly and contentedly\nto the Jerusalem of his heart.\n\nIt is the simple note of familiarity that is wanting in us; that by which\nwe link world with world.  Once, years ago, I sat by the bedside of a\ndying man in a wretched garret in the East End.  He was entirely\nignorant, entirely quiescent, and entirely uninterested.  The minister of\na neighbouring chapel came to see him and spoke to him at some length of\nthe need for repentance and the joys of heaven.  After he had gone my\nfriend lay staring restlessly at the mass of decrepit broken chimney pots\nwhich made his horizon.  At last he spoke, and there was a new note in\nhis voice:\u2014\n\n\u201cEe said as \u2019ow there were golding streets in them parts.  I ain\u2019t no\nways particler wot they\u2019re made of, but it\u2019ll feel natral like if there\u2019s\nchimleys too.\u201d\n\nThe sun stretched a sudden finger and painted the chimney pots red and\ngold against the smoke-dimmed sky, and with his face alight with\nsurprised relief my friend died.\n\nWe are one with the earth, one in sin, one in redemption.  It is the\nfringe of the garment of God.  \u201cIf I may but touch the hem,\u201d said a\ncertain woman.\n\nOn the great Death-day which shadows the early spring with a shadow of\nwhich it may be said _Umbra Dei est Lux_, the earth brought gifts of\ngrief, the fruit of the curse, barren thorns, hollow reed, and the wood\nof the cross; the sea made offering of Tyrian purple; the sky veiled her\nface in great darkness, while the nation of priests crucified for the\nlast time their Paschal lamb.  \u201cI will hear, saith the Lord; I will hear\nthe heavens, and they shall hear the earth, and the earth shall hear the\ncorn and wine and oil, and they shall hear Jezreel, and I will sow her\nunto me in the earth; and I will have mercy upon her that had not\nobtained mercy, and I will say unto them which were not my people, \u2018Thou\nart my people,\u2019 and they shall say \u2018Thou art my God.\u2019\u201d\n\nThe second Adam stood in the garden with quickening feet, and all the\nearth pulsed and sang for joy of the new hope and the new life quickening\nwithin her, to be hers through the pains of travail, the pangs of\ndissolution.  The Tree of Life bears Bread and Wine\u2014food of the wayfaring\nman.  The day of divisions is past, the day of unity has dawned.  One has\nrisen from the dead, and in the Valley of Achor stands wide the Door of\nHope\u2014the Sacrament of Death.\n\n    Scio Domine, et vere scio . . . quia non sum dignus accedere ad\n    tantum mysterium propter nimia peccata mea et infinitas negligentias\n    meas.  Sed scio . . . quia tu potes me facere dignum.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\n\n\u201cANYTUS and Meletus can kill me, but they cannot hurt me,\u201d said Socrates;\nand Governor Sancho, with all the itch of newly-acquired authority, could\nnot make the young weaver of steel-heads for lances sleep in prison.  In\nthe Vision of Er the souls passed straight forward under the throne of\nnecessity, and out into the plains of forgetfulness, where they must\nseverally drink of the river of unmindfulness whose waters cannot be held\nin any vessel.  The throne, the plain, and the river are still here, but\nin the distance rise the great lone heavenward hills, and the wise among\nus no longer ask of the gods Lethe, but rather remembrance.  Necessity\ncan set me helpless on my back, but she cannot keep me there; nor can\nfour walls limit my vision.  I pass out from under her throne into the\ngarden of God a free man, to my ultimate beatitude or my exceeding shame.\nAll day long this world lies open to me; ay, and other worlds also, if I\nwill but have it so; and when night comes I pass into the kingdom and\npower of the dark.\n\nI lie through the long hours and watch my bridge, which is set with\nlights across the gloom; watch the traffic which is for me but so many\npassing lamps telling their tale by varying height and brightness.  I\nhear under my window the sprint of over-tired horses, the rattle of\nuncertain wheels as the street-sellers hasten south; the jangle of cab\nbells as the theatre-goers take their homeward way; the gruff altercation\nof weary men, the unmelodious song and clamorous laugh of women whose\nmerriment is wearier still.  Then comes a time of stillness when the\nlight in the sky waxes and wanes, when the cloud-drifts obscure the\nstars, and I gaze out into blackness set with watching eyes.  No sound\ncomes from without but the voice of the night-wind and the cry of the\nhour.  The clock on the mantelpiece ticks imperatively, for a check has\nfallen on the familiarity which breeds a disregard of common things, and\na reason has to be sought for each sound which claims a hearing.  The\npause is wonderful while it lasts, but it is not for long.  The working\nworld awakes, the poorer brethren take up the burden of service; the dawn\nlights the sky; remembrance cries an end to forgetting.\n\nSometimes in the country on a night in early summer you may shut the\ncottage door to step out into an immense darkness which palls heaven and\nearth.  Going forward into the embrace of the great gloom, you are as a\nbabe swaddled by the hands of night into helpless quiescence.  Your feet\ntread an unseen path, your hands grasp at a void, or shrink from the\ncontact they cannot realise; your eyes are holden; your voice would die\nin your throat did you seek to rend the veil of that impenetrable\nsilence.\n\nShut in by the intangible dark, we are brought up against those worlds\nwithin worlds blotted out by our concrete daily life.  The working of the\ngreat microcosm at which we peer dimly through the little window of\nscience; the wonderful, breathing earth; the pulsing, throbbing sap; the\ngrowing fragrance shut in the calyx of to-morrow\u2019s flower; the heart-beat\nof a sleeping world that we dream that we know; and around, above, and\ninterpenetrating all, the world of dreams, of angels and of spirits.\n\nIt was this world which Jacob saw on the first night of his exile, and\nagain when he wrestled in Peniel until the break of day.  It was this\nworld which Elisha saw with open eyes; which Job knew when darkness fell\non him; which Ezekiel gazed into from his place among the captives; which\nDaniel beheld as he stood alone by the great river, the river Hiddekel.\n\nFor the moment we have left behind the realm of question and explanation,\nof power over matter and the exercise of bodily faculties; and passed\ninto darkness alight with visions we cannot see, into silence alive with\nvoices we cannot hear.  Like helpless men we set our all on the one thing\nleft us, and lift up our hearts, knowing that we are but a mere speck\namong a myriad worlds, yet greater than the sum of them; having our roots\nin the dark places of the earth, but our branches in the sweet airs of\nheaven.\n\nIt is the material counterpart of the \u2018Night of the Soul.\u2019  We have left\nour house and set forth in the darkness which paralyses those faculties\nthat make us men in the world of men.  But surely the great mystics, with\nall their insight and heavenly love, fell short when they sought freedom\nin complete separateness from creation instead of in perfect unity with\nit.  The Greeks knew better when they flung Ariadne\u2019s crown among the\nstars, and wrote Demeter\u2019s grief on a barren earth, and Persephone\u2019s joy\nin the fruitful field.  For the earth is gathered up in man; he is the\nwhole which is greater than the sum of its parts.  Standing in the image\nof God, and clothed in the garment of God, he lifts up priestly hands and\npresents the sacrifice of redeemed earth before the throne of the\nAll-Father.  \u201cDust and ashes and a house of devils,\u201d he cries; and there\ncomes back for answer, \u201c_Rex concupiscet decorem tuam_.\u201d\n\nThe Angel of Death has broad wings of silence and mystery with which he\nshadows the valley where we need fear no evil, and where the voice which\nspeaks to us is as the \u201cvoice of doves, tabering upon their breasts.\u201d  It\nis a place of healing and preparation, of peace and refreshing after the\nsharply-defined outlines of a garish day.  Walking there we learn to use\nthose natural faculties of the soul which are hampered by the familiarity\nof bodily progress, to apprehend the truths which we have intellectually\naccepted.  It is the place of secrets where the humility which embraces\nall attainable knowledge cries \u201cI know not\u201d; and while we proclaim from\nthe house-tops that which we have learnt, the manner of our learning lies\nhid for each one of us in the sanctuary of our souls.\n\nThe Egyptians, in their ancient wisdom, act in the desert a great\nandrosphinx, image of mystery and silence, staring from under level brows\nacross the arid sands of the sea-way.  The Greeks borrowed and debased\nthe image, turning the inscrutable into a semi-woman who asked a foolish\nriddle, and hurled herself down in petulant pride when \u0152dipus answered\naright.  So we, marring the office of silence, question its mystery;\nthwart ourselves with riddles of our own suggesting; and turn away,\nleaving our offering but half consumed on the altar of the unknown god.\nIt was not the theft of fire that brought the vengeance of heaven upon\nPrometheus, but the mocking sacrifice.  Orpheus lost Eurydice because he\nmust see her face before the appointed time.  Persephone ate of the\npomegranate and hungered in gloom for the day of light which should have\nbeen endless.\n\nThe universe is full of miracle and mystery; the darkness and silence are\nset for a sign we dare not despise.  The pall of night lifts, leaving us\nengulphed in the light of immensity under a tossing heaven of stars.  The\ndawn breaks, but it does not surprise us, for we have watched from the\nvalley and seen the pale twilight.  Through the wondrous Sabbath of\nfaithful souls, the long day of rosemary and rue, the light brightens in\nthe East; and we pass on towards it with quiet feet and opening eyes,\nbearing with us all of the redeemed earth that we have made our own,\nuntil we are fulfilled in the sunrise of the great Easter Day, and the\npeoples come from north and south and east and west to the City which\nlieth foursquare\u2014the Beatific Vision of God.\n\n    Vere Ierusalem est illa civitas\n    Cuius pax iugis et summa iucunditas;\n    Ubi non pr\u00e6venit rem desiderium,\n    Nec desiderio minus est pr\u00e6mium.\n\n\n\n\nAT THE WHITE GATE\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\n\nA GREAT joy has come to me; one of those unexpected gifts which life\nloves to bestow after we have learnt to loose our grip of her.  I am back\nin my own place very near my road\u2014the white gate lies within my distant\nvision; near the lean grey Downs which keep watch and ward between the\ncountry and the sea; very near, nay, in the lap of Mother Earth, for as I\nwrite I am lying on a green carpet, powdered yellow and white with the\nsun\u2019s own flowers; overhead a great sycamore where the bees toil and\nsing; and sighing shimmering poplars golden grey against the blue.  The\nday of Persephone has dawned for me, and I, set free like Demeter\u2019s\nchild, gladden my eyes with this foretaste of coming radiance, and rest\nmy tired sense with the scent and sound of home.  Away down the meadow I\nhear the early scythe song, and the warm air is fragrant with the fallen\ngrass.  It has its own message for me as I lie here, I who have obtained\nyet one more mercy, and the burden of it is life, not death.\n\nI remember when, taking a grace from my road, I helped to mow Farmer\nMarler\u2019s ten-acre field, rich in ripe upstanding grass.  The mechanism of\nthe ancient reaper had given way under the strain of the home meadows,\nand if this crop was to be saved it must be by hand.  I have kept the\nrecord of those days of joyous labour under a June sky.  Men were hard to\nget in our village; old Dodden, who was over seventy, volunteered his\nservices\u2014he had done yeoman work with the scythe in his youth\u2014and two of\nthe farm hands with their master completed our strength.\n\nWe took our places under a five o\u2019clock morning sky, and the larks cried\ndown to us as we stood knee-deep in the fragrant dew-steeped grass, each\nman with his gleaming scythe poised ready for its sweeping swing.  Old\nDodden led by right of age and ripe experience; bent like a sickle, brown\nand dry as a nut, his face a tracery of innumerable wrinkles, he has\nnever ailed a day, and the cunning of his craft was still with him.  At\nfirst we worked stiffly, unreadily, but soon the monotonous motion\npossessed us with its insistent rhythm, and the grass bowed to each\nsibilant swish and fell in sweet-smelling swathes at our feet.  Now and\nthen a startled rabbit scurried through the miniature forest to vanish\nwith white flick of tail in the tangled hedge; here and there a mother\nlark was discovered sitting motionless, immovable upon her little brood;\nbut save for these infrequent incidents we paced steadily on with no\nspeech save the cry of the hone on the steel and the swish of the falling\nswathes.  The sun rose high in the heaven and burnt on bent neck and bare\nand aching arms, the blood beat and drummed in my veins with the unwonted\nposture and exercise; I worked as a man who sees and hears in a mist.\nOnce, as I paused to whet my scythe, my eye caught the line of the\nuntroubled hills strong and still in the broad sunshine; then to work\nagain in the labouring, fertile valley.\n\nRest time came, and wiping the sweat from brow and blade we sought the\nwelcome shadow of the hedge and the cool sweet oatmeal water with which\nthe wise reaper quenches his thirst.  Farmer Marler hastened off to see\nwith master-eye that all went well elsewhere; the farm men slept\ntranquilly, stretched at full length, clasped hands for pillow; and old\nDodden, sitting with crooked fingers interlaced to check their trembling\nbetrayal of old age, told how in his youth he had \u201cswep\u201d a four-acre\nfield single-handed in three days\u2014an almost impossible feat\u2014and of the\nfirst reaping machine in these parts, and how it brought, to his\nthinking, the ruin of agricultural morals with it.  \u201c\u2019Tis again nature,\u201d\nhe said, \u201cthe Lard gave us the land an\u2019 the seed, but \u2019Ee said that a man\nshould sweat.  Where\u2019s the sweat drivin\u2019 round wi\u2019 two horses cuttin\u2019 the\nstraw down an\u2019 gatherin\u2019 it again, wi\u2019 scarce a hand\u2019s turn i\u2019 the day\u2019s\nwork?\u201d\n\nOld Dodden\u2019s high-pitched quavering voice rose and fell, mournful as he\nsurveyed the present, vehement as he recorded the heroic past.  He spoke\nof the rural exodus and shook his head mournfully.  \u201cWe old \u2019uns were\ncontent wi\u2019 earth and the open sky like our feythers before us, but wi\u2019\nthe children \u2019tis first machines to save doin\u2019 a hand\u2019s turn o\u2019 honest\nwork, an\u2019 then land an\u2019 sky ain\u2019t big enough seemin\u2019ly, nor grand enough;\nit must be town an\u2019 a paved street, an\u2019 they sweat their lives out atwixt\nfour walls an\u2019 call it seein\u2019 life\u2014\u2019tis death an\u2019 worse comes to the most\nof \u2019em.  Ay, \u2019tis better to stay by the land, as the Lard said, till time\ncomes to lie under it.\u201d  I looked away across the field where the hot air\nthrobbed and quivered, and the fallen grass, robbed already of its\nfreshness, lay prone at the feet of its upstanding fellows.  It is quite\nuseless to argue with old Dodden; he only shakes his head and says\nfirmly, \u201cAn old man, seventy-five come Martinmass knows more o\u2019 life than\na young chap, stands ter reason\u201d; besides, his epitome of the town life\nhe knows nothing of was a just one as far as it went; and his own son is\nthe sweeper of a Holborn crossing, and many other things that he should\nnot be; but that is the parson\u2019s secret and mine.\n\nWe took rank again and swept steadily on through the hot still hours into\nthe evening shadows, until the sinking sun set a _Gloria_ to the psalm of\nanother working day.  Only a third of the field lay mown, for we were not\nskilled labourers to cut our acre a day; I saw it again that night under\nthe moonlight and the starlight, wrapped in a shroud of summer\u2019s mist.\n\nThe women joined us on the third day to begin haymaking, and the air was\nfragrant of tossed and sun-dried grass.  One of them walked apart from\nthe rest, without interest or freedom of movement; her face, sealed and\nimpassive, was aged beyond the vigour of her years.  I knew the woman by\nsight, and her history by hearsay.  We have a code of morals here\u2014not\nindeed peculiar to this place or people\u2014that a wedding is \u2018respectable\u2019\nif it precedes child-birth by a bare month, tolerable, and to be\nrecognised, should it succeed the same by less than a year (provided the\npair are not living in the same village); but the child that has never\nbeen \u2018fathered\u2019 and the wife without a ring are \u2018anathema,\u2019 and such in\none was Elizabeth Banks.  She went away a maid and came back a year ago\nwith a child and without a name.  Her mother was dead, her father and the\nvillage would have none of her: the homing instinct is very strong, or\nshe would scarcely have returned, knowing the traditions of the place.\nOld Dodden, seeing her, grumbled to me in the rest-time.\u2014\u201cCan\u2019t think\nwhat the farmer wants wi\u2019 Lizzie Banks in \u2019is field.\u201d  \u201cShe must live,\u201d I\nsaid, \u201cand by all showing her life is a hard one.\u201d  \u201cShe \u2019ad the makin\u2019\nof \u2019er bed,\u201d he went on, obstinately.  \u201cWhat for do she bring her\ndisgrace home, wi\u2019 a fatherless brat for all folks to see?  We don\u2019t want\nthem sort in our village.  The Lord\u2019s hand is heavy, an\u2019 a brat\u2019s a curse\nthat cannot be hid.\u201d\n\nWhen tea-time came I crossed the field to look for a missing hone, and\nsaw Elizabeth Banks far from the other women, busied with a bundle under\nthe hedge.  I passed close on my search, and lo! the bundle was a little\nboy.  He lay smiling and stretching, fighting the air with his small pink\nfists, while the wind played with his curls.  \u201cA curse that cannot be\nhid,\u201d old Dodden had said.  The mother knelt a moment, devouring him with\nher eyes, then snatched him to her with aching greed and covered him with\nkisses.  I saw the poor, plain face illumined, transfigured, alive with a\nmother\u2019s love, and remembered how the word came once to a Hebrew\nprophet:\u2014\n\n    Say unto your brethren Ammi, and to your sisters Ruhamah.\n\nThe evening sky was clouding fast, the sound of rain was in the air;\nFarmer Marler shook his head as he looked at the grass lying in ordered\nrows.  I was the last to leave, and as I lingered at the gate drinking in\nthe scent of the field and the cool of the coming rain, the first drops\nfell on my upturned face and kissed the poor dry swathes at my feet, and\nI was glad.\n\nDavid, child of the fields and the sheepfolds, his kingship laid aside,\nsees through the parted curtain of the years the advent of his greater\nSon, and cries in his psalm of the hilltops, his last prophetic prayer:\u2014\n\n    He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass.\n\nEven so He came, and shall still come.  Three days ago the field, in its\npageant of fresh beauty, with shimmering blades and tossing banners,\ngreeted sun and shower alike with joy for the furtherance of its life and\npurpose; now, laid low, it hears the young grass whisper the splendour of\nits coming green; and the poor swathes are glad at the telling, but full\nof grief for their own apparent failure.  Then in great pity comes the\nrain, the rain of summer, gentle, refreshing, penetrating, and the\nswathes are comforted, for they know that standing to greet or prostrate\nto suffer, the consolations of the former and the latter rain are still\ntheir own, with tender touch and cool caress.  Then, once more parched by\nthe sun, they are borne away to the new service their apparent failure\nhas fitted them for; and perhaps as they wait in the dark for the unknown\nthat is still to come they hear sometimes the call of the distant rain,\nand at the sound the dry sap stirs afresh\u2014they are not forgotten and can\nwait.\n\n\u201c_Say unto your sisters Ruhamah_,\u201d cries the prophet.\n\n\u201c_He shall come down like rain on the mown grass_,\u201d sang the poet of the\nsheepfolds.\n\n\u201c_My ways are not your ways_, _saith the Lord_.\u201d\n\n                                * * * * *\n\nI remember how I went home along the damp sweet-scented lanes through the\ngrey mist of the rain, thinking of the mown field and Elizabeth Banks and\nmany, many more; and that night, when the sky had cleared and the\nnightingale sang, I looked out at the moon riding at anchor, a silver\nboat in a still blue sea ablaze with the headlights of the stars, and the\nsaying of the herdsman of Tekoa came to me\u2014as it has come oftentimes\nsince:\u2014\n\n    Seek Him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the\n    shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night;\n    that calleth for the waters of the sea and poureth them out upon the\n    face of earth; the Lord is His name.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\n\nTHIS garden is an epitome of peace; sun and wind, rain, flowers, and\nbirds gather me into the blessedness of their active harmony.  The world\nholds no wish for me, now that I have come home to die with my own\npeople, for verify I think that the sap of grass and trees must run in my\nveins, so steady is their pull upon my heart-strings.  London claimed all\nmy philosophy, but the country gives all, and asks of me only the warm\nreceptivity of a child in its mother\u2019s arms.\n\nWhen I lie in my cool light room on the garden level, I look across the\nbright grass\u2014_il verde smalto_\u2014to a great red rose bush in lavish\ndisarray against the dark cypress.  Near by, amid a tangle of many-hued\ncorn-flowers I see the promise of coming lilies, the sudden crimson of a\nsolitary p\u00e6ony; and in lowlier state against the poor parched earth glow\nthe golden cups of the eschseholtzias.  Beyond the low hedge lies pasture\nbright with buttercups, where the cattle feed.  Farther off, where the\nscythe has been busy, are sheep, clean and shorn, with merry, well-grown\nlambs; and in the farthest field I can see the great horses moving in\nslow steady pace as the farmer turns his furrow.\n\nThe birds are noisy comrades and old friends, from the lark which chants\nthe dew-steeped morning, to the nightingale that breaks the silence of\nthe most wonderful nights.  I hear the wisdom of the rooks in the great\nelms; the lifting lilt of the linnet, and the robin\u2019s quaint little\nsummer song.  The starlings chatter ceaselessly, their queer strident\nvoices harsh against the melodious gossip of the other birds; the martins\nshrill softly as they swoop to and fro busied with their nesting under\nthe caves; thrush and blackbird vie in friendly rivalry like the\nMeister-singer of old; sometimes I hear the drawling cry of a peacock\nstrayed from the great house, or the laugh of the woodpecker; and at\nnight the hunting note of the owl reaches me as he sweeps by in search of\nprey.\n\nTo-day I am out again; and the great sycamore showers honey and flowers\non me as I lie beneath it.  Sometimes a bee falls like an over-ripe\nfruit, and waits awhile to clean his pollen-coated legs ere he flies home\nto discharge his burden.  He is too busy to be friendly, but his great\nvelvety cousin is much more sociable, and stays for a gentle rub between\nhis noisy shimmering wings, and a nap in the hollow of my hand, for he is\nan idle friendly soul with plenty of time at his own disposal and no\nresponsibilities.  Looking across I can watch the martins at work; they\nhave a starling and a sparrow for near neighbours in the wooden gutter.\nOne nest is already complete all but the coping, the other two are\na-building: I wonder whether I or they will be first to go south through\nthe mist.\n\nThis great tree is a world in itself, and the denizens appear full of\ncuriosity as to the Gulliver who has taken up his abode beneath it.  Pale\ngreen caterpillars and spiders of all sizes come spinning down to visit\nme, and have to be persuaded with infinite difficulty to ascend their\nthreads again.  There are flies with beautiful iridescent wings, beetles\nof all shapes, some of them like tiny jewels in the sunlight.  Their\nnomenclature is a sealed book to me; of their life and habits I know\nnothing; yet this is but a little corner of the cosmos I am leaving, and\nI feel not so much desire for the beauty to come, as a great longing to\nopen my eyes a little wider during the time which remains to me in this\nbeautiful world of God\u2019s making, where each moment tells its own tale of\nactive, progressive life in which there is no undoing.  Nature knows\nnaught of the web of Penelope, that acme of anxious pathetic waiting, but\ngoes steadily on in ever widening circle towards the fulfilment of the\nmystery of God.\n\nThere are, I take it, two master-keys to the secrets of the universe,\nviewed _sub specie \u00e6ternitatis_, the Incarnation of God, and the\nPersonality of Man; with these it is true for us as for the pantheistic\nlittle man of contemptible speech, that \u201call things are ours,\u201d yea, even\nunto the third heaven.\n\nI have lost my voracious appetite for books; their language is less plain\nthan scent and song and the wind in the trees; and for me the clue to the\nnext world lies in the wisdom of earth rather than in the learning of\nmen.  \u201c_Libera me ab fuscina Hophni_,\u201d prayed the good Bishop fearful of\nreligious greed.  I know too much, not too little; it is realisation that\nI lack, wherefore I desire these last days to confirm in myself the\nsustaining goodness of God, the love which is our continuing city, the\nNew Jerusalem whose length, breadth, and height are all one.  It is a\ntime of exceeding peace.  There is a place waiting for me under the firs\nin the quiet churchyard; thanks to my poverty I have no worldly anxieties\nor personal dispositions; and I am rich in friends, many of them unknown\nto me, who lavishly supply my needs and make it ideal to live on the\ncharity of one\u2019s fellow-men.  I am most gladly in debt to all the world;\nand to Earth, my mother, for her great beauty.\n\nI can never remember the time when I did not love her, this mother of\nmine with her wonderful garments and ordered loveliness, her tender care\nand patient bearing of man\u2019s burden.  In the earliest days of my lonely\nchildhood I used to lie chin on hand amid the milkmaids, red sorrel, and\nheavy spear-grass listening to her many voices, and above all to the\nvoice of the little brook which ran through the meadows where I used to\nplay: I think it has run through my whole life also, to lose itself at\nlast, not in the great sea but in the river that maketh glad the City of\nGod.  Valley and plain, mountain and fruitful field; the lark\u2019s song and\nthe speedwell in the grass; surely a man need not sigh for greater\nloveliness until he has read something more of this living letter, and\nknelt before that earth of which he is the only confusion.\n\nIt is a grave matter that the word religion holds such away among us,\nmaking the very gap seem to yawn again which the Incarnation once and for\never filled full.  We have banished the protecting gods that ruled in\nriver and mountain, tree and grove; we have gainsayed for the most part\nfolk-lore and myth, superstition and fairy-tale, evil only in their\nabuse.  We have done away with mystery, or named it deceit.  All this we\nhave done in an enlightened age, but despite this policy of destruction\nwe have left ourselves a belief, the grandest and most simple the world\nhas ever known, which sanctifies the water that is shed by every passing\ncloud; and gathers up in its great central act vineyard and cornfield,\nproclaiming them to be that Life of the world without which a man is dead\nwhile he liveth.  Further, it is a belief whose foundations are the most\nheavenly mystery of the Trinity, but whose centre is a little Child: it\nsets a price upon the head of the sparrow, and reckons the riches of this\nworld at their true value; it points to a way of holiness where the fool\nshall not err, and the sage may find the realisation of his far-seeking;\nand yet, despite its inclusiveness, it is a belief which cannot save the\nbirds from destruction, the silent mountains from advertisement, or the\nstream from pollution, in an avowedly Christian land.  John Ruskin\nscolded and fought and did yeoman service, somewhat hindered by his\nover-good conceit of himself; but it is not the worship of beauty we need\nso much as the beauty of holiness.  Little by little the barrier grows\nand \u2018religion\u2019 becomes a _rule_ of life, not life itself, although the\nBride stands ready to interpret, likened in her loveliness to the chief\ntreasures of her handmaid-Earth.  There is more truth in the believing\ncry, \u201cCome from thy white cliffs, O Pan!\u201d than in the religion that\nmeasures a man\u2019s life by the letter of the Ten Commandments, and erects\nitself as judge and ruler over him, instead of throwing open the gate of\nthe garden where God walks with man from morning until morning.\n\nAs I write the sun is setting; in the pale radiance of the sky above his\nglory there dawns the evening star; and earth like a tired child turns\nher face to the bosom of the night.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\n\nONCE again I have paid a rare visit to my tree to find many things\nchanged since my last sojourn there.  The bees are silent, for the\nhoney-laden flowers of the sycamore are gone and in their place hang\ndainty two-fold keys.  The poplar has lost its metallic shimmer, the\nchestnut its tall white candles; and the sound of the wind in the\nfully-leaved branches is like the sighing of the sea.  The martins\u2019 nests\nare finished, and one is occupied by a shrill-voiced brood; but for the\nmost part the birds\u2019 parental cares are over, and the nestlings in bold\nflight no longer flutter on inefficient wings across the lawn with\nclamorous, open bill.  The robins show promise of their ruddy vests, the\nslim young thrush is diligently practising maturer notes, and soon Maid\nJune will have fled.\n\nIt is such a wonderful world that I cannot find it in my heart to sigh\nfor fresh beauty amid these glories of the Lord on which I look, seeing\nmen as trees walking, in my material impotence which awaits the final\nanointing.  The marigolds with their orange suns, the lilies\u2019 white\nflame, the corncockle\u2019s blue crown of many flowers, the honeysuckle\u2019s\nhorn of fragrance\u2014I can paraphrase them, name, class, dissect them; and\nthen, save for the purposes of human intercourse, I stand where I stood\nbefore, my world bounded by my capacity, the secret of colour and\nfragrance still kept.  It is difficult to believe that the second lesson\nwill not be the sequence of the first, and death prove a \u201cfeast of\nopening eyes\u201d to all these wonders, instead of the heavy-lidded slumber\nto which we so often liken it.  \u201cEarth to earth?\u201d  Yes, \u201cdust thou art,\nand unto dust thou shalt return,\u201d but what of the rest?  What of the\nfolded grave clothes, and the Forty Days?  If the next state be, as it\nwell might, space of four dimensions, and the first veil which will lift\nfor me be the material one, then the \u201cother\u201d world which is hidden from\nour grosser material organism will lie open, and declare still further to\nmy widening eyes and unstopped ears the glory and purpose of the manifold\ngarment of God.  Knowledge will give place to understanding in that\nsecond chamber of the House of Wisdom and Love.  Revelation is always\nmeasured by capacity: \u201cOpen thy mouth wide,\u201d and it shall be filled with\na satisfaction that in itself is desire.\n\nThere is a child here, a happy quiet little creature holding gently to\nits two months of life.  Sometimes they lay it beside me, I the more\nhelpless of the two\u2014perhaps the more ignorant\u2014and equally dependent for\nthe supply of my smallest need.  I feel indecently large as I survey its\nminute perfections and the tiny balled fist lying in my great palm.  The\nlittle creature fixes me with the wise wide stare of a soul in advance of\nits medium of expression; and I, gazing back at the mystery in those\neyes, feel the thrill of contact between my worn and sustained self and\nthe innocence of a little white child.  It is wonderful to watch a\nwoman\u2019s rapturous familiarity with these newcomers.  A man\u2019s love has far\nmore awe in it, and the passionate animal instinct of defence is wanting\nin him.  \u201cA woman shall be saved through the child-bearing,\u201d said St\nPaul; not necessarily her own, but by participation in the great act of\nmotherhood which is the crown and glory of her sex.  She is the \u201cprisoner\nof love,\u201d caught in a net of her own weaving; held fast by little hands\nwhich rule by impotence, pursued by feet the swifter for their faltering.\n\nIt seems incredible that this is what a woman will barter for the right\nto \u201clive her own life\u201d\u2014surely the most empty of desires.  Man\u2014_vir_,\nwoman\u2014_femina_, go to make up _the_ man\u2014_homo_.  There can be no\ncomparison, no rivalry between them; they are the complement of each\nother, and a little child shall lead them.  It is easy to understand that\ndesire to shelter under the dear mantle of motherhood which has led to\none of the abuses of modern Romanism.  I met an old peasant couple at\nBornhofen who had tramped many weary miles to the famous shrine of Our\nLady to plead for their only son.  They had a few pence saved for a\ncandle, and afterwards when they told me their tale the old woman heaved\na sigh of relief, \u201cEs wird bald gut gehen: Die da, Sie versteht,\u201d and I\nsaw her later paying a farewell visit to the great understanding Mother\nwhom she could trust.  Superstitious misapprehension if you will, but\nalso the recognition of a divine principle.\n\nIt was Behmen, I believe, who cried with the breath of inspiration, \u201cOnly\nwhen I know God shall I know myself\u201d; and so man remains the last of all\nthe riddles, to be solved it may be only in Heaven\u2019s perfection and the\nlight of the Beatific Vision.  \u201cKnow thyself\u201d is a vain legend, the more\nso when emphasised by a skull; and so I company with a friend and a\nstranger, and looking across at the white gate I wonder concerning the\nquiet pastures and still waters that lie beyond, even as Brother Ambrose\nwondered long years ago in the monastery by the forest.\n\n    The Brother Ambrose was ever a saintly man approved of God and\n    beloved by the Brethren.  To him one night, as he lay abed in the\n    dormitory, came the word of the Lord, saying, \u201cCome, and I will show\n    thee the Bride, the Lamb\u2019s wife.\u201d  And Brother Ambrose arose and was\n    carried to a great and high mountain, even as in the Vision of\n    Blessed John.  \u2019Twas a still night of many stars, and Brother\n    Ambrose, looking up, saw a radiant path in the heavens; and lo! the\n    stars gathered themselves together on either side until they stood as\n    walls of light, and the four winds lapped him about as in a mantle\n    and bore him towards the wondrous gleaming roadway.  Then between the\n    stars came the Holy City with roof and pinnacle aflame, and walls\n    aglow with such colours as no earthly limner dreams of, and much\n    gold.  Brother Ambrose beheld the Gates of Pearl, and by every gate\n    an angel with wings of snow and fire, and a face no man dare look on\n    because of its exceeding radiance.\n\n    Then as Brother Ambrose stretched out his arms because of his great\n    longing, a little grey cloud came out of the north and hung between\n    the walls of light, so that he no longer beheld the Vision, but only\n    heard a sound as of a great multitude crying \u2018Alleluia\u2019; and suddenly\n    the winds came about him again, and lo! he found himself in his bed\n    in the dormitory, and it was midnight, for the bell was ringing to\n    Matins; and he rose and went down with the rest.  But when the\n    Brethren left the choir Brother Ambrose stayed fast in his place,\n    hearing and seeing nothing because of the Vision of God; and at Lauds\n    they found him and told the Prior.\n\n    He questioned Brother Ambrose of the matter, and when he heard the\n    Vision bade him limn the Holy City even as he had seen it; and the\n    Precentor gave him uterine vellum and much fine gold and what colours\n    he asked for the work.  Then Brother Ambrose limned a wondrous fair\n    city of gold with turrets and spires; and he inlaid blue for the\n    sapphire, and green for the emerald, and vermilion where the city\n    seemed aflame with the glory of God; but the angels he could not\n    limn, nor could he set the rest of the colours as he saw them, nor\n    the wall of stars on either hand; and Brother Ambrose fell sick\n    because of the exceeding great longing he had to limn the Holy City,\n    and was very sad; but the Prior bade him thank God, and remember the\n    infirmity of the flesh, which, like the little grey cloud, veiled\n    Jerusalem to his sight.\n\nAs I write the monastery bell hard by rings out across the lark\u2019s song.\nThey still have time for visions behind those guarding walls, but for\nmost of us it is not so.  We let slip the ideal for what we call the\nreal, and the golden dreams vanish while we clutch at phantoms: we speed\nalong life\u2019s pathway, counting to the full the sixty minutes of every\nhour, yet the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong.\nLying here in this quiet backwater it is hard to believe that the world\nwithout is turbulent with storm and stress and the ebb and flow of\nuncertain tides.  The little yellow cat rolling on its back among the\ndaisies, the staid tortoise making a stately meal off the buttercups near\nme, these are great events in this haven of peace.  And yet, looking back\nto the working days, I know how much goodness and loving kindness there\nis under the froth and foam.  If we do not know ourselves we most\ncertainly do not know our brethren: that revelation awaits us, it may be,\nfirst in Heaven.  To have faith is to create; to have hope is to call\ndown blessing; to have love is to work miracles.  Above all let us see\nvisions, visions of colour and light, of green fields and broad rivers,\nof palaces laid with fair colours, and gardens where a place is found for\nrosemary and rue.\n\nIt is our prerogative to be dreamers, but there will always be men ready\nto offer us death for our dreams.  And if it must be so let us choose\ndeath; it is gain, not loss, and the gloomy portal when we reach it is\nbut a white gate, the white gate maybe we have known all our lives barred\nby the tendrils of the woodbine.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\n\nRAIN, rain, rain: the little flagged path outside my window is a\nstreaming way, where the coming raindrops meet again the grey clouds\nwhose storehouse they have but just now left.  The grass grows greener as\nI watch it, the burnt patches fade, a thousand thirsty beads are uplifted\nfor the cooling draught.\n\nThe great thrush that robs the raspberry canes is busy; yesterday he had\nlittle but dust for his guerdon, but now fresh, juicy fruit repays him as\nhe swings to and fro on the pliant branches.  The blackbirds and\nstarlings find the worms an easy prey\u2014poor brother worm ever ready for\nsacrifice.  I can hear the soft expectant chatter of the family of\nmartins under the roof; there will be good hunting, and they know it, for\nthe flies are out when the rain is over, and there are clamorous mouths\nawaiting.  My little brown brothers, the sparrows, remain my chief\ndelight.  Of all the birds these nestle closest to my heart, be they\ngrimy little cockneys or their trim and dainty country cousins.  They\ncome day by day for their meed of crumbs spread for them outside my\nwindow, and at this season they eat leisurely and with good appetite, for\nthere are no hungry babies pestering to be fed.  Very early in the\nmorning I hear the whirr and rustle of eager wings, and the tap, tap, of\nlittle beaks upon the stone.  The sound carries me back, for it was the\nfirst to greet me when I rose to draw water and gather kindling in my\nroadmender days; and if I slip back another decade they survey me,\nreproving my laziness, from the foot of the narrow bed in my little attic\noverseas.\n\nLooking along the roadway that we have travelled we see the landmarks,\ngreat and small, which have determined the direction of our feet.  For\nsome those of childhood stand out above all the rest; but I remember few\nnotable ones, and those few the emphatic chord of the universe, rather\nthan any commerce with my fellows.  There was the night of my great\ndisappointment, when I was borne from my comfortable bed to see the\nwonders of the moon\u2019s eclipse.  Disappointment was so great that it\nsealed my lips; but, once back on my pillow, I sobbed for grief that I\nhad seen a wonder so far below my expectation.  Then there was a night at\nWhitby, when the wind made speech impossible, and the seas rushed up and\nover the great lighthouse like the hungry spirits of the deep.  I like\nbetter to remember the scent of the first cowslip field under the warm\nside of the hedge, when I sang to myself for pure joy of their colour and\nfragrance.  Again, there were the bluebells in the deserted quarry like\nthe backwash of a southern sea, and below them the miniature forest of\nsheltering bracken with its quaint conceits; and, crowned above all, the\nday I stood on Watcombe Down, and looked across a stretch of golden gorse\nand new-turned blood-red field, the green of the headland, and beyond,\nthe sapphire sea.\n\nTime sped, and there came a day when I first set foot on German soil and\nfelt the throb of its paternity, the beat of our common Life.  England is\nmy mother, and most dearly do I love her swelling breasts and wind-swept,\nsalt-strewn hair.  Scotland gave me my name, with its haunting derivation\nhanded down by brave men; but Germany has always been to me the\nFatherland _par excellence_.  True, my love is limited to the southern\nprovinces, with their medieval memories; for the progressive guttural\nnorth I have little sympathy, but the Rhine claimed me from the first,\ncalling, calling, with that wonderful voice which speaks of death and\nlife, of chivalry and greed of gold.  If you would have the river\u2019s\ncompany you should wander, a happy solitary, along its banks, watching\nits gleaming current in the early morning, its golden glory as it answers\nthe farewell of parting day.  Then, in the silence of the night, you can\nhear the wash and eddy calling one to another, count the heart-beats of\nthe great bearer of burdens, and watch in the moonlight the sisters of\nthe mist as they lament with wringing hands the days that are gone.\n\nThe forests, too, are ready with story hid in the fastness of their\nsolitude, and it is a joy to think that those great pines, pointing ever\nupwards, go for the most part to carry the sails of great ships seeking\nafar under open sky.  The forest holds other wonders still.  It seems but\nlast night that I wandered down the road which led to the little unheeded\nvillage where I had made my temporary home.  The warm-scented breath of\nthe pines and the stillness of the night wrapped me in great content; the\nsummer lightning leapt in a lambent arch across the east, and the stars,\nseen dimly through the sombre tree crests, were outrivalled by the\nglow-worms which shone in countless points of light from bank and hedge;\neven two charcoal-burners, who passed with friendly greeting, had\nwreathed their hats with the living flame.  The tiny shifting lamps were\neverywhere; pale yellow, purely white, or green as the underside of a\nnorthern wave.  By day but an ugly, repellent worm; but darkness comes,\nand lo, a star alight.  Nature is full for us of seeming inconsistencies\nand glad surprises.  The world\u2019s asleep, say you; on your ear falls the\nnightingale\u2019s song and the stir of living creatures in bush and brake.\nThe mantle of night falls, and all unattended the wind leaps up and\nscatters the clouds which veil the constant stars; or in the hour of the\ngreat dark, dawn parts the curtain with the long foregleam of the coming\nday.  It is hard to turn one\u2019s back on night with her kiss of peace for\ntired eye-lids, the kiss which is not sleep but its neglected forerunner.\nI made my way at last down to the vine-girt bridge asleep under the stars\nand up the winding stairs of the old grey tower; and a stone\u2019s-throw away\nthe Rhine slipped quietly past in the midsummer moonlight.  Switzerland\ncame in its turn, unearthly in its white loveliness and glory of lake and\nsky.  But perhaps the landmark which stands out most clearly is the\nsolitary blue gentian which I found in the short slippery grass of the\nRigi, gazing up at the sky whose blue could not hope to excel it.  It was\nmy first; and what need of another, for finding one I had gazed into the\nmystery of all.  This side the Pass, snow and the blue of heaven; later I\nentered Italy through fields of many-hued lilies, her past glories\nblazoned in the flowers of the field.\n\nNow it is a strangely uneventful road that leads to my White Gate.  Each\nday questions me as it passes; each day makes answer for me \u201cnot yet.\u201d\nThere is no material preparation to be made for this journey of mine into\na far country\u2014a simple fact which adds to the \u2018unknowableness\u2019 of the\nother side.  Do I travel alone, or am I one of a great company, swift yet\nunhurried in their passage?  The voices of Penelope\u2019s suitors shrilled on\nthe ears of Ulysses, as they journeyed to the nether-world, like\nnocturnal birds and bats in the inarticulateness of their speech.  They\nhad abused the gift, and fled self-condemned.  Maybe silence commends\nitself as most suitable for the wayfarers towards the sunrise\u2014silence\nbecause they seek the Word\u2014but for those hastening towards the confusion\nthey have wrought there falls already the sharp oncoming of the curse.\n\nWhile we are still here the language of worship seems far, and yet lies\nvery nigh; for what better note can our frail tongues lisp than the voice\nof wind and sea, river and stream, those grateful servants giving all and\nasking nothing, the soft whisper of snow and rain eager to replenish, or\nthe thunder proclaiming a majesty too great for utterance?  Here, too,\nstands the angel with the censer gathering up the fragrance of teeming\nearth and forest-tree, of flower and fruit, and sweetly pungent herb\ndistilled by sun and rain for joyful use.  Here, too, come acolytes\nlighting the dark with tapers\u2014sun, moon, and stars\u2014gifts of the Lord that\nHis sanctuary may stand ever served.\n\nIt lies here ready to our hand, this life of adoration which we needs\nmust live hand in hand with earth, for has she not borne the curse with\nus?  But beyond the white gate and the trail of woodbine falls the\nsilence greater than speech, darkness greater than light, a pause of \u201ca\nlittle while\u201d; and then the touch of that healing garment as we pass to\nthe King in His beauty, in a land from which there is no return.\n\nAt the gateway then I cry you farewell.","title":"The Roadmender","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":24919}