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MICHAEL FAIRLESS Il]u6lrc>Cioris by E.Bl^mpied. re. ! / J ' I ' /'r'VT ■> ^<, .■.~.X Sf<> f... 'i ^'■/^^/ff/i .tj : /t.l^l,t!f.LU..i.:h..i.., . "V*~,' -S^ TORONTO THE MUSSON BOOK COMPANY LIMITED I'nnttd in Grtat Hritatn f,y Etu;,^ter B-iyfi*. A Sun. U A. M. D. O. TO MY MOTHER AND TU BARTH, MY MOTHER WHOM I LOVK 7S8227 CONTENTS 3 ■a ■4 The Roadmendek Out of thk Shadow At tue White Gate - PAGE 1 47 91 va LIST OF ILLHSTllATIOXS The illustrations have been specially designed by Edmund Blompicd for this edition of " The Roadniender," and are reproduced by arrangement with the Lefevre Galleries. The boadmender Fronti/rpiece *' Two TRAMPS COME ANI> FLING THEMSELVES BY ME ff • • • • ■ • . . , *' Ee be mos' like a cuilo to me and the mother, an' mos' as sensible A3 A CHRISTIAN, EE BE " *' At the top they paused, shook hands, and SEPARATr.!); ONE went ON, THE OTHER TURNED BACK " ..... " FOR THE J108 AND REELS WHICH CHILDREN HOLD DEAR . . ." . " As I CLIMBED THE HILL THE MOON RODE HIGH IN A GOLDEN FIELD " .... " ' A CURSE THAT CANNOT BE HID,' OLD DODDEN HAD S4ID " . ^' There is no material preparation to be made for this journey of mine into a far col ntiiy— a simple :-act which adds to tiif. ' unknow- ABL.XilSa ' OF THE OTHER SIDE " farina pane 12 28 41 6.' y8 120 IX THE ROADMENDER I 3 -ii I HAVE attained my ideal : I am a roadmender. some .ay stonebreaker. Both titles are correct, but the one 18 more pregnant than the other. All day I sit by the roadside on a stretch of grass under a high hedge of saphngs and a tangle of traveller's joy. wood^ne. -weetbnar. and late roses. Opposite me is a white gate, seldom used, if one may judge from the trail of honeysuckle growing tranquilly along it : I know now that whenever and wherever I die my soul will pass out through this white gate; and then, thank God, I shall not have need to undo that trail. In our youth we discussed our ideals freelv • I wonder how many beside myself have attained," or would understand my attaining. After aU. wlmt do we ask of life, here or indeed hereafter, but leave to serve, to hve. to commune with our fellow-men and' w.th ourselves; and from the lap of earth to look a. I s,t by the wmdmg white road and serve the foot- steps of my feUows. There is no room in my Ufe for avance or anxiety ; I who serve at the altar Uve of the 3 THE ROADMENDER alUr: I lack nothing but have nothing over; and when the winter of life comes I shall join the company of weary old men who sit on the sunny side of the workhouse wall and wait for the tender mercies o( God. Just now it is the summer of things ; there is life and music everywhere — in the stones themselvca, und I live to-day beating out the rhythmical hammer-song of The Ring. There is reiJ physical joy in the rise and swing of the arm, in the jar of a fair stroke, the split and scatter of the quartz : I am learning to be ambidextrous, for why shf nld Esau sell his birthright when there is enough for both ? Then the rest-hour comes, bringing the luxurious ache of tired but not weary limbs; and I he outstretched and renew my strength, sometimes with my face deep-nestled in the cool green grass, sometimes on my back looking up into tlie blue sky which no wise man would wish to fathom. The birds have no fear of me ; am I not also of the brown brethren in my sober fUstian liv.jry ? They share my meals— at least the little dun-coated Fran- ciscans do; the blackbirds and thrushes care not a whit for such simple food as crumbs, but with legs well apart and claws tense with purchase they disinter poor brother worm, having 6rst mocked him with sound of rain. The robin thut Uves by the gate regards my 4 THE ROADMENDER heap of stones as subject to his special inspection. He sits atop and practises the trill of his summer song until it shrills above and through the metallic clang of my strokes ; and when I pause he cocks his tail, witli a humorous twinkle of his round eye which means— " What I shirking, big brother ? "—and I fall, ashamed, to my mending of roads. The other day, as I lay with my face in tlie grass, I heard a gentle rustle, and raised my head to find a hedge-snake watching me fearless, unwinking. I stretched out my hand, picked it up unresisting, and put it in my coat like the husbandman of old. Was he so ili-rewarded, I wonder, with the kiss that reveals • secrets ? My snake slept in peace while I hammered away with an odd quickening of heart as I thought how to me, as to Melampus, had come the messenger —had come, but to ears deafened by centuries of misrule, blindness, and oppression; so that, witli all my longing, I am shut out of the wondrous world where walked MeWpus and the Saint To me there is no suggestion of evil in the little aUent creatures, harmless, or deadly only with the Death which ii , Life. The beasb who turn upon us, as a rule maul and tear unreflectingly; with the snake there is the swift, silent strike, the tiny, tiny wound, then sleep and a forgetting. •- >, >... *'U..... 1 ^ -•.: '7 t( '•••». THE ROADMENDER My brown fritnd, with itf message unspoken, slid •way into the grass at sundown to tell its tale in un- stopped ears ; and I, mj task done, went home across the fields to the solitary cottage where I lodge. It is old and decrepit— two rooms, with a quasi-attic over them reached by a ladder from the kitchen and reached only by me. It is furnished with the luxuries of life, a truckle bed, table, chair, and huge earthen- ware pan which I fill from the ice-cold well at the back of the cottage. Morning and ni^t I serve with the Gibeonites, their curse my blessing, as no doubt it was theirs when their hearts were purged by service. Morning and night I send down the m^^ss-grown bucket with its urgent message from a dry and dusty world ; the chain tightens through my hand as the liquid treasure responds to the messenger, and then with creak and jangle — the welcome of labouring earth — the bucket slowly nears the top and disperses the trei>sure in the waiting vessels. The Gibeonites wen; servants in the house of God, ministers of the sacrament of service even as the High Pnest himself; and J, sharing their high office of servitude, thank God that the ground was accursed for my sake, for surely that curse was the womb of all unborn blessing. The old widow with whom I lodge has been deaf lor the last twenty years. She speaks in the strained 6 THE ROADMENDER high voice which proteKts Agaiiut her own infirmity, and her eye* have the pathetic look of those who stearrh in silence. For many yean »he lived r^lone with her son, who laboured on the farm two miles away. He met hi« death rescuing a cart-horse from its burning stable ; and the farmer gave the cottage rent free and a weekly k ' Town for life to th*" poor old woman whose dearest terror was the workhouse. U'itu my shilling a week rent, and sharing of supplies, we live in the lines of comfort. Of death she has no fears, for in the long chest in the kitchen lie a web of coarse white linen, two pennies covered with tlie same to keep down tired eyelids, decent white stockings, and a whi -otton sun-bonnet— a dec8)-ovs death-suit truly— and enough •noney in th« little bag for self-respecting burial. The farmer buried his servant handsomely— good man, he knew the love of reticent grief for a ' kind ' burial— and one day Harry's mother is to lie beside him in the Jittle churchyard which has bwn a cornlield, and may some day be one again. n Ox Sundajt my feet Uke ever the Mine w«j. Pint my temple service, and Uien five miles tramp over the tender, dewy fields, with their ineffable earthly fmell, until I reach the little church at the foot of the grey- green down. Here, every Sunday, a young priest from a neighbouring village says Mass for the tiny hamlet, where all are very old or very young — for the heyday of life haji no part under the long shadow of the hills, but is away at nea or in sprvice. Tliere is a beautiful seemliness in the extreme youth of the priest who serves these aged children of God. He bends to com- municate them with the rf\ereut tenderness oi* a son, and reads with the careful intonau^a of far-seeing love. To the old people he is Uie son of their old age, God-sent to guide their tottering footsteps along the highway of foolish wayiarers ; and he, with his youtli and strength, wishes no better taak. Service ended, we greet each other friendly — for men should noc b<>i strange in the acre of God ; and I pass through the littlo | hamlet and out and up ^ the grey down beyond. Here, at the last gate, I pause for breakfast ; and then 8 THE ROAOMENDER up and on with quickening pulM, and evergreen memory i_ of the weary war-worn Greeks who broke rank to I greet the great blue Mothw-way that led to home. I 1 ttand on the summit hatless, the wind in my hair, the smack of salt on my cheek, all round me rolling I ftretches of doud-shadowed down, no sound but the ] shrill mourn of the peewit and the gathering of the I The hour* pass, the shads^ws lengthen, the sheep- ^1 bells clang; and I Ue in my mche under the stunted 1 hawthorn watching the to and fro of the sea, and ^olus '] shepherding his white sheep across the blue. I love I the sea with its impenetrable fathoms, its wash and I undertow, and rasp of shingle sucked anew. I love I it for its secret dead in the Caverns of Peace, of which % account must be given when the books are opened and earth and heaven have fled away. Yet in my love I tliere is a paradox, for as I watch the restless, in- ^ effective T^aves I think of the measureless, reflective depths of the still and silent Sea of Glass, of the dead, ? small and great, rich or poor, with the works which follow them, and of the Voice as the voice of many waters, whea the multitude of one mind rends heaven with alleluia: and I '';. so still that I almost feel the j kiss of \Mute Peace on my mouth. Later still, when f the flare of the binking sun has died away and the 9 J-' K \-... THE ROADMENDER stars rise out of a veil of purple cloud, I take my way home, down the slopes, through the hamlet, and across miles of sleeping fields over which night has thrown her shifting web of mist— home to the little attic, the deep, cool weU, the kindly wrinkled face with its listen- ing eyes— peace in my heart and thankfulness for the rhythm of the road. Monday brings the joy of work, second only to the Sabbath of rest, and I settle to my heap by the white gate. Soon I hear the distant stamp of horsehoofs, heralding the grind and roll of the wheels which reaches me later— a heavy flour-waggon with a team of four great gentle horses, gay with brass trappings and scarlet earcaps. On the top of the c -aftily pUed sacks lies the white-clad wagoner, a pink in his mouth which he mumbles meditatively, and thfl reins looped over the inactive whip— w?iy should he drive a willing team that knows the journey and responds as strenuously to a cheery chirrup as to the well-directed lash ? We greet and pass the time of day, and as he mounts the rise he calls back a warning of coming rain. I am ah-eady white with dust as he with flour, sacramental dust, the outward and visible sign of the stir and beat of the heart of labouring life. Next to pass down the road is an anxious ru£9ed hen, her speckled breast astir with niaterna! troubles, lo THE ROADMENDER She walks delicately, lifting her feet high and glandng furtively from side to side with comb low dressed. The sight of man, the heartless egg-collector, from whose haunts she has fled, wrings from her a startled cluck, and she makes for the white gate, climbs through, and disappears. I know hw feelings too well to intrude. Many times already has she hidden herself, amassed four or five precious treasures, brooding over them with anxious hope ; and then, after a brief desertion to seek the necessar}' food, she has returned to find her efforts at concealment vain, her treasures gone. At last, with the courage of despair she has resolved to brave the terrors of the unknown and seek a haunt beyond the tyranny of man. I will watch over her from afar, and when her mother-hope is fulfilled I will marshal her and her brood back to the farm where she belongs ; for what end I care rot to think, it is of the mystery which lies at the heart of things ; and we are aU God's beasts, says St Augustine. o'^-u - ^ T=^ - |:^ j-- J >-->--ry- - Wliat a wonderful work Wagner has done for humanity in translating the toil of life into the read- II THE ROADMENDER able script of music ! For those who seek the tale of other worlds his magic is silent; but earth-travail under Ixis wand becomes instinct with rhythmic song to an accompaniment of the elements, and the blare and crash of the bottomless pit itself. The Pilgrims' March is the sad sound of footsore men ; tlie San Graal the tremulous yearning of ser\itude for richer, deeper bondage. The yellow, thirsty flames lick up the willing sacrifice, the water wails the secret of the river and the sea; the birds and beasts, the shepherd with his pipe, the underground life in rocks and caverns, all cry their message to this nineteenth-century toiling, labouring world— and to me as I mend my road. Two tramps come and fling tliemselves by me aa I eat my noonday meal. Tlie one, red-eyed, furtive, lies on his side with restless, clutching hands that tear and twist and torture the living grass, while his lips mutter incoherently. The otlier sits stooped, bare- footed, legs wide apart, his face grey, almost as grey as his stubbly beard ; and it is not long since Death looked him in the eyes. He tells me querulously of a two himdred miles tramp since early spring, of search for work, casual jobs with more kicks tlian halfpence, and a brief but blissful sojourn in a hospital bed, from which he was dismissed with sentence passed upon him. For himself, he is determined to die on the road la 'I Two tramps come ar-i fling themselves by me 12 THE ROADMENDER under a hedge, where a man can see and brpAthe. His anxiety is all for his fellow ; he has said he will " do for a man " ; he wants to " swing," to get out of his " dog's life." I watch him as he lies, tliis Ishmacl ' and wotild-be iXmech, Ignorance, hnnj^or, terror, the exhaustion - Cvi. ■1 C«J..^ 1 •t-^ -civ '1. s A^.{ ( 6l [r H V''*^ f n 4l\ 111 !!■ ^ f m Yesterday was a day of encounters. First, early in the morning, a young girl came down the road on a bicycle. Her dressguard was loose, and she stopped to ask for a piece of string. When I had tied it for her she looked at me, at my worn dusty clothes and burnt face ; and then she took a Niphetos rose from her belt and laid it shyly in my dirty dis- figured palm. I bared my head, and stood hat in hand looking after her as she rode away up the hill. Then I took my treasure and put^it in a nest of cool dewy grass under the hedge. Eccg ari&la Dominit. My next visitor was a fellow-worker on his way to a job at the cross-roads. He stood gazing meditatively at my heap of stones. " 'Ow long 'ave yer bin at this job that y'ere in such a hurry ? " I stayed my hammer to answer—" Four months." " Seen better days ? " "Never," I said emphaticaUy, and punctuated the remark with a stone split neatly in four. The man surveyed me in silence for a moment; 14 THE ROADMENDER then he said slowly, " Mean ter say yer like crackin' these blamed stones to fill 'oles some other fool's made ? " I nodded. "Well, that beats everything. Now, I 'ow seen better days ; worked in a big brewery over near Maid- stone — a town that, and something doing; and now, 'ere I am, 'ammering me 'eart out on these blasted atones for a bit o' bread and a pipe o' baccy once a week— it ain't good enough." He pulled a blackened clay from his pocket and began slowly filling it with rank tobacco; then he lit it carefully behind his battered hat, put the spent match back in his pocket, rose to his feet, hitched his braces, and, with a silent nod to me, went on to his job. Why do we give these tired children, whose minds move slowly, whose eyes are holden that they cannot read the Book, whose hearts are full of sore resentment against they know not what, such work as this to do —hammering their hearts out for a bit of bread ? All the pathos of unreasoning labour rings in these few words. We fit the collar on unwilling necks; and when their service is over we bid them go out free; but we break the good Mosaic law and send them away empty. What wonder there is so little willing service, so few ears ready to be thrust through against the maaier's door. 15 V\ THE ROADMENDER The Bwif* itride of dvilifiation is leaving behind A individual eifort, and turning man into the Dl&non of a nuichine. To and frn \n front of the long loom, lifting a fever at f^' ' ,mon, and the field is silent to him. As with the web and the grain so with the wood and stone in the treasure-house of our needs. The ground was accursed for our mice that in the sweat of our brow we might eat bread. Now the many live in the brain - sweat of the few; and it must be so, for as little as great King Cnut could stay ^le sea until it had reached the appointed place, so little can we raise a barrier to the wave of progress, and say, " Thus far and no further fchalt thou come." \Vhat then ? This at lea.«t ; if we live in an age of i6 ■V. A. .. ^ . . ,>1 < < » . . X* '•a- ">■ <.d'.M, 4 THE ROADMENDER mecfaanism let lu see to it that we are a race of intelligent /' mechanics; and if man is to be the Dajmon of a machine let him know the setting of the knives, the rise of the piston, the part that each wheel and rod plays in the economy of the whole, the part that he himself pUyH, co-operating with it Hen, when he has Uved and served intelligently, let us give him of our flocks and of our floor that he may learn to rest in the lengthening shadows until he is called to his work above. j So I sat, hammering out my thoughts, and with them j the convict" n that stonebreaking should be allotted to I minor poets or vagrant^ children of nature like myself, j never to such tired folk as my poor mate at the cross- j roads and his fellows. At noon, when I stopped for my meal, the sun was baking the hard white road in a pitiless glare. Several waggonp and carts passed, the horses sweating and straining, with drooping, fly-tormented ears. The men for the most part nodded slumberously on the shaft, seeking the little shelter the cart afforded ; but one' shuffled in the white dust, with an occasional chirrup and friendly pressure on the tired horse's neck. Then an old woman and a smaU child appeared in sight, both with enormous sim-bonnets and carrying baskets. As they came up with me the woman stopped and swept her face with her hand, wliile the child 17 t ; THE ROADMENDER depontiiig the basket in the dust with great care, wiped her little sticky fingers on her pinafore, llien Uie shady hedge beckoned them and they came and sat down near me. The *7cnian looked about seventy, tall, angular, dauntless, good for another ten years of hd'd work. The httle maid — her only grandchild, she told me — was just four, her father away soldiering, and the mother died in childbed, so for four years the child had known no other guardian or playmate than the old woman. She was not the least shy, but had the strange self-po8$e>sion which comes from associating with one who has travelled far on life's journey. " I couldn't leave her alone in the house," said her grandmother, "and she wouldn't leave the kitten for fear it should be lonesome " — with a humorous, tender glance at the child — " but it's a long tramp in the heat for the little one, and we've another mile to go." " Will you let her bide here till you come back 7 " I said. " She'U be aU right by me." The old lady hesitated. " Will 'ee stay by him, defrie ? " she said. The small child nodded, drew from her miniature pocket a piece of sweetstuff. extracted from the basket a small black cat, and settled in for the afternoon. Her grandmother rose, took her basket, and, with a nod and " lliank 'ee kindly, mister," went off down the road. x8 4 1 THE ROADMENDER I went back to my work a little depressed— why had I not white hair ?— for a few minutes had shown me tliat I was not old enough for the child despite my forty years. She waa quite happy with the UtUe black cat, wUch lay in the smaU Up blinking its yellow eyes at the sun I • d presently an old man came by, lame an«i bent, with gnarled twisted hands, leaning heavily on his stick. He greeted me in a high, piping voice, limped acroes to the child, and sat down. " Your little naid, mister ? " he said. I explained. ^ " Ah," he said, " I've left a UtUe darlin* Uke this at 'ome. It's 'ard on us old folks when we're one too many ; but the little mouths must be dUed, and my son, •e said 'e didn't see they could keep me on the arf* crown, with another child on the way ; so I'm tramping *° N , to the House ; but it's a 'ard piuch, leavin' the little ones." I looked at him— a typical countryman, with white hair, mild blue eyes, and a rosy, childish, unwrinkled face. " I'm eighty-four," he went on, " and tenible bad with the rheumatics and my chest. Maybe it'U not be long before the Lord remembers me." The child crept close and put a sticky little hand 19 ij THE ROADMENDER confldingly into the tired old palm. The two looked viraogclj alike, for the world Menu much the aame to . those who leave it behind as to thoM who have but tnken the first otpp on it* circular pathway. " 'Ook at my kitty," she said, pointing to the small (feature in her lap. Then, as the old man touched it with trembling fingers she went on — " 'Oo isu . my grandad ; he's away in the sky, but I'll kiss 'oo." I worked on, hearing at intervals the old piping voice and the child-treble, much of a note ; and thinking of the blessings vouchsafed to the simple old age which crowns a harmless working-life spent in thi^ fields. The two under toe hedge had everything in conunon and were boundlessly content together, the sting of the knowledge of good and evil past for the one, and tor the other still to come ; while I stood on the battle- tield of the world, the flesh, and the devil, though, thank God, with my face to the foe. The old man sat resting : I had promised him a lift with my friend the driver of the flour-cart, and he was almost due v.hr i the uhilJ's grandmother came down the road. When she saw my other visitor she stood amazed. " >Vhat, Richard Hunton, that worked with my old man years ago up at Ditton, whatever are you doin' all these miles from your own place ? " 20 -X THE ROADMENUER ** It it Elita Jakm 7 ** He looked at her dazed, doubtful. " An* who else should it be ? Where's your memory gone, Richard Hunton, and you not such u great agr either ? Where are you stay in' ? " Shame overcame him; his lips trembled, his tniJil blue eyes filled with tears. I told the tale as I Iim<: heard it, and Mrs Jakes's indignation was good to see. " Not keep you on '»lf a crown I Send you to tli* House I May the Lord forgive them f You wouldn't eat no more than a fair-sized cat, and not long for thi- world either, that's plain to see. No, Richard Uunton. you don't go to the House while I'm above ground ; it'd make my good man turn to think of it You'll come 'ome with me and tlie Uttlc 'un there. I've my washin', and a bit put by for a rainy day, and a bed to spare, and the Lord and the parson will see I don't come to want." She stopped breathless, her defensive motherhood in arms. The old man said quaveringly, in the pathetic, judging phrase of the poor, which veils their gratitude wliile it teitifies their independence, " Maybe I aiighl us well." He rose witli difficulty, picked up his bundle and stick, the small child replaced the kitten in iu basket, and thrust her hand in her new friend's. «2 THE ROADMENDER U i " Then 'oo it grandad turn back," she said. Mm Jakes had been fumbling in her pocket, and extracted a penny, which she pressed on me. " It's little enough, mister," she said. Then, as I tried to return it : " Nay, I've enough, and yours is poor paid work." I hope I shall always be able to keep that penny ; and as I watched the three going down the dusty white road, with the child in the middle, I thanked God for the Brotherhood of the Poor. i -X IV / JSTERDAY a funeral passed, from the workhouse at ^ . a quaint sepultiire without solemnities. The rough, ungamished coffin of stained deal lay bare and unsightly on the floor of an old market-cart ; a woman sat beside, steadying it with her feet. The husband drove; and the most depressed of the three was the horse, a broken-kneed, flea-bitten grey. It was pathetic, this bringing home in death of the old father whom, while he Uved, they had been too poor to house ; it was at no small sacrifice that they had spared him that terror of old age, a pauper's grave, and brought him to lie by his wife in our quiet churchyard. They felt no emotion, this husband and wife, only a dull sense of filial duty done, respectability preserved ; and above and through all, the bitter but necessary count- ing the cost of this last bed- It is straiige how pagan many of us are in our beUefs. True, the funeral libations have made way for the comfortable bake-meats ; still, to the large majority Death is Pluto, king of the dark Unknown whence no traveller returns, ratlier than Azrael, brother and friend, 33 11 THE ROADMENDER lord of this mansion of life. Strange how men shun him as he waits in the shadow, watching our puny straining after immortality, sending his comrade sleep to prepare us for himself. When the hour strikes he comes— very gently, very tenderly, if we will but have it so — folds the tired hands together, takes the way- worn feet in his broad strong palm ; and lifting us in his wonderful arms he bears us swiftly down the valley and across the waters of Remembrance. Very pleasant art thou, O Brother Death, thy love is wonderful, passing the love of women. • ♦♦»•• To-day I have lived in a whirl of dust. To-morrow is the great annual Cattle Fair at E , and through the long hot hours the beasts from all the district round have streamed in broken procession along my road, to change hands or to die. Surely the lordship over creation implies wise and gentle rule for intelligent use, not the pursuit of a mere immediate end, without any thought of community in the great sacrament of life. For the most part mystery has ceased for this work- ing Western world, and with it reverence. Coventry Patmore says: "God clothes Himself actually and literally with His whole creation. Herbs take up and assimilate minerals, beasts assimilate herbs, and God, in the Incarnation and its proper Sacrament, assimilates a '1- THE ROADMENDER us, who, says St Augustine, * are God's beasts.' " It is man in his blind self-seeking who separates woof from weft in the living garment of God, and loses the more as he neglects the outward and visible signs of a world-wide grace. In olden days the herd led his Bock, going first in the post of danger to defend the creatures he had weaned from their natural habits for his various uses. Now that good relationship has ceased for us to exist, man drives the beasts before him, means to his end, but with no harmony between end and means. All day long the droves of sheep pass me on their lame and patient way, no longer freely and instinctively follow- ing a protector and forerunner, but driven, impelled by force and resistless will— the same will which once went before without force. They are all trimmed as much as possible to one pattern, and all make the same sad plaint. It is a day on wlii«*~-^ ■ Ee be mo,- like a child to me and the mother, an' mo.' a, sensible „ a Christian, ee be.' 28 r THE ROADMENDER wearily. " Ay, ay, lad, you've got it ; 'tis poor Dick's pig right enow." " But you're never going to take it to E ?" " Ay, but I be, and comin' back alone, if the Lord be mardful. The missus has been terrible bad this two months and more; Squire's in foreign parts; and food-stuffs such as the old woman wants is hard buying for poor folks. The stocking's empty, now 'ti« the pig must go, and I believe he'd be glad for to do the missus a turn; she were terrible good to him, were the missus, and fond, too. I dursn't tell her he was to go ; she'd sooner starve than lose poor Dick's pig. WeU, we'd best be movin* ; 'tis a fairish step." The pig followed comprehending and docile, and as the quaint couple passed from sight I thought I heard Brother Death stir in the shadow. He is a strong ingel and of great pity. II 39 I i., :i 4 : 1 1 1 1 1 1 Th«r« if always a little fire of wood on the open hearth in the kitchen when I get home at night; the old lady says it is " company " for her, and sits in the lonely twilight, her knotted hands lying quiet on her lap, her listening eyes fixed on the burning sticks. I wonder sometimes whether she hears music in the leap and lick of the fiery tongues, music such as he of Bayreuth draws from the vioUns till the hot energy of the fire spirit is oo us, embodied in sound. Surely she hears some voice, tliat lonely old woman on whom is set the seal of great silence ? It is a great truth tenderly said that God builds the nest for the blind bird ; and may it not be that He opens closed eyes and unstops deaf ears to sights and sounds from which others by these very senses are debarred ? Here the best of us see through a mist of tears men as trees walking ; it is only in the land which is very far off and yet very near that we shaU have fulness of sight and see the King in His beauty ; and I cannot think that any listening ears listen in vain. 30 THE ROADMENDER The coppice at our back ii> fuU of birds, for iiiMUit from the road and they nest there undisturbed year •fter year. Through tht jtiU night I heard the DighUngales calling, calling, until I could bear it no longer and went softly out into the luminous dark. The little wood was manifold with sound, I heard my Uttle brothers who move by night rustling in grass •nd tree. A hedgehog crosaed my path with a dull squeak, the bats shriUed high to the stars, a white owl swept past me crying his hunting note, a beetle boomed suddenly in my face ; and above and through it all the nightingales sang— and sang ! The night wind bent the listening trees, and the stars yearned earthward to hear the song of deathless love. Louder and louder the wonderful notes rose and feU m a passion of melody ; and then sank to rest on that low thrilling caU wliich it is said Death once heard, and stayed his hand. Tliey wiU scarcely sing again this year, these mght- ingales, for they are late on the wing as it is. It seems as if on such nights they sang as the swan sings, knowing It to be the last tim«--with the lavish note of one who bids an eternal farewell. At last there was silence. Sitting under the big beech tree, the giant of the coppice, I rested my tired self m the lap of mother earth, breathed of her breath 31 J : « : > . iii THE ROADMENOER and Usteoed to her Toicc in th« quickening lUenre until my fletb came again aa the flesh of a little child, for it iM true recreation to tit at the foot-rtool of God wrapped in a fold of Hii Uving robe, the while night smoothes our tired face with her healins bands. * The grey dawn awoke and stole with trailing robes across earth's floor. At her footsteps the birds roused from sleep and cried a greeting; the sky flushed and paled conscious of coming splendour; and overhead a flle of swans passed with broad strong flight to the reeded waters of the sequestered pool. Another hour of silence while the light throbbed and flamed in the east; then the larks rose bar- monious from a neighbouring field, the rabbits scurried with ears alert to their morning meal, the day had b^un. I passed through the coppice and out into the fields beyond. The dew Uy heavy on leaf and blade and gossamer, a cool fresh wind swept clear over dale and down from the sea, and the clover field rippled like a lolvery lake in the breeze. There is something inexpressibly beautiful in the unused day, something beautiful in the fact that it is still untouched, unsoiled ; and town and country «hare alike in thu loveliness. At half-past tliree on 3a THE ROADMENDER • June morning eren London has not anMimed her rttpoMibiliUw, but Kmile. and ^lows iightheuied and iimokdeu under Uie careMes of the morning lun. Five o'clock. The bell ring, out cri.p and iar ' ^ from the monattcry where the BedeKmen of St Hugh ^ watch and pray for the houIh on this labouring forgetful •wth. Every hour the note of comfort and warning me. acroM the land, tell, the Sanctu.. the Angelu. '" and the Hour, of the Pa.»ion. and caU. to remembrance and prayer. When the wind is north, the sound carries as far as my road, and rompanie me through the day ; and if to His dumb children (Jod in His mercy reckons work a. prayer, most certainly those who have forged through the ages an unbroken chain of supplication and thanksgiving will be counted among the stalwart labourers of the house of the Lord. Sun and bell together are my only clock : it is time for my water drawing ; and gathering a ,.,le of mush- rooms, children of the night, I hasten hom.'. The cottage is dear to me in its quaint .mtidiness and want of rectitude, dear because we are to be its last denizens, last of the long line of toilers who have sweated and sown that others might reap, and have passed away leaving no trace. I once saw a taU cross in a seaboard churchyard. 33 :■( i*! 1 'I: 3; SI U ; THE ROAOMENDER inscribed, " To the memory of the unknown dead who have perished in these waters." There might be one in every village sleeping-place to the unhonoured many who made fruitful the land with sweat and tears. It is a consolation to think that when we look back on this stretch of life's road from beyond the Qrst milestone, whidi, it is instrui-tive to remember, is always a grave, we may hope to see the work of this world with open eyes, and to judge of it with a due sense of proportion. A bee with laden honey-bag hummed and buzzed in the hed >■ ■ 0; I THE ROADMENDER have all that we need, and yet we tast« the life and poverty of the very poor. We are, if you will, un- cloistered monks, preaching friars who speak not with the tongue, disciples who hear the wise words of a sUent master." " Robert Louis Stevenson was a roadmender," said the wise parson. "Ay, and with more than his pen," I answered. "I wonder was he ever so truly great, so entirely the man we know and love, as when he inspired the <::,chiefs to make a highway in the wilderness. Surely no more fitting monument could exist to his memory than the Road of Gratitude, cut, laid, and kept by the pure-blooded tribe kings of Samoa." Parson nodded. ! " He knew that the people who make no roads are ^, ruled out from intelligent participation in the world's I brotherhood " He filled his pipe, thinking the while, ^ 'then he held out his pouch to me. " Try some of this baccy," he said ; " Sherwood of Magdalen sent it me from some outlandish place." I accepted gratefully. It was such tobacco as falls to the lot of few roadraenders. He Toae to go. " I wish I could come and break stones," he said, a little wistfully. 36 THE ROADMENDER " Nay." said I, " few men have nich weary road- mending ao youM. and perhaps you need my road less than most men, and less than most parsons " We shook hands, and he went down the road and out of my life. He little guessed that I knew Sherwood, ay. and knew him too, for had not Sherwood told me of the man he delighted to honour. Ah, weU I I ara no Browning Junior, and Sherwood's name is not Sherwood. 37 M .■■» ■ ., 5:! i"- AivniLE ago I took a holiday; mouched, played truant from my road. Jem the waggoner hailed rue as he passed— he was going to the mill— would I ride with him and come back atop of the fulJ sacks ? I hid my hammer in the hedge, clinibod into the great waggon white and fragrant with the clean sweet meal, and flung myself down on the empty flour hags. Tlie looped-back tarpaulin framed the long vista of my road with the downs beyond ; and I lay in tlie cool dark, caressed by the fresh breeze in its thoroughfare, soothed by the strong monotonous tramp of the great grey team and the music of tlie jangling harness. Jem walked at the leaders' heads; it is his rule when the wagpon is empty, a rule no " company " will make him break. At first I regretted it, but soon discovered I learnt to know him better so, as he plodded along, his tliickset figure sliphtly bent, his hands in his pockets, his whip under one arm, whistling hymn tunes in a low minor, while the great horses answered to his voice without touch of lash or guiding rein. 38 THE KOADMENDER I lay as in a blisshil dream and watrlied my road unfold. ITie sun set the pine-boles aflare where the hedge is sparse, and stretched the long shadows of the besom poplars in slanting bars across the white highway; the roadside gardens smiled friendly with their trim-cut laurels and rows of stately sunflowers— a seemly proximity this. Daphne and Clytie, sisters in experience, wrapped in the warm caress of the pod whose wooing they need no longer fear. Here ancJ there we passed little groups of women and children off to work in the early cornfields, and Jem paused in his fond repetition of " The Lord my pasture shaU prepare " to give thera good-day. It is like Life, this traveUing backwcirds— tha* which has been, alone visible— like Life, which is after all, retrospective with a steady moving on into the Unknown, Unseen, until Faith Ls lost in Sight and •experience is no longer the touchstone of huniuriity. The face of the son of Adam is set on the road his brothers have travelled, marking their landmarks, rracing their journeyings ; but with the eyes of a child of God he looks forward, straining to catch a glimpse of the jewelled walls of his future home, the city " Eternal in the Heavens." Presently we left my road for the deep shade of a narrow country way where the great oaks and beeches 39 m m m il* :» . ... i: jii '' I I; til ill hi Si;; THE ROADMENDER meet overhead and no iiedge-dipper sets hii hand to stay nature's profusion ; and so by pleasant lanes •carce the waggon's width across, now shady, now sunny, here bordered by thickset coverts, there giving on fruitful fields, we came at length to the mill. I left Jem to his business with the miller and wondered down the flowery meadow to listen to the merry clack of the stream and the voice of the waters on the weir. The great wheel was at rest, as I love best to see it in the later afternoon; the splash and chum of the water belong rather to the morning hours. It is the chief mistake we make in portioning out our day that we banish rest to the night-time, which is for sleep and recreating, instead of setting apart the later afternoon and quiet twilight hours for the stretching of weary limbs and repose of tired mind after a day's toil that should b^n and end at five. The little stone bridge over the mill-stream is almost on a level with the clear running water, and I lay there and gazed at the huge wheel which, under multitudinous forms and uses, is one of the world's wonders, because one of the few tilings we imitative children have not learnt from nature. Is it perchance a memory out of that past when Adam walked clear-eyed in Paradise and talked with the Lord in the cool of the day ? Did he see then the flaming wheels instinct with service, 40 THE ROADMENDER wondrou. m«,enge„ of the Mort High vouch«fed in Tuion to the later propheta? Bfaybe he did. and going forth from before the ^avenguig «word of his own forging to the bittemew of an ««wed earth, took with him this bright memory of perfect, ceaseless service. «,d so fashioned our labouring wheel-pathetic link with che time of hi. innacency It is one of many unanswered question., good to ask because it has no answer, only the suggestion of a tram of thought : perhaps we a., never «, reactive as when with folded hands we say simply. "Thi. i. a great mystery." I watched and wondered until Jem caUed. and I had to leave the rippUng v^eir and the water s side, and the wheel with it. untold secret ■nie miUer's wife gave me tea and a crust of home- made bread, and the miller's little maid sat on my knee whde I told the sad tale of a Uttle pink cloud separated from Its parents and teazed and hunted by mischievous htiJe airs. To-morrow, if I nustake not, her garden ^ be wet with its tears, and. let us hope, point a moral ; for the tale had its origin in a frenzied chicken driven from the .side of an anxious mother, and pursued by a sturdy, relentless figure in a white sun-bonnet The Uttle maid trotted off. greatly sobered, to look somewhat prematurely for the cloud's tears ; and I chmbed to my place at the top of the piled-up sacks, 41 !i I: •:> • • •. .If, THE ROADMENDER and thence wat. hed twilight pam to starlight throt^ toy narrow peep, and, so watching, slept until Jem't voire hailed me from Dreamland, and I went, only iiall awake, across the dark field." homo Autumn is here and it is alren.lv late. He hat painted the hedges russet and gold, scarlet and black, and a tangle of grey ; now he has damp brown leaves in his hair and fro-t in his finger-tips. It is a season ol contrasts ; at first all is stir and bustle, the ingathering of man and beast ; barn and rickyard itand filled with golden ti euaure ; at the farm the sound of threshing; in wood and copse the squirrels busied 'twist tree and storehou.se. while the ripe nuts fall with thud of thunder ruin. When the harvesting is over, the fruit gathered, the last rick thatched, there come.<^ a pause. Earth strips off her bright colours and shows a bare m d furrowed face : the dead leaves fall geutly and sadly through the calm, sweet air; grey mists drape the fields and hedges. The migratory birds have left, save a few late swallows ; and as I sit at work in the soft, still rain, I cati hrar the black- bird's melancholy trill and the thin pipe of the red- breast's winter song— the air is full of the sound of farewell. Forethought and preparation for the Future which 4a THE ROADMENDER •ball be; farewell, because of the Future which may never be-for us; "Man, thou ha.t goods l«d up for many years, and it i* weU ; but, remember, thi» night thy soul may be required"; i, Uie unvoiced l««on of autunm. There i« growing up among us a great fear; it stares at us white, wide-eyed, fru.a the faces of men and women alike-the fear of pain, mental and bodily pain. For the lart twenty vears we have waged war with suffering-a noble war when fought in the u.terest of the many, but fraught with great dangor to each individual man. It is the fear which should not be, rather than the 'hope which is in us,' tlia' leads men in these days to drape Death in a flowery mantle, to lay stress on the shortness of parting, the speedy reunion, to postpone their good-byes until the last moment, or avoid saying them altogether; and this fear is a poor, ignoble thing, unworthy of those who are as gods, knowing,' good and evil. We are siiU paying the price of that knowlcl^^e ; suffering in both kinds is a substantial ptu^ of it, and brin;,-; its own healing. Let us pay Uke men. cir face to the open heaven, neither whimpering like dul.lren in the dark, nor lulled to unnecessary ol)Iivion by some lethal drug; for it w manly, not morbid, to dare to \asfo the pungent savour of pain. tJie lingering sadness of farewell wliich empha.sises the aftermath of life; it 43 \ % ^ Vt Hi, 5:?: THE ROADMBNOER should have iti place in aU our preparation aa a part of OUT inheritance we dare not be without. (There in an old couple in our village who are pant work. The married daughter hat made •hilt to take her mother and the parish half-crown, but there is neither room nor food for the father, and he mu«t go to N . If husband and wife went together, they would be wparated at the workhouse door. The parting had to come; it came yesterday. I saw them stumbhng lamely down the road on their last journey together, walking side by side without touch or speech, seeing > and heeding nothing but a blank future. As they passed me the old man said gruffly, " Tis far eno' ; better be gettin' back " ; but the woman shook her head, and they breasted the hill together. At the top they paused, shook hands, and separated ; one went on, the other turned back; and as the old woman limped blindly by I turned away, for there are sights a man dare not look upon. She passed ; and I heard a child's shrill voice say, " I come to look for you, gran"; and I thanked God that there need be no utter lonehnees the world while it holds a little child."^ > Now it is r \.arn, and I must leave the wayside to serve in is sheepfolds during the winter months. It is scarcely a farewell, for my road is ubiquitous, eternal ; there are green ways in Paradise and golden 44 » ' "-^7wp)l^«J5P=ia At the top they piuud. >hook hand., .nd separited ; one went on. the other turned h«:k : 44 It, III Mi THE ROADMKNDER ■treeb in the beautiful City of God. NeTcrthelcM, my heart ii heavy; for, viewed by the light of th« waning year, roadmending seem!! a great and wonderful work which I have poorly 'onceived of and m^nly pcrforrned: yet I have learnt to understand dimly the truths of three great paradoxes — the blettsing ol ' a curse, the voice of silence, the companionship of solitude— and so take ray leave of this stretch of road, and of you who have fared along tiie white highway through the medium of a printed page. Farewell ! It is a roadmeuderV word ; I cry you Godspeed to the next mjleslone — and beyond. m Pi H 1:1., S;;tl ^ Mi »■.: i« .1 1 I AM no longer a roadmeader; the stretch of wWe lughway which leads to the end of the world will know me no .nore; the fields and hedgerows, grass and leaf •tiff with the crisp rime of winter's breath, lie beyond my honzon ; the ewes in tlie folding, their mysterious eyes quick with the consciousness of coming mother- hood, answer another's voice and hand; wliile I lie here, not m the lonely companionship of my ex- pectations, but where the shadow is bright with kindly faces and gentle hands, unUl one kinder and gentler stiU carries me down the stairway into Uie larger room. But now the veil was held aside and one went by crowned with the majesty of years, wearing the ermine of an unstained rule, the purple of her people's loyalty. Nations stood with bated breaUi to see her pass L tlfe starht mist of her children's tears; a monarch- greatest of her time ; an empress-conquered men caUed mother; a woman-EngUshmen cried queen; •tdl the crowned captive of her people's heart-the prisoner of love. The night-goers passed under my window in silence, 49 d m «i ♦ ll U III., HI 1 1 THE ROADMENDER neither song nor shout broke the welcome dark ; next morning the workmen who went by were strangely quiet. *ViCTOBiA Dei Gratia Britanniarum Regina.' Did they think of how that legend would disappear, and of all it meant, as they paid their pennies at the coffee-stall ? The feet rarely know the true value And work of the head ; but all Englishmen have boen and will be quick to acknowledge and revere Victoria by the grace of God a wise woman, a great and loving mother. Years ago, I, standing at a level crossing, saw her pass. The train slowed down, and she caught sight of tlie gatekeeper's little girl who had climbed the barrier. Such a smile as she gave her ! And then I caught a quick startled gesture as she slipped from my vision ; I thought afterwards it was that she feared the child might full. Mother first, then Queen ; even so rest came to her — not in one of the royal palaces, but in her own home, surrounded by the immediate circle of her nearest and dearest, wliile the world kept watch and ward. I, a shy lover of the fields and woods, longed always, should a painless passing be vouchsafed me, to make my bed on the fragrant pine needles in the aloneness of a great forest ; to lie once again as I had lain many 50 OUT OF THE SHADOW a time, bathed in the bitter sweetness of the gun- blessed pines, lapped in the manifold silence; my ear attuned to the wind of Heaven with its call from tiie Cities of Peace. In sterner mood, when Love's hand held a scourge, I craved rather the stress of Uie moorland with its bleaker mind imperative of sacrifice. To rest again under the lee of Rippon Tor swept by the strong peat-smelling breeze; to stare untired at the long cloud-shudowed reaches, and watch the mist- wraiths huddle and shrink round the stones of blood ; until my sacrifice too was accomplished, and my soul had fled. A wild waste moor ; a vast void sky ; and naught between heaven and earth but man, his sin- ghued eyes seeking afar the distant hght of his own heart. With years came counsels more profound, and the knowledge that man was no mere dweller in the woods to foUow Uie footsteps of the piping god, but on integral part of an organised whole, in which Pan too has his fulfilment. The wise Venetians knew; and read pantheism into Christianity when they set these words round Ezekiel's Uving creatures in the altar vault of St Mark's :- : '^ QUAKQUE SUB OBSCCRIS DE RISTO DICTA FIGUBIg His APEKIKE DATUB ET IN Hit DeuS IPSE NOTATUB. 51 ■^ III l.\ H •• 'rt i I ■'ii THE ROADMENDER "Thou shalt have none other gods but me." If man had been able to keep this one commandment perfectly the other nine would neYer have been written ; instead he has comprehensively disregarded it, and perhaps never more tlian now in the twentieth century. Ah, well ! this world, in spite of all its sinning, is still the Garden of Eden where the Lord walked with man, not in the cool of evening, but in the heat and stresH of the immediate working day. There is no angel now with flaming sword to keep the way of the Tree of Life, but tapers alight morning by morning in the Hostel of God to point us to it ; and we, who are as gods knowing good and evil, partake of that fruit " whereof whoso eateth shall never die " ; the greatest ^ gift or the most awful penalty — Eternal Life. I then, with my craving for tree and sky, held that « great capital with its stir of life and death, of toil and strife and pleasure, was an ill place for a sick man to wait in ; a place to shrink from as a cluld shrink* from the rude blow of one out of authority. Yet here, far from moor and forest, hillside and hedgerow, in the family sitting-room of the English-speaking peoples, the London much misunderstood, I find the fulfilment by antithesis of all desire. For the loneliness of the moorland, there is the warmth and companionsliip of London's swift beating heart. For silence there i» OUT OF THE SHADOW •ound— the sound and stir of service—for the most part far in excess of its earthly equivalent. Against the fragrant incense of the pines I set the honest sweat of the man whose lifeUme is the measure of his workiiip day. " He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how shaU he love God whom he hath not seen ? " wrote Blessed John, who himself loved so much that he beheld the Umb as it had been slain from tlic beginning when Adam fell, and tlie City of God with light most precious. The burden of corporate sin, the sword of corporate sorrow, the joy of corporate righteousness ; thus we become citizens in the ICingdom of God, and companions of all his creatures. " It is not good that the man should be alone," said tlie Lord God. I live now as it were in two worlds, the world of sight, and Uie world of sound ; and tliey scarcely ever touch each other. I hear the grind of heavy traffic, the struggle of horses on the frost-breathed ground,* Uie decorous jolt of omnibuses, the jangle of cab bells,' the sharp warning of bicycles at the corner, tlie swift rattle of costers' carts as they go south at night with their shouting, goading crew. All these tilings I hear, and more ; but I see no road, only the silent river of my heart with its tale of wonder and years, and the white beat of seagulls' wings in strong inqdring flight. 53 uJi ;:« Ml ..,i ... .. f '3' ' . ' rf I If! ► .*• • i-i •J •I • ••t THE ROADMENDER Sometimes there is naught to see on the waterwaj but a solitary black hull, a very Stygian ferry-boat, manned by a solitary figure, and moving slowly up under the impulse of the far-reaching sweeps. Then the great barges pass with their coffined treasure, drawn by a small self-righteous steam-tug. Later, lightened of their load, and waiting on wind and tide, I see them swooping by like birds set free; tawny sails that mind me of red-roofed Whitby with its northern fleet ; black sails as of some heedless Theseus ; white sails that sweep out of the morning mist " like restless gossameres." They make the bridge, which is just within my vision, and then away past West- minster and Blackfriors where St Paul's great dome lifts the cross high over a self-seeking city; past Southwark where England's poet illuminates in the scroll of divine wisdom the sign of the Tabard ; past tlie Tower with its haimting ghosts of history ; past Greenwich, fairy dty, caught in the meshes of river- side mist ; and then the salt and speer of the sea, the companying with great ships, the fresh burden. At night I see them again, silent, mysterious ; search- ing the darkness with unwinking yellow stare, led by a great green light. They creep up under the bridge which spans the river with its watching eyes, and vanish, crying back a wju-ning note as they make the upper 54 OUT OF THE SHADOW reftch, or strident hail, m a chain ol kindred phantoms pa«eca, ploughing a contrary tide. Throughout the long watches of the night I follow them ; and in the early morning they slide by, their eyes pale in the twibght ; while the stars flicker and fade, and the gas lamps die down into a dull yellow blotch against the glory and glow of a new day. Is m a u '♦ l|«H >■;)[ in; ,1.. ;i t:;i 1^ «» . "I F«BR0A»Y ia here, February fiU-dyke; the month of purification, of cleansing rains and pulsing bounding streams, and white mist clinging insistent to field and hedgerow so that when her veil is withdrawn greenness may make us glad. The river has been uniformly grey of lale, with no wind to ruffle its surface or to speed the barges dropping slowly and suUenly down with the tide tlirough a blurring haze. I watched one yesterday, its useless sails half.furlcd and no sign of life save the man at tlie helm. It drifted stealthily past, and a little behind, flying low, came a soliUry seagull, grey as the river's liaze — a following bird. Once again I lay on my back in the bottom of the tarry old fishing smack, blue sky above and no sound but the knock, knock of the waves, and tlie thud and curl of falUng foam as the old boat's blunt nose breasted the coming sea. Then Daddy Whiddon spoke. " A foUerin' burrd," he said. 1 got up, and looked across the blue field we were plougliing into white furrows. Far away a tiny sail 56 OUT OF THE SHADOW •caiTed the great rolitude, and astern canie a gull flying slowly doM to the water's braast. Daddy Whiddon waved his pipe towards it. " A foUerin' burrd," he said, again ; and again I waited ; questions were not grateful to him. "There be a carpse there, sure enough, a carpse driftin' and shiftin' on the floor of the sea. Tliere be IhoM as can't rest, poor sawls, and her'll be mun, her'U be mun, and the sperrit of her is with tiie biirrii." The clumsy boom swung across as we changed our course, and the water ran from u;* in smooth reachc!" on either side : the bird flew steadily on. " Wiat will the spirit do ? " I said. The old man looked at me prnvely. " Her'll rest in tlie Lard's ume, in the lord's gude tmM>-but now her'U just be follerin* on with the burrd." The gull was flying close to us now, and a told wind swept the sunny sea. I shivered : Daddy looked al me curiou.sly. " There be reason enough to be cawld if us did but knaw it, but 1 be mos' used to *em, poor siiwU." He shaded his keen old blue eyes, and looked away across the water. His face kindled. " There be a skule comin', and by my saw! 'tis mackerel they be drivin'." I watched eagerly, and saw the dark line n.se and 57 ft ill m :* ■I; m J; J ».«■.• '•«- ■■i;:ir 'A W , n THE ROADMENDER Call in the trough of the nea. and. away h«hind, the !«tir and rush of tumbh'ng porpoise* a« they clianed tlieir prey. Again we changed out tack, and eaih iaking an our. pulled lustily for the beach. "PleoM God her'll break inshore," naid Dacldy Whiddon ; and he shouted the news at the idle men waiting who hailed \i». In a moment all was stir, for the fishing had been ■lack. Two boata put out with the lithe brown ^eine. The dark line had turned, but the school was stiU behind, churning the water in clumsy haste; they were coming in. Then the brit broke in silvery leaping waves on the shelving beach. The three-fold hunt was over; t!.. porpoises turned out to sea in search of fresh quarry ; and the seine, dragged by ready hands, came slowl- . stubbornly in with its quivering treasure of fish, 'fliev had sought a haven and found none; the brit lav dying in the flickering iridescent heaps as the bare- legged babies of the village gathered them up; ea. a;,:: ., lo blossom at her feet. p, We can never be too Pag.*, 'h .; »v>. Are truly Christian, and the o ld my tha ase •. • .j.al -ufhs held fast in the Church's net. Pron-eth. fetched fire from Heaven, to be slain forever in the fetching ; and lo, a Greater tlian Prometheus came to fire the cresset 50 V\ r m [■!'•# m<«i lli] •> M I '«> THE ROADMENDER of the CroM. Demcter waits now patiently enough. Persephone waits, too, in the faith of the sun she cannot fee : and every kmp lit carries on the crusade which has for its goal a sunless, moonless, dty whose light is the Light of tlie world. •• Lume i Uaaii, che *isiliile fsce \o creatore a quella crentura, die Milo in lui vedere ha la sua pace." Immediately outside my window is a Ume tree— a little black skeleton of abundant branches— in which sparrows congregate to chirp and bicker. Farther away I have a glimpse of graceful planes, children of moonlight and mist; their dainty robes, still more or less unsullied, gleam ghostly in the gaslight athwart the dark. Tliey make a brave show even in winter with their feathery branches and swinging tassels, whereas my little tree stands stark and uncompromising! with its horde of sooty sparrows cockney to the last laU feather, and a patheUc inabUity to look anyUiing but black. Rain comes with strong caressing fingers, and the branches seem no whit the cleaner for her care; but then their gUstening blackness mirrors back the succeeding sunlight, as a muddy pavement will sometimes lap our feet in a sea of gold. The Utile wet sparrows are for the moment equaUy transformp.1. 60 ii i OUT OF THE SHADOW for the tun turns their dun-coloured coats to a ruddy bronze, and cries Chrysostom as it kisses each shiny beak. They are dumb Cbrysostoms ; but they preach a golden gospel, for the sparrows are to London what the rainbow was to eight saved souls out of a wasfe of waters — a perpetual sign of the rcmcni'oering mercies »f God. Last night there was a sudden claller of hoofs, a shout, and then silence. A runaway cnb-horse, a dark m'ght, a wide crossing, and a heavy burden : so death came to a poor woman. People from tlie housiC went out to help ; and I heard of her, the centre of an un- knowing curious crowd, as she lay bonnetless in tl»e mud of the road, her head on the kerb. A rude but painless death: the misery lay in her life; for this woman — worn, wliite-hoired, auid wrinkled — had but fifty years to set against such a condition. The police- man reported her respectable, hard-working, hving apart from her husband with a sister; but although they shared rooms, they " did not speak," and tlie sister refused all responsibihty ; so the parish buried the dead woman, and thus ended an uneventful tragedy. Was it her own fault? If so, the greater pathos. The lonely souls that hold out timid hands to an un- heeding world have their meed of interior comfort even here, wlule the sons of couholutiuii wait on tlie 6i ■ ■ I J :*»♦ lanii ):i < jt». •Li P"*,*' THE ROADMExXDER threshold for their footfall : but God help the soul that bars its own door ! It is kicking against tli- prick. of Divine ordinance, the ordinance of a triune God ; wheUicr it be the dweller in crowded street or tenement who is proud to say, " I keep myself to myself," or Seneca writing in pitiful complacency, "Whenever I have gone among men, I have returned home less of a man." Whatever tht next world holds in slore, we are bidden in this to seek and serve God in our fellow- men, and in the creatures of His making whom He calls by name. It was once my privilege to know an old organ- grinder named Gawdine. lie was a hard swearer, a hard drinker, a hard Uver. and he fortified liimself body aiid soul against the worid : he even drank alone, which is an evil sign. One day to Gawdine sober came a httle dirty child, who clung to his empty trouser leg— he had lost a Umb years before— with a persistent uninteUigible request. He shook the UtUe chap oft with a blow and a curse ; and the child was trotting dismally away, when it suddenly turned, ran back, and held up a dirty face (or a kiss. Two days later Gawdine fell under a passi^ dray which inflicted terrible internal injuries on him. They patched him up in hospital, and he went back to his 63 -iUiluJi._ii;_ U >) for \he jiRs and reels which children hold dear, . . . 1' I 62 'T ' i ■ i| ■■ >l«OI» ' 'i iV >■. It. OUT OF THE SHADOW organ-grinding, taking witli liiin two friends — a paia wliicb fell suddenly upon him to rack and rend with an anguish of crucifixion, and llie memory of a child's upturned face. Outwardly he was the same save that he changed the tunes of his organ, out of long- huarded savings, for the jigs and reds which children }iold dear, and stood patmitly playing them in child- crowded alleys, where pennies are not as plentiful as elsewhere. He contiimed to drink ; it did not come within his new code to stop, since he could " carry his liquor well " ; but he rarely, if ever, swore. He told me thia tale through tl»e tliroes of his anguish as he lay crouched on a mattress on the floor ; and as the grip of the pain took him he tore and bit at his hmds until they were maimed and bleeding, to keep tlie ready curses
ii ■if i»' ■«!..•' m " Two began, in a low voice, * Why, the fact is, you Mse, Miss, thi« here ought to have beji a red roae-tree, and we put a white one in by mistake.' " As I look round this room I feel sure Two, and Five, •nd Seven, have aU been at work on it, and made no mistakes, for round the waUs runs a frieze of squat standard rose-trees, red as red can be, and just Uke those that Alice saw in the Queen's garden. In between them are Chaucer's name-children, prim little daisies, peering wideawake from green grass. This same grass has a history which I have heard. In the original stencil for the frieze it was purely conventional like the rest, and met in spikey curves round each tree; the painter, however, who was doing the work, was a lover of the lields ; and feeling that such grass was • travesty, he added on his own account dainty little tussocks, and softened the hard line into a tufted carpet, the grass growing irregularly, bent at will by the wind. The result from the standpoint of conventional •rt is indeed disastrous; but my sympathy and 64 OUT OF THE SHADOW gratitude are with the painter. I gee, an he saw, the far-reaching robe of Uving ineffable green, of whoee brilliance the eye never has too much, and in whoM weft no two threads are aUke; and shrink aa he did from the conventionalising of that wind-swept glory. Hie sea has its crested waves of recognisable form ; the river its eddy and swirl and separate vortices; but the grass! The wind bloweth wl.ere it listeth and the grass bows ns the wind blows—" thou canst not teU whither it goeth." It takes no pattern, it obeys no recognised law ; it is Uke a beauUful creature of a thousand wayward moods, and its voice is like nothing else in the wide world. It bids you rest and bury your tired face ia the green codiiess. and breathe of its breath and of the breath of the good earth from which man was taken and to which he will one day return. Then, if you lend your ear and are silent minded, you may hear wondrous things of the deep places of the earth ; of life in mineral and stone as weU as in pulsing sap ; of a green world as the stars saw it before man trod it under foot— of the emerald which has its place with the rest iu the City of God. m ill fli "Uhatlfenrth Be but thr shadow of lieaven, and tliii.^b tlierein, Each u> fMcU otli.r like, more than on earth it thought?' 65 II Un s ' ifl A>l#<* f^ w Hi I ••I THE ROADMENDER It ia a natural part of dyilisation'i lust of re-arrange- ment that we should be no ready to coiiventionalis(> the beauty of this world into decorative patterns for our pilgrim tents. It in a phase, and will melt into other phaMs; but it tends to the increase of arti- ficiality, and exists not only in art but in every- th^. It is no new thing for jaded sentiment to -crave the spur of tlje unnatural, to prefer the clever imitation, to live in a Devaduui where the surroundings appear that whidi we would have them to be ; but it is an interesting record of the pulse of the pre- sent day that ' An Englishwoman's Love Letters ' should have takea society by storm in the way it certainly has. It is a delightful book to leave about, with its vellum bindii^, daaity ribbons, and the hallmark of a great publisher's name. But when we seek witliin we find love with its thousand voices and wayward moods, its shy graces and seemly reticences, love which has its throne and robe of state aa well as the gartnent of the beggar maid, love which u before time was, which knew the world when the stars took up their courses, pre- sented to us in gushing outpourings, the appropriate language of a womai's heart to the boor she delights to honour. " It is woman who is the glory of man," says the 66 OUT OF THE SHADOW •uthor of ' The Hoiwe of Wwdoni uud Love,' " Itcgina tttundi, greater, becaune so far the less ; and man is her head, but only as he serves his queen." Set this sober nphorism against the school girl love-making wluch kisses a man's feet and gaily refuses him the barren honour of having loved her first. There is scant need for the apologia wliich precedes the letters ; a few pages dispels the fear that we are prying into another's soul. As for the authorsliip, tlicre is a woman's influence, an artist's poorly concealed bias in the foreign letters ; and for the rest a man's blunders— so much easier to see in another than to avoid oneself— writ large from cover to cover. King Cophetua, who sends his "profoundly grateful re- membrances," has most surely written the letters he would wish to receive. "Mrs Meynelll" cries one reviewer, triumphantly. Nay. the "aints be good to us, what has Mrs MeyneU in common with the "Englishwoman's" language, style, or most unconvincing passion ? Men can write as from a woman's heart when they are minded to do 60 in desperate earnestness— there is Clarissa Harlowe and Stevenson's Kirstie, and many more to prove it; but when a man writes as the author of the " Love Letters " writes, I feel, as did the painter of the frieze, that pattern-making has gone too far and included 67 1 1* ■m m I ^^J "'I I Si THE ROAOMENDER th«t which, like the grass, should be spared such • convention. " I quite agree with yon," said the Duchess, ** and the moral of that is— Be what you would sewn to be * — or, if you'd like to put it more simply — ' never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that whot you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.' " And so by way of the Queen's garden I come back to my room again. My heart's a^octions are still centred on my old attic, T/ith boarded floor and whitewashed walls, where the sun blazoned a frieze of red and gold until he traveUed too far towards the north, the moon streamed in to paint the trees in inky wavering shadows, and the stars flashed their glory to me across the years. But now sun and moon greet me only indirectly : and under the J roses hang pictures, some of them the dear companions of my days. Opposite me is the Arundel print of the Presentation, painted by the gentle " Brother of the Angels." Priest Simeon, a stately fipire in grcon and gold, great with prophecy, "azes adoringly at tlie Bambino he holds with fatherly rare. Our I^dy, in robe of red and veil of shadowed purple, is instinct with light despite the sombre colour- 68 OUT OF THE SHADOW ing, M sh* itretchM out hungering, Awe-struck handa tor her loul'i delij^t. St Joseph, dignified guardian and servitor, stands behind, holding the Sacrifice of the Poor to redeem the First-begotten. St Peter Martyr and the Dominican nun, gazing in rapt contemplation at the scene, are not one whit surprised to find themselves in the pre»ence of eternal myHterieii. In the Entombment, which hangs on the opposite wall, St Dominic comes round the comer full of grievous amaze and tenderest sympathy, but with no sense of sbo< k or intrusion, for wai he not " famigliar di Cristo " ? And so he takes it all in ; the stone bed empty and waiting ; the Beloved cradled for the last time on Ilis mother's knees to be washed, lapped round, and liiid to rest as if He were agtiin the Dabe of Bethlehem. He sees the Magdalen anointing the Sacred Feet ; Blessed John caring for the living and the Dead ; and he, Dominic — hound of the Lord — having his real, living share in the anguish and hope, the bedding of the dearest Dead, who did but leave this earth that He might manifest Himself more completely. Underneath, with a leap across tlie centuries, is Rossetti's picture ; Dante tliis time the onlooker, Beatrice, in her pole beauty, the death-kissed one. The some idea under different representations ; the 69 III 'f « M if -it _ •"ooconr rbowtion tbt chart (ANSI ond ISO TEST CHART No. 2) la 12.8 us, ^ Ub ■ Z2 |20 Mlbu ■ 1.8 1.4 1.6 ^ (716) 288 - 5,85 _ r„ ,l« I :«4.V ■'»' THE ROADMENDER one conceived in childlike simplicity, the other recaU- ing, even in the photograph, its wealth of colour and imagining ; the one a world-wide ideal, the other an individual expression of it. Beatrice was to Dante the inclusion of belief. She was more to him than he himself knew, far more to him after her death than before. And, therefore, the analogy between the pictures has at core a common reality. " It is expedient for you that I go away," is constantly being said to us as we cling earthlike to the outward expression, rather than to the inward manifestation— and blessed are those who hear and understand, for it is spoken only to such as have been with Him from the beginning. The eternal mysteries come into time for us individually under widely differ- ing forms. The tiny child mothers its doll, croons to it, spends herself upon it, why she cannot tell you ; and we who are here in our extreme youth, never to be men and women grown in this world, nurse our ideal, exchange it, refashion it, call it by many names ; and at last in here or hereafter we find in its naked truth the Child in the manger, even as the Wise Men foimd Him when they came from the East to seek a great King. There is but one necessary condition of this finding; we must follow the particular manifestation of light given us, never resting until it rests— over the place 70 OUT OF THE SHADOW of the Child. And there is but one insurmountable hindrance, the extinction of or drawing back from the light truly apprehended by us. We forget this, and judge other men by the Ught of our own soul. I think the old bishop must have understood it. He is my friend of friends as he lies opposite my window in his alabaster sleep, clad in pontifical robes, with unshod feet, a little island of white peace in a many- coloured marble sea. The faithful sculptor has given every line and wrinkle, the heavy eyelids and sunken face of tired old age, but withal the smile of a contented child. I do not even know my bishop's name, only that the work is of the thirteenth century ; but he is good to company with through the day, for he has known darkness and light and the minds of many men ; most surely, too, he has known that God fulfils Himself in strange ways, so with the shadow of his feet upon the polished floor he rests iu peace. 1 I n f»l*l# •*' (Ml* IV On Sunday my LtUe tree was limned in white and the sparrows were craving shelter at my window from the blizzard. Now the mild thin air brings a breath of spnng in its wake and the daffodils in the garden wait the kisses of the sun. Hand-in-hand with memory I slip away down the years, and remember a day when I awoke at earliest dawn, for across my sleep I had heard the lusty golden-throated trumpeters heralding the spring. The air was sharp-set; a delicate rime frosted roof and road ; the sea lay hazy and stiU like a great pearl. Then as the sky stirred with flush upor ^h of warm rosy light, it passed from misty pearl to opal with heart of flame, from opal to gleaming sapphire. The earth called, the fields called, the river caUed-that pied piper to whose music a man cannot stop his ears. It was with me as with the Canterbury pilgrims :— " So priketh hem nature in hir corages ; Than longen folk *o gon on pilgrunapes," Half an hour later I was away by the early train 73 OUT OF THE SHADOW that carries the branch niuils and a few workmen, and was delivered at the little waysidp station with the letters. The kind air went singing past as I swung along the reverberating road between the high tree- crowned banks wliich we call hedges in merry Devon, with all the world to myself and the Brethren. A great blackbird flew out with a loud " chook, chook," and the red of the haw on his yellow bill. A robin trilled from a low rose-bush ; two wrens searched diligently on a fallen tree for breakfast, quite unconcerned when I rested a moment beside them ; and a shrewmouse slipped across the road followed directly by its mate. March violets bloomed under the sheltered hedge with here and there a pale primrose ; a frosted bramble spray still held its autumn tints clinging to the semblance of the past ; and great branches of snowy blackthorn broke the barren hedgeway as if spring made a mock of winter's snows. Light of heart and foot with the new wine of the year I sped on again, stray daffodils lighting the wayside, until I heard the voice of the stream and reached the field gate which leads to tlie lower meadow.s. There before me lay spring's pageant ; green permons waving, dainty maids curt.'ieying, and a host of joyous yellow tnmipeters procluiuiing ' Victory ' to an awakened earth. They range in serried ranks right down to 73 li !?(! ttttMff '"Oil I 111 •»• THE ROADMENDER the river, so that a man must walk warily to reach the water's edge where they stand gazing down at themselves in fairest semblance like their most tragic progenitor, and, rising from the bright grass in their thousands, stretch away until they melt in a golden doud at the far end of the misty mead. Through the field gate and across the road I see them, starring the steep earth bank that leads to the upper copse, gleaming like pale flamea against the dark tree-boles. There they have but frail tenure; here, in the meadows, they reign supreme. At the upper end of the field the river provides yet closer sanctuary for these children of the spring. Held in its embracing arms hes an island long and narrow, some thirty feet by twelve, a veritable untrod Eldorado, ^orious in gold from end to end, a fringe of reeds by the water's edge, and save for that— daffodUs. A great oak stands at the meadow's neck, an oak with gnarled and wandering roots where a man may rest, for it is bare of daffodils save for a group of three, and a solitary one apart growing close to the old tree's side. I sat down by my lonely little sister, blue sky over- head, green grass at my feet decked, like the pastures of the Blessid, in glorious sheen; a sea of triumphant, golden heads tossing blithely back 74 OUT OF THE SHADOW •a the w.ud swept down to play with them at his pleasure. It was all mine to have and to hold without sever- ing a single slender stem or harbouring a thought of covetousness ; mine, as the whole earth was mine, to appropriate to myself without the burden and bane of woridly possession. "Thou sayest that I am— a King," said the Lord before Pilate, and " My kingdom is not of this world." We who are made kings after His likeness possess all things, not after this worid's fashion but in proportion to our poverty ; and when we cease to toil and spin, are arrayed as the liUes, in a glory transcending Solomon's. Bride Poverty — she who climbed the Cross with Christ — stretches out eager hands to free us from our chains, but we flee from her, and lay up treasiu-e ag-unst her importunity, while Amytas on his seaweed bed weeps tears of pure pity for crave-mouth Ceesar of great possessions. Presently another of spring's lovers cried across the water "Cuckoo, cuckoo," and the voice of the stream sang joyously in unison. It is free from burden, this merry little river, and neither weir nor mill bars its quick way to the sea as it completes the eternal circle, lavishing gifts of coolness and refreshment on the children of the meadows. It has its birth on the great lone moor, cradled 75 -X ii' ,<■ t *i»f^ i>M I It: ii; III ::t Tilt Mo^iWa from the upper rearhen paM down th« river in sober steady flight seeking the open soa. I nhall miss the swoop and circle of silver wings in the sunhght and the plaintive caU wliicL sounds so strangely away from rock and shore, but it is good to know that they have gone from mudbank and murky town back to the free airs of their inheritance, to the shadow of siin-swepfc cliffs and the curling crest of tlie wind- beaten waves, to brood again over the great ocean of n world's tears. My little tree is gemmed with buds, shy, immature, but full of promise. The sparrows busied with nest- building in the neighbouring pipes and gutters use it for a vantage ground, and crowd there in numbers, each Uttle beak sealed with long golden straw or downy feiither. 'Jhe river is heavy with hay barges, the last fruits of winter's storehouse; the lengthening days slowly and steadily oust the dark ; the air is loud with a growing clamour of life : spring is not only proclaimed, but on this Feast she is crowned, and despite tl p 78 OUT OF THE SHADOW warring wiad tlie dayx bring i.ieir mco!>vly, abaiidtning our belief in sudden and violent transitions for a surer and fuller 79 I a* ^iA-« -#• THE ROADMENDER Acceptance of the doctrine of evolution; but most oi us still draw a sharp line of demarcation between this wwld and the next, and expect a radical change /:y'm ourselves and our surroundings, a break in the chaLa- of continuity entirely contrary to the teaching of nature and experience. In the same way we ding to the specious untruth tliat we can begin over and over again in tliis world, forgetting that while our sorrow and repentance bring sacramental gifts of grace and strength, God Himself cannot, by His own Umitation, rewrite the Past. We are in our sorrow that which we have made ourselves in our sin ; our temptations are there as well as the way of escape. We are in the image of God. We create our world, our undying ^ selves, our heaven, or our hell. " Qui crravit te tine te nou salvahit te sine te" It is stupendous, magnificent, and most appalling. A man does not change as he ,y;^crosses the threshold of the larger room. His per- ^sonality remains the same, although the expression of it may be altered. Here we have material bodies in a material world — there, perhaps, ether bodies in c an ether world. There is no indecency in reason- able speculation and curiosity about the life to come. One end of the thread is between our fingers, but we are haunted for the most part by the snap of Atropos' shertrs. 80 Jl , OUT OF THE SHADOW Socrateo faced death with the magnificent calnf bred of dignified familiarity. He had built for himself a desired heaven of colour, light, and precious stones —the philosophic formula of those who set the spiritual - ubove the material, and worship truth in the beauty of holiness. He is not troubled by doubts or regrets, for the path of the just Ues plain before his face. He forbids mourning and lamentations as out of place, obeys minutely and cheerily the directions of liis executioner, and passes with unaffected dignity to the apprehension of that larger truth for which he bad constantly prepared himself. His friends may bury him provided they will remember they are not burying Socrates ; and that all things may be done decently and in order, a cock must go to iEsculapius. Long before, in the days of the Captivity, there lived in godless, blood-shedding Nineveh an exiled Jew whose father had fallen from the faith. He was a simple man, child-like and direct ; Uving the careful, kindly life of an orthodox Jew, suffering many persecutions for conscience' sake, and in constant danger of dcatli. He narrates the story of his life and of the blindness which fell on him, with gentJe placidity, and checks the exuberance of his more emotional wife with the assurance of untrouble*! faith. Finally, when his pious expectations are fulfilled, his sight restored, and F 8i i^ i iM {a««* THE ROADMENDER his son prosperously established beside him, he breaks into a prayer of rejoicing wliich reveals the secret of his confident content He made use of two great faculties : the sense of proportion, which enabled him to apprise life and its accidents justly, and the gift of inseeing, which led Socrates after him, and Blessed John in lonely exile on Patmos, to look through tlie things temporal to the hidden meanings of eternity. " Let my soul bless God the great King," he cries ; and looks away past the present distress; past tiie Restoration which was to end in fresh scattering and confusion ; past the dream of gold, and porphyry, and marble defaced by the eagles and emblems of the conqueror; until his eyes are held by the Jerusalem of God, "built up with sapphires, and emeralds, and precious stones," with battlements of pure gold, and the cry of • Alleluia ' in her streets. Many years later, when he was very aged, he called Ids son to him and gave him as heritage his own simple rule of life, adding but one request : " Keep thou the law and the commandments, and shew thyself merciful and just, that it may go well with thee. . . . Consider what alms doeth, and how righteousness doth deliver. . . . And bury me decently, and thy mother with me." Having so said, he went his way quietly and contentedly to the Jerusalem of his heart. 82 ill H '• if OUT OF THE SHADOW It is the simple note of familiarity that is wanting in us ; that by which we link world with world. Once, years ago, I sat by the bedside of a dying man in a wretched garret in the East End. He was entirely ignorant, entirely quiescent, and entirely uninterested. The minister of a neighbouring chapel came to see him and spoke to him at some length of the need for repentance and the joys of heaven. After he had gone my friend lay staring restlessly at the mass of decrepit broken chimney pots which made his horizon. At last he spoke, and there was a new note in his voice : — *' Ee said as *ow there were golding streett^ in them parts. I ain't no ways particler wot they're made of, ■ but it'll feel natral like if there's chimleys too." The sun stretched a sudden finger and painted the chimney pots red and gold against the smoke-dimmed sky, and with his face aUght with surprised relief my friend died. We are one with the earth, one in sin, one in redemp- tion. It is the fringe of the garment of God. "If I may but touch the hem," said a certain woman. On the great Death-day vuich shadows the early spring with a shadow of wnich it may be said Umbra Dei at Lux, the earth brought gifts of grief, the fruit of the curse, barren thorns, hollow reed, and the wood of the cross : the sea made offering of Tyrian purple ; i li; ^ Ji THE ROADMENDEll the sky veiled her face in great darkness, while the nation of priests crucified for the last time their Paschal lamb. " I will hear, saith the Lord ; I will hear the heavens, and they shall hear the earth, and the eai-th shall hear the com and wine and oil, and they shall hear Jezreel, and I will sow her imto me in the earth ; and I will have mercy upon her that had not obtained mercy, and I will say unto them which were not my people, * Thou art my people,' nn<] they shall say ' Tliou art my God.' " The second Adam stood in the garden with quickening feet, and all the earth pulsed and sang for joy of the new hope and tlie new life quickening witliin her, to be hers through the pains of travail, the pangs of dissolution. The Tree of Life bears Bread and Wine — food of the wayfaring man. Tlie day of divisions is past, the day of unity has dawned. One has risen from the dead, and in the Valley of Achor stands wide the Door of Hope — the Sacrament of Death. Scio Domine, ct vere scio . . . quia non sum dignus accf-dtTe ■d tantom mjsterium propter iiiniis percaU mea et infinitas nrglipcntiac meas. Sed scio . . . quia tu potcs me fucere dignum. it; I i! in VI " Anytus and Meletus can kill me, but they cannot hurt me," said Socrates ; and Governor Sancho, with all the itdi of newly-acquired authority, could not make the young weaver of steel-heads for lances sleep in prison. In the Vision of Er the souls passed straight forward under the throne of necessity, and out into the plains of forgetfulness, where thay must severally drink of the river of unmindfulness whose waters cannot be held in any vessel. The throne, the plain, and the river are still here, but in the distance rise the great lone heavenward hills, and the wise among us no longer ask of the gods Lethe, but rather remembrance. Necessity can set me helpless on my back, but she cannot keep me there ; nor can four walls Umit my vision. I pass out from under her throne into the garden of God a free man, to my ultimate beatitude or my exceed- ing shame. All day long this world lies open to me ; ay, and other worlds also, if I will but have it so ; and when night comes I pass into the kingdom and power of the dark. I lie through the long hours and watch my bridge, 85 :' jl !ii ■'r liil m I' ^ J ».it^ i In K! ' J THE ROADMENDER (arthest field I can ■«• the great horties moving in •low steady pace ai the farmer tunw his furrow. The birds are noisy comrades and old friends, from the lark which chants the dew-steeped morning, to the nightingale that breaks the silence of the most wonderful nights. I hear the wisdom of the rooks in the great elms ; the Ufting hit of the linnet, and the robin's quaint little suirimer song. The starlings chatter ceaselessly, their queer strident voices harsh against the melooious gossip of the other birds ; the martins shrill softly as they swoop to and fro busied with their nesting under the eaves ; thrush and black- bird vie in friendly rivalry Uke the Meister-singer of old ; sometimes I hear the drawling cry of a peacock rtrayed from the great house, or the laugh of the wood- pecker; and at night the hunting note of the owl reaches me as he sweeps by in search of prey. To-day I am out again; and the great sycanore showers honey and flowers on me as I lie beneath it. Sometimes a bee falls like an over-ripe fruit, and waits awhile to clean his pollen-coated legs ere he flies home to discharge his burden. He is too busy to be friendly, but his great velvety cousin is much more r,oci»vhIe and stays for a gerille rub between his nuisy shimmering wngs, and a nap in the hollow of my hand, for he is an idle friendly soul with plenty of time at his own disposal /.T THE WHITE GATE And no reffponsibilitiea. Looking acroNs I can watch Uie martins at woik; they have a starling and a sparrow for near neighbours in the wooden gutter. One nest is already complete *. but the coping, the other two arr a-building : I wonder whether I or they mU be first to go south through the mist. This great tree is a world ia itself, and the denizenx appear full of curiosity as to the Gulliver who has taken up his abode beneath it Pa'e green ratcrpillars and spiders of ail sizes come spinning down to visit rae, and have to be persuaded with infinite difficulty to ascend their threads again. There are flies with beautiful iridescent wings, beetles of ail slmpes, some of them like tiny jewels in the sunlight. Tlieir nomen- clature is a sealed book to me ; of their life and habits I know nothing; yet this is but a little corner of the cosmos I am leaving, and I feel net so much desire for th beauty to come, as a great lyn/^ing to open my eyes a little wider during the time wliich remains to me in this beautiful world of God's making, where each moment tells its own tale of active, progressive life in which there is no undoing. Nature knows naught of the web of Penelope, that acme of anxious pathetic waiting, but goes steadily on in ever widening circle towards the fulfilment of the mystery of God. There are, I take it, two master-keys to the secrets .1 1 THE ROADMENDER u2 the universe, ^viewed tub tpecit egtemilatu,^ the / loMmetion of God, and th^ Personality of Man ; with t hy it ia true for ua as for the pantheistic little man of contemptible speech, that " all things are ours," yea, even unto the third heaven. I have lost my voracious appetite for bookii ; their language is less plain than scent and song and the wir.d in the trees ; and for me the clue to the next wond lies in the wisdom of earth ratlier thun in the learning of men. r Libera me ab fuscina Hophni." prayed the good Bishop fearful of religious greed. I know too much, not too little ; it is realisation that I lack) wherefore I desire these last days to confirm in myself the sustaining goodness of God, the love which is our continwn5( city, the New Jerusalem whose length, breadth, and height are all one. It is a time of ex- ceeding peace. There is a place waiting for me under the firs in tlie quiet churchyard ; thanks to my poverty I have no worldly anxieties or peror".' dispositfnns ; and I am rich in friends, many of them unknown to me, who lavishly supply my needs and make it ideal to live on the charity of one's fellow-men. I am most gladly in debt to all the world ; and to Earth, my mother, for her great beauty. (l can never remember the time when I did not love her, this mother of mine with her wonderful garmentji 104 AT THE WHITE GATE «nd ordered loveliness, hrr tender care and patient bearing of man's burden. In the earlieot days of mj lonely childhood I used to lie chin on hand amid the **iilkmaid8, red sorrel, and heavy spear-grass listening tu her many voices, and above all to the voice of the little brook which ran tlirough the meadows where I used to play : I think it has run through my whole life also, to lose itself at last, not in the great sea but in the river that maketh glad the City of God. Valley and plain, mountain and fruitful field ; the lark's song and the speedwell in the grass ; surely a man need not sigh for greater loveliness until he has read something more of this living letter, and knelt before tliat earth of wliich la. is the only confusion. ) It is a grave matter that the word religion holds such sway among us, making the very gap seem to yawn again wliich the Incarnation once and for ever filled full. We have banished the protecting gods that ruled in river and mountain, tree and grove ; we i'>avc goinsayed for the mobt port folk-lore and myth, lupcfi^tition and fairy-tale, evil only in tlieir abuse. We have done ftway with K;y.stery, or named it deceit. All this we liave done in an enlightened age, 'but dcipite this policy of destruction we have left ourselves a belief, the grandest and most simple the world has ever known, which sanctifies the water tliat is shed by every passing E^M THE ROADMENDER M cloud ; and gathers up in its great central act vine- yard and cornfield, proclaiming them to be that Life of the world without which a man is dead while he bveth. Further, it is a belief whose foundations are the most heavenly mystery of the Trinity, but whose centre is a little Child : it sets a price upon the head o* the sparrow, and reckons the riches of this world at their true value ; it points to a way of holiness where the fool shall not err, and the sage may find the realisation of his far-seeking ; and yet, despite its inclusiveness, it is a belief which cannot save the birds // from destniction, the silent mountains from advertise- ment, or the stream from pollution, in an avowedly Christian land, '"John Ruskin scolded and fought and did yeoman service, somewhat hindered by his over-good conceit of himself ; but it is not the worship of beauty we need so much as the beauty of holiness. Little by little the barrier grows and ' religion ' becomes a rule of life, not life itself, although the Bride stands tsady to interpret, likened in her loveliness to the chief treasures of her handmaid — Earth. There is more truth in the believing cry, " Come from thy white cliffs, Pan ! " than in the religion that measures a man's life by the letter of the Ten Command- ments, and erects itself as judge and ruler over liim, instead of throwing open the gate of the garden io6 AT THE WHITE GATE where God walks with man from morning until morning. As I write the r'ln 5- setting ; in the pale radiance of tho ' ■ y ".bove hi > gl jiy there dawns the evening star ; and eartJ 'ike a tired child turns her face to the boscm of the nigiiL 107 m !M#ll Once again I have paid a rare visit to my tree to find many tilings changed since my last sojourn there. Hie bees are sUent, for the honey-laden flowers of the sycamore are gone and in their place hang dainty two-fold keys. The poplar has lost its metallic shimmer, the chestnut its tall white candles; and the sound of the wind in the fully-leaved branches is like the sighing of the sea. The martins' nests are finished, and one is occupied by a shriU-voiced brood ; but for the most part the birds' parental cares are over, and the nestlings in bold flight no longer flutter on inefficient wings across the lawn with clamorous, open bill. The robins show promi e of their ruddy vests, the slim young thrush is diUgently practising maturer notes, and soon Maid June will have fled. It is such a wonderful world that I cannot find it in ray heart to sigh for fresh beauty amid tliese glories of the Lord on which I look, seeing men as trees walk- ing, in my material impotence which awaits the final anointing. The marigolds with their orange suns, the lilies' white flame, the corncockle's blue crown zo8 AT THE WHITE GATE of many flowers, the honeysuckle's horn of fragrance— I can paraphrase them, name, class, dissect them; and then, save for the purposes of human intercourse, I stand where I stood before, my world bounded by my capacity, the secret of colour and fragrance still kept. It is difficult to believe that the second lesson will not be the sequence of the first, and death prove a " feast of opening eyes " to all these wonders, instea.l of the heavy-lidded slumber to which we so often liken it. " Earth to earth ? " Yes, " dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return," but what of the rest ? What of the folded grave clothes, and the Forty Days ? If the next state be, as it well might, space of four dimensions, and the first veil which will lift for me be the material one, then the "other" world which is hidden from our grosser material organism will lie open, and declare still further to my widening eves and •- -topped ears the glory and purpose of the mani- fo' lent of God. Knowledge will give place to I. I landing in that second chamber of the House of Wisdom and Love. Revelation is always measured ^ by capacity : " Open thy mouth wide," and it shall be filled with a satisfaction that in itself is desire. There is a child here, a happy quiet little creature holding gently to its two months of life. Sometimes they lay it beside me, I tlie more helpless of the two— 109 Ill *'«l»«l THE ROADMENDER perhaps the more ignorant— and equally dependent for the supply of my smallest need. I feel indecently large as I survey its minute perfections and the tiny balled fist lying in my great palm. The little creature fixes me with the wise wide stare of a soul in advance of its medium of expression ; and I, gazing back at the mystery in those eyes, feel the thrill of contact between my worn and sin-stained self and the innocence of a httle white child, (it is wonderful to watch a woman's rapturous familiarity with these newcomers. A man's love has far more awe in it, and the passionate animal instinct of defence is wanting in him. "A woman shall be saved through tlie child-bearing," said St Paul ; not necessarily her own, but by participa- tion in the great act of motherhood which is the crown and glorj- of her sex. She is the " prisoner of love," caught in a net of her own weaving ; held fast by httle hands which rule by impotence, pursued by feet the swifter for their faltering. It seems incredible that this is what a woman will barter for the right to "live her own life "— \\ ' 1 \*m 6 * AT THE WHITE GATE taperfl — sun, moon, and stars — gifts oi the Lord that His sanctuary may stand ever served. It lies here ready to our hand, this life of adoration which we needs must live hand in hand with earth, for has she not borne the curse with us ? But beyond the white gate and the trail of woodbine falls the silence greater than speech, darkness greater than light, a pause of "a little while"; and then the touch of that healing garment as we pass to the Iving in His beauty, in a land from which there is no return. At the gateway then I cry you farewell. T2I