UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES
 
 THE ROADMENDER
 
 
 
 
 Rolling stretches of cloud-shadowed down 
 
 Frontispiece}
 
 v^K 
 
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 BY MICHAEL FAIRLESS 
 
 ILLUSTRATED WITH TWENTY 
 PHOTOGRAPHS BY WILL F. TAYLOR 
 
 NEW YORK 
 E. P. BUTTON & CO. 
 
 1922
 
 Printed in Creat Rritai* 
 ly Turnbull if Shears, Edinburgh
 
 . 
 
 H 
 
 A. M. D. G. 
 
 TO 
 MY MOTHER 
 
 AND TO EARTH, MY MOTHER 
 WHOM I LOVE 
 
 284125
 
 FOREWORD TO THIS EDITION 
 
 THE country amid which Margaret Fairless Barber 
 ("Michael Fairless") wrote "The Roadmender " is 
 that central part of Sussex drained by the river Adur, 
 perhaps the least known of the three main rivers, 
 Ouse, Adur and Arun, which breach the South 
 Downs. From Chanctonbury Ring to Ditchling 
 Beacon the Downs belong to the Adur, and this is 
 the country of the Roadmender. Here, from under 
 the " stunted hawthorn," the eye looks down on the 
 one side to the " little church " on the Weald, and 
 on the other to the more distant "to and fro of the 
 sea." Over all this Wealden valley the " long grey 
 downs " keep watch, and on the inland side a 
 constant companion of the roads is the spire of 
 " the monastery where the Bedesmen of St Hugh 
 watch and pray." 
 
 Michael Fairless wrote Parts I and II of " The 
 Roadmender " in a farmhouse at Mock Bridge on 
 the Adur near Henfield, and here in her last days 
 she lay writing " The White Gate," looking out over 
 the " pasture bright with buttercups where the cattle 
 feed." Here she died, and she was carried to the grave 
 " under the firs in the quiet churchyard " at Ashhurst, 
 two miles away across the river.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 FAOB 
 
 THE ROADMENDEB .... 1 
 
 OUT OF THE SHADOW .... 47 
 AT THE WHITE GATE .... 91 
 
 IX
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 ROLLING STRETCHES OF CLOUD-SHADOWED 
 
 DOWN ..... Frontispiece 
 
 TO FACB PARK 
 
 THE WHITE WINDING ROAD .... 2 
 
 THE SOLITARY COTTAGE .... 6 
 
 THE LITTLE CHURCH AT THE FOOT OF THE GREY- 
 
 GREEN DOWN ..... 8 
 
 MY NICHE UNDER THE STUNTED HAWTHORN . 10 
 
 SHEPHERDING HIS WHITE SHEEP . . 12 
 
 A LITTLE LONELY COTTAGE WHOSE WINDOWS 
 PEERED AND BLINKED UNDER OVERHANGING 
 BROWS OF THATCH . . . .26 
 
 THE REEDED WATERS OF THE SEQUESTERED POOL 32 
 
 THE MONASTERY WHERE THE BEDESMEN OF Si 
 
 HUGH WATCH AND PRAY . .34 
 
 THE SUN STRETCHED THE LONG SHADOWS IN 
 
 SLANTING BARS ACROSS THE WHITE HIGHWAY 38 
 
 THE GREAT WHEEL WAS AT REST ... 40 
 
 xi
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 TO FACK PAOK 
 
 THE CRISP RIME OF WINTER'S BREATH . . 48 
 
 THE ALONENESS OF A GREAT FOREST . . 50 
 
 THE FIELD- GATE THAT LEADS TO THE LOWER 
 
 MEADOWS ...... 72 
 
 A HOST OF JOYOUS YELLOW TRUMPETERS . . 74 
 
 IN THE DISTANCE RISE THE GREAT LONE HEAVEN- 
 WARD HILLS ..... 84 
 
 THE LINE OF THE UNTROUBLED HILLS STRONG AND 
 
 STILL IN THE BROAD SUNSHINE . 94 
 
 BUTTERCUPS, WHERE THE CATTLE FEED . 100 
 
 THE GREAT HORSES MOVING IN SLOW STEADY PACE 
 
 AS THE FARMER TURNS HIS FURROW . . 102 
 
 THERE is A PLACE WAITING FOR ME UNDER THE 
 
 FIRS IN THE QUIET CHURCHYARD . . 104
 
 THE ROADMENDER
 
 HBBHB 
 
 The white winding road
 
 I HAVE attained my ideal : I am a roadmender, some 
 say stonebreaker. Both titles are correct, but the one 
 is more pregnant than the other. All day I sit by the 
 roadside on a stretch of grass under a high hedge of 
 saplings and a tangle of traveller's joy, woodbine, 
 sweetbriar, and late roses. Opposite me is a white 
 gate, seldom used, if one may judge from the trail of 
 honeysuckle growing tranquilly along it : I know now 
 that whenever and wherever I die my soul will pass 
 out through this white gate ; and then, thank God, I 
 shall not have need to undo that trail. 
 
 In our youth we discussed our ideals freely : I 
 wonder how many beside myself have attained, or 
 would understand my attaining. After all, what do 
 we ask of life, here or indeed hereafter, but leave to 
 serve, to h've, to commune with our fellow-men and 
 with ourselves ; and from the lap of earth to look 
 up into the face of God ? All these gifts are mine 
 as I sit by the winding white road and serve the foot- 
 steps of my fellows. There is no room in my life for 
 avarice or anxiety ; I who serve at the altar live of the 
 
 3
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 altar : I lack nothing but have nothing over ; and 
 when the winter of life comes I shall join the company 
 of weary old men who sit on the sunny side of the 
 workhouse wall and wait for the tender mercies of 
 God. 
 
 Just now it is the summer of things ; there is life 
 and music everywhere in the stones themselves, and 
 I live to-day beating out the rhythmical hammer-song 
 of The Ring. There is real physical joy in the rise 
 and swing of the arm, in the jar of a fair stroke, the 
 split and scatter of the quartz : I am learning to be 
 ambidextrous, for why should Esau sell his birthright 
 when there is enough for both ? Then the rest-hour 
 comes, bringing the luxurious ache of tired but not 
 weary limbs ; and I lie outstretched and renew my 
 strength, sometimes with my face deep-nestled in the 
 cool green grass, sometimes on my back looking up into 
 the blue sky which no wise man would wish to fathom. 
 
 The birds have no fear of me ; am I not also of the 
 brown brethren in my sober fustian livery ? They 
 share my meals at least the little dun-coated 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 first mocked him with sound 
 of rain. The robin that lives 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, with 
 a humorous twinkle of his round eye which means 
 44 What ! shirking, big brother ? " and I fall, ashamed, 
 to my mending of roads. 
 
 The other day, as I lay with my face in the grass, 
 I heard a gentle rustle, and raised my head to find 
 a hedge-snake watching me fearless, unwinking. I 
 stretched out my hand, picked it up unresisting, and 
 put it in my coat like the husbandman of old. Was 
 he so ill-rewarded, I wonder, with the kiss that reveals 
 secrets ? My snake slept in peace while I hammered 
 away with an odd quickening of heart as I thought 
 how to me, as to Melampus, had come the messenger 
 had come, but to ears deafened by centuries of 
 misrule, blindness, and oppression ; so that, with all 
 my longing, I am shut out of the wondrous world 
 where walked Melampus and the Saint. To me there 
 is no suggestion of evil in the little silent creatures, 
 harmless, or deadly only with the Death which is 
 Life. The beasts who turn upon us, as a rule maul 
 and tear unreflectingly ; with the snake there is the 
 swift, silent strike, the tiny, tiny wound, then sleep 
 and a forgetting. 
 
 5
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 My brown friend, with its message unspoken, slid 
 away into the grass at sundown to tell its tale in un- 
 stopped ears ; and I, my task done, went home across 
 the fields to the solitary cottage where I lodge. It 
 is old and decrepit two rooms, with a quasi-attic 
 over them reached by a ladder from the kitchen and 
 reached only by me. It is furnished with the luxuries 
 of life, a truckle bed, table, chair, and huge earthen- 
 ware pan which I fill from the ice-cold well at the back 
 of the cottage. Morning and night I serve with the 
 Gibeonites, their curse my blessing, as no doubt it 
 was theirs when their hearts were purged by service. 
 Morning and night I send down the moss-grown bucket 
 with its urgent message from a dry and dusty world ; 
 the chain tightens through my hand as the liquid 
 treasure responds to the messenger, and then with 
 creak and jangle the welcome of labouring earth 
 the bucket slowly nears the top and disperses the 
 treasure in the waiting vessels. The Gibeonites were 
 servants in the house of God, ministers of the sacrament 
 of service even as the High Priest himself ; and I, 
 sharing their high office of servitude, thank God that 
 the ground was accursed for my sake, for surely that 
 curse was the womb of all unborn blessing. 
 
 The old widow with whom I lodge has been deaf 
 for the last twenty years. She speaks in the strained 
 6
 
 The solitary cottage
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 high voice which protests against her own infirmity, and 
 her eyes have the pathetic look of those who search in 
 silence. For many years she lived alone with her son, 
 who laboured on the farm two miles away. He met 
 his death rescuing a cart-horse from its burning stable ; 
 and the farmer gave the cottage rent free and a weekly 
 half-crown for life to the poor old woman whose dearest 
 terror was the workhouse. With my shilling a week 
 rent, and sharing of supplies, we live in the lines of 
 comfort. Of death she has no fears, for in the long 
 chest in the kitchen lie a web of coarse white linen, 
 two pennies covered with the same to keep down tired 
 eyelids, decent white stockings, and a white cotton 
 sun-bonnet a decorous death-suit truly and enough 
 money in the little bag for self-respecting burial. The 
 farmer buried his servant handsomely good man, he 
 knew the love of reticent grief for a 4 kind ' burial 
 and one day Harry's mother is to lie beside him in the 
 little churchyard which has been a cornfield, and may 
 some day be one again.
 
 II 
 
 ON Sundays my feet take ever the same way. First 
 my temple service, and then five miles tramp over the 
 tender, dewy fields, with their ineffable earthly smell, 
 until I reach the little church at the foot of the grey- 
 green down. Here, every Sunday, a young priest from 
 a neighbouring village says Mass for the tiny hamlet, 
 where all are very old or very young for the heyday 
 of life has no part under the long shadow of the hills, 
 but is away at sea or in service. There is a beautiful 
 seemliness in the extreme youth of the priest who 
 serves these aged children of God. He bends to com- 
 municate them with the reverent tenderness of a son, 
 and reads with the careful intonation of far-seeing 
 love. To the old people he is the son of their old age, 
 God-sent to guide their tottering footsteps along the 
 highway of foolish wayfarers ; and he, with his youth 
 and strength, wishes no better task. Service ended, 
 we greet each other friendly for men should not be 
 strange in the acre of God ; and I pass through the little 
 hamlet and out and up on the grey down beyond. 
 Here, at the last gate, I pause for breakfast ; and then 
 8
 
 The little church at the foot of the grey-green down 
 
 [8
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 up and on with quickening pulse, and evergreen memory 
 of the weary war-worn Greeks who broke rank to 
 greet the great blue Mother-way that led to home. I 
 stand on the summit hatless, the wind in my hair, 
 the smack of salt on my cheek, all round me rolling 
 stretches of cloud-shadowed down, no sound but the 
 shrill mourn of the peewit and the gathering of the 
 sea. 
 
 The hours pass, the shadows lengthen, the sheep- 
 bells clang ; and I lie in my niche under the stunted 
 hawthorn watching the to and fro of the sea, and JSolus 
 shepherding his white sheep across the blue. I love 
 the sea with its impenetrable fathoms, its wash and 
 undertow, and rasp of shingle sucked anew. I love 
 it for its secret dead in the Caverns of Peace, of which 
 account must be given when the books are opened and 
 earth and heaven have fled away. Yet in my love 
 there is a paradox, for as I watch the restless, in- 
 effective waves I think of the measureless, reflective 
 depths of the still and silent Sea of Glass, of the dead, 
 small and great, rich or poor, with the works which 
 follow them, and of the Voice as the voice of many 
 waters, when the multitude of one mind rends heaven 
 with alleluia : and I lie so still that I almost feel the 
 kiss of White Peace on my mouth. Later still, when 
 the flare of the sinking sun has died away and the 
 
 9
 
 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 well, 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 craftily piled sacks lies 
 the white-clad waggoner, a pink in his mouth which 
 he mumbles meditatively, and the reins looped over 
 the inactive whip why should he drive a willing team 
 that knows the journey and responds as strenuously 
 to a cheery chirrup as to the well-directed lash ? We 
 greet and pass the time of day, and as he mounts the 
 rise he calls back a warning of coming rain. I am 
 already white with dust as he with flour, sacramental 
 dust, the outward and visible sign of the stir and beat 
 of the heart of labouring life. 
 
 Next to pass down the road is an anxious ruffled 
 hen, her speckled breast astir with maternal troubles. 
 10
 
 1 
 
 My niche under the stunted hawthorn 
 
 [10
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 She walks delicately, lifting her feet high and glancing 
 furtively from side to side with comb low dressed. 
 The sight of man, the heartless egg-collector, from whose 
 haunts she has fled, wrings from her a startled cluck, 
 and she makes for the white gate, climbs through, 
 and disappears. I know her feelings too well to intrude. 
 Many times already has she hidden herself, amassed 
 four or five precious treasures, brooding over them 
 with anxious hope ; and then, after a brief desertion 
 to seek the necessary food, she has returned to find 
 her efforts at concealment vain, her treasures gone. 
 At last, with the courage of despair she has resolved 
 to brave the terrors of the unknown and seek a haunt 
 beyond the tyranny of man. I will watch over her 
 from afar, and when her mother-hope is fulfilled I will 
 marshal her and her brood back to the farm where 
 she belongs ; for what end I care not to think, it is of 
 the mystery which lies at the heart of things ; and we 
 are all God's beasts, says St Augustine. 
 
 Here is my stone-song, a paraphrase of the Treasure 
 Motif. 
 
 What 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 his 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 ; the San Graal 
 the tremulous yearning of servitude for richer, deeper 
 bondage. The yellow, thirsty flames lick up the willing 
 sacrifice, the water wails the secret of the river and 
 the sea ; the birds and beasts, the shepherd with his 
 pipe, the underground life in rocks and caverns, all 
 cry their message to this nineteenth- century toiling, 
 labouring world and to me as I mend my road. 
 
 Two tramps come and fling themselves by me as I 
 eat my noonday meal. The one, red-eyed, furtive, 
 lies on his side with restless, clutching hands that tear 
 and twist and torture the living grass, while his lips 
 mutter incoherently. The other sits stooped, bare- 
 footed, legs wide apart, his face grey, almost as grey 
 as his stubbly beard ; and it is not long since Death 
 looked him in the eyes. He tells me querulously of a 
 two hundred miles tramp since early spring, of search 
 for work, casual jobs with more kicks than halfpence, 
 and a brief but blissful sojourn in a hospital bed, from 
 which he was dismissed with sentence passed upon 
 him. For himself, he is determined to die on the road 
 12
 
 
 -<Eolus shepherding his white sheep 
 
 [12
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 under a hedge, where a man can see and breathe. His 
 anxiety is all for his fellow ; he has said he will " do 
 for a man " ; he wants to " swing," to get out of his 
 " dog's life." I watch him as he lies, this Ishmael 
 and would-be Lamech. Ignorance, hunger, terror, the 
 exhaustion of past generations, have done their work. 
 The man is mad, and would kill his fellow-man. 
 
 Presently we part, and the two go, dogged and foot- 
 sore, down the road which is to lead them into the 
 great silence.
 
 Ill 
 
 YESTEEDAY 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. Ecce ancilla Domini. 
 
 My next visitor was a fellow-worker on his way to 
 a job at the cross-roads. He stood gazing meditatively 
 at my heap of stones. 
 
 " 'Ow long 'ave yer bin at this job that y'ere in such 
 a hurry ? " 
 
 I stayed my hammer to answer " Four months." 
 
 " Seen better days ? " 
 
 " Never," I said emphatically, and punctuated the 
 remark with a stone split neatly in four. 
 
 The man surveyed me in silence for a moment ; 
 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 'ave 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 
 stones for a bit o' bread and a pipe o' baccy once a 
 week it ain't good enough." He pulled a blackened 
 clay from his pocket and began slowly filling it with 
 rank tobacco ; then he lit it carefully behind his 
 battered hat, put the spent match back in his pocket, 
 rose to his feet, hitched his braces, and, with a silent 
 nod to me, went on to his job. 
 
 Why do we give these tired children, whose minds 
 move slowly, whose eyes are holden that they cannot 
 read the Book, whose hearts are full of sore resentment 
 against they know not what, such work as this to do 
 hammering their hearts out for a bit of bread ? All 
 the pathos of unreasoning labour rings in these few 
 words. We fit the collar on unwilling necks ; and 
 when their service is over we bid them go out free ; 
 but we break the good Mosaic law and send them away 
 empty. What wonder there is so little willing service, 
 so few ears ready to be thrust through against the 
 master's door. 
 
 15
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 The swift stride of civilisation is leaving behind 
 individual effort, and turning man into the Daemon 
 of a machine. To and fro in front of the long loom, 
 lifting a lever at either end, paces he who once with 
 painstaking intelligence drove the shuttle. Then he 
 tasted the joy of completed work, that which his eye 
 had looked upon, and his hands had handled; now 
 his work is as little finished as the web of Penelope. 
 Once the reaper grasped the golden corn stems, and 
 with dexterous sweep of sickle set free the treasure of 
 the earth. Once the creatures of the field were known 
 to him, and his eye caught the flare of scarlet and blue 
 as the frail poppies and sturdy corn-cockles laid down 
 their beauty at his feet ; now he sits serene on Jugger- 
 naut's car, its guiding Daemon, and the field is silent 
 to him. 
 
 As with the web and the grain so with the wood and 
 stone in the treasure-house of our needs. The ground 
 was accursed for our sake that in the sweat of our brow 
 we might eat bread. Now the many live in the brain- 
 sweat of the few ; and it must be so, for as little as 
 great King Cnut could stay the sea until it had reached 
 the appointed place, so little can we raise a barrier to 
 the wave of progress, and say, " Thus far and no further 
 shalt thou come." 
 
 What then ? This at least ; if we live in an age of 
 16
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 mechanism let us see to it that we are a race of intelligent 
 mechanics ; and if man is to be the Daemon of a machine 
 let him know the setting of the knives, the rise of the 
 piston, the part that each wheel and rod plays in the 
 economy of the whole, the part that he himself plays, 
 co-operating with it. Then, when he has lived and 
 served intelligently, let us give him of our flocks and 
 of our floor that he may learn to rest in the lengthening 
 shadows until he is called to his work above. 
 
 So I sat, hammering out my thoughts, and with them 
 the conviction that stonebreaking should be allotted to 
 minor poets or vagrant children of nature like myself, 
 never to such tired folk as my poor mate at the cross- 
 roads and his fellows. 
 
 At noon, when I stopped for my meal, the sun was 
 baking the hard white road in a pitiless glare. Several 
 waggons and carts passed, the horses sweating and 
 straining, with drooping, fly-tormented ears. The men 
 for the most part nodded slumberously on the shaft, 
 seeking the little shelter the cart afforded ; but one 
 shuffled in the white dust, with an occasional chirrup 
 and friendly pressure on the tired horse's neck. 
 
 Then an old woman and a small child appeared in 
 
 sight, both with enormous sun-bonnets and carrying 
 
 baskets. As they came up with me the woman stopped 
 
 and swept her face with her hand, while the child, 
 
 B 17
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 depositing the basket in the dust with great care, wiped 
 her little sticky fingers on her pinafore. Then the 
 shady hedge beckoned them and they came and sat 
 down near me. The woman looked about seventy, tall, 
 angular, dauntless, good for another ten years of hard 
 work. The little maid her only grandchild, she told 
 me was just four, her father away soldiering, and the 
 mother died in childbed, so for four years the child 
 had known no other guardian or playmate than the 
 old woman. She was not the least shy, but had the 
 strange self-possession which comes from associating 
 with one who has travelled far on life's journey. 
 
 " I couldn't leave her alone in the house," said her 
 grandmother, " and she wouldn't leave the kitten for 
 fear it should be lonesome " with a humorous, tender 
 glance at the child " but it's a long tramp in the heat 
 for the little one, and we've another mile to go." 
 
 " Will you let her bide here till you come back ? " 
 I said. " She'll be all right by me." 
 
 The old lady hesitated. 
 
 " Will 'ee stay by him, dearie ? " she said. 
 
 The small child nodded, drew from her miniature 
 pocket a piece of sweetstuff, extracted from the basket 
 a small black cat, and settled in for the afternoon. 
 Her grandmother rose, took her basket, and, with a nod 
 and " Thank 'ee kindly, mister," went off down the road. 
 18
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 I went back to my work a little depressed why had 
 I not white hair ? for a few minutes had shown me 
 that I was not old enough for the child despite my forty 
 years. She was quite happy with the little black cat, 
 which lay in the small lap blinking its yellow eyes at 
 the sun ; and presently an old man came by, lame and 
 bent, with gnarled twisted hands, leaning heavily on 
 his stick. 
 
 He greeted me in a high, piping voice, limped across 
 to the child, and sat down. 
 
 " Your little maid, mister ? " he said. 
 
 I explained. 
 
 " Ah," he said, " I've left a little darlin' like this at 
 'ome. It's 'ard on us old folks when we're one too 
 many ; but the little mouths must be filled, and my son, 
 'e said 'e didn't see they could keep me on the arf- 
 crown, with another child on the way ; so I'm tramping 
 
 to N , to the House ; but it's a 'ard pinch, leavin* 
 
 the little ones." 
 
 I looked at him a typical countryman, with white 
 hair, mild blue eyes, and a rosy, childish, unwrinkled 
 face. 
 
 " I'm eighty-four," he went on, " and terrible bad 
 with the rheumatics and my chest. Maybe it'll not be 
 long before the Lord remembers me." 
 
 The child crept close and put a sticky little hand 
 
 19
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 confidingly into the tired old palm. The two looked 
 strangely alike, for the world seems much the same to 
 those who leave it behind as to those who have but 
 taken the first step on its circular pathway. 
 
 ' 'Ook at my kitty," she said, pointing to the small 
 creature in her lap. Then, as the old man touched it 
 with trembling fingers she went on " 'Oo isn't my 
 grandad ; he's away in the sky, but I'll kiss 'oo." 
 
 I worked on, hearing at intervals the old piping voice 
 and the child-treble, much of a note ; and thinking of 
 the blessings vouchsafed to the simple old age which 
 crowns a harmless working-life spent in the fields. 
 The two under the hedge had everything in common 
 and were boundlessly content together, the sting of 
 the knowledge of good and evil past for the one, and 
 for the other still to come ; while I stood on the battle- 
 field of the world, the flesh, and the devil, though, 
 thank God, with my face to the foe. 
 
 The old man sat resting : I had promised him a lift 
 with my friend the driver of the flour-cart, and he was 
 almost due when the child's grandmother came down 
 the road. 
 
 When she saw my other visitor she stood amazed. 
 
 " What, Richard Hunton, that worked with my old 
 man years ago up at Ditton, whatever are you doin* 
 all these miles from your own place ? " 
 20
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 " Is it Eliza Jakes ? " 
 
 He looked at her dazed, doubtful. 
 
 " An' who else should it be ? Where's your memory 
 gone, Richard Hunton, and you not such a great age 
 either ? Where are you stayin' ? " 
 
 Shame overcame him ; his lips trembled, his mild 
 blue eyes filled with tears. I told the tale as I had 
 heard it, and Mrs Jakes's indignation was good to see. 
 
 " Not keep you on 'ah* a crown ! Send you to the 
 House ! May the Lord forgive them ! You wouldn't 
 eat no more than a fair-sized cat, and not long for this 
 world either, that's plain to see. No, Richard Hunton, 
 you don't go to the House while I'm above ground ; 
 it'd make my good man turn to think of it. You'll 
 come 'ome with me and the little 'un there. I've my 
 washin', and a bit put by for a rainy day, and a bed 
 to spare, and the Lord and the parson will see I don't 
 come to want." 
 
 She stopped breathless, her defensive motherhood in 
 arms. 
 
 The old man said quaveringly, in the pathetic, 
 grudging phrase of the poor, which veils their gratitude 
 while it testifies their independence, " Maybe I might 
 as well." He rose with difficulty, picked up his bundle 
 and stick, the small child replaced the kitten in its 
 basket, and thrust her hand in her new friend's.
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 " Then 'oo is grandad turn back," she said. 
 
 Mrs Jakes had been fumbling in her pocket, and 
 extracted a penny, which she pressed on me. 
 
 " It's little enough, mister," she said. 
 
 Then, as I tried to return it : " Nay, I've enough, 
 and yours is poor paid work." 
 
 I hope I shall always be able to keep that penny ; 
 and as I watched the three going down the dusty white 
 road, with the child in the middle, I thanked God for 
 the Brotherhood of the Poor.
 
 IV 
 
 YESTERDAY a funeral passed, from the workhouse at 
 
 N , a quaint sepulture without solemnities. The 
 
 rough, ungarnished coffin of stained deal lay bare and 
 unsightly on the floor of an old market-cart ; a woman 
 sat beside, steadying it with her feet. The husband 
 drove ; and the most depressed of the three was 
 the horse, a broken-kneed, flea-bitten grey. It was 
 pathetic, this bringing home in death of the old father 
 whom, while he lived, they had been too poor to house ; 
 it was at no small sacrifice that they had spared him 
 that terror of old age, a pauper's grave, and brought 
 him to lie by his wife in our quiet churchyard. They 
 felt no emotion, this husband and wife, only a dull 
 sense of filial duty done, respectability preserved ; and 
 above and through all, the bitter but necessary count- 
 ing the cost of this last bed. 
 
 It is strange how pagan many of us are in our 
 beliefs. True, the funeral libations have made way for 
 the comfortable bake-meats ; still, to the large majority 
 Death is Pluto, king of the dark Unknown whence no 
 traveller returns, rather than Azrael, brother and friend, 
 
 23
 
 lord of tliis 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 
 24
 
 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 flock, going first in 
 the post of danger to defend the creatures he had weaned 
 from their natural habits for his various uses. Now 
 that good relationship has ceased for us to exist, man 
 drives the beasts before him, means to his end, but 
 with no harmony between end and means. All day 
 long the droves of sheep pass me on their lame and 
 patient way, no longer freely and instinctively 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 which to thank God for the 
 unknown tongue. The drover and his lad in dusty 
 blue coats plod along stolidly, deaf and blind to all but 
 the way before them ; no longer wielding the crook, 
 instrument of deliverance, or at most of gentle compul- 
 sion, but armed with a heavy stick and mechanically 
 dealing blows on the short thick fleeces ; without evil 
 intent because without thought it is the ritual of the 
 trade. 
 
 25
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 Of all the poor dumb pilgrims of the road the bullocks 
 are the most terrible to see. They are not patient, 
 but go most unwillingly with lowered head and furtive 
 sideways motion, in their eyes a horror of great fear. 
 The sleek cattle, knee deep in pasture, massed at 
 the gate, and stared mild-eyed and with inquiring 
 bellow at the retreating drove ; but these passed 
 without answer on to the Unknown, and for them it 
 spelt death. 
 
 Behind a squadron of sleek, well-fed cart-horses, 
 formed in fours, with straw braid in mane and tail, 
 came the ponies, for the most part a merry company. 
 Long strings of rusty, shaggy two-year-olds, unbroken, 
 unkempt, the short Down grass still sweet on their 
 tongues ; full of fun, frolic, and wickedness, biting 
 and pulling, casting longing eyes at the hedgerows. 
 The boys appear to recognise them as kindred spirits, 
 and are curiously forbearing and patient. Soon both 
 ponies and boys vanish in a white whirl, and a long 
 line of carts, which had evidently waited for the dust 
 to subside, comes slowly up the incline. For the most 
 part they carry the pigs and fowls, carriage folk of the 
 road. The latter are hot, crowded, and dusty under 
 the open netting ; the former for the most part cheer- 
 fully reraonstrative. 
 
 I drew a breath of relief as the noise of wheels died 
 26
 
 A little lonely cottage 
 
 [26
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 away and my road sank into silence. The hedgerows 
 are no longer green but white and choked with dust, 
 a sight to move good sister Rain to welcome tears. 
 The birds seem to have fled before the noisy confusion. 
 I wonder whether my snake has seen and smiled at 
 the clumsy ruling of the lord he so little heeds ? I 
 turned aside through the gate to plunge face and hands 
 into the cool of the sheltered grass that side the hedge, 
 and then rested my eyes on the stretch of green I had 
 lacked all day. The rabbits had apparently played 
 and browsed unmindful of the stir, and were still 
 flirting their white tails along the hedgerows ; a lark 
 rose, another and another, and I went back to my 
 road. Peace still reigned, for the shadows were 
 lengthening, and there would be little more traffic 
 for the fair. I turned to my work, grateful for the 
 stillness, and saw on the white stretch of road a lone 
 old man and a pig. Surely I knew that tall figure 
 in the quaint grey smock, surely I knew the face, 
 furrowed like nature's face in springtime, and crowned 
 by a round, soft hat ? And the pig, the black pig 
 walking decorously free ? Ay, I knew them. 
 
 In the early spring I took a whole holiday and a 
 long tramp ; and towards afternoon, tired and thirsty, 
 sought water at a little lonely cottage whose windows 
 peered and blinked under overhanging brows of thatch. 
 
 27
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 I had, not the water I asked for, but milk and a bowl 
 of sweet porridge for which I paid only thanks ; and 
 stayed for a chat with my kindly hosts. They were 
 a quaint old couple of the kind rarely met with now- 
 adays. They enjoyed a little pension from the Squire 
 and a garden in which vegetables and flowers lived 
 side by side in friendliest fashion. Bees worked and 
 sang over the thyme and marjoram, blooming early 
 in a sunny nook ; and in a homely sty lived a solemn 
 black pig, a pig with a history. 
 
 It was no common utilitarian pig, but the honoured 
 guest of the old couple, and it knew it. A year before, 
 their youngest and only surviving child, then a man 
 of five-and-twenty, had brought his mother the result 
 of his savings in the shape of a fine young pig : a 
 week later he lay dead of the typhoid that scourged 
 Maidstone. Hence the pig was sacred, cared for and 
 loved by this Darby and Joan. 
 
 " Ee be mos' like a child to me and the mother, an* 
 mos' as sensible as a Christian, ee be," the old man had 
 said ; and I could hardly credit my eyes when I saw 
 the tall bent figure side by side with the black pig, 
 coming along my road on such a day. 
 
 I hailed the old man, and both turned aside ; but 
 he gazed at me without remembrance. 
 
 I spoke of the pig and its history. He nodded 
 28
 
 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 marciful. 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 
 'tis the pig must go, and I believe he'd be glad for 
 to do the missus a turn ; she were terrible good to 
 him, were the missus, and fond, too. I dursn't tell 
 her he was to go ; she'd sooner starve than lose poor 
 Dick's pig. Well, we'd best be movin' ; 'tis a fairish 
 step." 
 
 The pig followed comprehending and docile, and as 
 the quaint couple passed from sight I thought I heard 
 Brother Death stir in the shadow. He is a strong 
 angel and of great pity.
 
 THERE is always a little fire of wood on the open hearth 
 in the kitchen when I get home at night ; the old 
 lady says it is " company " for her, and sits in the 
 lonely twilight, her knotted hands lying quiet on her 
 lap, her listening eyes fixed on the burning sticks. 
 
 I wonder sometimes whether she hears music in the 
 leap and lick of the fiery tongues, music such as he 
 of Bayreuth draws from the violins till the hot energy 
 of the fire spirit is on us, embodied in sound. 
 
 Surely she hears some voice, that lonely old woman 
 on whom is set the seal of great silence ? 
 
 It is a great truth tenderly said that God builds 
 the nest for the blind bird ; and may it not be that 
 He opens closed eyes and unstops deaf ears to sights 
 and sounds from which others by these very senses 
 are debarred ? 
 
 Here the best of us see through a mist of tears men 
 as trees walking ; it is only in the land which is very 
 far off and yet very near that we shall have fulness of 
 sight and see the King in His beauty ; and I cannot 
 think that any listening ears listen in vain. 
 30
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 The coppice at our back is full of birds, for it is far 
 from the road and they nest there undisturbed year 
 after year. Through the still night I heard the 
 nightingales calling, calling, until I could bear it no 
 longer and went softly out into the luminous dark. 
 
 The little wood was manifold with sound, I heard 
 my little brothers who move by night rustling in grass 
 and tree. A hedgehog crossed my path with a dull 
 squeak, the bats shrilled high to the stars, a white 
 owl swept past me crying his hunting note, a beetle 
 boomed suddenly in my face ; and above and through 
 it all the nightingales sang and sang ! 
 
 The night wind bent the listening trees, and the stars 
 yearned earthward to hear the song of deathless love. 
 Louder and louder the wonderful notes rose and fell 
 in a passion of melody ; and then sank to rest on that 
 low thrilling call which it is said Death once heard, 
 and stayed his hand. 
 
 They will scarcely sing again this year, these night- 
 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 time with the lavish note of one who 
 bids an eternal farewell. 
 
 At last there was silence. Sitting under the big 
 beech tree, the giant of the coppice, I rested my tired 
 self in the lap of mother earth, breathed of her breath
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 and listened to her voice in the quickening silence 
 until my flesh came again as the flesh of a little child, 
 for it is true recreation to sit at the foot-stool of 
 God wrapped in a fold of His living robe, the 
 while night smoothes our tired face with her healing 
 hands. 
 
 The grey dawn awoke and stole with trailing robes 
 across earth's floor. At her footsteps the birds roused 
 from sleep and cried a greeting ; the sky flushed and 
 paled conscious of coming splendour ; and overhead 
 a file of swans passed with broad strong flight to the 
 reeded waters of the sequestered pool. 
 
 Another hour of silence while the light throbbed 
 and flamed in the east ; then the larks rose har- 
 monious from a neighbouring field, the rabbits 
 scurried with ears alert to their morning meal, the 
 day liad bc^un. 
 
 I passed through the coppice and out into the fields 
 beyond. The dew lay heavy on leaf and blade and 
 gossamer, a cool fresh wind swept clear over dale and 
 clown from the sea, and the clover field rippled like a 
 silvery lake in the breeze. 
 
 There is something inexpressibly beautiful in the 
 unused day, something beautiful in the fact that it 
 is still untouched, unsoiled ; and town and country 
 share alike in this loveliness. At half-past three on
 
 The reeded waters of the sequestered pool 
 
 (32
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 a June morning even London has not assumed her 
 responsibilities, but smiles and glows lighthearted and 
 smokeless under the caresses of the morning sun. 
 
 Five o'clock. The bell rings out crisp and clear 
 from the monastery where the Bedesmen of St Hugh 
 watch and pray for the souls on this labouring forgetful 
 earth. Every hour the note of comfort and warning 
 cries across the land, tells the Sanctus, the Angelus, 
 and the Hours of the Passion, and calls to remembrance 
 and prayer. 
 
 When the wind is north, the sound carries as far 
 as my road, and companies me through the day ; and 
 if to His dumb children God in His mercy reckons 
 work as prayer, most certainly those who have forged 
 through the ages an unbroken chain of supplication 
 and thanksgiving will be counted among the stalwart 
 labourers of the house of the Lord. 
 
 Sun and bell together are my only clock : it is time 
 for my water drawing ; and gathering a pile of mush- 
 rooms, children of the night, I hasten home. 
 
 The cottage is dear to me in its quaint untidiness 
 and want of rectitude, dear because we are to be its 
 last denizens, last of the long line of toilers who have 
 sweated and sown that others might reap, and have 
 passed away leaving no trace. 
 
 I once saw a tall cross in a seaboard churchyard, 
 c 33
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 inscribed, " To the memory of the unknown dead who 
 have perished in these waters." There might be 
 one in every village sleeping-place to the unhonoured 
 many who made fruitful the land with sweat and tears. 
 It is a consolation to think that when we look back 
 on this stretch of life's road from beyond the first 
 milestone, which, it is instructive to remember, is 
 always a grave, we may hope to see the work of this 
 world with open eyes, and to judge of it with a due sense 
 of proportion. 
 
 A bee with laden honey-bag hummed and buzzed 
 in the hedge as I got ready for work, importuning the 
 flowers for that which he could not carry, and finally 
 giving up the attempt in despair fell asleep on a 
 buttercup, the best place for his weary little velvet 
 body. In five minutes they may have been five 
 hours to him he awoke a new bee, sensible and clear- 
 sighted, and flew blithely away to the hive with his 
 sufficiency an example this weary world would be 
 wise to follow. 
 
 My road has been lonely to-day. A parson came 
 by in the afternoon, a stranger in the neighbourhood, 
 for lie asked his way. He talked awhile, and with 
 kindly rebuke said it was sad to see a man of my 
 education brought so low, which shows how the out- 
 side appearance may mislead the prejudiced observer. 
 34
 
 The monastery where the Bedesmen of St. Hugh watch and pray 
 
 [34
 
 " Was it misfortune ? " " Nay, the best of good 
 luck," I answered, gaily. 
 
 The good man with beautiful readiness sat down 
 on a heap of stones and bade me say on. " Read me 
 a sermon in stone," he said, simply ; and I stayed my 
 hand to read. 
 
 He listened with courteous intelligence. 
 
 " You hold a roadmender has a vocation ? " he asked. 
 
 " As the monk or the artist, for, like both, he is 
 universal. The world is his home ; he serves all 
 men alike, ay, and for him the beasts have equal honour 
 with the men. His soul is ' bound up in the bundle 
 of life ' with all other souls, he sees his father, his 
 mother, his brethren in the children of the road. For 
 him there is nothing unclean, nothing common ; the 
 very stones cry out that they serve." 
 
 Parson nodded his head. 
 
 " It is all true," he said ; " beautifully true. But 
 need such a view of life necessitate the work of road- 
 mending ? Surely all men should be roadmenders." 
 
 wise parson, so to read the lesson of the road ! 
 
 " It is true," I answered ; " but some of us find 
 our salvation in the actual work, and earn our bread 
 better in this than in any other way. No man is 
 dependent on our earning, all men on our work. We 
 are ' rich beyond the dreams of avarice ' because we 
 
 35
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 have all that we need, and yet we taste 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 
 silent master." 
 
 " Robert Louis Stevenson was a roadmender," 
 said the wise parson. 
 
 " Ay, and with more than his pen," I answered. 
 " I wonder was he ever so truly great, so entirely 
 the man we know and love, as when he inspired the 
 chiefs to make a highway in the wilderness. Surely 
 no more fitting monument could exist to his memory 
 than the Road of Gratitude, cut, laid, and kept by 
 the pure-blooded tribe kings of Samoa." 
 
 Parson nodded. 
 
 '' He knew that the people who make no roads are 
 ruled out from intelligent participation in the world's 
 brotherhood." He filled his pipe, thinking the while, 
 then he held out his pouch to me. 
 
 " Try some of this baccy," he said ; " Sherwood of 
 Magdalen sent it me from some outlandish place." 
 
 I accepted gratefully. It was such tobacco as falla 
 to the lot of few roadmenders. 
 
 He rose to go. 
 
 '' I wish I could come and break stones," he said, 
 a little wistfully. 
 36
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 " Nay," said I, " few men have such weary road- 
 mending as yours, and perhaps you need my road less 
 than most men, and less than most parsons." 
 
 We shook hands, and he went down the road and 
 out of my lif e. 
 
 He little guessed that I knew Sherwood, ay, and knew 
 him too, for had not Sherwood told me of the man he 
 delighted to honour. 
 
 Ah, well ! I am no Browning Junior, and Sherwood's 
 name is not Sherwood. 
 
 37
 
 VI 
 
 AWHILE ago I took a holiday ; mouched, played 
 truant from my road. Jem the waggoner hailed 
 me as he passed he was going to the mill would 
 I ride with him and come back atop of the full 
 
 sacks ? 
 
 I hid my hammer in the hedge, climbed into the 
 great waggon white and fragrant with the clean sweet 
 meal, and flung myself down on the empty flour bags. 
 The looped-back tarpaulin framed the long vista of 
 my road with the downs beyond ; and I lay in the cool 
 dark, caressed by the fresh breeze in its thoroughfare, 
 soothed by the strong monotonous tramp of the great 
 grey team and the music of the jangling harness. 
 
 Jem walked at the leaders' heads ; it is his rule 
 when the waggon is empty, a rule no " company " 
 will make him break. At first I regretted it, but soon 
 discovered I learnt to know him better so, as he plodded 
 along, his thickset figure slightly bent, his hands in 
 his pockets, his whip under one arm, whistling hymn 
 tunes in a low minor, while the great horses answered 
 lo his voice without touch of lash or guiding rein. 
 38
 
 The sun stretched the long shadows in slanting bars across the white 
 
 highway
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 I lay as in a blissful dream and watched my road 
 unfold. The sun set the pine-boles aflare where the 
 hedge is sparse, and stretched the long shadows of 
 the besom poplars in slanting bars across the white 
 highway ; the roadside gardens smiled friendly with 
 their trim-cut laurels and rows of stately sunflowers 
 a seemly proximity this, Daphne and Clytie, sisters 
 in experience, wrapped in the warm caress of the god 
 whose wooing they need no longer fear. Here and 
 there we passed little groups of women and children 
 off to work in the early cornfields, and Jem paused 
 in his fond repetition of " The Lord my pasture shall 
 prepare " to give them good-day. 
 
 It is like Life, this travelling backwards that 
 which has been, alone visible like Life, which is after 
 all, retrospective with a steady moving on into the 
 Unknown, Unseen, until Faith is lost in Sight and 
 experience is no longer the touchstone of humanity. 
 The face of the son of Adam is set on the road his 
 brothers have travelled, marking their landmarks, 
 tracing their journeyings ; but with the eyes of a child 
 of God he looks forward, straining to catch a glimpse 
 of the jewelled walls of his future home, the city 
 " Eternal in the Heavens." 
 
 Presently we left my road for the deep shade of a 
 narrow country way where the great oaks and beeches 
 
 39
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 meet overhead and no hedge-clipper sets his hand 
 to stay nature's profusion ; and so by pleasant lanes 
 scarce the waggon's width across, now shady, now 
 sunny, here bordered by thickset coverts, there giving 
 on fruitful fields, we came at length to the mill. 
 
 I left Jem to his business with the miller and wandered 
 down the flowery meadow to listen to the merry clack 
 of the stream and the voice of the waters on the weir. 
 The great wheel was at rest, as I love best to see it 
 in the later afternoon ; the splash and churn of the 
 water belong rather to the morning hours. It is the 
 chief mistake we make in portioning out our day that 
 we banish rest to the night-time, which is for sleep and 
 recreating, instead of setting apart the later afternoon 
 and quiet twilight hours for the stretching of weary 
 limbs and repose of tired mind after a day's toil that 
 should begin and end at five. 
 
 The little stone bridge over the mill-stream is almost 
 on a level with the clear running water, and I lay there 
 and gazed at the huge wheel which, under multitudinous 
 forms and uses, is one of the world's wonders, because 
 one of the few things we imitative children have not 
 learnt from nature. Is it perchance a memory out of 
 that past when Adam walked clear-eyed in Paradise 
 and talked with the Lord in the cool of the day ? Did 
 tie see then the flaming wheels instinct with service, 
 40
 
 The great wheel was at rest 
 
 [40
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 wondrous messengers of the Most High vouchsafed 
 in vision to the later prophets ? 
 
 Maybe he did, and going forth from before the 
 avenging sword of his own forging to the bitterness 
 of an accursed earth, took with him this bright memory 
 of perfect, ceaseless service, and so fashioned our 
 labouring wheel pathetic link with the time of his 
 innocency. It is one of many unanswered questions, 
 good to ask because it has no answer, only the suggestion 
 of a train of thought : perhaps we are never so receptive 
 as when with folded hands we say simply, " This is 
 a great mystery." I watched and wondered until 
 Jem called, and I had to leave the rippling weir and 
 the water's side, and the wheel with its untold secret. 
 
 The miller's wife gave me tea and a crust of home- 
 made bread, and the miller's little maid sat on my knee 
 while I told the sad tale of a little pink cloud separated 
 from its parents and teazed and hunted by mischievous 
 little airs. To-morrow, if I mistake not, her garden 
 will be wet with its tears, and, let us hope, point a 
 moral ; for the tale had its origin in a frenzied chicken 
 driven from the side of an anxious mother, and pursued 
 by a sturdy, relentless figure in a white sun-bonnet. 
 
 The little maid trotted off, greatly sobered, to look 
 somewhat prematurely for the cloud's tears ; and I 
 climbed to my place at the top of the piled-up sacks,
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 and thence watched twilight pass to starlight through 
 my narrow peep, and, so watching, slept until Jem's 
 voice hailed me from Dreamland, and I went, only 
 half awake, across the dark fields home. 
 
 Autumn is here and it is already late. He has 
 painted the hedges russet and gold, scarlet and black, 
 and a tangle of grey ; now he has damp brown leaves 
 in his hair and frost in his finger-tips. 
 
 It is a season of contrasts ; at first all is stir and bustle, 
 the ingathering of man and beast ; barn and rickyard 
 stand filled with golden treasure ; at the farm the sound 
 of threshing ; in wood and copse the squirrels busied 
 'twixt tree and storehouse, while the ripe nuts fall 
 with thud of thunder rain. When the harvesting 
 is over, the fruit gathered, the last rick thatched, there 
 comes a pause. Earth strips off her bright colours 
 and shows a bare and furrowed face ; the dead leaves 
 fall gently and sadly through the calm, sweet air; 
 grey mists drape the fields and hedges. The migratory 
 birds have left, save a few late swallows ; and as I 
 pit at work in the soft, still rain, I can hear the black- 
 Mr d'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 
 42
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 shall be ; farewell, because of the Future which may 
 never be for us ; " Man, thou hast goods laid up 
 for many years, and it is well ; but, remember, this 
 night thy soul may be required " ; is the unvoiced 
 lesson of autumn. There is growing up among us a 
 great fear ; it stares at us white, wide-eyed, from the 
 faces of men and women alike the fear of pain, mental 
 and bodily pain. For the last twenty years we have 
 waged war with suffering a noble war when fought in 
 the interest of the many, but fraught with great danger 
 to each individual man. It is the fear which should 
 not be, rather than the ' hope which is in us,' that 
 leads men in these days to drape Death in a flowery 
 mantle, to lay stress on the shortness of parting, the 
 speedy reunion, to postpone their good-byes until 
 the last moment, or avoid saying them altogether ; 
 and this fear is a poor, ignoble thing, 'unworthy of those 
 who are as gods, knowing good and evil. We are still 
 paying the price of that knowledge ; suffering in both 
 kinds is a substantial part of it, and brings its own 
 healing. Let us pay like men, our face to the open 
 heaven, neither whimpering like children in the dark, 
 nor lulled to unnecessary oblivion by some lethal 
 drug; for it is manly, not morbid, to dare to taste 
 the pungent savour of pain, the lingering sadness of 
 farewell which emphasises the aftermath of life ; it 
 
 43
 
 should have its place in all our preparation as a part 
 of our inheritance we dare not be without. 
 
 There is an old couple in our village who are past 
 work. The married daughter has made shift to take 
 her mother and the parish half-crown, but there is neither 
 
 room nor food for the father, and he must go to N . 
 
 If husband and wife went together, they would be 
 separated at the workhouse door. The parting had to 
 come ; it came yesterday. I saw them stumbling 
 lamely down the road on their last journey together, 
 walking side by side without touch or speech, seeing 
 and heeding nothing but a blank future. As they 
 passed me the old man said gruffly, " 'Tis far eno' ; 
 better be gettin' back " ; but the woman shook her 
 head, and they breasted the hill together. At the top 
 they paused, shook hands, and separated ; one went 
 on, the other turned back ; and as the old woman 
 limped blindly by I turned away, for there are sights 
 a man dare not look upon. She passed ; and I heard 
 a cliild's shrill voice say, " I come to look for you, 
 gran " ; and I thanked God that there need be no 
 utter loneliness in the world while it holds a little child. 
 
 Now it is my turn, and I must leave the wayside 
 
 to serve in the sheepfolds during the winter months. 
 
 It is scarcely a farewell, for my road is ubiquitous, 
 
 eternal ; there are green ways in Paradise and golden 
 
 44
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 streets in the beautiful City of God. Nevertheless, 
 my heart is heavy ; for, viewed by the light of the 
 waning year, roadmending seems a great and wonderful 
 work which I have poorly conceived of and meanly 
 performed : yet I have learnt to understand dimly 
 the truths of three great paradoxes the blessing of 
 a curse, the voice of silence, the companionship of 
 solitude and so take my leave of this stretch of road, 
 and of you who have fared along the white highway 
 through the medium of a printed page. 
 
 Farewell ! It is a roadmender's word ; I cry you 
 Godspeed to the next milestone and beyond. 
 
 45
 
 OUT OF THE SHADOW
 
 The crisp rime of winter's breath 
 
 [48
 
 I AM no longer a roadmender ; the stretch of white 
 highway which leads to the end of the world will know 
 me no more ; the fields and hedgerows, grass and leaf 
 stiff with the crisp rime of winter's breath, lie beyond 
 my horizon ; the ewes in the folding, their mysterious 
 eyes quick with the consciousness of coming mother- 
 hood, answer another's voice and hand ; while I lie 
 here, not in the lonely companionship of my ex- 
 pectations, but where the shadow is bright with kindly 
 faces and gentle hands, until one kinder and gentler 
 still carries me down the stairway into the larger room. 
 
 But now the veil was held aside and one went by 
 crowned with the majesty of years, wearing the ermine 
 of an unstained rule, the purple of her people's loyalty. 
 Nations stood with bated breath to see her pass in the 
 starlit mist of her children's tears ; a monarch 
 greatest of her time ; an empress conquered men 
 called mother ; a woman Englishmen cried queen ; 
 still the crowned captive of her people's heart the 
 prisoner of love. 
 
 The night-goers passed under my window in silence, 
 D 49
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 neither song nor shout broke the welcome dark; next 
 morning the workmen who went by were strangely quiet. 
 
 'VICTORIA DEI GRATIA BRITANNIARUM REGINA.' 
 
 Did they think of how that legend would disappear, 
 and of all it meant, as they paid their pennies at the 
 coffee-stall ? The feet rarely know the true value 
 and work of the head ; but all Englishmen have been 
 and will be quick to acknowledge and revere Victoria 
 by the grace of God a wise woman, a great and loving 
 mother. 
 
 Years ago, I, standing at a level crossing, saw her 
 pass. The train slowed down, and she caught sight 
 of the gatekeeper's little girl who had climbed the 
 barrier. Such a smile as she gave her ! And then 
 I caught a quick startled gesture as she slipped from 
 my vision ; I thought afterwards it was that she feared 
 the child might fall. Mother first, then Queen ; even 
 so rest came to her not in one of the royal palaces, 
 but in her own home, surrounded by the immediate 
 circle of her nearest and dearest, while the world kept 
 watch and ward. 
 
 I, a shy lover of the fields and woods, longed always, 
 should a painless passing be vouchsafed me, to make 
 my bed on the fragrant pine needles in th<3 aloneness 
 of a great forest ; to lie once again as I had lain many
 
 
 The aloneness of a great forest 
 
 (90
 
 OUT OF THE SHADOW 
 
 a time, bathed in the bitter sweetness of the sun- 
 blessed pines, lapped in the manifold silence ; my 
 ear attuned to the wind of Heaven with its call from 
 the Cities of Peace. In sterner mood, when Love's 
 hand held a scourge, I craved rather the stress of the 
 moorland with its bleaker mind imperative of sacrifice. 
 To rest again under the lee of Rippon Tor swept by 
 the strong peat-smelling breeze; to stare untired at 
 the long cloud- shadowed reaches, and watch the mist- 
 wraiths huddle and shrink round the stones of blood ; 
 until my sacrifice too was accomplished, and my soul 
 had fled. A wild waste moor ; a vast void sky ; and 
 naught between heaven and earth but man, his sin- 
 glazed eyes seeking afar the distant light of his own 
 heart. 
 
 With years came counsels more profound, and the 
 knowledge that man was no mere dweller in the 
 woods to follow the footsteps of the piping god, but 
 an integral part of an organised whole, in which Pan 
 too has his fulfilment. The wise Venetians knew ; and 
 read pantheism into Christianity when they set these 
 words round Ezekiel's living creatures in the altar 
 vault of St Mark's : 
 
 QUAEQUE SUB OBSCURIS DE CRISTO DICTA FIGURIS 
 HlS APERIRE DATUR ET IN HIS, DfiUS IPSE NOTATUR. 
 
 51
 
 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 never have been written ; 
 instead he has comprehensively disregarded it, and 
 perhaps never more than now in the twentieth century. 
 Ah, well ! this world, in spite of all its sinning, is still 
 the Garden of Eden where the Lord walked with man, 
 not in the cool of evening, but in the heat and stress 
 of the immediate working day. There is no angel 
 now with flaming sword to keep the way of the Tree 
 of Life, but tapers alight morning by morning in the 
 Hostel of God to point us to it ; and we, who are as 
 gods knowing good and evil, partake of that fruit 
 " whereof whoso eateth shall never die " ; the greatest 
 gift or the most awful penalty Eternal Life. 
 
 I then, with my craving for tree and sky, held that 
 a great capital with its stir of life and death, of toil 
 and strife and pleasure, was an ill place for a sick man 
 to wait in ; a place to shrink from as a child shrinks 
 from the rude blow of one out of authority. Yet 
 here, far from moor and forest, hillside and hedgerow, 
 in the family sitting-room of the English-speaking 
 peoples, the London much misunderstood, I find the 
 fulfilment by antithesis of all desire. For the loneliness 
 of the moorland, there is the warmth and companionship 
 of London's swift beating heart. For silence there is 
 52
 
 OUT OF THE SHADOW 
 
 sound the sound and stir of service for the most 
 part far in excess of its earthly equivalent. Against 
 the fragrant incense of the pines I set the honest sweat 
 of the man whose lifetime is the measure of his working 
 day. " He that loveth not his brother whom he hath 
 seen, how shall he love God whom he hath not seen ? " 
 wrote Blessed John, who himself loved so much that he 
 beheld the Lamb as it had been slain from the beginning 
 when Adam fell, and the City of God with light most 
 precious. The burden of corporate sin, the sword of 
 corporate sorrow, the joy of corporate righteousness ; 
 thus we become citizens in the Kingdom of God, and 
 companions of all his creatures. " It is not good that 
 the man should be alone," said the Lord God. 
 
 I live now as it were in two worlds, the world of 
 sight, and the world of sound ; and they scarcely ever 
 touch each other. I hear the grind of heavy traffic, 
 the struggle of horses on the frost-breathed ground, 
 the decorous jolt of omnibuses, the jangle of cab bells, 
 the sharp warning of bicycles at the corner, the swift 
 rattle of costers' carts as they go south at night with 
 their shouting, goading crew. Ah 1 these things I hear, 
 and more ; but I see no road, only the silent river 
 of my heart with its tale of wonder and years, and 
 the white beat of seagulls' wings in strong inquiring 
 flight. 
 
 53
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 Sometimes there is naught to see on the waterway 
 but a solitary black hull, a very Stygian ferry-boat, 
 manned by a solitary figure, and moving slowly up 
 under the impulse of the far-reaching sweeps. Then 
 the great barges pass with their coffined treasure, 
 drawn by a small self-righteous steam-tug. Later, 
 lightened of their load, and waiting on wind and tide, 
 I see them swooping by like birds set free ; tawny 
 sails that mind me of red-roofed Whitby with its 
 northern fleet ; black sails as of some heedless Theseus ; 
 white sails that sweep out of the morning mist " like 
 restless gossamcres." They make the bridge, which 
 is just within my vision, and then away past West- 
 minster and Blackfriars where St Paul's great dome 
 lifts the cross high over a self-seeking city ; past 
 Southwark where England's poet illuminates in the 
 scroll of divine wisdom the sign of the Tabard ; past 
 the Tower with its haunting ghosts of history ; past 
 Greenwich, fairy city, caught in the meshes of 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 warning note as they make the upper 
 54
 
 OUT OF THE SHADOW 
 
 reach, or strident hail, as a chain of kindred phantoms 
 passes, ploughing a contrary tide. 
 
 Throughout the long watches of the night I follow 
 them ; and in the early morning they slide by, their 
 eyes pale in the twilight; while the stars flicker and 
 fade, and the gas lamps die down into a dull yellow 
 blotch against the glory and glow of a new day. 
 
 55
 
 II 
 
 FEBRUARY is here, February fill-dyke ; the month 
 of purification, of cleansing rains and pulsing bounding 
 streams, and white mist clinging insistent to field and 
 hedgerow so that when her veil is withdrawn greenness 
 may make us glad. 
 
 The river has been uniformly grey of late, with no 
 wind to ruffle its surface or to speed the barges dropping 
 slowly and sullenly down with the tide through a 
 blurring haze. I watched one yesterday, its useless 
 sails half-furled and no sign of life save the man at 
 the helm. It drifted stealthily past, and a little behind, 
 flying low, came a solitary seagull, grey as the river's 
 haze a following bird. 
 
 Once again I lay on my back in the bottom of the 
 tarry old fishing smack, blue sky above and no sound 
 but the knock, knock of the waves, and the thud and 
 curl of falling foam as the old boat's blunt nose breasted 
 the coming sea. Then Daddy Whiddon spoke. 
 
 " A follerin' biirrd," he said. 
 
 I got up, and looked across the blue field we were 
 ploughing into white furrows. Far away a tiny sail 
 56
 
 OUT OF THE SHADOW 
 
 scarred the great solitude, and astern came a gull 
 flying slowly close to the water's breast. 
 
 Daddy Whiddon waved his pipe towards it. 
 
 " A follerin' biirrd," he said, again ; and again I 
 waited ; questions were not grateful to him. 
 
 " There be a carpse there, sure enough, a carpse 
 driftin' and shiftin' on the floor of the sea. There be 
 those as can't rest, poor sawls, and her'll be mun, her'll 
 be mun, and the sperrit of her is with the biirrd." 
 
 The clumsy boom swung across as we changed our 
 course, and the water ran from us in smooth reaches 
 on either side : the bird flew steadily on. 
 
 " What will the spirit do ? " I said. 
 
 The old man looked at me gravely. 
 
 " Her'll rest in the Lard's time, in the Lard's gude 
 time but now her'll just be follerin' on with the 
 burrd." 
 
 The gull was flying close to us now, and a cold wind 
 swept the sunny sea. I shivered : Daddy looked at 
 me curiously. 
 
 " There be reason enough to be cawld if us did but 
 knaw it, but I be mos' used to 'em, poor sawls." He 
 shaded his keen old blue eyes, and looked away across 
 the water. His face kindled. " There be a skule comin', 
 and by my sawl 'tis mackerel they be drivin'." 
 
 I watched eagerly, and saw the dark line rise and 
 
 57
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 fall in the trough of the sea, and, away behind, the stir 
 and rush of tumbling porpoises as they chased their 
 prey. 
 
 Again we changed our tack, and each taking an oar, 
 pulled lustily for the beach. 
 
 " Please God her'll break inshore," said Daddy 
 Whiddon ; and he shouted the news at the idle men 
 waiting who hailed us. 
 
 In a moment all was stir, for the fishing had been 
 slack. Two boats put out with the lithe brown seine. 
 The dark line had turned, but the school was still 
 behind, churning the water in clumsy haste ; they 
 were coming in. 
 
 Then the brit broke in silvery leaping waves on the 
 shelving beach. The three-fold hunt was over ; the 
 porpoises turned out to sea in search of fresh quarry ; 
 and the seine, dragged by ready hands, came slowly, 
 stubbornly in with its quivering treasure of fish. They 
 had sought a haven and found none ; the brit lay 
 dying in the flickering iridescent heaps as the bare- 
 legged babies of the village gathered them up ; and 
 far away over the water I saw a single grey speck ; 
 it was the following bird. 
 
 The curtain of river haze falls back ; barge and bird 
 are alike gone, and the lamplighter has lit the first 
 
 53
 
 OUT OF THE SHADOW 
 
 gas-lamp on the far side of the bridge. Every night 
 I watch him come, his progress marked by the great 
 yellow eyes that wake the dark. Sometimes he walks 
 quickly ; sometimes he loiters on the bridge to chat, 
 or stare at the dark water ; but he always comes, 
 leaving his watchful deterrent train behind him to 
 police the night. 
 
 Once Demeter in the black anguish of her desolation 
 searched for lost Persephone by the light of Hecate's 
 torch ; and searching all in vain, spurned beneath 
 her empty feet an earth barren of her smile ; froze 
 with set brows the merry brooks and streams ; and 
 smote forest, and plain, and fruitful field, with the breath 
 of her last despair, until even lambe's laughing jest 
 was still. And then when the desolation was complete, 
 across the wasted valley where the starveling cattle 
 scarcely longed to browse, came the dreadful chariot 
 and Persephone. The day of the prisoner of Hades 
 had dawned ; and as the sun flamed slowly up to 
 light her thwarted eyes the world sprang into blossom 
 at her feet. 
 
 We can never be too Pagan when we are truly 
 Christian, and the old myths are eternal truths held 
 fast in the Church's net. Prometheus fetched fire 
 from Heaven, to be slain forever in the fetching ; and 
 lo, a Greater than Prometheus came to fire the cresset 
 
 59
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 of the Cross. Demeter waits now patiently enough. 
 Persephone waits, too, in the faith of the sun she cannot 
 see : and every lamp lit carries on the crusade which 
 has for its goal a sunless, moonless, city whose light 
 is the Light of the world. 
 
 " Lume e lassu, che visibile face 
 lo creatore a quella creatura, 
 che solo in lui vedere ha la sua pace." 
 
 Immediately outside my window is a lime tree 
 a little black skeleton of abundant branches in which 
 sparrows congregate to chirp and bicker. Farther 
 away I have a glimpse of graceful planes, children of 
 moonlight and mist ; their dainty robes, still more 
 or less unsullied, gleam ghostly in the gaslight athwart 
 the dark. They make a brave show even in winter 
 with their feathery branches and swinging tassels, 
 whereas my little tree stands stark and uncompromising, 
 with its horde of sooty sparrows cockney to the last 
 tail feather, and a pathetic inability to look anything 
 but black. Rain comes with strong caressing fingers, 
 and the branches seem no whit the cleaner for her 
 care ; but then their glistening blackness mirrors 
 back the succeeding sunlight, as a muddy pavement 
 will sometimes lap our feet in a sea of gold. The little 
 wet sparrows are for the moment equally transformed, 
 60
 
 OUT OF THE SHADOW 
 
 for the sun turns their dun- coloured coats to a ruddy 
 bronze, and cries Chrysostom as it kisses each shiny 
 beak. They are dumb Chrysostoms ; but they preach 
 a golden gospel, for the sparrows are to London what 
 the rainbow was to eight saved souls out of a waste 
 of waters a perpetual sign of the remembering mercies 
 of God. 
 
 Last night there was a sudden clatter of hoofs, a 
 shout, and then silence. A runaway cab-horse, a dark 
 night, a wide crossing, and a heavy burden : so death 
 came to a poor woman. People from the house went 
 out to help ; and I heard of her, the centre of an un- 
 knowing curious crowd, as she lay bonnetless in the 
 mud of the road, her head on the kerb. A rude but 
 painless death : the misery lay in her life ; for this 
 woman worn, white-haired, and wrinkled had but 
 fifty years to set against such a condition. The police- 
 man reported her respectable, hard-working, living 
 apart from her husband with a sister ; but although 
 they shared rooms, they " did not speak," and the sister 
 refused all responsibility ; so the parish buried the dead 
 woman, and thus ended an uneventful tragedy. 
 
 Was it her own fault ? If so, the greater pathos. 
 The lonely souls that hold out timid hands to an un- 
 heeding world have their meed of interior comfort 
 even here, while the sons of consolation wait on the 
 
 61
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 threshold for their footfall : but God help the soul 
 that bars its own door ! It is kicking against the pricks 
 of Divine ordinance, the ordinance of a triune God ; 
 whether it be the dweller in crowded street or tenement 
 who is proud to say, " I keep myself to myself," or 
 Seneca writing in pitiful complacency, " Whenever 
 I have gone among men, I have returned home less of 
 a man." Whatever the next world holds in store, we 
 are bidden in this to seek and serve God in our fellow- 
 men, and in the creatures of His making whom He calls 
 by name. 
 
 It was once my privilege to know an old organ- 
 grinder named Gawdine. He was a hard swearer, a 
 hard drinker, a hard liver, and he fortified himself 
 body and soul against the world : he even drank alone, 
 which is an evil sign. 
 
 One day to Gawdine sober came a little dirty child, 
 who clung to his empty trouser leg he had lost a limb 
 years before with a persistent unintelligible request. 
 He shook the little chap off with a blow and a curse ; 
 and the child was trotting dismally away, when it 
 suddenly turned, ran back, and held up a dirty face 
 for a kiss. 
 
 Two days later Gawdine fell under a passing dray 
 wliich inflicted terrible internal injuries on him. They 
 patched him up in hospital, and he went back to his 
 62
 
 OUT OF THE SHADOW 
 
 organ-grinding, taking with him two friends a pain 
 which fell suddenly upon him to rack and rend with 
 an anguish of crucifixion, and the memory of a child's 
 upturned face. Outwardly he was the same save 
 that he changed the tunes of his organ, out of long- 
 hoarded savings, for the jigs and reels which children 
 hold dear, and stood patiently playing them in child- 
 crowded alleys, where pennies are not as plentiful 
 as elsewhere. 
 
 He continued to drink ; it did not come within 
 his new code to stop, since he could " carry his liquor 
 well " ; but he rarely, if ever, swore. He told me this 
 tale through the throes of his anguish as he lay crouched 
 on a mattress on the floor ; and as the grip of the pain 
 took him he tore and bit at his hands until they were 
 maimed and bleeding, to keep the ready curses off 
 his lips. 
 
 He told the story, but he gave no reason, offered 
 no explanation : he has been dead now many a year, 
 and thus would I write his epitaph : 
 
 He saw the face of a little child and looked on God.
 
 Ill 
 
 14 Two began, in a low voice, ' Why, the fact is, you 
 see, Miss, this here ought to have be'jn a red rose-tree, 
 and we put a white one in by mistake.' ' 
 
 As I look round this room I feel sure Two, and Five, 
 and Seven, have all been at work on it, and made no 
 mistakes, for round the walls runs a frieze of squat 
 standard rose-trees, red as red can be, and just like 
 those that Alice saw in the Queen's garden. In between 
 them are Chaucer's name-children, prim little daisies, 
 peering wideawake from green grass. This same grass 
 has a history which I have heard. In the original 
 stencil for the frieze it was purely conventional like 
 the rest, and met in spikey curves round each tree ; 
 the painter, however, who was doing the work, was a 
 lover of the fields ; and feeling that such grass was 
 a travesty, he added on his own account dainty little 
 tussocks, and softened the hard line into a tufted 
 carpet, the grass growing irregularly, bent at will 
 by the wind. 
 
 The result from the standpoint of conventional 
 art is indeed disastrous ; but my sympathy and 
 64
 
 OUT OF THE SHADOW 
 
 gratitude are with the painter. I see, as he saw, 
 the far-reaching robe of living ineffable green, of 
 whose brilliance the eye never has too much, and in 
 whose weft no two threads are alike ; and shrink as 
 he did from the conventionalising of that wind-swept 
 glory. 
 
 The sea has its crested waves of recognisable form ; 
 the river its eddy and swirl and separate vortices ; 
 but the grass ! The wind bloweth where it listeth 
 and the grass bows as the wind blows " thou canst 
 not tell whither it goeth." It takes no pattern, it 
 obeys no recognised law ; it is like a beautiful creature 
 of a thousand wayward moods, and its voice is like 
 nothing else in the wide world. It bids you rest and 
 bury your tired face in the green coolness, and breathe 
 of its breath and of the breath of the good earth from 
 which man was taken and to which he will one day 
 return. Then, if you lend your ear and are silent 
 minded, you may hear wondrous things of the deep 
 places of the earth ; of lif e in mineral and stone as well 
 as in pulsing sap ; of a green world as the stars saw 
 it before man trod it under foot of the emerald which 
 has its place with the rest in the City of God. 
 
 " What if earth 
 
 Be but the shadow of heaven, and things therein, 
 Each to each other like, more than on earth is thought ? " 
 E 65
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 It is a natural part of civilisation's lust of re-arrange- 
 ment that we should be so ready to conventionalise 
 the beauty of this world into decorative patterns for 
 our pilgrim tents. It is a phase, and will melt into 
 other phases ; but it tends to the increase of arti 
 ficiality, and exists not only in art but in every- 
 thing. It is no new thing for jaded sentiment to 
 crave the spur of the unnatural, to prefer the clever 
 imitation, to live in a Devachan where the surroundings 
 appear that which we would have them to be ; but 
 it is an interesting record of the pulse of the pre- 
 sent day that ' An Englishwoman's Love Letters ' 
 should have taken society by storm in the way it 
 certainly has. 
 
 It is a delightful book to leave about, with its vellum 
 binding, dainty ribbons, and the hallmark of a great 
 publisher's name. But when we seek within we find 
 love with its thousand voices and wayward moods, its 
 shy graces and seemly reticences, love which has its 
 throne and robe of state as well as the garment of the 
 beggar maid, love which is before time was, which knew 
 the world when the stars took up their courses, pre- 
 sented to us in gushing outpourings, the appropriate 
 language of a woman's heart to the boor she delights 
 to honour. 
 
 "It is woman who is the glory of man," says the 
 66
 
 OUT OF THE SHADOW 
 
 author of ' The House of Wisdom and Love,' " Regina 
 mundi, greater, because so far the less ; and man is her 
 head, but only as he serves his queen." Set this sober 
 aphorism against the school girl love-making which 
 kisses a man's feet and gaily refuses him the barren 
 honour of having loved her first. 
 
 There is scant need for the apologia which precedes 
 the letters ; a few pages dispels the fear that we are 
 prying into another's soul. As for the authorship, 
 there is a woman's influence, an artist's poorly concealed 
 bias in the foreign letters ; and for the rest a man's 
 blunders so much easier to see in another than to 
 avoid oneself writ large from cover to cover. King 
 Cophetua, who sends his " profoundly grateful re- 
 membrances," has most surely written the letters he 
 would wish to receive. 
 
 " Mrs Meynell ! " cries one reviewer, triumphantly. 
 Nay, the saints be good to us, what has Mrs Meynell 
 in common with the " Englishwoman's " language, 
 style, or most unconvincing passion ? Men can write 
 as from a woman's heart when they are minded to do 
 so in desperate earnestness there is Clarissa Harlowe 
 and Stevenson's Kirstie, and many more to prove it ; 
 but when a man writes as the author of the " Love 
 Letters " writes, I feel, as did the painter of the frieze, 
 that pattern-making has gone too far and included 
 
 67
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 that which, like the grass, should be spared such a 
 convention. 
 
 " I quite agree with you," said the Duchess, " and 
 the moral of that is ' Be what you would seem to 
 be ' or, if you'd like to put it more simply ' never 
 imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it 
 might appear to others that what you were or might 
 have been was not otherwise than what you had been 
 would have appeared to them to be otherwise.' ' And 
 so by way of the Queen's garden I come back to my 
 room again. 
 
 My heart's affections are still centred on my old 
 attic, with boarded floor and whitewashed walls, where 
 the sun blazoned a frieze of red and gold until he 
 travelled too far towards the north, the moon streamed 
 in to paint the trees in inky wavering shadows, and 
 the stars flashed their glory to me across the years. 
 But now sun and moon greet me only indirectly : and 
 under the red roses hang pictures, some of them the 
 dear companions of my days. Opposite me is the 
 Arundel print of the Presentation, painted by the 
 gentle " Brother of the Angels." Priest Simeon, a 
 stately figure in green and gold, great with prophecy, 
 gazes adoringly at the Bambino he holds with fatherly 
 care. Our Lady, in robe of red and veil of shadowed 
 purple, is instinct with light despite the sombre colour- 
 68
 
 OUT OF THE SHADOW 
 
 ing, as she stretches out hungering, awe-struck hands 
 for her soul's delight. St Joseph, dignified guardian 
 and servitor, stands behind, holding the Sacrifice of 
 the Poor to redeem the First-begotten. 
 
 St Peter Martyr and the Dominican nun, gazing 
 in rapt contemplation at the scene, are not one whit 
 surprised to find themselves in the presence of eternal 
 mysteries. In the Entombment, which hangs on the 
 opposite wall, St Dominic comes round the corner full 
 of grievous amaze and tenderest sympathy, but with 
 no sense of shock or intrusion, for was he not " famigliar 
 di Cristo " ? And so he takes it all in ; the stone bed 
 empty and waiting ; the Beloved cradled for the last 
 time on His mother's knees to be washed, lapped 
 round, and laid to rest as if He were again the Babe 
 of Bethlehem. He sees the Magdalen anointing the 
 Sacred Feet ; Blessed John caring for the living and 
 the Dead ; and he, Dominic hound of the Lord 
 having his real, living share in the anguish and hope, 
 the bedding of the dearest Dead, who did but leave 
 this earth that He might manifest Himself more 
 completely. 
 
 Underneath, with a leap across the centuries, is 
 Rossetti's picture ; Dante this time the onlooker, 
 Beatrice, in her pale beauty, the death-kissed one. 
 The same idea under different representations ; the 
 
 69
 
 one conceived in childlike simplicity, the other recall- 
 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 found Him 
 when they came from the East to seek a great King. 
 There is but one necessary condition of this finding ; 
 we must follow the particular manifestation of light 
 given us, never resting until it rests over the place 
 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 light of our own soul. 
 
 I think the old bishop must have understood it. 
 He is my friend of friends as he lies opposite my window 
 in his alabaster sleep, clad in pontifical robes, with 
 unshod feet, a little island of white peace in a many- 
 coloured marble sea. The faithful sculptor has given 
 every line and wrinkle, the heavy eyelids and sunken 
 face of tired old age, but withal the smile of a contented 
 child. 
 
 I do not even know my bishop's name, only that 
 the work is of the thirteenth century ; but he is good 
 to company with through the day, for he has known 
 darkness and light and the minds of many men ; most 
 surely, too, he has known that God fulfils Himself 
 in strange ways, so with the shadow of his feet upon 
 the polished floor he rests in peace.
 
 IV 
 
 ON Sunday my little tree was limned in white and the 
 sparrows were craving shelter at my window from the 
 blizzard. Now the mild thin air brings a breath of 
 spring in its wake and the daffodils in the garden wait 
 the kisses of the sun. Hand-in-hand with memory I 
 slip away down the years, and remember a day when 
 I awoke at earliest dawn, for across my sleep I had 
 heard the lusty golden-throated trumpeters heralding 
 the spring. 
 
 The air was sharp-set.; a delicate rime frosted roof 
 arid road ; the sea lay hazy and still like a great pearl. 
 Then as the sky stirred with flush upon flush of warm 
 rosy light, it passed from misty pearl to opal with heart 
 of flame, from opal to gleaming sapphire. The earth 
 called, the fields called, the river called that pied 
 piper to whose music a man cannot stop his ears. It 
 was with me as with the Canterbury pilgrims : 
 
 " So priketh hem nature in hir corages ; 
 Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages." 
 
 Half an hour later I was away by the early train 
 72
 
 
 The field-gate that leads to the lower meadows 
 
 172
 
 OUT OF THE SHADOW 
 
 that carries the branch mails and a few workmen, and 
 was delivered at the little wayside station with the 
 letters. The kind air went singing past as I swung 
 along the reverberating road between the high tree- 
 crowned banks which we call hedges in merry Devon, 
 with all the world to myself and the Brethren. A great 
 blackbird flew out with a loud " chook, chook," and 
 the red of the haw on his yellow bilL A robin trilled 
 from a low rose-bush ; two wrens searched diligently 
 on a fallen tree for breakfast, quite unconcerned when 
 I rested a moment beside them ; and a shrewmouse 
 slipped across the road followed directly by its mate. 
 March violets bloomed under the sheltered hedge with 
 here and there a pale primrose ; a frosted bramble spray 
 still held its autumn tints clinging to the semblance 
 of the past ; and great branches of snowy blackthorn 
 broke the barren hedgeway as if spring made a mock 
 of winter's snows. 
 
 Light of heart and foot with the new wine of the year 
 I sped on again, stray daffodils lighting the wayside, 
 until I heard the voice of the stream and reached the 
 field gate which leads to the lower meadows. There 
 before me lay spring's pageant ; green pennons waving, 
 dainty maids curtseying, and a host of joyous yellow 
 trumpeters proclaiming ' Victory ' to an awakened 
 earth. They range in serried ranks right down to 
 
 73
 
 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 
 cloud at the far end of the misty mead. Through the 
 field gate and across the road I see them, starring the 
 steep earth bank that leads to the upper copse, gleaming 
 like pale flames against the dark tree-boles. There 
 they have but frail tenure ; here, in the meadows, 
 they reign supreme. 
 
 At the upper end of the field the river provides yet 
 closer sanctuary for these children of the spring. Held 
 in its embracing arms lies an island long and narrow, 
 some thirty feet by twelve, a veritable untrod 
 Eldorado, glorious in gold from end to end, a fringe 
 of reeds by the water's edge, and save for that 
 daffodils. A great oak stands at the meadow's 
 neck, an oak with gnarled and wandering roots 
 where a man may rest, for it is bare of daffodils 
 save for a group of three, and a solitary one 
 apart growing close to the old tree's side. I sat 
 down by my lonely little sister, blue sky over- 
 head, green grass at my feet decked, like the 
 pastures of the Blessed, in glorious sheen ; a sea 
 of triumphant, golden heads tossing blithely back 
 74
 
 A host of joyous yellow trumpeters 
 
 174
 
 OUT OF THE SHADOW 
 
 as the wind 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 worldly possession. " Thou sayest that I am a 
 King," said the Lord before Pilate, and " My kingdom 
 is not of this world." We who are made kings after 
 His likeness possess all things, not after this world's 
 fashion but in proportion to our poverty ; and when we 
 cease to toil and spin, are arrayed as the lilies, in a glory 
 transcending Solomon's. Bride Poverty she who 
 climbed the Cross with Christ stretches out eager 
 hands to free us from our chains, but we flee from her, 
 and lay up treasure against her importunity, while 
 Amytas on his seaweed bed weeps tears of pure pity 
 for crave-mouth Caesar of great possessions. 
 
 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
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 in a wonderful peat-smelling bog, with a many-hued 
 coverlet of soft mosses pale gold, orange, emerald, 
 tawny, olive and white, with the red stain of sun-dew 
 and tufted cotton-grass. Under the old grey rocks 
 which watch it rise, yellow-eyed tormantil stars the turf, 
 and bids " Godspeed " to the little child of earth and 
 sky. Thus the journey begins ; and with ever-increasing 
 strength the stream carves a way through the dear 
 brown peat, wears a fresh wrinkle on the patient stones, 
 and patters merrily under a clapper bridge which 
 spanned its breadth when the mistletoe reigned and 
 Bottor, the grim rock idol, exacted the toll of human 
 life that made him great. On and on goes the stream, 
 for it may not stay ; leaving of its freshness with the 
 great osmunda that stretches eager roots towards the 
 running water ; flowing awhile with a brother stream, 
 to part again east and west as each takes up his separate 
 burden of service my friend to cherish the lower 
 meadows in their flowery joyance and so by the great 
 sea-gate back to sky and earth again. 
 
 The river of God is full of water. The streets of 
 the City are pure gold. Verily, here also having 
 nothing we possess all things. 
 
 The air was keen and still as I walked back in the 
 early evening, and a daffodil light was in the sky 
 
 76
 
 OUT OF THE SHADOW 
 
 as if Heaven mirrored back earth's radiance. Near 
 the station some children flitted past, like little white 
 miller moths homing through the dusk. As I climbed 
 the hill the moon rode high in a golden field it was 
 daffodils to the last. 
 
 tt
 
 THE seagulls from the upper reaches pass down the 
 river in sober steady flight seeking the open sea. I 
 shall miss the swoop and circle of silver wings in the 
 sunlight and the plaintive call which sounds so strangely 
 away from rock and shore, but it is good to know 
 that they have gone from mudbank and murky town 
 back to the free airs of their inheritance, to the shadow 
 of sun-swept cliffs and the curling crest of the wind- 
 beaten waves, to brood again over the great ocean 
 of a world's tears. 
 
 My little tree is gemmed with buds, shy, immature, 
 but full of promise. The sparrows busied with nest- 
 building in the neighbouring pipes and gutters use it 
 for a vantage ground, and crowd there in numbers, 
 each little beak sealed with long golden straw or downy 
 feather. 
 
 The river is heavy with hay barges, the last fruits 
 of winter's storehouse ; the lengthening days slowly 
 and steadily oust the dark ; the air is loud with a 
 growing clamour of life : spring is not only proclaimed, 
 but on this Feast she is crowned, and despite the 
 78
 
 OUT OF THE SHADOW 
 
 warring wind the days bring their meed of sunshine. 
 We stand for a moment at the meeting of the ways, 
 the handclasp of Winter and Spring, of Sleep and 
 Wakening, of Life and Death ; and there is between 
 them not even the thin line which Rabbi Jochanan 
 on his death-bed beheld as all that divided hell from 
 heaven. 
 
 " Sphosra cujus centrum ubique, circumferentia 
 nullibi" was said of Mercury, that messenger of the 
 gods who marshalled reluctant spirits to the Under- 
 world ; and for Mercury we may write Life with Death 
 as its great sacrament of brotherhood and release, to 
 be dreaded only as we dread to partake unworthily of 
 great benefits. Like all sacraments it has its rightful 
 time and due solemnities ; the horror and sin of suicide 
 lie in the presumption of free will, the forestalling of 
 a gift, the sin of Eve in Paradise, who took that which 
 might only be given at the hand of the Lord. It 
 has too its physical pains, but they are those of a 
 woman in travail, and we remember them no more 
 for joy that a child-man is born into the world naked 
 and not ashamed : beholding ourselves as we are we 
 shall see also the leaves of the Tree of Life set for the 
 healing of the nations. 
 
 We are slowly, very slowly, abandoning our belief 
 in sudden and violent transitions for a surer and fuller 
 
 79
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 acceptance of the doctrine of evolution; but most 
 of us still draw a sharp line of demarcation between 
 this world and the next, and expect a radical change 
 in ourselves and our surroundings, a break in the chain 
 of continuity entirely contrary to the teaching of nature 
 and experience. In the same way we cling to the 
 specious untruth that we can begin over and over 
 again in this world, forgetting that while our sorrow 
 and repentance bring sacramental gifts of grace and 
 strength, God Himself cannot, by His own limitation, 
 rewrite the Past. We are in our sorrow that which 
 we have made ourselves in our sin ; our temptations 
 are there as well as the way of escape. We are in the 
 image of God. We create our world, our undying 
 selves, our heaven, or our hell. " Qui creavit te sine 
 te non s ah obit te sine te." It is stupendous, magnificent, 
 and most appalling. A man does not change as he 
 crosses the threshold of the larger room. His 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 
 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' 
 shears. 
 80
 
 OUT OF THE SHADOW 
 
 Socrates faced death with the magnificent calm 
 bred of dignified familiarity. He had built for himself 
 a desired heaven of colour, light, and precious stones 
 the philosophic formula of those who set the spiritual 
 above the material, and worship truth in the beauty 
 of holiness. He is not troubled by doubts or regrets, 
 for the path of the just lies plain before his face. He 
 forbids mourning and lamentations as out of place, 
 obeys minutely and cheerily the directions of his 
 executioner, and passes with unaffected dignity to the 
 apprehension of that larger truth for which he had 
 constantly prepared himself. His friends may bury 
 him provided they will remember they are not burying 
 Socrates ; and that all things may be done decently 
 and in order, a cock must go to ^Esculapius. 
 
 Long before, in the days of the Captivity, there lived 
 in godless, blood-shedding Nineveh an exiled Jew whose 
 father had fallen from the faith. He was a simple 
 man, child-like and direct ; living the careful, kindly 
 life of an orthodox Jew, suffering many persecutions 
 for conscience' sake, and in constant danger of death. 
 He narrates the story of his life and of the blindness 
 which fell on him, with gentle placidity, and checks 
 the exuberance of his more emotional wife with the 
 assurance of untroubled faith. Finally, when his 
 pious expectations are fulfilled, his sight restored, and 
 F 81
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 his son prosperously established beside him, he breaks 
 into a prayer of rejoicing which reveals the secret 
 of his confident content. He made use of two great 
 faculties : the sense of proportion, which enabled him 
 to apprise life and its accidents justly, and the gift 
 of inseeing, which led Socrates after him, and Blessed 
 John in lonely exile on Patmos, to look through the 
 things temporal to the hidden meanings of eternity. 
 
 " Let my soul bless God the great King," he cries ; 
 and looks away past the present distress ; past the 
 Restoration which was to end in fresh scattering and 
 confusion ; past the dream of gold, and porphyry, 
 and marble defaced by the eagles and emblems of the 
 
 */ o 
 
 conqueror ; until his eyes are held by the Jerusalem 
 of God, " built up with sapphires, and emeralds, and 
 precious stones," with battlements of pure gold, and 
 the cry of ' Alleluia ' in her streets. 
 
 Many years later, when he was very aged, he called 
 his son to him and gave him as heritage his own simple 
 rule of life, adding but one request : " Keep thou 
 the law and the commandments, and shew thyself 
 merciful and just, that it may go well with thee. . . . 
 Consider what alms doeth, and how righteousness 
 doth deliver. . . . And bury me decently, and thy 
 mother with me." Having so said, he went his way 
 quietly and contentedly to the Jerusalem of his heart. 
 82
 
 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 streets in them 
 parts. I ain't no ways particler wot they're made of, 
 but it'll feel natral like if there's cbimleys too." 
 
 The sun stretched a sudden finger and painted the 
 chimney pots red and gold against the smoke-dimmed 
 sky, and with his face alight with surprised relief my 
 friend died. 
 
 We are one with the earth, one in sin, one in 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 which shadows the early 
 spring with a shadow of which it may be said Umbra 
 Dei est Lux, the earth brought gifts of grief, the fruit 
 of the curse, barren thorns, hollow reed, and the wood 
 of the cross ; the sea made offering of Tyrian purple ; 
 
 83
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 the sky veiled her face in great darkness, while the 
 nation of priests crucified for the last time their Paschal 
 lamb. " I will hear, saith the Lord ; I will hear the 
 heavens, and they shall hear the earth, and the earth 
 shall hear the corn and wine and oil, and they shall 
 hear Jezreel, and I will sow her unto me in the earth ; 
 and I will have mercy upon her that had not obtained 
 mercy, and I will say unto them which were not my 
 people, ' Thou art my people,' and they shall say ' Thou 
 art my God.' " 
 
 The second Adam stood in the garden with quickening 
 feet, and all the earth pulsed and sang for joy of the 
 new hope and the new life quickening within her, 
 to be hers through the pains of travail, the pangs of 
 dissolution. The Tree of Life bears Bread and Wine 
 food of the wayfaring man. The day of divisions 
 is past, the day of unity has dawned. One has risen 
 from the dead, and in the Valley of Achor stands wide 
 the Door of Hope the Sacrament of Death. 
 
 Sfio Domine, ct vere scio . . . quia non sum dignus accedere 
 ad tantum mysterium propter nimia peccata mea et infinitas 
 neglipentias meas. Sed scio . . , quia tu potes me facere 
 
 digttum. 
 
 8 4
 
 In the distance rise the great lone heavenward hills 
 
 184
 
 VI 
 
 " ANYTUS and Meletus can kill me, but they cannot 
 hurt me," said Socrates ; and Governor Sancho, with 
 all the itch of newly-acquired authority, could not 
 make the young weaver of steel-heads for lances sleep 
 in prison. In the Vision of Er the souls passed straight 
 forward under the throne of necessity, and out into 
 the plains of forgetfulness, where they must severally 
 drink of the river of unmindfulness whose waters cannot 
 be held in any vessel. The throne, the plain, and the 
 river are still here, but in the distance rise the great 
 lone heavenward hills, and the wise among us no 
 longer ask of the gods Lethe, but rather remembrance. 
 Necessity can set me helpless on my back, but she cannot 
 keep me there ; nor can four walls limit my vision. 
 I pass out from under her throne into the garden of 
 God a free man, to my ultimate beatitude or my 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
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 which is set with lights across the gloom; watch the traffic 
 which is for me but so many passing lamps telling their 
 tale by varying height and brightness. I hear under 
 my window the sprint of over-tired horses ; the rattle 
 of uncertain wheels as the street-sellers hasten south ; 
 the jangle of cab bells as the theatre-goers take their 
 homeward way ; the gruff altercation of weary men, 
 the unmelodious song and clamorous laugh of women 
 whose merriment is wearier still. Then comes a time 
 of stillness when the light in the sky waxes and wanes, 
 when the cloud-drifts obscure the stars, and I gaze 
 out into blackness set with watching eyes. No sound 
 comes from without but the voice of the night-wind 
 and the cry of the hour. The clock on the mantel- 
 piece ticks imperatively, for a check has fallen on the 
 familiarity which breeds a disregard of common things, 
 and a reason has to be sought for each sound which 
 claims a hearing. The pause is wonderful while it 
 lasts, but it is not for long. The working world awakes, 
 the poorer brethren take up the burden of service ; 
 the dawn lights the sky ; remembrance cries an end 
 to forgetting. 
 
 Sometimes in the country on a night in early summer 
 
 you may shut the cottage door to step out into an 
 
 immense darkness which palls heaven and earth. 
 
 Going forward into the embrace of the great gloom, 
 
 86
 
 OUT OF THE SHADOW 
 
 you are as a babe swaddled by the hands of night into 
 helpless quiescence. Your feet tread an unseen path, 
 your hands grasp at a void, or shrink from the contact 
 they cannot realise ; your eyes are holden ; your voice 
 would die in your throat did you seek to rend the veil 
 of that impenetrable silence. 
 
 Shut in by the intangible dark, we are brought up 
 against those worlds within worlds blotted out by 
 our concrete daily life. The working of the great 
 microcosm at which we peer dimly through the little 
 window of science ; the wonderful, breathing earth ; 
 the pulsing, throbbing sap ; the growing fragrance 
 shut in the calyx of to-morrow's flower ; the heart- 
 beat of a sleeping world that we dream that we know ; 
 and around, above, and interpenetrating all, the world 
 of dreams, of angels and of spirits. 
 
 It was this world which Jacob saw on the first night 
 of his exile, and again when he wrestled in Peniel until 
 the break of day. It was this world which Elisha 
 saw with open eyes ; which Job knew when darkness 
 fell on him ; which Ezekiel gazed into from his place 
 among the captives ; which Daniel beheld as he stood 
 alone by the great river, the river Hiddekel. 
 
 For the moment we have left behind the realm of 
 question and explanation, of power over matter and 
 the exercise of bodily faculties ; and passed into darkness 
 
 87
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 alight with visions we cannot see, into silence alive 
 with voices we cannot hear. Like helpless men we set 
 our all on the one thing left us, and lift up our hearts, 
 knowing that we are but a mere speck among a myriad 
 worlds, yet greater than the sum of them ; having 
 our roots in the dark places of the earth, but our 
 branches in the sweet airs of heaven. 
 
 It is the material counterpart of the ' Night of the 
 Soul.' We have left our house and set forth in the 
 darkness which paralyses those faculties that make 
 us men in the world of men. But surely the great 
 mystics, with all their insight and heavenly love, 
 fell short when they sought freedom in complete 
 separateness from creation instead of in perfect unity 
 with it. The Greeks knew better when they flung 
 Ariadne's crown among the stars, and wrote Demeter's 
 grief on a barren earth, and Persephone's joy in the 
 fruitful field. For the earth is gathered up in man ; 
 he is the whole which is greater than the sum of its 
 parts. Standing in the image of God, and clothed in 
 the garment of God, he lifts up priestly hands and 
 presents the sacrifice of redeemed earth before the 
 throne of the All-Father. " Dust and ashes and a 
 house of devils," he cries; and there comes back 
 for answer, " Rex concupiscet decor em tuam." 
 
 The Angel of Death has broad wings of silence and 
 88
 
 OUT OF THE SHADOW 
 
 mystery with which he shadows the valley where we 
 need fear no evil, and where the voice which speaks 
 to us is as the " voice of doves, tabering upon their 
 breasts." It is a place of healing and preparation, 
 of peace and refreshing after the sharply-defined 
 outlines of a garish day. Walking there we learn to 
 use those natural faculties of the soul which are 
 hampered by the familiarity of bodily progress, to 
 apprehend the truths which we have intellectually 
 accepted. It is the place of secrets where the humility 
 which embraces all attainable knowledge cries " I 
 know not " ; and while we proclaim from the house- 
 tops that which we have learnt, the manner of our 
 learning Lies hid for each one of us in the sanctuary of 
 our souls. 
 
 The Egyptians, in their ancient wisdom, set in the 
 desert a great androsphinx, image of mystery and silence, 
 staring from under level brows across the arid sands 
 of the sea-way. The Greeks borrowed and debased 
 the image, turning the inscrutable into a semi-woman 
 who asked a foolish riddle, and hurled herself down 
 in petulant pride when (Edipus answered aright. So 
 we, marring the office of silence, question its mystery ; 
 thwart ourselves with riddles of our own suggesting ; 
 and turn away, leaving our offering but half consumed 
 on the altar of the unknown god. It was not the theft 
 
 89
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 of fire that brought the vengeance of heaven upon 
 Prometheus, but the mocking sacrifice. Orpheus lost 
 Eurydice because he must see her face before the 
 appointed time. Persephone ate of the pomegranate 
 and hungered in gloom for the day of light which should 
 have been endless. 
 
 The universe is full of miracle and mystery; the 
 darkness and silence are set for a sign we dare not 
 despise. The pall of night lifts, leaving us engulphed 
 in the light of immensity under a tossing heaven of 
 stars. The dawn breaks, but it does not surprise us, 
 for we have watched from the valley and seen the 
 pale twilight. Through the wondrous Sabbath of 
 faithful souls, the long day of rosemary and rue, the 
 light brightens in the East ; and we pass on towards 
 it with quiet feet and opening eyes, bearing with us 
 all of the redeemed earth that we have made our own, 
 until we are fulfilled in the sunrise of the great Easter 
 Day, and the peoples come from north and south and 
 east and west to the City which lieth foursquare the 
 Beatific Vision of God. 
 
 Vere Jerusalem est ilia civitas 
 Cuius pax iugis et summa iucunditas ; 
 Ubi non praevenit rem desiderium, 
 Nee desiderio minus est premium.
 
 AT THE WHITE GATE
 
 A GREAT joy has come to me ; one of those unexpected 
 gifts which life loves to bestow after we have learnt 
 to loose our grip of her. I am back in my own place 
 very near my road the white gate lies within my 
 distant vision ; near the lean grey Downs which keep 
 watch and ward between the country and the sea ; 
 very near, nay, in the lap of Mother Earth, for as I 
 write I am lying on a green carpet, powdered yellow 
 and white with the sun's own flowers ; overhead a 
 great sycamore where the bees toil and sing ; and 
 sighing shimmering poplars golden grey against the 
 blue. The day of Persephone has dawned for me, 
 and I, set free like Demeter's child, gladden my eyes 
 with this foretaste of coming radiance, and rest my tired 
 sense with the scent and sound of home. Away down 
 the meadow I hear the early scythe song, and the warm 
 air is fragrant with the fallen grass. It has its own 
 message for me as I lie here, I who have obtained yet 
 one more mercy, and the burden of it is life, not death. 
 I remember when, taking a grace from my road, 
 I helped to mow Farmer Marler's ten-acre field, rich 
 
 93
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 m ripe upstanding grass. The mechanism of the 
 ancient reaper had given way under the strain of 
 the home meadows, and if this crop was to be saved 
 it must be by hand. I have kept the record of those 
 days of joyous labour under a June sky. Men were 
 hard to get in our village ; old Dodden, who was over 
 seventy, volunteered his services he had done yeoman 
 work with the scythe in his youth and two of the 
 farm hands with their master completed our strength. 
 
 We took our places under a five o'clock morning 
 sky, and the larks cried down to us as we stood knee- 
 deep in the fragrant dew-steeped grass, each man with 
 his gleaming scythe poised ready for its sweeping 
 swing. Old Dodden led by right of age and ripe ex- 
 perience ; bent like a sickle, brown and dry as a nut, 
 his face a tracery of innumerable wrinkles, he has 
 never ailed a day, and the cunning of his craft was still 
 with him. At first we worked stiffly, unreadily, but soon 
 the monotonous motion possessed us with its insistent 
 rhythm, and the grass bowed to each sibilant swish 
 and fell in sweet- smelling swathes at our feet. Now 
 and then a startled rabbit scurried through tlie 
 miniature forest to vanish with white flick of tail in 
 the tangled hedge ; here and there a mother lark was 
 discovered sitting motionless, immovable upon her 
 little brood ; but save for these infrequent incidents 
 94
 
 The line of the untroubled hills strong and still in the broad 
 
 sunshine 
 
 194
 
 AT THE WHITE GATE 
 
 we paced steadily on with no speech save the cry of 
 the hone on the steel and the swish of the falling swathes. 
 The sun rose high in the heaven and burnt on bent 
 neck and bare and aching arms, the blood beat and 
 drummed in my veins with the unwonted posture and 
 exercise ; I worked as a man who sees and hears in a 
 mist. Once, as I paused to whet my scythe, my eye 
 caught the line of the untroubled hills strong and still 
 in the broad sunshine ; then to work again in the 
 labouring, fertile valley. 
 
 Rest time came, and wiping the sweat from brow 
 and blade we sought the welcome shadow of the hedge 
 and the cool sweet oatmeal water with which the wise 
 reaper quenches his thirst. Farmer Marler hastened 
 off to see with master-eye that all went well elsewhere ; 
 the farm men slept tranquilly, stretched at full length, 
 clasped hands for pillow ; and old Dodden, sitting 
 with crooked fingers interlaced to check their trembling 
 betrayal of old age, told how in his youth he had 
 " swep " a four-acre field single-handed in three days 
 an almost impossible feat and of the first reaping 
 machine in these parts, and how it brought, to his 
 thinking, the ruin of agricultural morals with it. 
 " 'Tis again nature," he said, " the Lard gave us the 
 land an' the seed, but Ee said that a man should 
 sweat. Where's the sweat drivin' round wi' two horses 
 
 95
 
 cuttin' the straw down an' gatherin' it again, wi' 
 scarce a hand's turn i' the day's work ? " 
 
 Old Dodden's high-pitched quavering voice rose and 
 fell, mournful as he surveyed the present, vehement as 
 he recorded the heroic past. He spoke of the rural 
 exodus and shook his head mournfully. " We old 
 'uns were content wi' earth and the open sky like 
 our feythers before us, but wi' the children 'tis first 
 machines to save doin' a hand's turn o' honest work, 
 an' then land an' sky ain't big enough seemin'ly, nor 
 grand enough ; it must be town an' a paved street, 
 an' they sweat their lives out atwixt four walls an' 
 call it seem' life 'tis death an' worse conies to the most 
 of 'em. Ay, 'tis better to stay by the land, as the 
 Lard said, till time comes to lie under it." I looked 
 away across the field where the hot air throbbed and 
 quivered, and the fallen grass, robbed already of its 
 freshness, lay prone at the feet of its upstanding fellows. 
 It is quite useless to argue with old Dodden ; he only 
 shakes his head and says firmly, " An old man, seventy- 
 five come Martinmass knows more o' life than a young 
 chap, stands ter reason " ; besides, his epitome of the 
 town life he knows nothing of was a just one as far as 
 it went ; and his own son is the sweeper of a Holborn 
 crossing, and many other things that he should not be ; 
 but that is the parson's secret and mine. 
 96
 
 AT THE WHITE GATE 
 
 We took rank again and swept steadily on through 
 the hot still hours into the evening shadows, until 
 the sinking sun set a Gloria to the psalm of another 
 working day. Only a third of the field lay mown, 
 for we were not skilled labourers to cut our acre a day ; 
 I saw it again that night under the moonlight and the 
 starlight, wrapped in a shroud of summer's mist. 
 
 The women joined us on the third day to begin 
 haymaking, and the air was fragrant of tossed and 
 sun-dried grass. One of them walked apart from 
 the rest, without interest or freedom of movement ; 
 her face, sealed and impassive, was aged beyond the 
 vigour of her years. I knew the woman by sight, 
 arid her history by hearsay. We have a code of morals 
 here not indeed peculiar to this place or people 
 that a wedding is ' respectable ' if it precedes child- 
 birth by a bare month, tolerable, and to be recognised, 
 should it succeed the same by less than a year (provided 
 the pair are not living in the same village); but the 
 child that has never been ' fathered ' and the wife 
 without a ring are ' anathema,' and such an one was 
 Elizabeth Banks. She went away a maid and came back 
 a year ago with a child and without a name. Her 
 mother was dead, her father and the village would have 
 none of her : the homing instinct is very strong, or she 
 would scarcely have returned, knowing the traditions 
 G 97
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 of the place. Old Dodden, seeing her, grumbled to 
 me in the rest- time. " Can't think what the farmer 
 wants wi' Lizzie Banks in 'is field." " She must live," 
 I said, " and by all showing her life is a hard one." 
 " She 'ad the makin' of 'er bed," he went on, obstinately. 
 " What for do she bring her disgrace home, wi' a 
 fatherless brat for all folks to see ? We don't want 
 them sort in our village. The Lord's hand is heavy, 
 an' a brat's a curse that cannot be hid." 
 
 When tea-time came I crossed the field to look for 
 a missing hone, and saw Elizabeth Banks far from 
 the other women, busied with a bundle under the hedge. 
 I passed close on my search, and lo ! the bundle was 
 a little boy. He lay smiling and stretching, fighting 
 the air with his small pink fists, while the wind played 
 with his curls. " A curse that cannot be hid," old 
 Dodden had said. The mother knelt a moment, devour- 
 ing him with her eyes, then snatched him to her with 
 aching greed and covered him with kisses. I saw the 
 poor, plain face illumined, transfigured, alive with a 
 mother's love, and remembered how the word came 
 once to a Hebrew prophet : 
 
 Say unto your brethren Ammi, and to your sisters Ruhamah. 
 
 The evening sky was clouding fast, the sound of rain 
 was in the air ; Farmer Marler shook his head as he 
 
 98
 
 AT THE WHITE GATE 
 
 looked at the grass lying in ordered rows. I was the 
 last to leave, and as I lingered at the gate drinking 
 in the scent of the field and the cool of the coming rain, 
 the first drops fell on my upturned face and kissed the 
 poor dry swathes at my feet, and I was glad. 
 
 David, child of the fields and the sheepfolds, his 
 kingship laid aside, sees through the parted curtain 
 of the years the advent of his greater Son, and cries 
 in his psalm of the hilltops, his last prophetic prayer : 
 
 He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass. 
 
 Even so He came, and shall still come. Three 
 days ago the field, in its pageant of fresh beauty, with 
 shimmering blades and tossing banners, greeted sun 
 and shower alike with joy for the furtherance of its 
 life and purpose ; now, laid low, it hears the young grass 
 whisper the splendour of its coming green ; and the 
 poor swathes are glad at the telling, but full of grief 
 for their own apparent failure. Then in great pity 
 comes the rain, the rain of summer, gentle, refreshing, 
 penetrating, and the swathes are comforted, for they 
 know that standing to greet or prostrate to suffer, the 
 consolations of the former and the latter rain are still 
 their own, with tender touch and cool caress. Then, 
 once more parched by the sun, they are borne away to 
 the new service their apparent failure has fitted them 
 
 99
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 for ; and perhaps as they wait in the dark for the 
 unknown that is still to come they hear sometimes 
 the call of the distant rain, and at the sound the dry 
 sap stirs afresh they are not forgotten and can wait. 
 
 " Say unto your sisters Ruhamah" cries the prophet. 
 
 " He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass" 
 sang the poet of the sheepfolds. 
 
 " My ways are not your ways, saith the Lord." 
 
 I remember how I went home along the damp sweet- 
 scented lanes through the grey mist of the rain, thinking 
 of the mown field and Elizabeth Banks and many, 
 many more ; and that night, when the sky had cleared 
 and the nightingale sang, I looked out at the moon 
 riding at anchor, a silver boat in a still blue sea ablaze 
 with the head-lights of the stars, and the saying of the 
 herdsman of Tekoa came to me as it has come often- 
 times since : 
 
 Seek Mini that inaketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth 
 the shadow of deatli into the morning, and maketh the day dark 
 with ni^lit ; that calleth for the waters of the sea and poureth 
 them out upon the face of earth ; the Lord is His name. 
 
 IOO
 
 Below the low hedge lies pasture bright with buttercups, where the 
 
 cattle feed 
 
 1 100
 
 II 
 
 THIS garden is an epitome of peace ; sun and wind, 
 rain, flowers, and birds gather me into the blessedness 
 of their active harmony. The world holds no wish for 
 me, now that I have come home to die with my own 
 people, for verily I think that the sap of grass and 
 trees must run in my veins, so steady is their pull 
 upon my heart-strings. London claimed all my 
 philosophy, but the country gives all, and asks of 
 me only the warm receptivity of a child in its 
 mother's arms. 
 
 When I lie in my cool light room on the garden level, 
 I look across the bright grass il verde smcdto to a great 
 red rose bush in lavish disarray against the dark cypress. 
 Near by, amid a tangle of many-hued corn-flowers I 
 see the promise of coming lilies, the sudden crimson of 
 a solitary pseony; and in lowlier state against the 
 poor parched earth glow the golden cups of the esch- 
 scholtzias. Beyond the low hedge lies pasture bright 
 with buttercups, where the cattle feed. Farther off, 
 where the scythe has been busy, are sheep, clean and 
 shorn, with merry, well-grown lambs ; and in the 
 
 101
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 farthest field I can see the great horses moving in 
 slow steady pace as the farmer turns his furrow. 
 
 The birds are noisy comrades and old friends, from 
 the lark which chants the dew-steeped morning, to 
 the nightingale that breaks the silence of the most 
 wonderful nights. I hear the wisdom of the rooks 
 in the great elms ; the lifting Hit of the linnet, and 
 the robin's quaint little summer song. The starlings 
 chatter ceaselessly, their queer strident voices harsh 
 against the melodious gossip of the other birds ; the 
 martins shrill softly as they swoop to and fro busied 
 with their nesting under the eaves ; thrush and black- 
 bird vie in friendly rivalry like the Meister- singer of 
 old ; sometimes I hear the drawling cry of a peacock 
 strayed from the great house, or the laugh of the 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 sycamore 
 showers honey and flowers on me as I lie beneath it. 
 Sometimes a bee falls like an over-ripe fruit, and waits 
 awhile to clean his pollen-coated legs ere he flies home 
 to discharge his burden. He is too busy to be friendly, 
 but his great velvety cousin is much more sociable, 
 and stays for a gentle rub between his noisy shimmering 
 wings, and a nap in the hollow of my hand, for he is an 
 idle friendly soul with plenty of time at his own disposal 
 
 102
 
 The great horses moving in slow steady pace as the farmer turns his 
 
 furrow 
 
 [102
 
 AT THE WHITE GATE 
 
 and no responsibilities. Looking across I can watch 
 the martins at work ; they have a starling and a 
 sparrow for near neighbours in the wooden gutter. 
 One nest is already complete all but the coping, the 
 other two are a-building : I wonder whether I or they 
 will be first to go south through the mist. 
 
 This great tree is a world in itself, and the denizens 
 appear full of curiosity as to the Gulliver who has 
 taken up his abode beneath it. Pale green caterpillars 
 and spiders of all sizes come spinning down to visit 
 me, and have to be persuaded with infinite difficulty 
 to ascend their threads again. There are flies with 
 beautiful iridescent wings, beetles of all shapes, some 
 of them like tiny jewels in the sunlight. Their 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 not so much desire 
 for the beauty to come, as a great longing to open my 
 eyes a little wider during the time which remains to me 
 in this beautiful world of God's making, where each 
 moment tells its own tale of active, progressive life 
 in which there is no undoing. Nature knows naught 
 of the web of Penelope, that acme of anxious pathetic 
 waiting, but goes steadily on in ever widening circle 
 towards the fulfilment of the mystery of God. 
 
 There are, I take it, two master-keys to the secrets 
 
 103
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 of the universe, viewed sub specie ceternitatis, the 
 Incarnation of God, and the Personality of Man ; with 
 these it is true for us as for the pantheistic little man 
 of contemptible speech, that " all things are ours," 
 yea, even unto the third heaven. 
 
 I have lost my voracious appetite for books ; their 
 language is less plain than scent and song and the wind 
 in the trees ; and for me the clue to the next world 
 lies in the wisdom of earth rather than in the learning 
 of men. " Libera me ab fuscina Hophni" prayed the 
 good Bishop fearful of religious greed. I know too 
 much, not too little ; it is realisation that I lack, 
 wherefore I desire these last days to confirm in myself 
 the sustaining goodness of God, the love which is our 
 continuing city, the New Jerusalem whose length, 
 breadth, and height are all one. It is a time of ex- 
 ceeding peace. There is a place waiting for me under 
 the firs in the quiet churchyard ; thanks to my poverty 
 I have no worldly anxieties or personal dispositions ; 
 and I am rich in friends, many of them unknown to me, 
 who lavishly supply my needs and make it ideal to live 
 on the charity of one's fellow-men. I am most gladly 
 in debt to all the world ; and to Earth, my mother, 
 for her great beauty. 
 
 I can never remember the time when I did not love 
 her, tliis mother of mine with her wonderful garments 
 104
 
 There is a place waiting for me under the firs in the quiet churchyard 
 
 [104
 
 AT THE WHITE GATE 
 
 and ordered loveliness, her tender care and patient 
 bearing of man's burden. In the earliest days of my 
 lonely childhood I used to lie chin on hand amid the 
 milkmaids, red sorrel, and heavy spear-grass listening 
 to her many voices, and above all to the voice of the 
 little brook which ran through the meadows where I 
 used to play : I think it has run through my whole 
 life also, to lose itself at last, not in the great sea but 
 in the river that maketh glad the City of God. Valley 
 and plain, mountain and fruitful field ; the lark's song 
 and the speedwell in the grass ; surely a man need not 
 sigh for greater loveliness until he has read something 
 more of this living letter, and knelt before that earth 
 of which he is the only confusion. 
 
 It is a grave matter that the word religion holds such 
 sway among us, making the very gap seem to yawn 
 again which the Incarnation once and for ever filled full. 
 We have banished the protecting gods that ruled in 
 river and mountain, tree and grove ; we have gainsayed 
 for the most part folk-lore and myth, superstition and 
 fairy-tale, evil only in their abuse. We have done 
 away with mystery, or named it deceit. All this we 
 have done in an enlightened age, but despite this 
 policy of destruction we have left ourselves a belief, 
 the grandest and most simple the world has ever known, 
 which sanctifies the water that is shed by every passing 
 
 105
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 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 
 liveth. Further, it is a belief whose foundations are 
 the most heavenly mystery of the Trinity, but whose 
 centre is a little Child : it sets a price upon the head 
 of the sparrow, and reckons the riches of this world 
 at their true value ; it points to a way of holiness where 
 the fool shall not err, and the sage may find the 
 realisation of his far-seeking ; and yet, despite its 
 inclusiveness, it is a belief which cannot save the birds 
 from destruction, the silent mountains from 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 
 ready to interpret, likened in her loveliness to the chief 
 treasures of her handmaid Earth. There is more 
 truth in the believing cry, " Come from thy white 
 cliffs, 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 him, 
 instead of throwing open the gate of the garden 
 1 06
 
 AT THE WHITE GATE 
 
 where God walks with man from morning until 
 morning. 
 
 As I write the sun is setting ; in the pale radiance 
 of the sky above his glory there dawns the evening star ; 
 and earth like a tired child turns her face to the bosom 
 of the night. 
 
 107
 
 Ill 
 
 ONCE again I have paid a rare visit to my tree to find 
 many things changed since my last sojourn there. 
 The bees are silent, for the honey-laden flowers of 
 the sycamore are gone and in their place hang dainty 
 two-fold keys. The poplar has lost its metallic shimmer, 
 the chestnut its tall white candles ; and the sound 
 of the wind in the fully-leaved branches is like the 
 sighing of the sea. The martins' nests are finished, 
 and one is occupied by a shrill-voiced brood ; but for 
 the most part the birds' parental cares are over, and 
 the nestlings in bold flight no longer flutter on inefficient 
 wings across the lawn with clamorous, open bill. The 
 robins show promise of their ruddy vests, the slim young 
 thrush is diligently practising maturer notes, and soon 
 Maid June will have fled. 
 
 It is such a wonderful world that I cannot find it 
 in my heart to sigh for fresh beauty amid these glories 
 of the Lord on which I look, seeing men as trees 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 
 108
 
 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 ah 1 these wonders, instead of the 
 heavy-lidded slumber to which we so often liken it. 
 " Earth to earth ? " Yes, " dust thou art, and unto 
 dust thou shalt return," but what of the rest ? What 
 of the folded grave clothes, and the Forty Days ? 
 If the next state be, as it well might, space of four 
 dimensions, and the first veil which will lift for me be 
 the material one, then the " other " world which is 
 hidden from our grosser material organism will lie 
 open, and declare still further to my widening eyes 
 and unstopped ears the glory and purpose of the mani- 
 fold garment of God. Knowledge will give place 
 to understanding in that second chamber of the House 
 of Wisdom and Love. Revelation is always measured 
 by capacity : " Open thy mouth wide," and it shall be 
 filled with a satisfaction that in itself is desire. 
 
 There is a child here, a happy quiet little creature 
 holding gently to its two months of life. Sometimes 
 they lay it beside me, I the more helpless of the two 
 
 109
 
 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 little white child. It is wonderful to watch a 
 woman's rapturous familiarity with these newcomers. 
 A man's love has far more awe in it, and the passionate 
 animal instinct of defence is wanting in him. " A 
 woman shall be saved through the child-bearing," said 
 St Paul ; not necessarily her own, but by participa- 
 tion in the great act of motherhood which is the crown 
 and glory of her sex. She is the " prisoner of love," 
 caught in a net of her own weaving ; held fast by little 
 hands which rule by impotence, pursued by feet the 
 swifter for their faltering. 
 
 It seems incredible that this is what a woman will 
 barter for the right to " live her own life " surely 
 the most empty of desires. Man vir, woman jemina, 
 go to make up the man homo. There can be no 
 comparison, no rivalry between them ; they are the 
 complement of each other, and a little child shall lead 
 them. It is easy to understand that desire to shelter 
 no
 
 AT THE WHITE GATE 
 
 under the dear mantle of motherhood which has led 
 to one of the abuses of modern Romanism. I met 
 an old peasant couple at Bornhofen who had tramped 
 many weary miles to the famous shrine of Our Lady 
 to plead for their only son. They had a few pence 
 saved for a candle, and afterwards when they told me 
 their tale the old woman heaved a sigh of relief, " Es 
 wird bald gut gehen : Die da, Sie versteht," and I saw 
 her later paying a farewell visit to the great under- 
 standing Mother whom she could trust. Superstitious 
 misapprehension if you will, but also the recognition 
 of a divine principle. 
 
 It was Behmen, I believe, who cried with the breath 
 of inspiration, " Only when I know God shall I know 
 myself " ; and so man remains the last of all the riddles, 
 to be solved it may be only in Heaven's perfection 
 and the light of the Beatific Vision. " Know thyself " 
 is a vain legend, the more so when emphasised by a 
 skull ; and so I company with a friend and a stranger, 
 and looking across at the white gate I wonder concerning 
 the quiet pastures and still waters that lie beyond, 
 even as Brother Ambrose wondered long years ago 
 in the monastery by the forest. 
 
 The Brother Ambrose was ever a saintly man approved of God 
 and beloved by the Brethren. To him one night, as he lay abed 
 in the dormitory, came the word of the Lord, saying, "Come, 
 
 III
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 and I will show thee the Bride, the Lamb's wife." And Brother 
 Ambrose arose and was carried to a great and high mountain, 
 even as in the Vision of Blessed John. 'Twas a still night of 
 many stars, and Brother Ambrose, looking up, saw a radiant path 
 in the heavens ; and lo ! the stars gathered themselves together 
 on either side until they stood as walls of light, and the four winds 
 lapped him about as in a mantle and bore him towards the 
 wondrous gleaming roadway. Then between the stars came the 
 Holy City with roof and pinnacle aflame, and walls aglow with 
 such colours as no earthly limner dreams of, and much gold. 
 Brother Ambrose beheld the Gates of Pearl, and by every gate 
 an angel with wings of snow and fire, and a face no man dare 
 look on because of its exceeding radiance. 
 
 Then as Brother Ambrose stretched out his arms because of his 
 great longing, a little grey cloud came out of the north and hung 
 between the walls of light, so that he no longer beheld the Vision, 
 but only heard a sound as of a great multitude crying 'Alleluia' ; 
 and suddenly the winds came about him again, and lo ! he found 
 himself in his bed in the dormitory, and it was midnight, for 
 the bell was ringing to Matins ; and he rose and went down 
 with the rest. But when the Brethren left the choir Brother 
 Ambrose stayed fast in his place, hearing and seeing nothing 
 because of the Vision of God ; and at Lauds they found him and 
 told the Prior. 
 
 He questioned Brother Ambrose of the matter, and when he 
 heard the Vision bade him limn the Holy City even as he had 
 ^een it ; and the Precentor gave him uterine vellum and much 
 fine gold and what colours he asked for the work. Then Brother 
 Ambrose limned a wondrous fair city of gold with turrets and 
 spires ; and he inlaid blue for the sapphire, and green for the 
 emerald, and vermilion where the city seemed aflame with the 
 glory of God ; but the angels he could not limn, nor could he set 
 the rest of the colours as he saw them, nor the wall of stars on 
 
 \ 12
 
 AT THE WHITE GATE 
 
 either hand ; and Brother Ambrose fell sick because of the ex- 
 ceeding great longing he had to limn the Holy City, and was very 
 sad ; but the Prior bade him thank God, and remember the 
 infirmity of the flesh, which, like the little grey cloud, veiled 
 Jerusalem to his sight. 
 
 As I write the monastery bell hard by rings out 
 across the lark's song. They still have time for visions 
 behind those guarding walls, but for most of us it is 
 not so. We let slip the ideal for what we call the real, 
 and the golden dreams vanish while we clutch at phan- 
 toms : we speed along life's pathway, counting to the 
 full the sixty minutes of every hour, yet the race is 
 not to the swift nor the battle to the strong. Lying 
 here in this quiet backwater it is hard to believe that 
 the world without is turbulent with storm and stress 
 and the ebb and flow of uncertain tides. The little 
 yellow cat rolling on its back among the daisies, the 
 staid tortoise making a stately meal off the buttercups 
 near me, these are great events in this haven of peace. 
 And yet, looking back to the working days, I know how 
 much goodness and loving kindness there is under 
 the froth and foam. If we do not know ourselves 
 we most certainly do not know our brethren : that 
 revelation awaits us, it may be, first in Heaven. To 
 have faith is to create ; to have hope is to call down 
 blessing ; to have love is to work miracles. Above all 
 H 113
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 let us see visions, visions of colour and light, of green 
 fields and broad rivers, of palaces laid with fair colours, 
 and gardens where a place is found for rosemary and rue. 
 It is our prerogative to be dreamers, but there will 
 always be men ready to offer us death for our dreams. 
 And if it must be so let us choose death ; it is gain, 
 not loss, and the gloomy portal when we reach it is 
 but a white gate, the white gate maybe we have known 
 all our lives barred by the tendrils of the woodbine. 
 
 114
 
 IV 
 
 RAIN, rain, rain : the little flagged path outside my 
 window is a streaming way, where the coming raindrops 
 meet again the grey clouds whose storehouse they have 
 but just now left. The grass grows greener as I watch 
 it, the burnt patches fade, a thousand thirsty heads are 
 uplifted for the cooling draught. 
 
 The great thrush that robs the raspberry canes is 
 busy ; yesterday he had little but dust for his guerdon, 
 but now fresh, juicy fruit repays him as he swings 
 to and fro on the pliant branches. The blackbirds 
 and starlings find the worms an easy prey poor 
 brother worm ever ready for sacrifice. I can hear 
 the soft expectant chatter of the family of martins 
 under the roof ; there will be good hunting, and they 
 know it, for the flies are out when the rain is over, 
 and there are clamorous mouths awaiting. My little 
 brown brothers, the sparrows, remain my chief delight. 
 Of all the birds these nestle closest to my heart, be they 
 grimy little cockneys or their trim and dainty country 
 cousins. They come day by day for their meed of 
 crumbs spread for them outside my window, and at 
 H* 115
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 this season they eat leisurely and with good appetite, 
 for there are no hungry babies pestering to be fed. 
 Very early in the morning I hear the whirr and rustle 
 of eager wings, and the tap, tap, of little beaks upon 
 the stone. The sound carries me back, for it was 
 the first to greet me when I rose to draw water and 
 gather kindling in my roadmender days ; and if I 
 slip back another decade they survey me, reproving 
 my laziness, from the foot of the narrow bed in my 
 little attic overseas. 
 
 Looking along the roadway that we have travelled 
 we see the landmarks, great and small, which have 
 determined the direction of our feet. For some those 
 of childhood stand out above all the rest ; but I re- 
 member few notable ones, and those few the emphatic 
 chord of the universe, rather than any commerce with 
 my fellows. There was the night of my great dis- 
 appointment, when I was borne from my comfortable 
 bed to see the wonders of the moon's eclipse. Dis- 
 appointment was so great that it sealed my lips ; but, 
 once back on my pillow, I sobbed for grief that I had 
 seen a wonder so far below my expectation. Then there 
 was a night at Whitby, when the wind made speech 
 impossible, and the seas rushed up and over the great 
 lighthouse like the hungry spirits of the deep. I 
 like better to remember the scent of the first cowslip 
 116
 
 AT THE WHITE GATE 
 
 field under the warm side of the hedge, when I sang 
 to myself for pure joy of their colour and fragrance. 
 Again, there were the bluebells in the deserted quarry 
 like the backwash of a southern sea, and below them 
 the miniature forest of sheltering bracken with its 
 quaint conceits ; and, crowned above all, the day 
 I stood on Watcombe Down, and looked across a stretch 
 of golden gorse and new-turned blood-red field, the green 
 of the headland, and beyond, the sapphire sea. 
 
 Time sped, and there came a day when I first set 
 foot on German soil and felt the throb of its paternity, 
 the beat of our common life. England is my mother, 
 and most dearly do I love her swelling breasts and wind- 
 swept, salt-strewn hair. Scotland gave me my name, 
 with its haunting derivation handed down by brave 
 men ; but Germany has always been to me the Father- 
 land par excellence. True, my love is limited to the 
 southern provinces, with their mediaeval memories ; 
 for the progressive guttural north I have little sympathy, 
 but the Rhine claimed me from the first, calling, calling, 
 with that wonderful voice which speaks of death and 
 life, of chivalry and greed of gold. If you would 
 have the river's company you should wander, a happj 
 solitary, along its banks, watching its gleaming current 
 in the early morning, its golden glory as it answers 
 the farewell of parting day. Then, in the silence of 
 
 117
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 the night, you can hear the wash and eddy calling 
 one to another, count the heart-beats of the great 
 bearer of burdens, and watch in the moonlight the 
 sisters of the mist as they lament with wringing hands 
 the days that are gone. 
 
 The forests, too, are ready with story hid in the 
 fastness of their solitude, and it is a joy to think that 
 those great pines, pointing ever upwards, go for the 
 most part to carry the sails of great ships seeking afar 
 under open sky. The forest holds other wonders 
 still. It seems but last night that I wandered down 
 the road which led to the little unheeded village where 
 I had made my temporary home. The warm-scented 
 breath of the pines and the stillness of the night wrapped 
 me in great content ; the summer lightning leapt 
 in a lambent arch across the east, and the stars, seen 
 dimly through the sombre tree crests, were outrivalled 
 by the glow-worms which shone in countless points 
 of light from bank and hedge ; even two charcoal- 
 burners, who passed with friendly greeting, had 
 wreathed their hats with the living flame. The tiny 
 shifting lamps were everywhere ; pale yellow, purely 
 white, or green as the underside of a northern wave. 
 By day but an ugly, repellent worm ; but darkness 
 comes, and lo, a star alight. Nature is full for us of 
 seeming inconsistencies and glad surprises. The world's 
 118
 
 AT THE WHITE GATE 
 
 asleep, say you ; on your ear falls the nightingale's 
 song and the stir of living creatures in bush and brake. 
 The mantle of night falls, and all unattended the wind 
 leaps up and scatters the clouds which veil the constant 
 stars ; or in the hour of the great dark, dawn parts 
 the curtain with the long foregleam of the coming day. 
 It is hard to turn one's back on night with her kiss 
 of peace for tired eye-lids, the kiss which is not sleep 
 but its neglected forerunner. I made my way at last 
 down to the vine-girt bridge asleep under the stars 
 and up the winding stairs of the old grey tower ; and 
 a stone's-throw away the Rhine slipped quietly past 
 in the midsummer moonlight. 
 
 Switzerland came in its turn, unearthly in its white 
 loveliness and glory of lake and sky. But perhaps 
 the landmark which stands out most clearly is the 
 solitary blue gentian which I found in the short slippery 
 grass of the Rigi, gazing up at the sky whose blue 
 could not hope to excel it. It was my first ; and what 
 need of another, for finding one I had gazed into the 
 mystery of all. This side the Pass, snow and the blue 
 of heaven ; later I entered Italy through fields of many- 
 hued lilies, her past glories blazoned in the flowers 
 of the field. 
 
 Now it is a strangely uneventful road that leads 
 to my White Gate. Each day questions me as it passes ; 
 
 119
 
 THE ROADMENDER 
 
 each day makes answer for me " not yet." There 
 is no material preparation to be made for this journey 
 of mine into a far country a simple fact which adds 
 to the ' unknowableness ' of the other side. Do I 
 travel alone, or am I one of a great company, 
 swift yet unhurried in their passage ? The voices 
 of Penelope's suitors shrilled on the ears of Ulysses, 
 as they journeyed to the nether- world, like nocturnal 
 birds and bats in the inarticulateness of their speech. 
 They had abused the gift, and fled self-condemned. 
 Maybe silence commends itself as most suitable for 
 the wayfarers towards the sunrise silence because 
 they seek the Word but for those hastening towards 
 the confusion they have wrought there falls already 
 the sharp oncoming of the curse. 
 
 While we are still here the language of worship seems 
 far, and yet lies very nigh ; for what better note can 
 our frail tongues lisp than the voice of wind and sea, 
 river and stream, those grateful servants giving all 
 and asking nothing, the soft whisper of snow and rain 
 eager to replenish, or the thunder proclaiming a majesty 
 too great for utterance ? Here, too, stands the angel 
 with the censer gathering up the fragrance of teeming 
 earth and forest-tree, of flower and fruit, and sweetly 
 pungent herb distilled by sun and rain for joyful 
 use. Here, too, come acolytes lighting the dark with 
 
 120
 
 AT THE WHITE GATE 
 
 tapers sun, moon, and stars gifts of the Lord that 
 His sanctuary may stand ever served. 
 
 It lies here ready to our hand, this life of adoration 
 which we needs must live hand in hand with earth, 
 for has she not borne the curse with us ? But beyond 
 the white gate and the trail of woodbine falls the silence 
 greater than speech, darkness greater than light, a 
 pause of " a little while " ; and then the touch of 
 that healing garment as we pass to the King in His 
 beauty, in a land from which there is no return. 
 
 At the gateway then I cry you farewell. 
 
 121
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES 
 
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