THE ROADMENDER

I have attained my ideal: I am a roadmender, some saystonebreaker. Both titles are correct, but the one is morepregnant than the other. All day I sit by the roadside on astretch of grass under a high hedge of saplings and a tangle oftraveller's joy, woodbine, sweetbrier, and late roses. Opposite meis a white gate, seldom used, if one may judge from the trail ofhoneysuckle growing tranquilly along it: I know now that wheneverand 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 manybeside myself have attained, or would understand my attaining. After all, what do we ask of life, here or indeed hereafter, butleave to serve, to live, to commune with our fellowmen and withourselves; and from the lap of earth to look up into the face ofGod? All these gifts are mine as I sit by the winding white roadand serve the footsteps of my fellows. There is no room in my lifefor avarice or anxiety; I who serve at the altar live of the altar:I lack nothing but have nothing over; and when the winter of lifecomes I shall join the company of weary old men who sit on thesunny side of the workhouse wall and wait for the tender mercies ofGod. 

Just now it is the summer of things; there is life and musiceverywhere--in the stones themselves, and I live to-day beating outthe rhythmical hammer-song of The Ring. There is real physical joyin the rise and swing of the arm, in the jar of a fair stroke, thesplit and scatter of the quartz: I am learning to be ambidextrous, for why should Esau sell his birthright when there is enough forboth? Then the rest-hour comes, bringing the luxurious ache oftired but not weary limbs; and I lie outstretched and renew mystrength, sometimes with my face deep-nestled in the cool greengrass, sometimes on my back looking up into the blue sky which nowise man would wish to fathom. 

The birds have no fear of me; am I not also of the brown brethrenin my sober fustian livery? They share my meals--at least thelittle dun-coated Franciscans do; the blackbirds and thrushes carenot a whit for such simple food as crumbs, but with legs well apartand claws tense with purchase they disinter poor brother worm, having first mocked him with sound of rain. The robin that livesby the gate regards my heap of stones as subject to his specialinspection. He sits atop and practises the trill of his summersong until it shrills above and through the metallic clang of mystrokes; and when I pause he cocks his tail, with a humoroustwinkle of his round eye which means--"What! shirking, bigbrother?"--and I fall, ashamed, to my mending of roads. 

The other day, as I lay with my face in the grass, I heard a gentlerustle, and raised my head to find a hedge-snake watching mefearless, unwinking. I stretched out my hand, picked it upunresisting, and put it in my coat like the husbandman of old. Washe so ill-rewarded, I wonder, with the kiss that reveals secrets?My snake slept in peace while I hammered away with an oddquickening of heart as I thought how to me, as to Melampus, hadcome the messenger--had come, but to ears deafened by centuries ofmisrule, blindness, and oppression; so that, with all my longing, Iam shut out of the wondrous world where walked Melampus and theSaint. To me there is no suggestion of evil in the little silentcreatures, harmless, or deadly only with the Death which is Life. The beasts who turn upon us, as a rule maul and tearunreflectingly; with the snake there is the swift, silent strike, the tiny, tiny wound, then sleep and a forgetting. 

My brown friend, with its message unspoken, slid away into thegrass at sundown to tell its tale in unstopped ears; and I, my taskdone, went home across the fields to the solitary cottage where Ilodge. It is old and decrepit--two rooms, with a quasi-attic overthem reached by a ladder from the kitchen and reached only by me. It is furnished with the luxuries of life, a truckle bed, table, chair, and huge earthenware pan which I fill from the ice-cold wellat the back of the cottage. Morning and night I serve with theGibeonites, their curse my blessing, as no doubt it was theirs whentheir hearts were purged by service. Morning and night I send downthe moss-grown bucket with its urgent message from a dry and dustyworld; the chain tightens through my hand as the liquid treasureresponds to the messenger, and then with creak and jangle--thewelcome of labouring earth--the bucket slowly nears the top anddisperses the treasure in the waiting vessels. The Gibeonites wereservants in the house of God, ministers of the sacrament of serviceeven as the High Priest himself; and I, sharing their high officeof 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 twentyyears. She speaks in the strained high voice which protestsagainst her own infirmity, and her eyes have the pathetic look ofthose who search in silence. For many years she lived alone withher son, who laboured on the farm two miles away. He met his deathrescuing a carthorse from its burning stable; and the farmer gavethe cottage rent free and a weekly half-crown for life to the poorold woman whose dearest terror was the workhouse. With my shillinga week rent, and sharing of supplies, we live in the lines ofcomfort. Of death she has no fears, for in the long chest in thekitchen lie a web of coarse white linen, two pennies covered withthe same to keep down tired eyelids, decent white stockings, and awhite cotton sun-bonnet--a decorous death-suit truly--and enoughmoney in the little bag for self-respecting burial. The farmerburied his servant handsomely--good man, he knew the love ofreticent grief for a 'kind' burial--and one day Harry's mother isto lie beside him in the little churchyard which has been acornfield, and may some day be one again. 

CHAPTER II

On Sundays my feet take ever the same way. First my templeservice, and then five miles tramp over the tender, dewy fields, with their ineffable earthy smell, until I reach the little churchat the foot of the grey-green down. Here, every Sunday, a youngpriest from a neighbouring village says Mass for the tiny hamlet, where all are very old or very young--for the heyday of life has nopart under the long shadow of the hills, but is away at sea or inservice. There is a beautiful seemliness in the extreme youth ofthe priest who serves these aged children of God. He bends tocommunicate them with the reverent tenderness of a son, and readswith the careful intonation of far-seeing love. To the old peoplehe is the son of their old age, God-sent to guide their totteringfootsteps along the highway of foolish wayfarers; and he, with hisyouth and strength, wishes no better task. Service ended, we greeteach other friendly--for men should not be strange in the acre ofGod; and I pass through the little hamlet and out and up on thegrey down beyond. Here, at the last gate, I pause for breakfast;and then up and on with quickening pulse, and evergreen memory ofthe weary war-worn Greeks who broke rank to greet the great blueMother-way that led to home. I stand on the summit hatless, thewind in my hair, the smack of salt on my cheek, all round merolling stretches of cloud-shadowed down, no sound but the shrillmourn of the peewit and the gathering of the sea. 

The hours pass, the shadows lengthen, the sheep-bells clang; and Ilie in my niche under the stunted hawthorn watching the to and froof the sea, and AEolus shepherding his white sheep across the blue. I love the sea with its impenetrable fathoms, its wash andundertow, and rasp of shingle sucked anew. I love it for itssecret dead in the Caverns of Peace, of which account must be givenwhen the books are opened and earth and heaven have fled away. Yetin my love there is a paradox, for as I watch the restless, ineffective waves I think of the measureless, reflective depths ofthe 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 asthe voice of many waters, when the multitude of one mind rendsheaven with alleluia: and I lie so still that I almost feel thekiss of White Peace on my mouth. Later still, when the flare ofthe sinking sun has died away and the stars rise out of a veil ofpurple cloud, I take my way home, down the slopes, through thehamlet, and across miles of sleeping fields; over which night hasthrown her shifting web of mist--home to the little attic, thedeep, cool well, the kindly wrinkled face with its listening eyes--peace in my heart and thankfulness for the rhythm of the road. 

Monday brings the joy of work, second only to the Sabbath of rest, and I settle to my heap by the white gate. Soon I hear the distantstamp of horsehoofs, heralding the grind and roll of the wheelswhich reaches me later--a heavy flour-waggon with a team of fourgreat gentle horses, gay with brass trappings and scarlet ear-caps. On the top of the craftily piled sacks lies the white-cladwaggoner, a pink in his mouth which he mumbles meditatively, andthe reins looped over the inactive whip--why should he drive awilling team that knows the journey and responds as strenuously toa cheery chirrup as to the well-directed lash? We greet and passthe time of day, and as he mounts the rise he calls back a warningof coming rain. I am already white with dust as he with flour, sacramental dust, the outward and visible sign of the stir and beatof the heart of labouring life. 

Next to pass down the road is an anxious ruffled hen, her speckledbreast astir with maternal troubles. She walks delicately, liftingher feet high and glancing furtively from side to side with comblow dressed. The sight of man, the heartless egg-collector, fromwhose haunts she has fled, wrings from her a startled cluck, andshe makes for the white gate, climbs through, and disappears. Iknow her feelings too well to intrude. Many times already has shehidden herself, amassed four or five precious treasures, broodingover them with anxious hope; and then, after a brief desertion toseek the necessary food, she has returned to find her efforts atconcealment vain, her treasures gone. At last, with the courage ofdespair she has resolved to brave the terrors of the unknown andseek a haunt beyond the tyranny of man. I will watch over her fromafar, and when her mother-hope is fulfilled I will marshal her andher brood back to the farm where she belongs; for what end I carenot to think, it is of the mystery which lies at the heart ofthings; and we are all God's beasts, says St Augustine. 

Here is my stone-song, a paraphrase of the Treasure Motif. 

[Music score which cannot be reproduced. It is F# dotted crotchet, F# quaver, F# quaver, F# dotted crotchet, D crotchet, E crotchet. This bar is then repeated once more. ]

What a wonderful work Wagner has done for humanity in translatingthe toil of life into the readable script of music! For those whoseek the tale of other worlds his magic is silent; but earth-travail under his wand becomes instinct with rhythmic song to anaccompaniment of the elements, and the blare and crash of thebottomless pit itself. The Pilgrim's March is the sad sound offootsore men; the San Graal the tremulous yearning of servitude forricher, deeper bondage. The yellow, thirsty flames lick up thewilling sacrifice, the water wails the secret of the river and thesea; the birds and beasts, the shepherd with his pipe, theunderground life in rocks and caverns, all cry their message tothis nineteenth-century toiling, labouring world--and to me as Imend my road. 

Two tramps come and fling themselves by me as I eat my noondaymeal. 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 hisstubbly beard; and it is not long since Death looked him in theeyes. He tells me querulously of a two hundred miles tramp sinceearly spring, of search for work, casual jobs with more kicks thanhalfpence, and a brief but blissful sojourn in a hospital bed, fromwhich he was dismissed with sentence passed upon him. For himself, he is determined to die on the road under a hedge, where a man cansee and breathe. His anxiety is all for his fellow; HE has said hewill "do for a man"; he wants to "swing, " to get out of his "dog'slife. " I watch him as he lies, this Ishmael and would-be Lamech. Ignorance, hunger, terror, the exhaustion of past generations, havedone their work. The man is mad, and would kill his fellowman. 

Presently we part, and the two go, dogged and footsore, down theroad which is to lead them into the great silence. 

CHAPTER III

Yesterday was a day of encounters. 

First, early in the morning, a young girl came down the road on abicycle. Her dressguard was loose, and she stopped to ask for apiece of string. When I had tied it for her she looked at me, atmy worn dusty clothes and burnt face; and then she took a Niphetosrose from her belt and laid it shyly in my dirty disfigured palm. I bared my head, and stood hat in hand looking after her as sherode away up the hill. Then I took my treasure and put it in anest of cool dewy grass under the hedge. Ecce ancilla Domini. 

My next visitor was a fellow-worker on his way to a job at thecross-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 astone split neatly in four. 

The man surveyed me in silence for a moment; then he said slowly, "Mean ter say yer like crackin' these blamed stones to fill 'olessome other fool's made?"

I nodded. 

"Well, that beats everything. Now, I 'AVE seen better days; workedin a big brewery over near Maidstone--a town that, and somethingdoing; and now, 'ere I am, 'ammering me 'eart out on these blastedstones for a bit o' bread and a pipe o' baccy once a week--it ain'tgood enough. " He pulled a blackened clay from his pocket and beganslowly filling it with rank tobacco; then he lit it carefullybehind 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, whoseeyes are holden that they cannot read the Book, whose hearts arefull of sore resentment against they know not what, such work asthis to do--hammering their hearts out for a bit of bread? All thepathos of unreasoning labour rings in these few words. We fit thecollar on unwilling necks; and when their service is over we bidthem go out free; but we break the good Mosaic law and send themaway empty. What wonder there is so little willing service, so fewears ready to be thrust through against the master's door. 

The swift stride of civilisation is leaving behind individualeffort, and turning man into the Daemon of a machine. To and froin front of the long loom, lifting a lever at either end, paces hewho once with painstaking intelligence drove the shuttle. THEN hetasted the joy of completed work, that which his eye had lookedupon, and his hands had handled; now his work is as little finishedas the web of Penelope. Once the reaper grasped the golden cornstems, and with dexterous sweep of sickle set free the treasure ofthe earth. Once the creatures of the field were known to him, andhis eye caught the flare of scarlet and blue as the frail poppiesand sturdy corn-cockles laid down their beauty at his feet; now hesits serene on Juggernaut's car, its guiding Daemon, and the fieldis silent to him. 

As with the web and the grain so with the wood and stone in thetreasure-house of our needs. The ground was accursed FOR OUR SAKEthat in the sweat of our brow we might eat bread. Now the manylive in the brain-sweat of the few; and it must be so, for aslittle as great King Cnut could stay the sea until it had reachedthe appointed place, so little can we raise a barrier to the waveof progress, and say, "Thus far and no further shalt thou come. "

What then? This at least; if we live in an age of mechanism let ussee to it that we are a race of intelligent mechanics; and if manis to be the Daemon of a machine let him know the setting of theknives, the rise of the piston, the part that each wheel and rodplays in the economy of the whole, the part that he himself plays, co-operating with it. Then, when he has lived and servedintelligently, let us give him of our flocks and of our floor thathe may learn to rest in the lengthening shadows until he is calledto his work above. 

So I sat, hammering out my thoughts, and with them the convictionthat stonebreaking should be allotted to minor poets or vagrantchildren of nature like myself, never to such tired folk as my poormate at the cross-roads and his fellows. 

At noon, when I stopped for my meal, the sun was baking the hardwhite road in a pitiless glare. Several waggons and carts passed, the horses sweating and straining, with drooping, fly-tormentedears. The men for the most part nodded slumberously on the shaft, seeking the little shelter the cart afforded; but one shuffled inthe white dust, with an occasional chirrup and friendly pressure onthe tired horse's neck. 

Then an old woman and a small child appeared in sight, both withenormous sun-bonnets and carrying baskets. As they came up with methe woman stopped and swept her face with her hand, while thechild, depositing the basket in the dust with great care, wiped herlittle sticky fingers on her pinafore. Then the shady hedgebeckoned them and they came and sat down near me. The woman lookedabout seventy, tall, angular, dauntless, good for another ten yearsof hard work. The little maid--her only grandchild, she told me--was just four, her father away soldiering, and the mother died inchildbed, so for four years the child had known no other guardianor playmate than the old woman. She was not the least shy, but hadthe strange self-possession which comes from associating with onewho 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 longtramp in the heat for the little one, and we've another mile togo. "

"Will you let her bide here till you come back?" I said. "She'llbe 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 ofsweetstuff, extracted from the basket a small black cat, andsettled in for the afternoon. Her grandmother rose, took herbasket, and, with a nod and "Thank 'ee kindly, mister, " went offdown the road. 

I went back to my work a little depressed--why had I not whitehair?--for a few minutes had shown me that I was not old enough forthe child despite my forty years. She was quite happy with thelittle black cat, which lay in the small lap blinking its yelloweyes 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 mouthsmust be filled, and my son, 'e said 'e didn't see they could keepme on the arf-crown, with another child on the way; so I'm trampingto N-, to the House; but it's a 'ard pinch, leavin' the littleones. "

I looked at him--a typical countryman, with white hair, mild blueeyes, and a rosy, childish, unwrinkled face. 

"I'm eighty-four, " he went on, "and terrible bad with therheumatics and my chest. Maybe it'll not be long before the Lordremembers me. "

The child crept close and put a sticky little hand confidingly intothe tired old palm. The two looked strangely alike, for the worldseems much the same to those who leave it behind as to those whohave but taken the first step on its circular pathway. 

"'Ook at my kitty, " she said, pointing to the small creature in herlap. Then, as the old man touched it with trembling fingers shewent 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 thechild-treble, much of a note; and thinking of the blessingsvouchsafed to the simple old age which crowns a harmless working-life spent in the fields. The two under the hedge had everythingin common and were boundlessly content together, the sting of theknowledge of good and evil past for the one, and for the otherstill to come; while I stood on the battlefield of the world, theflesh, 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 friendthe driver of the flour-cart, and he was almost due when thechild'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 atDitton, whatever are you doin' all these miles from your ownplace?"

"Is it Eliza Jakes?"

He looked at her dazed, doubtful. 

"An' who else should it be? Where's your memory gone, RichardHunton, and you not such a great age either? Where are youstayin'?"

Shame overcame him; his lips trembled, his mild blue eyes filledwith tears. I told the tale as I had heard it, and Mrs Jakes'sindignation was good to see. 

"Not keep you on 'alf a crown! Send you to the House! May theLord 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 withme and the little 'un there. I've my washin', and a bit put by fora rainy day, and a bed to spare, and the Lord and the parson willsee I don't come to want. "

She stopped breathless, her defensive motherhood in arms. 

The old man said quaveringly, in the pathetic, grudging phrase ofthe poor, which veils their gratitude while it testifies theirindependence, "Maybe I might as well. " He rose with difficulty, picked up his bundle and stick, the small child replaced the kittenin its basket, and thrust her hand in her new friend's. 

"Then 'oo IS grandad tum back, " she said. 

Mrs Jakes had been fumbling in her pocket, and extracted a penny, which she pressed on me. 

"It's little enough, mister, " she said. 

Then, as I tried to return it: "Nay, I've enough, and yours ispoor paid work. "

I hope I shall always be able to keep that penny; and as I watchedthe three going down the dusty white road, with the child in themiddle, I thanked God for the Brotherhood of the Poor. 

CHAPTER IV

Yesterday a funeral passed, from the work-house at N-, a quaintsepulture without solemnities. The rough, ungarnished coffin ofstained deal lay bare and unsightly on the floor of an old market-cart; a woman sat beside, steadying it with her feet. The husbanddrove; and the most depressed of the three was the horse, a broken-kneed, flea-bitten grey. It was pathetic, this bringing home indeath of the old father whom, while he lived, they had been toopoor to house; it was at no small sacrifice that they had sparedhim that terror of old age, a pauper's grave, and brought him tolie 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 butnecessary counting the cost of this last bed. 

It is strange how pagan many of us are in our beliefs. True, thefuneral libations have made way for the comfortable bake-meats;still, to the large majority Death is Pluto, king of the darkUnknown whence no traveller returns, rather than Azrael, brotherand friend, lord of this mansion of life. Strange how men shun himas he waits in the shadow, watching our puny straining afterimmortality, sending his comrade sleep to prepare us for himself. When the hour strikes he comes--very gently, very tenderly, if wewill but have it so--folds the tired hands together, takes the way-worn feet in his broad strong palm; and lifting us in his wonderfularms he bears us swiftly down the valley and across the waters ofRemembrance. 

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 greatannual Cattle Fair at E-, and through the long hot hours the beastsfrom all the district round have streamed in broken processionalong my road, to change hands or to die. Surely the lordship overcreation implies wise and gentle rule for intelligent use, not thepursuit of a mere immediate end, without any thought of communityin the great sacrament of life. 

For the most part mystery has ceased for this working Westernworld, and with it reverence. Coventry Patmore says: "God clothesHimself actually and literally with His whole creation. Herbs takeup and assimilate minerals, beasts assimilate herbs, and God, inthe Incarnation and its proper Sacrament, assimilates us, who, saysSt 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 ofa world-wide grace. 

In olden days the herd led his flock, going first in the post ofdanger to defend the creatures he had weaned from their naturalhabits for his various uses. Now that good relationship has ceasedfor us to exist, man drives the beasts before him, means to hisend, but with no harmony between end and means. All day long thedroves of sheep pass me on their lame and patient way, no longerfreely and instinctively following a protector and forerunner, butDRIVEN, impelled by force and resistless will--the same will whichonce went before without force. They are all trimmed as much aspossible to one pattern, and all make the same sad plaint. It is aday on which to thank God for the unknown tongue. The drover andhis lad in dusty blue coats plod along stolidly, deaf and blind toall but the way before them; no longer wielding the crook, instrument of deliverance, or at most of gentle compulsion, butarmed with a heavy stick and mechanically dealing blows on theshort thick fleeces; without evil intent because without thought--it is the ritual of the trade. 

Of all the poor dumb pilgrims of the road the bullocks are the mostterrible to see. They are not patient, but go most unwillinglywith lowered head and furtive sideways motion, in their eyes ahorror of great fear. The sleek cattle, knee deep in pasture, massed at the gate, and stared mild-eyed and with inquiring bellowat the retreating drove; but these passed without answer on to theUnknown, 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 mostpart a merry company. Long strings of rusty, shaggy two-year-olds, unbroken, unkempt, the short Down grass still sweet on theirtongues; full of fun, frolic, and wickedness, biting and pulling, casting longing eyes at the hedgerows. The boys appear torecognise them as kindred spirits, and are curiously forbearing andpatient. Soon both ponies and boys vanish in a white whirl, and along line of carts, which had evidently waited for the dust tosubside, comes slowly up the incline. For the most part they carrythe pigs and fowls, carriage folk of the road. The latter are hot, crowded, and dusty under the open netting; the former for the mostpart cheerfully remonstrative. 

I drew a breath of relief as the noise of wheels died away and myroad sank into silence. The hedgerows are no longer green butwhite and choked with dust, a sight to move good sister Rain towelcome tears. The birds seem to have fled before the noisyconfusion. I wonder whether my snake has seen and smiled at theclumsy ruling of the lord he so little heeds? I turned asidethrough the gate to plunge face and hands into the cool of thesheltered grass that side the hedge, and then rested my eyes on thestretch of green I had lacked all day. The rabbits had apparentlyplayed and browsed unmindful of the stir, and were still flirtingtheir white tails along the hedgerows; a lark rose, another andanother, and I went back to my road. Peace still reigned, for theshadows were lengthening, and there would be little more trafficfor the fair. I turned to my work, grateful for the stillness, andsaw on the white stretch of road a lone old man and a pig. SurelyI knew that tall figure in the quaint grey smock, surely I knew theface, furrowed like nature's face in springtime, and crowned by around, soft hat? And the pig, the black pig walking decorouslyfree? Ay, I knew them. 

In the early spring I took a whole holiday and a long tramp; andtowards afternoon, tired and thirsty, sought water at a littlelonely cottage whose windows peered and blinked under overhangingbrows of thatch. I had, not the water I asked for, but milk and abowl of sweet porridge for which I paid only thanks; and stayed fora chat with my kindly hosts. They were a quaint old couple of thekind rarely met with nowadays. They enjoyed a little pension fromthe Squire and a garden in which vegetables and flowers lived sideby side in friendliest fashion. Bees worked and sang over thethyme and marjoram, blooming early in a sunny nook; and in a homelysty lived a solemn black pig, a pig with a history. 

It was no common utilitarian pig, but the honoured guest of the oldcouple, and it knew it. A year before, their youngest and onlysurviving child, then a man of five-and-twenty, had brought hismother 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 andJoan. 

"Ee be mos' like a child to me and the mother, an' mos' as sensibleas a Christian, ee be, " the old man had said; and I could hardlycredit my eyes when I saw the tall bent figure side by side withthe black pig, coming along my road on such a day. 

I hailed the old man, and both turned aside; but he gazed at mewithout remembrance. 

I spoke of the pig and its history. He nodded wearily. "Ay, ay, lad, you've got it; 'tis poor Dick's pig right enow. "

"But you're never going to take it to E--?"

"Ay, but I be, and comin' back alone, if the Lord be marciful. Themissus has been terrible bad this two mouths and more; Squire's inforeign parts; and food-stuffs such as the old woman wants is hardbuying for poor folks. The stocking's empty, now 'tis the pig mustgo, and I believe he'd be glad for to do the missus a turn; shewere terrible good to him, were the missus, and fond, too. Idursn't tell her he was to go; she'd sooner starve than lose poorDick's pig. Well, we'd best be movin'; 'tis a fairish step. "

The pig followed comprehending and docile, and as the quaint couplepassed from sight I thought I heard Brother Death stir in theshadow. He is a strong angel and of great pity. 

CHAPTER V

There is always a little fire of wood on the open hearth in thekitchen when I get home at night; the old lady says it is "company"for her, and sits in the lonely twilight, her knotted hands lyingquiet on her lap, her listening eyes fixed on the burning sticks. 

I wonder sometimes whether she hears music in the leap and lick ofthe fiery tongues, music such as he of Bayreuth draws from theviolins till the hot energy of the fire spirit is on us, embodiedin sound. 

Surely she hears some voice, that lonely old woman on whom is setthe seal of great silence?

It is a great truth tenderly said that God builds the nest for theblind bird; and may it not be that He opens closed eyes and unstopsdeaf ears to sights and sounds from which others by these verysenses are debarred?

Here the best of us see through a mist of tears men as treeswalking; it is only in the land which is very far off and yet verynear that we shall have fulness of sight and see the King in Hisbeauty; and I cannot think that any listening ears listen in vain. 

The coppice at our back is full of birds, for it is far from theroad and they nest there undisturbed year after year. Through thestill night I heard the nightingales calling, calling, until Icould bear it no longer and went softly out into the luminous dark. 

The little wood was manifold with sound, I heard my little brotherswho move by night rustling in grass and tree. A hedgehog crossedmy path with a dull squeak, the bats shrilled high to the stars, awhite owl swept past me crying his hunting note, a beetle boomedsuddenly in my face; and above and through it all the nightingalessang--and sang!

The night wind bent the listening trees, and the stars yearnedearthward to hear the song of deathless love. Louder and louderthe wonderful notes rose and fell in a passion of melody; and thensank to rest on that low thrilling call which it is said Death onceheard, and stayed his hand. 

They will scarcely sing again this year, these nightingales, forthey are late on the wing as it is. It seems as if on such nightsthey sang as the swan sings, knowing it to be the last time--withthe lavish note of one who bids an eternal farewell. 

At last there was silence. Sitting under the big beech tree, thegiant of the coppice, I rested my tired self in the lap of motherearth, breathed of her breath and listened to her voice in thequickening silence until my flesh came again as the flesh of alittle child, for it is true recreation to sit at the footstool ofGod wrapped in a fold of His living robe, the while night smoothesour tired face with her healing hands. 

The grey dawn awoke and stole with trailing robes across earth'sfloor. At her footsteps the birds roused from sleep and cried agreeting; the sky flushed and paled conscious of coming splendour;and overhead a file of swans passed with broad strong flight to thereeded waters of the sequestered pool. 

Another hour of silence while the light throbbed and flamed in theeast; then the larks rose harmonious from a neighbouring field, therabbits scurried with ears alert to their morning meal, the day hadbegun. 

I passed through the coppice and out into the fields beyond. Thedew lay heavy on leaf and blade and gossamer, a cool fresh windswept clear over dale and down from the sea, and the clover fieldrippled 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. Athalf-past three on a June morning even London has not assumed herresponsibilities, but smiles and glows lighthearted and smokelessunder the caresses of the morning sun. 

Five o'clock. The bell rings out crisp and clear from themonastery where the Bedesmen of St Hugh watch and pray for thesouls on this labouring forgetful earth. Every hour the note ofcomfort and warning cries across the land, tells the Sanctus, theAngelus, and the Hours of the Passion, and calls to remembrance andprayer. 

When the wind is north, the sound carries as far as my road, andcompanies me through the day; and if to His dumb children God inHis mercy reckons work as prayer, most certainly those who haveforged through the ages an unbroken chain of supplication andthanksgiving will be counted among the stalwart labourers of thehouse of the Lord. 

Sun and bell together are my only clock: it is time for my waterdrawing; and gathering a pile of mushrooms, children of the night, I hasten home. 

The cottage is dear to me in its quaint untidiness and want ofrectitude, dear because we are to be its last denizens, last of thelong line of toilers who have sweated and sown that others mightreap, and have passed away leaving no trace. 

I once saw a tall cross in a seaboard churchyard, inscribed, "Tothe memory of the unknown dead who have perished in these waters. "There might be one in every village sleeping-place to theunhonoured many who made fruitful the land with sweat and tears. It is a consolation to think that when we look back on this stretchof life's road from beyond the first milestone, which, it isinstructive to remember, is always a grave, we may hope to see thework of this world with open eyes, and to judge of it with a duesense of proportion. 

A bee with laden honey-bag hummed and buzzed in the hedge as I gotready for work, importuning the flowers for that which he could notcarry, and finally giving up the attempt in despair fell asleep ona buttercup, the best place for his weary little velvet body. Infive minutes--they may have been five hours to him--he awoke a newbee, sensible and clear-sighted, and flew blithely away to the hivewith his sufficiency--an example this weary world would be wise tofollow. 

My road has been lonely to-day. A parson came by in the afternoon, a stranger in the neighbourhood, for he asked his way. He talkedawhile, and with kindly rebuke said it was sad to see a man of myeducation brought so low, which shows how the outside appearancemay mislead the prejudiced observer. "Was it misfortune?" "Nay, the best of good luck, " I answered, gaily. 

The good man with beautiful readiness sat down on a heap of stonesand 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. Theworld is his home; he serves all men alike, ay, and for him thebeasts have equal honour with the men. His soul is 'bound up inthe bundle of life' with all other souls, he sees his father, hismother, his brethren in the children of the road. For him there isnothing unclean, nothing common; the very stones cry out that theyserve. "

Parson nodded his head. 

"It is all true, " he said; "beautifully true. But need such a viewof life necessitate the work of roadmending? Surely all men shouldbe roadmenders. "

O wise parson, so to read the lesson of the road!

"It is true, " I answered; "but some of us find our salvation in theactual work, and earn our bread better in this than in any otherway. No man is dependent on our earning, all men on our work. Weare 'rich beyond the dreams of avarice' because we have all that weneed, and yet we taste the life and poverty of the very poor. Weare, if you will, uncloistered monks, preaching friars who speaknot with the tongue, disciples who hear the wise words of a silentmaster. "

"Robert Louis Stevenson was a roadmender, " said the wise parson. 

"Ay, and with more than his pen, " I answered. "I wonder was heever so truly great, so entirely the man we know and love, as whenhe inspired the chiefs to make a highway in the wilderness. Surelyno more fitting monument could exist to his memory than the Road ofGratitude, cut, laid, and kept by the pure-blooded tribe kings ofSamoa. "

Parson nodded. 

"He knew that the people who make no roads are ruled out fromintelligent participation in the world's brotherhood. " He filledhis pipe, thinking the while, then he held out his pouch to me. 

"Try some of this baccy, " he said; "Sherwood of Magdalen sent it mefrom some outlandish place. "

I accepted gratefully. It was such tobacco as falls to the lot offew roadmenders. 

He rose to go. 

"I wish I could come and break stones, " he said, a littlewistfully. 

"Nay, " said I, "few men have such weary roadmending as yours, andperhaps you need my road less than most men, and less than mostparsons. "

We shook hands, and he went down the road and out of my life. 

He little guessed that I knew Sherwood, ay, and knew him too, forhad not Sherwood told me of the man he delighted to honour. 

Ah, well! I am no Browning Junior, and Sherwood's name is notSherwood. 

CHAPTER VI

A while ago I took a holiday; mouched, played truant from my road. Jem the waggoner hailed me as he passed--he was going to the mill--would I ride with him and come back atop of the full sacks?

I hid my hammer in the hedge, climbed into the great waggon whiteand fragrant with the clean sweet meal, and flung myself down onthe empty flour bags. The looped-back tarpaulin framed the longvista of my road with the downs beyond; and I lay in the cool dark, caressed by the fresh breeze in its thoroughfare, soothed by thestrong monotonous tramp of the great grey team and the music of thejangling harness. 

Jem walked at the leaders' heads; it is his rule when the waggon isempty, a rule no "company" will make him break. At first Iregretted it, but soon discovered I learnt to know him better so, as he plodded along, his thickset figure slightly bent, his handsin his pockets, his whip under one arm, whistling hymn tunes in alow minor, while the great horses answered to his voice withouttouch of lash or guiding rein. 

I lay as in a blissful dream and watched my road unfold. The sunset the pine-boles aflare where the hedge is sparse, and stretchedthe long shadows of the besom poplars in slanting bars across thewhite highway; the roadside gardens smiled friendly with theirtrim-cut laurels and rows of stately sunflowers--a seemly proximitythis, Daphne and Clytie, sisters in experience, wrapped in the warmcaress of the god whose wooing they need no longer fear. Here andthere we passed little groups of women and children off to work inthe early cornfields, and Jem paused in his fond repetition of "TheLord 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 asteady moving on into the Unknown, Unseen, until Faith is lost inSight and experience is no longer the touchstone of humanity. Theface of the son of Adam is set on the road his brothers havetravelled, marking their landmarks, tracing their journeyings; butwith the eyes of a child of God he looks forward, straining tocatch 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 countryway where the great oaks and beeches meet overhead and no hedge-clipper sets his hand to stay nature's profusion; and so bypleasant lanes scarce the waggon's width across, now shady, nowsunny, here bordered by thickset coverts, there giving on fruitfulfields, we came at length to the mill. 

I left Jem to his business with the miller and wandered down theflowery meadow to listen to the merry clack of the stream and thevoice of the waters on the weir. The great wheel was at rest, as Ilove best to see it in the later afternoon; the splash and churn ofthe water belong rather to the morning hours. It is the chiefmistake we make in portioning out our day that we banish rest tothe night-time, which is for sleep and recreating, instead ofsetting apart the later afternoon and quiet twilight hours for thestretching of weary limbs and repose of tired mind after a day'stoil that should begin and end at five. 

The little stone bridge over the mill-stream is almost on a levelwith the clear running water, and I lay there and gazed at the hugewheel which, under multitudinous forms and uses, is one of theworld's wonders, because one of the few things we imitativechildren have not learnt from nature. Is it perchance a memory outof that past when Adam walked clear-eyed in Paradise and talkedwith the Lord in the cool of the day? Did he see then the flamingwheels instinct with service, wondrous messengers of the Most Highvouchsafed in vision to the later prophets?

Maybe he did, and going forth from before the avenging sword of hisown forging to the bitterness of an accursed earth, took with himthis bright memory of perfect, ceaseless service, and so fashionedour labouring wheel--pathetic link with the time of his innocency. It is one of many unanswered questions, good to ask because it hasno answer, only the suggestion of a train of thought: perhaps weare never so receptive as when with folded hands we say simply, "This is a great mystery. " I watched and wondered until Jemcalled, 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, andthe miller's little maid sat on my knee while I told the sad taleof a little pink cloud separated from its parents and teazed andhunted by mischievous little airs. To-morrow, if I mistake not, her garden will be wet with its tears, and, let us hope, point amoral; for the tale had its origin in a frenzied chicken drivenfrom 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 somewhatprematurely for the cloud's tears; and I climbed to my place at thetop of the piled-up sacks, and thence watched twilight pass tostarlight through my narrow peep, and, so watching, slept untilJem'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 hedgesrusset and gold, scarlet and black, and a tangle of grey; now hehas 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, theingathering of man and beast; barn and rickyard stand filled withgolden treasure; at the farm the sound of threshing; in wood andcopse the squirrels busied 'twixt tree and storehouse, while theripe nuts fall with thud of thunder rain. When the harvesting isover, the fruit gathered, the last rick thatched, there comes apause. Earth strips off her bright colours and shows a bare andfurrowed face; the dead leaves fall gently and sadly through thecalm, sweet air; grey mists drape the fields and hedges. Themigratory birds have left, save a few late swallows; and as I sitat work in the soft, still rain, I can hear the blackbird'smelancholy trill and the thin pipe of the redbreast's winter song--the air is full of the sound of farewell. 

Forethought and preparation for the Future which shall be;farewell, because of the Future which may never be--for us; "Man, thou hast goods laid up for many years, and it is well; but, remember, this night THY soul may be required"; is the unvoicedlesson of autumn. There is growing up among us a great fear; itstares at us white, wide-eyed, from the faces of men and womenalike--the fear of pain, mental and bodily pain. For the lasttwenty years we have waged war with suffering--a noble war whenfought in the interest of the many, but fraught with great dangerto each individual man. It is the fear which should not be, ratherthan the 'hope which is in us, ' that leads men in these days todrape Death in a flowery mantle, to lay stress on the shortness ofparting, the speedy reunion, to postpone their good-byes until thelast moment, or avoid saying them altogether; and this fear is apoor, ignoble thing, unworthy of those who are as gods, knowinggood and evil. We are still paying the price of that knowledge;suffering in both kinds is a substantial part of it, and brings itsown healing. Let us pay like men, our face to the open heaven, neither whimpering like children in the dark, nor lulled tounnecessary oblivion by some lethal drug; for it is manly, notmorbid, to dare to taste the pungent savour of pain, the lingeringsadness of farewell which emphasises the aftermath of life; itshould have its place in all our preparation as a part of ourinheritance we dare not be without. 

There is an old couple in our village who are past work. Themarried daughter has made shift to take her mother and the parishhalf-crown, but there is neither room nor food for the father, andhe must go to N-. If husband and wife went together, they would beseparated at the workhouse door. The parting had to come; it cameyesterday. I saw them stumbling lamely down the road on their lastjourney together, walking side by side without touch or speech, seeing and heeding nothing but a blank future. As they passed methe 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 Iturned away, for there are sights a man dare not look upon. Shepassed; and I heard a child's shrill voice say, "I come to look foryou, gran"; and I thanked God that there need be no utterloneliness in the world while it holds a little child. 

Now it is my turn, and I must leave the wayside to serve in thesheepfolds during the winter months. It is scarcely a farewell, for my road is ubiquitous, eternal; there are green ways inParadise and golden streets in the beautiful City of God. Nevertheless, my heart is heavy; for, viewed by the light of thewaning year, roadmending seems a great and wonderful work which Ihave poorly conceived of and meanly performed: yet I have learntto understand dimly the truths of three great paradoxes--theblessing of a curse, the voice of silence, the companionship ofsolitude--and so take my leave of this stretch of road, and of youwho have fared along the white highway through the medium of aprinted page. 

Farewell! It is a roadmender's word; I cry you Godspeed to thenext milestone--and beyond. 

OUT OF THE SHADOW

CHAPTER I

I am no longer a roadmender; the stretch of white highway whichleads to the end of the world will know me no more; the fields andhedgerows, grass and leaf stiff with the crisp rime of winter'sbreath, lie beyond my horizon; the ewes in the folding, theirmysterious eyes quick with the consciousness of coming motherhood, answer another's voice and hand; while I lie here, not in thelonely companionship of my expectations, but where the shadow isbright with kindly faces and gentle hands, until one kinder andgentler still carries me down the stairway into the larger room. 

But now the veil was held aside and one went by crowned with themajesty of years, wearing the ermine of an unstained rule, thepurple of her people's loyalty. Nations stood with bated breath tosee her pass in the starlit mist of her children's tears; amonarch--greatest of her time; an empress--conquered men calledmother; a woman--Englishmen cried queen; still the crowned captiveof her people's heart--the prisoner of love. 

The night-goers passed under my window in silence, neither song norshout broke the welcome dark; next morning the workmen who went bywere strangely quiet. 

'VICTORIA DEI GRATIA BRITANNIARUM REGINA. '

Did they think of how that legend would disappear, and of all itmeant, as they paid their pennies at the coffee-stall? The feetrarely know the true value and work of the head; but all Englishmenhave been and will be quick to acknowledge and revere Victoria bythe grace of God a wise woman, a great and loving mother. 

Years ago, I, standing at a level crossing, saw her pass. Thetrain slowed down and she caught sight of the gatekeeper's littlegirl who had climbed the barrier. Such a smile as she gave her!And then I caught a quick startled gesture as she slipped from myvision; I thought afterwards it was that she feared the child mightfall. Mother first, then Queen; even so rest came to her--not inone of the royal palaces, but in her own home, surrounded by theimmediate circle of her nearest and dearest, while the world keptwatch and ward. 

I, a shy lover of the fields and woods, longed always, should apainless passing be vouchsafed me, to make my bed on the fragrantpine needles in the aloneness of a great forest; to lie once againas I had lain many a time, bathed in the bitter sweetness of thesun-blessed pines, lapped in the manifold silence; my ear attunedto the wind of Heaven with its call from the Cities of Peace. Insterner mood, when Love's hand held a scourge, I craved rather thestress of the moorland with its bleaker mind imperative ofsacrifice. To rest again under the lee of Rippon Tor swept by thestrong peat-smelling breeze; to stare untired at the long cloud-shadowed reaches, and watch the mist-wraiths huddle and shrinkround the stones of blood; until my sacrifice too was accomplished, and my soul had fled. A wild waste moor; a vast void sky; andnaught between heaven and earth but man, his sin-glazed eyesseeking afar the distant light of his own heart. 

With years came counsels more profound, and the knowledge that manwas no mere dweller in the woods to follow the footsteps of thepiping god, but an integral part of an organised whole, in whichPan too has his fulfilment. The wise Venetians knew; and readpantheism into Christianity when they set these words roundEzekiel's living creatures in the altar vault of St Mark's:-

QUAEQUE SUB OBSCURIS DE CRISTO DICTA FIGURIS HIS APERIRE DATUR ETIN HIS, DEUS IPSE NOTATUR. 

"Thou shalt have none other gods but me. " If man had been able tokeep this one commandment perfectly the other nine would never havebeen written; instead he has comprehensively disregarded it, andperhaps never more than now in the twentieth century. Ah, well!this world, in spite of all its sinning, is still the Garden ofEden where the Lord walked with man, not in the cool of evening, but in the heat and stress of the immediate working day. There isno angel now with flaming sword to keep the way of the Tree ofLife, but tapers alight morning by morning in the Hostel of God topoint us to it; and we, who are as gods knowing good and evil, partake of that fruit "whereof whoso eateth shall never die"; thegreatest gift or the most awful penalty--Eternal Life. 

I then, with my craving for tree and sky, held that a great capitalwith 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 fromas a child shrinks from the rude blow of one out of authority. Yethere, far from moor and forest, hillside and hedgerow, in thefamily sitting-room of the English-speaking peoples, the Londonmuch misunderstood, I find the fulfilment by antithesis of alldesire. For the loneliness of the moorland, there is the warmthand companionship of London's swift beating heart. For silencethere is sound--the sound and stir of service--for the most partfar in excess of its earthly equivalent. Against the fragrantincense of the pines I set the honest sweat of the man whoselifetime is the measure of his working day. "He that loveth nothis brother whom he hath seen, how shall he love God whom he hathnot seen?" wrote Blessed John, who himself loved so much that hebeheld the Lamb as it had been slain from the beginning when Adamfell, and the City of God with light most precious. The burden ofcorporate sin, the sword of corporate sorrow, the joy of corporaterighteousness; thus we become citizens in the Kingdom of God, andcompanions of all his creatures. "It is not good that the manshould be alone, " said the Lord God. 

I live now as it were in two worlds, the world of sight, and theworld of sound; and they scarcely ever touch each other. I hearthe grind of heavy traffic, the struggle of horses on the frost-breathed ground, the decorous jolt of omnibuses, the jangle of cabbells, the sharp warning of bicycles at the corner, the swiftrattle of costers' carts as they go south at night with theirshouting, goading crew. All these things I hear, and more; but Isee no road, only the silent river of my heart with its tale ofwonder and years, and the white beat of seagulls' wings in stronginquiring flight. 

Sometimes there is naught to see on the waterway but a solitaryblack 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 asmall self-righteous steam-tug. Later, lightened of their load, and waiting on wind and tide, I see them swooping by like birds setfree; tawny sails that mind me of red-roofed Whitby with itsnorthern fleet; black sails as of some heedless Theseus; whitesails that sweep out of the morning mist "like restlessgossameres. " They make the bridge, which is just within my vision, and then away past Westminster and Blackfriars where St Paul'sgreat dome lifts the cross high over a self-seeking city; pastSouthwark where England's poet illuminates in the scroll of divinewisdom the sign of the Tabard; past the Tower with its hauntingghosts of history; past Greenwich, fairy city, caught in the meshesof riverside mist; and then the salt and speer of the sea, thecompanying with great ships, the fresh burden. 

At night I see them again, silent, mysterious; searching thedarkness with unwinking yellow stare, led by a great green light. They creep up under the bridge which spans the river with itswatching eyes, and vanish, crying back a warning note as they makethe upper reach, or strident hail, as a chain of kindred phantomspasses, ploughing a contrary tide. 

Throughout the long watches of the night I follow them; and in theearly morning they slide by, their eyes pale in the twilight; whilethe stars flicker and fade, and the gas lamps die down into a dullyellow blotch against the glory and glow of a new day. 

CHAPTER II

February is here, February fill-dyke; the month of purification, ofcleansing rains and pulsing bounding streams, and white mistclinging insistent to field and hedgerow so that when her veil iswithdrawn greenness may make us glad. 

The river has been uniformly grey of late, with no wind to ruffleits surface or to speed the barges dropping slowly and sullenlydown with the tide through a blurring haze. I watched oneyesterday, its useless sails half-furled and no sign of life savethe man at the helm. It drifted stealthily past, and a littlebehind, flying low, came a solitary seagull, grey as the river'shaze--a following bird. 

Once again I lay on my back in the bottom of the tarry old fishingsmack, blue sky above and no sound but the knock, knock of thewaves, and the thud and curl of falling foam as the old boat'sblunt nose breasted the coming sea. Then Daddy Whiddon spoke. 

"A follerin' burrd, " he said. 

I got up, and looked across the blue field we were ploughing intowhite furrows. Far away a tiny sail scarred the great solitude, and astern came a gull flying slowly close to the water's breast. 

Daddy Whiddon waved his pipe towards it. 

"A follerin' burrd, " he said, again; and again I waited; questionswere not grateful to him. 

"There be a carpse there, sure enough, a carpse driftin' andshiftin' 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 ofher is with the burrd. "

The clumsy boom swung across as we changed our course, and thewater ran from us in smooth reaches on either side: the bird flewsteadily 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 nowher'll just be follerin' on with the burrd. "

The gull was flying close to us now, and a cold wind swept thesunny sea. I shivered: Daddy looked at me curiously. 

"There be reason enough to be cawld if us did but knaw it, but I hemos' used to 'em, poor sawls. " He shaded his keen old blue eyes, and looked away across the water. His face kindled. "There be askule comin', and by my sawl 'tis mackerel they be drivin'. "

I watched eagerly, and saw the dark line rise and fall in thetrough of the sea, and, away behind, the stir and rush of tumblingporpoises as they chased their prey. 

Again we changed our tack, and each taking an oar, pulled lustilyfor the beach. 

"Please God her'll break inshore, " said Daddy Whiddon; and heshouted the news to the idle waiting men who hailed us. 

In a moment all was stir, for the fishing had been slack. Twoboats put out with the lithe brown seine. The dark line hadturned, but the school was still behind, churning the water inclumsy haste; they were coming in. 

Then the brit broke in silvery leaping waves on the shelving beach. The threefold hunt was over; the porpoises turned out to sea insearch of fresh quarry; and the seine, dragged by ready hands, cameslowly, stubbornly in with its quivering treasure of fish. Theyhad sought a haven and found none; the brit lay dying in flickeringiridescent heaps as the bare-legged babies of the village gatheredthem up; and far away over the water I saw a single grey speck; itwas the following bird. 

The curtain of river haze falls back; barge and bird are alikegone, and the lamplighter has lit the first gas-lamp on the farside of the bridge. Every night I watch him come, his progressmarked by the great yellow eyes that wake the dark. Sometimes hewalks quickly; sometimes he loiters on the bridge to chat, or stareat the dark water; but he always comes, leaving his watchfuldeterrent train behind him to police the night. 

Once Demeter in the black anguish of her desolation searched forlost Persephone by the light of Hecate's torch; and searching allin vain, spurned beneath her empty feet an earth barren of hersmile; froze with set brows the merry brooks and streams; and smoteforest, and plain, and fruitful field, with the breath of her lastdespair, until even Iambe's laughing jest was still. And then whenthe desolation was complete, across the wasted valley where thestarveling cattle scarcely longed to browse, came the dreadfulchariot--and Persephone. The day of the prisoner of Hades haddawned; and as the sun flamed slowly up to light her thwarted eyesthe world sprang into blossom at her feet. 

We can never be too Pagan when we are truly Christian, and the oldmyths are eternal truths held fast in the Church's net. Prometheusfetched fire from Heaven, to be slain forever in the fetching; andlo, a Greater than Prometheus came to fire the cresset of theCross. Demeter waits now patiently enough. Persephone waits, too, in the faith of the sun she cannot see: and every lamp lit carrieson the crusade which has for its goal a sunless, moonless, citywhose light is the Light of the world. 

"Lume e lassu, che visibile facelo creatore a quella creatura, che solo in lui vedere ha la sua pace. "

Immediately outside my window is a lime tree--a little blackskeleton of abundant branches--in which sparrows congregate tochirp and bicker. Farther away I have a glimpse of gracefulplanes, children of moonlight and mist; their dainty robes, stillmore or less unsullied, gleam ghostly in the gaslight athwart thedark. They make a brave show even in winter with their featherybranches and swinging tassels, whereas my little tree stands starkand uncompromising, with its horde of sooty sparrows cockney to thelast tail feather, and a pathetic inability to look anything butblack. Rain comes with strong caressing fingers, and the branchesseem no whit the cleaner for her care; but then their glisteningblackness mirrors back the succeeding sunlight, as a muddy pavementwill sometimes lap our feet in a sea of gold. The little wetsparrows are for the moment equally transformed, for the sun turnstheir dun-coloured coats to a ruddy bronze, and cries Chrysostom asit kisses each shiny beak. They are dumb Chrysostoms; but theypreach a golden gospel, for the sparrows are to London what therainbow was to eight saved souls out of a waste of waters--aperpetual sign of the remembering mercies of God. 

Last night there was a sudden clatter of hoofs, a shout, and thensilence. A runaway cab-horse, a dark night, a wide crossing, and aheavy burden: so death came to a poor woman. People from thehouse went out to help; and I heard of her, the centre of anunknowing curious crowd, as she lay bonnetless in the mud of theroad, her head on the kerb. A rude but painless death: the miserylay in her life; for this woman--worn, white-haired, and wrinkled--had but fifty years to set against such a condition. The policemanreported her respectable, hard-working, living apart from herhusband with a sister; but although they shared rooms, they "didnot speak, " and the sister refused all responsibility; so theparish buried the dead woman, and thus ended an uneventful tragedy. 

Was it her own fault? If so, the greater pathos. The lonely soulsthat hold out timid hands to an unheeding world have their meed ofinterior comfort even here, while the sons of consolation wait onthe thresh-hold for their footfall: but God help the soul thatbars its own door! It is kicking against the pricks of Divineordinance, the ordinance of a triune God; whether it be the dwellerin crowded street or tenement who is proud to say, "I keep myselfto myself, " or Seneca writing in pitiful complacency, "Whenever Ihave gone among men, I have returned home less of a man. " Whateverthe next world holds in store, we are bidden in this to seek andserve God in our fellow-men, and in the creatures of His makingwhom He calls by name. 

It was once my privilege to know an old organ-grinder namedGawdine. He was a hard swearer, a hard drinker, a hard liver, andhe fortified himself body and soul against the world: he evendrank alone, which is an evil sign. 

One day to Gawdine sober came a little dirty child, who clung tohis empty trouser leg--he had lost a limb years before--with apersistent unintelligible request. He shook the little chap offwith 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 akiss. 

Two days later Gawdine fell under a passing dray which inflictedterrible internal injuries on him. They patched him up inhospital, and he went back to his organ-grinding, taking with himtwo friends--a pain which fell suddenly upon him to rack and rendwith an anguish of crucifixion, and the memory of a child'supturned face. Outwardly he was the same save that he changed thetunes of his organ, out of long-hoarded savings, for the jigs andreels which children hold dear, and stood patiently playing them inchild-crowded alleys, where pennies are not as plentiful aselsewhere. 

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 ashe lay crouched on a mattress on the floor; and as the grip of thepain took him he tore and bit at his hands until they were maimedand 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 hisepitaph:-

He saw the face of a little child and looked on God. 

CHAPTER III

"Two began, in a low voice, 'Why, the fact is, you see, Miss, thishere ought to have been a RED rose-tree, and we put a white one inby 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 thewalls runs a frieze of squat standard rose-trees, red as red canbe, and just like those that Alice saw in the Queen's garden. Inbetween them are Chaucer's name-children, prim little daisies, peering wideawake from green grass. This same grass has a historywhich I have heard. In the original stencil for the frieze it waspurely conventional like the rest, and met in spikey curves roundeach tree; the painter, however, who was doing the work, was alover of the fields; and feeling that such grass was a travesty, headded on his own account dainty little tussocks, and softened thehard line into a tufted carpet, the grass growing irregularly, bentat will by the wind. 

The result from the standpoint of conventional art is indeeddisastrous; but my sympathy and gratitude are with the painter. Isee, as he saw, the far-reaching robe of living ineffable green, ofwhose brilliance the eye never has too much, and in whose weft notwo threads are alike; and shrink as he did from theconventionalising of that windswept glory. 

The sea has its crested waves of recognisable form; the river itseddy and swirl and separate vortices; but the grass! The windbloweth where it listeth and the grass bows as the wind blows--"thou canst not tell whither it goeth. " It takes no pattern, itobeys no recognised law; it is like a beautiful creature of athousand wayward moods, and its voice is like nothing else in thewide world. It bids you rest and bury your tired face in the greencoolness, and breathe of its breath and of the breath of the goodearth 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 hearwondrous things of the deep places of the earth; of life in mineraland stone as well as in pulsing sap; of a green world as the starssaw it before man trod it under foot--of the emerald which has itsplace with the rest in the City of God. 

"What if earthBe but the shadow of heaven, and things therein, Each to each other like, more than on earth to thought?"

It is a natural part of civilisation's lust of re-arrangement thatwe should be so ready to conventionalise the beauty of this worldinto decorative patterns for our pilgrim tents. It is a phase, andwill melt into other phases; but it tends to the increase ofartificiality, and exists not only in art but in everything. It isno new thing for jaded sentiment to crave the spur of theunnatural, to prefer the clever imitation, to live in a Devachanwhere the surroundings appear that which we would have them to be;but it is an interesting record of the pulse of the present daythat 'An Englishwoman's Love Letters' should have taken society bystorm 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. Butwhen we seek within we find love with its thousand voices andwayward moods, its shy graces and seemly reticences, love which hasits throne and robe of state as well as the garment of the beggarmaid, love which is before time was, which knew the world when thestars took up their courses, presented to us in gushingoutpourings, the appropriate language of a woman's heart to theboor she delights to honour. 

"It is woman who is the glory of man, " says the author of 'TheHouse of Wisdom and Love, ' "Regina mundi, greater, because so farthe less; and man is her head, but only as he serves his queen. "Set this sober aphorism against the school girl love-making whichkisses a man's feet and gaily refuses him the barren honour ofhaving loved her first. 

There is scant need for the apologia which precedes the letters; afew pages dispels the fear that we are prying into another's soul. As for the authorship, there is a woman's influence, an artist'spoorly concealed bias in the foreign letters; and for the rest aman's blunders--so much easier to see in another than to avoidoneself--writ large from cover to cover. King Cophetua, who sends"profoundly grateful remembrances, " has most surely written theletters he would wish to receive. 

"Mrs Meynell!" cries one reviewer, triumphantly. Nay, the saintsbe 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 soin desperate earnestness--there is Clarissa Harlowe and Stevenson'sKirstie, and many more to prove it; but when a man writes as theauthor of the "Love Letters" writes, I feel, as did the painter ofthe frieze, that pattern-making has gone too far and included thatwhich, like the grass, should be spared such a convention. 

"I quite agree with you, " said the Duchess, "and the moral of thatis--'Be what you would seem to be'--or, if you'd like to put itmore simply--'never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than whatit might appear to others that what you were or might have been wasnot otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them tobe otherwise. '" And so by way of the Queen's garden I come back tomy room again. 

My heart's affections are still centred on my old attic, withboarded floor and white-washed walls, where the sun blazoned afrieze of red and gold until he travelled too far towards thenorth, the moon streamed in to paint the trees in inky waveringshadows, and the stars flashed their glory to me across the years. But now sun and moon greet me only indirectly, and under the redroses hang pictures, some of them the dear companions of my days. Opposite me is the Arundel print of the Presentation, painted bythe gentle "Brother of the Angels. " Priest Simeon, a statelyfigure in green and gold, great with prophecy, gazes adoringly atthe Bambino he holds with fatherly care. Our Lady, in robe of redand veil of shadowed purple, is instinct with light despite thesombre colouring, as she stretches out hungering, awe-struck handsfor her soul's delight. St Joseph, dignified guardian andservitor, stands behind, holding the Sacrifice of the Poor toredeem the First-begotten. 

St Peter Martyr and the Dominican nun, gazing in rapt contemplationat the scene, are not one whit surprised to find themselves in thepresence of eternal mysteries. In the Entombment, which hangs onthe opposite wall, St Dominic comes round the corner full ofgrievous amaze and tenderest sympathy, but with no sense of shockor intrusion, for was he not "famigliar di Cristo"? And so hetakes it all in; the stone bed empty and waiting; the Belovedcradled 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 ofBethlehem. He sees the Magdalen anointing the Sacred Feet; BlessedJohn caring for the living and the Dead; and he, Dominic--hound ofthe Lord--having his real, living share in the anguish and hope, the bedding of the dearest Dead, who did but leave this earth thatHe might manifest Himself more completely. 

Underneath, with a leap across the centuries, is Rossetti'spicture; Dante this time the onlooker, Beatrice, in her palebeauty, the death-kissed one. The same idea under differentrepresentations; the one conceived in childlike simplicity, theother recalling, even in the photograph, its wealth of colour andimagining; the one a world-wide ideal, the other an individualexpression of it. 

Beatrice was to Dante the inclusion of belief. She was more to himthan he himself knew, far more to him after her death than before. And, therefore, the analogy between the pictures has at core acommon reality. "It is expedient for you that I go away, " isconstantly being said to us as we cling earthlike to the outwardexpression, rather than to the inward manifestation--and blessedare those who hear and understand, for it is spoken only to such ashave been with Him from the beginning. The eternal mysteries comeinto time for us individually under widely differing forms. Thetiny 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 inhere or hereafter we find in its naked truth the Child in themanger, even as the Wise Men found Him when they came from the Eastto seek a great King. There is but one necessary condition of thisfinding; we must follow the particular manifestation of light givenus, never resting until it rests--over the place of the Child. Andthere is but one insurmountable hindrance, the extinction of ordrawing back from the light truly apprehended by us. We forgetthis, and judge other men by the light of our own soul. 

I think the old bishop must have understood it. He is my friend offriends as he lies opposite my window in his alabaster sleep, cladin pontifical robes, with unshod feet, a little island of whitepeace in a many-coloured marble sea. The faithful sculptor hasgiven every line and wrinkle, the heavy eyelids and sunken face oftired 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 thethirteenth century; but he is good to company with through the day, for he has known darkness and light and the minds of many men; mostsurely, too, he has known that God fulfils Himself in strange ways, so with the shadow of his feet upon the polished floor he rests inpeace. 

CHAPTER IV

On Sunday my little tree was limned in white and the sparrows werecraving shelter at my window from the blizzard. Now the mild thinair brings a breath of spring in its wake and the daffodils in thegarden wait the kisses of the sun. Hand-in-hand with memory I slipaway down the years, and remember a day when I awoke at earliestdawn, for across my sleep I had heard the lusty golden-throatedtrumpeters heralding the spring. 

The air was sharp-set; a delicate rime frosted roof and road; thesea lay hazy and still like a great pearl. Then as the sky stirredwith flush upon flush of warm rosy light, it passed from mistypearl to opal with heart of flame, from opal to gleaming sapphire. The earth called, the fields called, the river called--that piedpiper to whose music a man cannot stop his ears. It was with me aswith the Canterbury pilgrims:-

"So priketh hem nature in hir corages;Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages. "

Half an hour later I was away by the early train that carries thebranch mails and a few workmen, and was delivered at the littlewayside station with the letters. The kind air went singing pastas I swung along the reverberating road between the high tree-crowned banks which we call hedges in merry Devon, with all theworld to myself and the Brethren. A great blackbird flew out witha loud "chook, chook, " and the red of the haw on his yellow bill. A robin trilled from a low rose-bush; two wrens searched diligentlyon a fallen tree for breakfast, quite unconcerned when I rested amoment beside them; and a shrewmouse slipped across the roadfollowed directly by its mate. March violets bloomed under thesheltered hedge with here and there a pale primrose; a frostedbramble spray still held its autumn tints clinging to the semblanceof the past; and great branches of snowy blackthorn broke thebarren 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 onagain, stray daffodils lighting the wayside, until I heard thevoice of the stream and reached the field gate which leads to thelower meadows. There before me lay spring's pageant; green pennonswaving, dainty maids curtseying, and a host of joyous yellowtrumpeters proclaiming 'Victory' to an awakened earth. They rangein serried ranks right down to the river, so that a man must walkwarily to reach the water's edge where they stand gazing down atthemselves in fairest semblance like their most tragic progenitor, and, rising from the bright grass in their thousands, stretch awayuntil 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 thesteep earth bank that leads to the upper copse, gleaming like paleflames against the dark tree-boles. There they have but frailtenure; here, in the meadows, they reign supreme. 

At the upper end of the field the river provides yet closersanctuary for these children of the spring. Held in its embracingarms lies an island long and narrow, some thirty feet by twelve, averitable untrod Eldorado, glorious in gold from end to end, afringe 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 andwandering roots where a man may rest, for it is bare of daffodilssave for a group of three, and a solitary one apart growing closeto the old tree's side. I sat down by my lonely little sister, blue sky overhead, green grass at my feet decked, like the pasturesof the Blessed, in glorious sheen; a sea of triumphant, goldenheads tossing blithely back as the wind swept down to play withthem at his pleasure. 

It was all mine to have and to hold without severing a singleslender stem or harbouring a thought of covetousness; mine, as thewhole earth was mine, to appropriate to myself without the burdenand 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, notafter this world's fashion but in proportion to our poverty; andwhen we cease to toil and spin, are arrayed as the lilies, in aglory transcending Solomon's. Bride Poverty--she who climbed theCross with Christ--stretched out eager hands to free us from ourchains, but we flee from her, and lay up treasure against herimportunity, while Amytas on his seaweed bed weeps tears of purepity 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 inunison. It is free from burden, this merry little river, andneither weir nor mill bars its quick way to the sea as it completesthe eternal circle, lavishing gifts of coolness and refreshment onthe children of the meadows. 

It has its birth on the great lone moor, cradled in a wonderfulpeat-smelling bog, with a many-hued coverlet of soft mosses--palegold, orange, emerald, tawny, olive and white, with the red stainof sun-dew and tufted cotton-grass. Under the old grey rocks whichwatch it rise, yellow-eyed tormantil stars the turf, and bids"Godspeed" to the little child of earth and sky. Thus the journeybegins; and with ever-increasing strength the stream carves a waythrough the dear brown peat, wears a fresh wrinkle on the patientstones, and patters merrily under a clapper bridge which spannedits breadth when the mistletoe reigned and Bottor, the grim rockidol, exacted the toll of human life that made him great. On andon goes the stream, for it may not stay; leaving of its freshnesswith the great osmunda that stretches eager roots towards therunning water; flowing awhile with a brother stream, to part againeast and west as each takes up his separate burden of service--myfriend to cherish the lower meadows in their flowery joyance--andso by the great sea-gate back to sky and earth again. 

The river of God is full of water. The streets of the City arepure gold. Verily, here also having nothing we possess all things. 

The air was keen and still as I walked back in the early evening, and a daffodil light was in the sky as if Heaven mirrored backearth's radiance. Near the station some children flitted past, like little white miller moths homing through the dusk. As Iclimbed the hill the moon rode high in a golden field--it wasdaffodils to the last. 

CHAPTER V

The seagulls from the upper reaches pass down the river in sobersteady flight seeking the open sea. I shall miss the swoop andcircle of silver wings in the sunlight and the plaintive call whichsounds so strangely away from rock and shore, but it is good toknow that they have gone from mudbank and murky town back to thefree airs of their inheritance, to the shadow of sun-swept cliffsand the curling crest of the wind-beaten waves, to brood again overthe great ocean of a world's tears. 

My little tree is gemmed with buds, shy, immature, but full ofpromise. The sparrows busied with nest-building in theneighbouring pipes and gutters use it for a vantage ground, andcrowd there in numbers, each little beak sealed with long goldenstraw or downy feather. 

The river is heavy with hay barges, the last fruits of winter'sstorehouse; the lengthening days slowly and steadily oust the dark;the air is loud with a growing clamour of life: spring is not onlyproclaimed, but on this Feast she is crowned, and despite thewarring wind the days bring their meed of sunshine. We stand for amoment at the meeting of the ways, the handclasp of Winter andSpring, of Sleep and Wakening, of Life and Death; and there isbetween them not even the thin line which Rabbi Jochanan on hisdeath-bed beheld as all that divided hell from heaven. 

"Sphaera cujus centrum ubique, circumferentia nullibus, " was saidof Mercury, that messenger of the gods who marshalled reluctantspirits to the Underworld; and for Mercury we may write Life withDeath as its great sacrament of brotherhood and release, to bedreaded 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 tookthat which might only be given at the hand of the Lord. It has tooits physical pains, but they are those of a woman in travail, andwe remember them no more for joy that a child-man is born into theworld naked and not ashamed: beholding ourselves as we are weshall see also the leaves of the Tree of Life set for the healingof the nations. 

We are slowly, very slowly, abandoning our belief in sudden andviolent transitions for a surer and fuller acceptance of thedoctrine of evolution; but most of us still draw a sharp line ofdemarcation between this world and the next, and expect a radicalchange in ourselves and our surroundings, a break in the chain ofcontinuity entirely contrary to the teaching of nature andexperience. In the same way we cling to the specious untruth thatwe can begin over and over again in this world, forgetting thatwhile our sorrow and repentance bring sacramental gifts of graceand strength, God Himself cannot, by His own limitation, rewritethe Past. We are in our sorrow that which we have made ourselvesin 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 undyingselves, our heaven, or our hell. "Qui creavit te sine te nonsalvabit te sine te. " It is stupendous, magnificent, and mostappalling. A man does not change as he crosses the threshold ofthe larger room. His personality remains the same, although theexpression of it may be altered. Here we have material bodies in amaterial world--there, perhaps, ether bodies in an ether world. There is no indecency in reasonable speculation and curiosity aboutthe life to come. One end of the thread is between our fingers, but we are haunted for the most part by the snap of Atropos'shears. 

Socrates faced death with the magnificent calm bred of dignifiedfamiliarity. He had built for himself a desired heaven of colour, light, and precious stones--the philosophic formula of those whoset the spiritual above the material, and worship truth in thebeauty of holiness. He is not troubled by doubts or regrets, forthe path of the just lies plain before his face. He forbidsmourning and lamentations as out of place, obeys minutely andcheerily the directions of his executioner, and passes withunaffected dignity to the apprehension of that larger truth forwhich he had constantly prepared himself. His friends may bury himprovided they will remember they are not burying Socrates; and thatall things may be done decently and in order, a cock must go toAEsculapius. 

Long before, in the days of the Captivity, there lived in godless, blood-shedding Nineveh an exiled Jew whose father had fallen fromthe faith. He was a simple man, child-like and direct; living thecareful, kindly life of an orthodox Jew, suffering manypersecutions for conscience' sake, and in constant danger of death. He narrates the story of his life and of the blindness which fellon him, with gentle placidity, and checks the exuberance of hismore emotional wife with the assurance of untroubled faith. Finally, when his pious expectations are fulfilled, his sightrestored, and his son prosperously established beside him, hebreaks into a prayer of rejoicing which reveals the secret of hisconfident content. He made use of two great faculties: the senseof proportion, which enabled him to apprise life and its accidentsjustly, and the gift of in-seeing, which led Socrates after him, and Blessed John in lonely exile on Patmos, to look through thethings temporal to the hidden meanings of eternity. 

"Let my soul bless God the great King, " he cries; and looks awaypast the present distress; past the Restoration which was to end infresh scattering and confusion; past the dream of gold, andporphyry, and marble defaced by the eagles and emblems of theconqueror; until his eyes are held by the Jerusalem of God, "builtup with sapphires, and emeralds, and precious stones, " withbattlements of pure gold, and the cry of 'Alleluia' in her streets. 

Many years later, when he was very aged, he called his son to himand gave him as heritage his own simple rule of life, adding butone request: "Keep thou the law and the commandments, and shewthyself 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, hewent his way quietly and contentedly to the Jerusalem of his heart. 

It is the simple note of familiarity that is wanting in us; that bywhich we link world with world. Once, years ago, I sat by thebedside of a dying man in a wretched garret in the East End. Hewas entirely ignorant, entirely quiescent, and entirelyuninterested. The minister of a neighbouring chapel came to seehim and spoke to him at some length of the need for repentance andthe joys of heaven. After he had gone my friend lay staringrestlessly at the mass of decrepit broken chimney pots which madehis horizon. At last he spoke, and there was a new note in hisvoice:-

"Ee said as 'ow there were golding streets in them parts. I ain'tno ways particler wot they're made of, but it'll feel natral likeif there's chimleys too. "

The sun stretched a sudden finger and painted the chimney pots redand gold against the smoke-dimmed sky, and with his face alightwith surprised relief my friend died. 

We are one with the earth, one in sin, one in redemption. It isthe 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 shadowof which it may be said Umbra Dei est Lux, the earth brought giftsof grief, the fruit of the curse, barren thorns, hollow reed, andthe wood of the cross; the sea made offering of Tyrian purple; thesky veiled her face in great darkness, while the nation of priestscrucified for the last time their Paschal lamb. "I will hear, saith the Lord; I will hear the heavens, and they shall hear theearth, and the earth shall hear the corn and wine and oil, and theyshall hear Jezreel, and I will sow her unto me in the earth; and Iwill have mercy upon her that had not obtained mercy, and I willsay unto them which were not my people, 'Thou art my people, ' andthey shall say 'Thou art my God. '"

The second Adam stood in the garden with quickening feet, and allthe earth pulsed and sang for joy of the new hope and the new lifequickening within her, to be hers through the pains of travail, thepangs of dissolution. The Tree of Life bears Bread and Wine--foodof the wayfaring man. The day of divisions is past, the day ofunity has dawned. One has risen from the dead, and in the Valleyof Achor stands wide the Door of Hope--the Sacrament of Death. 

Scio Domine, et vere scio . . . Quia non sum dignus accedere adtantum mysterium propter nimia peccata mea et infinitasnegligentias meas. Sed scio . . . Quia tu potes me facere dignum. 

CHAPTER VI

"Anytus and Meletus can kill me, but they cannot hurt me, " saidSocrates; and Governor Sancho, with all the itch of newly-acquiredauthority, could not make the young weaver of steel-heads forlances sleep in prison. In the Vision of Er the souls passedstraight forward under the throne of necessity, and out into theplains of forgetfulness, where they must severally drink of theriver of unmindfulness whose waters cannot be held in any vessel. The throne, the plain, and the river are still here, but in thedistance rise the great lone heavenward hills, and the wise amongus no longer ask of the gods Lethe, but rather remembrance. Necessity can set me helpless on my back, but she cannot keep methere; nor can four walls limit my vision. I pass out from underher throne into the garden of God a free man, to my ultimatebeatitude or my exceeding shame. All day long this world lies opento me; ay, and other worlds also, if I will but have it so; andwhen night comes I pass into the kingdom and power of the dark. 

I lie through the long hours and watch my bridge, which is set withlights across the gloom; watch the traffic which is for me but somany passing lamps telling their tale by varying height andbrightness. I hear under my window the sprint of over-tiredhorses, the rattle of uncertain wheels as the street-sellers hastensouth; the jangle of cab bells as the theatre-goers take theirhomeward way; the gruff altercation of weary men, the unmelodioussong and clamorous laugh of women whose merriment is wearier still. Then comes a time of stillness when the light in the sky waxes andwanes, when the cloud-drifts obscure the stars, and I gaze out intoblackness set with watching eyes. No sound comes from without butthe voice of the night-wind and the cry of the hour. The clock onthe mantelpiece ticks imperatively, for a check has fallen on thefamiliarity which breeds a disregard of common things, and a reasonhas to be sought for each sound which claims a hearing. The pauseis wonderful while it lasts, but it is not for long. The workingworld 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 shutthe cottage door to step out into an immense darkness which pallsheaven and earth. Going forward into the embrace of the greatgloom, you are as a babe swaddled by the hands of night intohelpless quiescence. Your feet tread an unseen path, your handsgrasp at a void, or shrink from the contact they cannot realise;your eyes are holden; your voice would die in your throat did youseek to rend the veil of that impenetrable silence. 

Shut in by the intangible dark, we are brought up against thoseworlds within worlds blotted out by our concrete daily life. Theworking of the great microcosm at which we peer dimly through thelittle window of science; the wonderful, breathing earth; thepulsing, throbbing sap; the growing fragrance shut in the calyx ofto-morrow's flower; the heart-beat of a sleeping world that wedream 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. Itwas this world which Elisha saw with open eyes; which Job knew whendarkness fell on him; which Ezekiel gazed into from his place amongthe captives; which Daniel beheld as he stood alone by the greatriver, the river Hiddekel. 

For the moment we have left behind the realm of question andexplanation, of power over matter and the exercise of bodilyfaculties; and passed into darkness alight with visions we cannotsee, into silence alive with voices we cannot hear. Like helplessmen we set our all on the one thing left us, and lift up ourhearts, knowing that we are but a mere speck among a myriad worlds, yet greater than the sum of them; having our roots in the darkplaces of the earth, but our branches in the sweet airs of heaven. 

It is the material counterpart of the 'Night of the Soul. ' We haveleft our house and set forth in the darkness which paralyses thosefaculties that make us men in the world of men. But surely thegreat mystics, with all their insight and heavenly love, fell shortwhen they sought freedom in complete separateness from creationinstead of in perfect unity with it. The Greeks knew better whenthey flung Ariadne's crown among the stars, and wrote Demeter'sgrief on a barren earth, and Persephone's joy in the fruitfulfield. For the earth is gathered up in man; he is the whole whichis greater than the sum of its parts. Standing in the image ofGod, and clothed in the garment of God, he lifts up priestly handsand presents the sacrifice of redeemed earth before the throne ofthe All-Father. "Dust and ashes and a house of devils, " he cries;and there comes back for answer, "Rex concupiscet decorem tuam. "

The Angel of Death has broad wings of silence and mystery withwhich he shadows the valley where we need fear no evil, and wherethe voice which speaks to us is as the "voice of doves, taberingupon their breasts. " It is a place of healing and preparation, ofpeace and refreshing after the sharply-defined outlines of a garishday. Walking there we learn to use those natural faculties of thesoul which are hampered by the familiarity of bodily progress, toapprehend the truths which we have intellectually accepted. It isthe place of secrets where the humility which embraces allattainable knowledge cries "I know not"; and while we proclaim fromthe house-tops that which we have learnt, the manner of ourlearning lies hid for each one of us in the sanctuary of our souls. 

The Egyptians, in their ancient wisdom, act in the desert a greatandrosphinx, image of mystery and silence, staring from under levelbrows across the arid sands of the sea-way. The Greeks borrowedand debased the image, turning the inscrutable into a semi-womanwho asked a foolish riddle, and hurled herself down in petulantpride when OEdipus answered aright. So we, marring the office ofsilence, question its mystery; thwart ourselves with riddles of ourown suggesting; and turn away, leaving our offering but halfconsumed on the altar of the unknown god. It was not the theft offire that brought the vengeance of heaven upon Prometheus, but themocking sacrifice. Orpheus lost Eurydice because he must see herface before the appointed time. Persephone ate of the pomegranateand hungered in gloom for the day of light which should have beenendless. 

The universe is full of miracle and mystery; the darkness andsilence are set for a sign we dare not despise. The pall of nightlifts, leaving us engulphed in the light of immensity under atossing heaven of stars. The dawn breaks, but it does not surpriseus, for we have watched from the valley and seen the pale twilight. Through the wondrous Sabbath of faithful souls, the long day ofrosemary and rue, the light brightens in the East; and we pass ontowards it with quiet feet and opening eyes, bearing with us all ofthe redeemed earth that we have made our own, until we arefulfilled in the sunrise of the great Easter Day, and the peoplescome from north and south and east and west to the City which liethfoursquare--the Beatific Vision of God. 

Vere Ierusalem est illa civitasCuius pax iugis et summa iucunditas;Ubi non praevenit rem desiderium, Nec desiderio minus est praemium. 

AT THE WHITE GATE

CHAPTER I

A great joy has come to me; one of those unexpected gifts whichlife 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 lieswithin my distant vision; near the lean grey Downs which keep watchand ward between the country and the sea; very near, nay, in thelap 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 agreat sycamore where the bees toil and sing; and sighing shimmeringpoplars golden grey against the blue. The day of Persephone hasdawned for me, and I, set free like Demeter's child, gladden myeyes with this foretaste of coming radiance, and rest my tiredsense with the scent and sound of home. Away down the meadow Ihear the early scythe song, and the warm air is fragrant with thefallen grass. It has its own message for me as I lie here, I whohave obtained yet one more mercy, and the burden of it is life, notdeath. 

I remember when, taking a grace from my road, I helped to mowFarmer Marler's ten-acre field, rich in ripe upstanding grass. Themechanism of the ancient reaper had given way under the strain ofthe home meadows, and if this crop was to be saved it must be byhand. I have kept the record of those days of joyous labour undera June sky. Men were hard to get in our village; old Dodden, whowas over seventy, volunteered his services--he had done yeoman workwith the scythe in his youth--and two of the farm hands with theirmaster completed our strength. 

We took our places under a five o'clock morning sky, and the larkscried down to us as we stood knee-deep in the fragrant dew-steepedgrass, each man with his gleaming scythe poised ready for itssweeping swing. Old Dodden led by right of age and ripeexperience; bent like a sickle, brown and dry as a nut, his face atracery of innumerable wrinkles, he has never ailed a day, and thecunning of his craft was still with him. At first we workedstiffly, unreadily, but soon the monotonous motion possessed uswith its insistent rhythm, and the grass bowed to each sibilantswish and fell in sweet-smelling swathes at our feet. Now and thena startled rabbit scurried through the miniature forest to vanishwith white flick of tail in the tangled hedge; here and there amother lark was discovered sitting motionless, immovable upon herlittle brood; but save for these infrequent incidents we pacedsteadily on with no speech save the cry of the hone on the steeland the swish of the falling swathes. The sun rose high in theheaven and burnt on bent neck and bare and aching arms, the bloodbeat and drummed in my veins with the unwonted posture andexercise; I worked as a man who sees and hears in a mist. Once, asI paused to whet my scythe, my eye caught the line of theuntroubled hills strong and still in the broad sunshine; then towork again in the labouring, fertile valley. 

Rest time came, and wiping the sweat from brow and blade we soughtthe welcome shadow of the hedge and the cool sweet oatmeal waterwith which the wise reaper quenches his thirst. Farmer Marlerhastened off to see with master-eye that all went well elsewhere;the farm men slept tranquilly, stretched at full length, claspedhands for pillow; and old Dodden, sitting with crooked fingersinterlaced to check their trembling betrayal of old age, told howin his youth he had "swep" a four-acre field single-handed in threedays--an almost impossible feat--and of the first reaping machinein these parts, and how it brought, to his thinking, the ruin ofagricultural morals with it. "'Tis again nature, " he said, "theLard gave us the land an' the seed, but 'Ee said that a man shouldsweat. Where's the sweat drivin' round wi' two horses cuttin' thestraw down an' gatherin' it again, wi' scarce a hand's turn i' theday's work?"

Old Dodden's high-pitched quavering voice rose and fell, mournfulas he surveyed the present, vehement as he recorded the heroicpast. He spoke of the rural exodus and shook his head mournfully. "We old 'uns were content wi' earth and the open sky like ourfeythers before us, but wi' the children 'tis first machines tosave doin' a hand's turn o' honest work, an' then land an' skyain't big enough seemin'ly, nor grand enough; it must be town an' apaved street, an' they sweat their lives out atwixt four walls an'call it seein' life--'tis death an' worse comes to the most of 'em. Ay, 'tis better to stay by the land, as the Lard said, till timecomes to lie under it. " I looked away across the field where thehot air throbbed and quivered, and the fallen grass, robbed alreadyof its freshness, lay prone at the feet of its upstanding fellows. It is quite useless to argue with old Dodden; he only shakes hishead and says firmly, "An old man, seventy-five come Martinmassknows 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 asfar as it went; and his own son is the sweeper of a Holborncrossing, and many other things that he should not be; but that isthe parson's secret and mine. 

We took rank again and swept steadily on through the hot stillhours into the evening shadows, until the sinking sun set a Gloriato the psalm of another working day. Only a third of the field laymown, for we were not skilled labourers to cut our acre a day; Isaw 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 theair was fragrant of tossed and sun-dried grass. One of them walkedapart from the rest, without interest or freedom of movement; herface, sealed and impassive, was aged beyond the vigour of heryears. I knew the woman by sight, and her history by hearsay. Wehave a code of morals here--not indeed peculiar to this place orpeople--that a wedding is 'respectable' if it precedes child-birthby a bare month, tolerable, and to be recognised, should it succeedthe same by less than a year (provided the pair are not living inthe same village); but the child that has never been 'fathered' andthe wife without a ring are 'anathema, ' and such in one wasElizabeth Banks. She went away a maid and came back a year agowith a child and without a name. Her mother was dead, her fatherand the village would have none of her: the homing instinct isvery strong, or she would scarcely have returned, knowing thetraditions of the place. Old Dodden, seeing her, grumbled to me inthe rest-time. --"Can't think what the farmer wants wi' Lizzie Banksin 'is field. " "She must live, " I said, "and by all showing herlife is a hard one. " "She 'ad the makin' of 'er bed, " he went on, obstinately. "What for do she bring her disgrace home, wi' afatherless brat for all folks to see? We don't want them sort inour village. The Lord's hand is heavy, an' a brat's a curse thatcannot 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 abundle under the hedge. I passed close on my search, and lo! thebundle was a little boy. He lay smiling and stretching, fightingthe air with his small pink fists, while the wind played with hiscurls. "A curse that cannot be hid, " old Dodden had said. Themother knelt a moment, devouring him with her eyes, then snatchedhim to her with aching greed and covered him with kisses. I sawthe poor, plain face illumined, transfigured, alive with a mother'slove, 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 theair; Farmer Marler shook his head as he looked at the grass lyingin ordered rows. I was the last to leave, and as I lingered at thegate drinking in the scent of the field and the cool of the comingrain, the first drops fell on my upturned face and kissed the poordry swathes at my feet, and I was glad. 

David, child of the fields and the sheepfolds, his kingship laidaside, sees through the parted curtain of the years the advent ofhis greater Son, and cries in his psalm of the hilltops, his lastprophetic 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 tossingbanners, greeted sun and shower alike with joy for the furtheranceof its life and purpose; now, laid low, it hears the young grasswhisper the splendour of its coming green; and the poor swathes areglad at the telling, but full of grief for their own apparentfailure. Then in great pity comes the rain, the rain of summer, gentle, refreshing, penetrating, and the swathes are comforted, forthey know that standing to greet or prostrate to suffer, theconsolations of the former and the latter rain are still their own, with tender touch and cool caress. Then, once more parched by thesun, they are borne away to the new service their apparent failurehas fitted them for; and perhaps as they wait in the dark for theunknown that is still to come they hear sometimes the call of thedistant rain, and at the sound the dry sap stirs afresh--they arenot forgotten and can wait. 

"Say unto your sisters Ruhamah, " cries the prophet. 

"He shall come down like rain on the mown grass, " sang the poet ofthe sheepfolds. 

"My ways are not your ways, saith the Lord. "

I remember how I went home along the damp sweet-scented lanesthrough the grey mist of the rain, thinking of the mown field andElizabeth Banks and many, many more; and that night, when the skyhad cleared and the nightingale sang, I looked out at the moonriding at anchor, a silver boat in a still blue sea ablaze with theheadlights of the stars, and the saying of the herdsman of Tekoacame to me--as it has come oftentimes since:-

Seek Him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth theshadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark withnight; that calleth for the waters of the sea and poureth them outupon the face of earth; the Lord is His name. 

CHAPTER II

This garden is an epitome of peace; sun and wind, rain, flowers, and birds gather me into the blessedness of their active harmony. The world holds no wish for me, now that I have come home to diewith my own people, for verify I think that the sap of grass andtrees must run in my veins, so steady is their pull upon my heart-strings. London claimed all my philosophy, but the country givesall, and asks of me only the warm receptivity of a child in itsmother's arms. 

When I lie in my cool light room on the garden level, I look acrossthe bright grass--il verde smalto--to a great red rose bush inlavish disarray against the dark cypress. Near by, amid a tangleof many-hued corn-flowers I see the promise of coming lilies, thesudden crimson of a solitary paeony; and in lowlier state againstthe poor parched earth glow the golden cups of the eschseholtzias. Beyond the low hedge lies pasture bright with buttercups, where thecattle feed. Farther off, where the scythe has been busy, aresheep, clean and shorn, with merry, well-grown lambs; and in thefarthest field I can see the great horses moving in slow steadypace as the farmer turns his furrow. 

The birds are noisy comrades and old friends, from the lark whichchants the dew-steeped morning, to the nightingale that breaks thesilence of the most wonderful nights. I hear the wisdom of therooks in the great elms; the lifting lilt of the linnet, and therobin's quaint little summer song. The starlings chatterceaselessly, their queer strident voices harsh against themelodious gossip of the other birds; the martins shrill softly asthey swoop to and fro busied with their nesting under the caves;thrush and blackbird vie in friendly rivalry like the Meister-singer of old; sometimes I hear the drawling cry of a peacockstrayed from the great house, or the laugh of the woodpecker; andat night the hunting note of the owl reaches me as he sweeps by insearch of prey. 

To-day I am out again; and the great sycamore showers honey andflowers on me as I lie beneath it. Sometimes a bee falls like anover-ripe fruit, and waits awhile to clean his pollen-coated legsere he flies home to discharge his burden. He is too busy to befriendly, but his great velvety cousin is much more sociable, andstays for a gentle rub between his noisy shimmering wings, and anap in the hollow of my hand, for he is an idle friendly soul withplenty of time at his own disposal and no responsibilities. Looking across I can watch the martins at work; they have astarling and a sparrow for near neighbours in the wooden gutter. One nest is already complete all but the coping, the other two area-building: I wonder whether I or they will be first to go souththrough the mist. 

This great tree is a world in itself, and the denizens appear fullof curiosity as to the Gulliver who has taken up his abode beneathit. Pale green caterpillars and spiders of all sizes come spinningdown to visit me, and have to be persuaded with infinite difficultyto ascend their threads again. There are flies with beautifuliridescent wings, beetles of all shapes, some of them like tinyjewels in the sunlight. Their nomenclature is a sealed book to me;of their life and habits I know nothing; yet this is but a littlecorner of the cosmos I am leaving, and I feel not so much desirefor the beauty to come, as a great longing to open my eyes a littlewider during the time which remains to me in this beautiful worldof God's making, where each moment tells its own tale of active, progressive life in which there is no undoing. Nature knows naughtof the web of Penelope, that acme of anxious pathetic waiting, butgoes steadily on in ever widening circle towards the fulfilment ofthe mystery of God. 

There are, I take it, two master-keys to the secrets of theuniverse, viewed sub specie aeternitatis, the Incarnation of God, and the Personality of Man; with these it is true for us as for thepantheistic little man of contemptible speech, that "all things areours, " yea, even unto the third heaven. 

I have lost my voracious appetite for books; their language is lessplain than scent and song and the wind in the trees; and for me theclue to the next world lies in the wisdom of earth rather than inthe learning of men. "Libera me ab fuscina Hophni, " prayed thegood Bishop fearful of religious greed. I know too much, not toolittle; it is realisation that I lack, wherefore I desire theselast days to confirm in myself the sustaining goodness of God, thelove which is our continuing city, the New Jerusalem whose length, breadth, and height are all one. It is a time of exceeding peace. There is a place waiting for me under the firs in the quietchurchyard; thanks to my poverty I have no worldly anxieties orpersonal dispositions; and I am rich in friends, many of themunknown to me, who lavishly supply my needs and make it ideal tolive on the charity of one's fellow-men. I am most gladly in debtto all the world; and to Earth, my mother, for her great beauty. 

I can never remember the time when I did not love her, this motherof mine with her wonderful garments and ordered loveliness, hertender care and patient bearing of man's burden. In the earliestdays of my lonely childhood I used to lie chin on hand amid themilkmaids, red sorrel, and heavy spear-grass listening to her manyvoices, and above all to the voice of the little brook which ranthrough the meadows where I used to play: I think it has runthrough my whole life also, to lose itself at last, not in thegreat sea but in the river that maketh glad the City of God. Valley and plain, mountain and fruitful field; the lark's song andthe speedwell in the grass; surely a man need not sigh for greaterloveliness until he has read something more of this living letter, and knelt before that earth of which he is the only confusion. 

It is a grave matter that the word religion holds such away amongus, making the very gap seem to yawn again which the Incarnationonce and for ever filled full. We have banished the protectinggods that ruled in river and mountain, tree and grove; we havegainsayed for the most part folk-lore and myth, superstition andfairy-tale, evil only in their abuse. We have done away withmystery, or named it deceit. All this we have done in anenlightened age, but despite this policy of destruction we haveleft ourselves a belief, the grandest and most simple the world hasever known, which sanctifies the water that is shed by everypassing cloud; and gathers up in its great central act vineyard andcornfield, proclaiming them to be that Life of the world withoutwhich a man is dead while he liveth. Further, it is a belief whosefoundations are the most heavenly mystery of the Trinity, but whosecentre is a little Child: it sets a price upon the head of thesparrow, and reckons the riches of this world at their true value;it points to a way of holiness where the fool shall not err, andthe sage may find the realisation of his far-seeking; and yet, despite its inclusiveness, it is a belief which cannot save thebirds from destruction, the silent mountains from advertisement, orthe stream from pollution, in an avowedly Christian land. JohnRuskin scolded and fought and did yeoman service, somewhat hinderedby his over-good conceit of himself; but it is not the worship ofbeauty we need so much as the beauty of holiness. Little by littlethe barrier grows and 'religion' becomes a RULE of life, not lifeitself, although the Bride stands ready to interpret, likened inher loveliness to the chief treasures of her handmaid-Earth. Thereis more truth in the believing cry, "Come from thy white cliffs, OPan!" than in the religion that measures a man's life by the letterof the Ten Commandments, and erects itself as judge and ruler overhim, instead of throwing open the gate of the garden where Godwalks with man from morning until morning. 

As I write the sun is setting; in the pale radiance of the skyabove his glory there dawns the evening star; and earth like atired child turns her face to the bosom of the night. 

CHAPTER III

Once again I have paid a rare visit to my tree to find many thingschanged since my last sojourn there. The bees are silent, for thehoney-laden flowers of the sycamore are gone and in their placehang dainty two-fold keys. The poplar has lost its metallicshimmer, the chestnut its tall white candles; and the sound of thewind 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 areover, and the nestlings in bold flight no longer flutter oninefficient wings across the lawn with clamorous, open bill. Therobins show promise of their ruddy vests, the slim young thrush isdiligently practising maturer notes, and soon Maid June will havefled. 

It is such a wonderful world that I cannot find it in my heart tosigh for fresh beauty amid these glories of the Lord on which Ilook, seeing men as trees walking, in my material impotence whichawaits the final anointing. The marigolds with their orange suns, the lilies' white flame, the corncockle's blue crown of manyflowers, the honeysuckle's horn of fragrance--I can paraphrasethem, name, class, dissect them; and then, save for the purposes ofhuman intercourse, I stand where I stood before, my world boundedby my capacity, the secret of colour and fragrance still kept. Itis difficult to believe that the second lesson will not be thesequence of the first, and death prove a "feast of opening eyes" toall these wonders, instead of the heavy-lidded slumber to which weso often liken it. "Earth to earth?" Yes, "dust thou art, andunto dust thou shalt return, " but what of the rest? What of thefolded grave clothes, and the Forty Days? If the next state be, asit well might, space of four dimensions, and the first veil whichwill lift for me be the material one, then the "other" world whichis hidden from our grosser material organism will lie open, anddeclare still further to my widening eyes and unstopped ears theglory and purpose of the manifold garment of God. Knowledge willgive place to understanding in that second chamber of the House ofWisdom and Love. Revelation is always measured by capacity: "Openthy mouth wide, " and it shall be filled with a satisfaction that initself is desire. 

There is a child here, a happy quiet little creature holding gentlyto its two months of life. Sometimes they lay it beside me, I themore helpless of the two--perhaps the more ignorant--and equallydependent for the supply of my smallest need. I feel indecentlylarge as I survey its minute perfections and the tiny balled fistlying in my great palm. The little creature fixes me with the wisewide stare of a soul in advance of its medium of expression; and I, gazing back at the mystery in those eyes, feel the thrill ofcontact between my worn and sustained self and the innocence of alittle white child. It is wonderful to watch a woman's rapturousfamiliarity with these newcomers. A man's love has far more awe init, and the passionate animal instinct of defence is wanting inhim. "A woman shall be saved through the child-bearing, " said StPaul; not necessarily her own, but by participation in the greatact of motherhood which is the crown and glory of her sex. She isthe "prisoner of love, " caught in a net of her own weaving; heldfast by little hands which rule by impotence, pursued by feet theswifter for their faltering. 

It seems incredible that this is what a woman will barter for theright to "live her own life"--surely the most empty of desires. Man--vir, woman--femina, go to make up THE man--homo. There can beno comparison, no rivalry between them; they are the complement ofeach other, and a little child shall lead them. It is easy tounderstand that desire to shelter under the dear mantle ofmotherhood which has led to one of the abuses of modern Romanism. I met an old peasant couple at Bornhofen who had tramped many wearymiles 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 theytold me their tale the old woman heaved a sigh of relief, "Es wirdbald gut gehen: Die da, Sie versteht, " and I saw her later payinga farewell visit to the great understanding Mother whom she couldtrust. Superstitious misapprehension if you will, but also therecognition 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 thelast of all the riddles, to be solved it may be only in Heaven'sperfection and the light of the Beatific Vision. "Know thyself" isa vain legend, the more so when emphasised by a skull; and so Icompany with a friend and a stranger, and looking across at thewhite gate I wonder concerning the quiet pastures and still watersthat lie beyond, even as Brother Ambrose wondered long years ago inthe monastery by the forest. 

The Brother Ambrose was ever a saintly man approved of God andbeloved by the Brethren. To him one night, as he lay abed in thedormitory, came the word of the Lord, saying, "Come, and I willshow thee the Bride, the Lamb's wife. " And Brother Ambrose aroseand was carried to a great and high mountain, even as in the Visionof Blessed John. 'Twas a still night of many stars, and BrotherAmbrose, looking up, saw a radiant path in the heavens; and lo! thestars gathered themselves together on either side until they stoodas walls of light, and the four winds lapped him about as in amantle and bore him towards the wondrous gleaming roadway. Thenbetween 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 byevery gate an angel with wings of snow and fire, and a face no mandare look on because of its exceeding radiance. 

Then as Brother Ambrose stretched out his arms because of his greatlonging, a little grey cloud came out of the north and hung betweenthe walls of light, so that he no longer beheld the Vision, butonly heard a sound as of a great multitude crying 'Alleluia'; andsuddenly the winds came about him again, and lo! he found himselfin his bed in the dormitory, and it was midnight, for the bell wasringing to Matins; and he rose and went down with the rest. Butwhen the Brethren left the choir Brother Ambrose stayed fast in hisplace, hearing and seeing nothing because of the Vision of God; andat Lauds they found him and told the Prior. 

He questioned Brother Ambrose of the matter, and when he heard theVision bade him limn the Holy City even as he had seen it; and thePrecentor gave him uterine vellum and much fine gold and whatcolours he asked for the work. Then Brother Ambrose limned awondrous fair city of gold with turrets and spires; and he inlaidblue for the sapphire, and green for the emerald, and vermilionwhere the city seemed aflame with the glory of God; but the angelshe could not limn, nor could he set the rest of the colours as hesaw them, nor the wall of stars on either hand; and Brother Ambrosefell sick because of the exceeding great longing he had to limn theHoly City, and was very sad; but the Prior bade him thank God, andremember the infirmity of the flesh, which, like the little greycloud, veiled Jerusalem to his sight. 

As I write the monastery bell hard by rings out across the lark'ssong. They still have time for visions behind those guardingwalls, but for most of us it is not so. We let slip the ideal forwhat we call the real, and the golden dreams vanish while we clutchat phantoms: we speed along life's pathway, counting to the fullthe sixty minutes of every hour, yet the race is not to the swiftnor the battle to the strong. Lying here in this quiet backwaterit is hard to believe that the world without is turbulent withstorm and stress and the ebb and flow of uncertain tides. Thelittle yellow cat rolling on its back among the daisies, the staidtortoise making a stately meal off the buttercups near me, theseare great events in this haven of peace. And yet, looking back tothe working days, I know how much goodness and loving kindnessthere is under the froth and foam. If we do not know ourselves wemost certainly do not know our brethren: that revelation awaitsus, it may be, first in Heaven. To have faith is to create; tohave hope is to call down blessing; to have love is to workmiracles. Above all let us see visions, visions of colour andlight, of green fields and broad rivers, of palaces laid with faircolours, and gardens where a place is found for rosemary and rue. 

It is our prerogative to be dreamers, but there will always be menready to offer us death for our dreams. And if it must be so letus choose death; it is gain, not loss, and the gloomy portal whenwe reach it is but a white gate, the white gate maybe we have knownall our lives barred by the tendrils of the woodbine. 

CHAPTER IV

Rain, rain, rain: the little flagged path outside my window is astreaming way, where the coming raindrops meet again the greyclouds whose storehouse they have but just now left. The grassgrows greener as I watch it, the burnt patches fade, a thousandthirsty beads are uplifted for the cooling draught. 

The great thrush that robs the raspberry canes is busy; yesterdayhe had little but dust for his guerdon, but now fresh, juicy fruitrepays him as he swings to and fro on the pliant branches. Theblackbirds and starlings find the worms an easy prey--poor brotherworm ever ready for sacrifice. I can hear the soft expectantchatter of the family of martins under the roof; there will be goodhunting, and they know it, for the flies are out when the rain isover, and there are clamorous mouths awaiting. My little brownbrothers, the sparrows, remain my chief delight. Of all the birdsthese nestle closest to my heart, be they grimy little cockneys ortheir trim and dainty country cousins. They come day by day fortheir meed of crumbs spread for them outside my window, and at thisseason they eat leisurely and with good appetite, for there are nohungry babies pestering to be fed. Very early in the morning Ihear the whirr and rustle of eager wings, and the tap, tap, oflittle beaks upon the stone. The sound carries me back, for it wasthe first to greet me when I rose to draw water and gather kindlingin my roadmender days; and if I slip back another decade theysurvey me, reproving my laziness, from the foot of the narrow bedin my little attic overseas. 

Looking along the roadway that we have travelled we see thelandmarks, great and small, which have determined the direction ofour feet. For some those of childhood stand out above all therest; but I remember few notable ones, and those few the emphaticchord of the universe, rather than any commerce with my fellows. There was the night of my great disappointment, when I was bornefrom my comfortable bed to see the wonders of the moon's eclipse. Disappointment was so great that it sealed my lips; but, once backon my pillow, I sobbed for grief that I had seen a wonder so farbelow my expectation. Then there was a night at Whitby, when thewind made speech impossible, and the seas rushed up and over thegreat lighthouse like the hungry spirits of the deep. I likebetter to remember the scent of the first cowslip field under thewarm side of the hedge, when I sang to myself for pure joy of theircolour and fragrance. Again, there were the bluebells in thedeserted quarry like the backwash of a southern sea, and below themthe miniature forest of sheltering bracken with its quaintconceits; 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 Germansoil and felt the throb of its paternity, the beat of our commonLife. England is my mother, and most dearly do I love her swellingbreasts and wind-swept, salt-strewn hair. Scotland gave me myname, with its haunting derivation handed down by brave men; butGermany has always been to me the Fatherland par excellence. True, my love is limited to the southern provinces, with their medievalmemories; for the progressive guttural north I have littlesympathy, 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'scompany you should wander, a happy solitary, along its banks, watching its gleaming current in the early morning, its goldenglory as it answers the farewell of parting day. Then, in thesilence of the night, you can hear the wash and eddy calling one toanother, count the heart-beats of the great bearer of burdens, andwatch in the moonlight the sisters of the mist as they lament withwringing hands the days that are gone. 

The forests, too, are ready with story hid in the fastness of theirsolitude, and it is a joy to think that those great pines, pointingever upwards, go for the most part to carry the sails of greatships seeking afar under open sky. The forest holds other wondersstill. It seems but last night that I wandered down the road whichled to the little unheeded village where I had made my temporaryhome. The warm-scented breath of the pines and the stillness ofthe night wrapped me in great content; the summer lightning leaptin a lambent arch across the east, and the stars, seen dimlythrough the sombre tree crests, were outrivalled by the glow-wormswhich shone in countless points of light from bank and hedge; eventwo charcoal-burners, who passed with friendly greeting, hadwreathed their hats with the living flame. The tiny shifting lampswere everywhere; pale yellow, purely white, or green as theunderside of a northern wave. By day but an ugly, repellent worm;but darkness comes, and lo, a star alight. Nature is full for usof seeming inconsistencies and glad surprises. The world's asleep, say you; on your ear falls the nightingale's song and the stir ofliving creatures in bush and brake. The mantle of night falls, andall unattended the wind leaps up and scatters the clouds which veilthe constant stars; or in the hour of the great dark, dawn partsthe curtain with the long foregleam of the coming day. It is hardto 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. Imade my way at last down to the vine-girt bridge asleep under thestars and up the winding stairs of the old grey tower; and astone's-throw away the Rhine slipped quietly past in the midsummermoonlight. Switzerland came in its turn, unearthly in its whiteloveliness and glory of lake and sky. But perhaps the landmarkwhich stands out most clearly is the solitary blue gentian which Ifound in the short slippery grass of the Rigi, gazing up at the skywhose blue could not hope to excel it. It was my first; and whatneed of another, for finding one I had gazed into the mystery ofall. This side the Pass, snow and the blue of heaven; later Ientered Italy through fields of many-hued lilies, her past gloriesblazoned in the flowers of the field. 

Now it is a strangely uneventful road that leads to my White Gate. Each day questions me as it passes; each day makes answer for me"not yet. " There is no material preparation to be made for thisjourney 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 oneof a great company, swift yet unhurried in their passage? Thevoices of Penelope's suitors shrilled on the ears of Ulysses, asthey journeyed to the nether-world, like nocturnal birds and batsin the inarticulateness of their speech. They had abused the gift, and fled self-condemned. Maybe silence commends itself as mostsuitable for the wayfarers towards the sunrise--silence becausethey seek the Word--but for those hastening towards the confusionthey have wrought there falls already the sharp oncoming of thecurse. 

While we are still here the language of worship seems far, and yetlies very nigh; for what better note can our frail tongues lispthan the voice of wind and sea, river and stream, those gratefulservants giving all and asking nothing, the soft whisper of snowand rain eager to replenish, or the thunder proclaiming a majestytoo great for utterance? Here, too, stands the angel with thecenser gathering up the fragrance of teeming earth and forest-tree, of flower and fruit, and sweetly pungent herb distilled by sun andrain for joyful use. Here, too, come acolytes lighting the darkwith tapers--sun, moon, and stars--gifts of the Lord that Hissanctuary may stand ever served. 

It lies here ready to our hand, this life of adoration which weneeds must live hand in hand with earth, for has she not borne thecurse with us? But beyond the white gate and the trail of woodbinefalls the silence greater than speech, darkness greater than light, a pause of "a little while"; and then the touch of that healinggarment as we pass to the King in His beauty, in a land from whichthere is no return. 

At the gateway then I cry you farewell.