The Roadmender Part 2

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

It is a great truth tenderly said that G.o.d builds the nest for the blind bird; and may it not be that He opens closed eyes and unstops deaf ears to sights and sounds from which others by these very senses are debarred?

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

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

The little wood was manifold with sound, I heard my little brothers who move by night rustling in gra.s.s and tree. A hedgehog crossed my path with a dull squeak, the bats shrilled high to the stars, a white owl swept past me crying his hunting note, a beetle boomed suddenly in my face; and above and through it all the nightingales sang-and sang!

The night wind bent the listening trees, and the stars yearned earthward to hear the song of deathless love. Louder and louder the wonderful notes rose and fell in a pa.s.sion of melody; and then sank to rest on that low thrilling call which it is said Death once heard, and stayed his hand.

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

At last there was silence. Sitting under the big beech tree, the giant of the coppice, I rested my tired self in the lap of mother earth, breathed of her breath and listened to her voice in the quickening silence until my flesh came again as the flesh of a little child, for it is true recreation to sit at the footstool of G.o.d wrapped in a fold of His living robe, the while night smoothes our tired face with her healing hands.

The grey dawn awoke and stole with trailing robes across earth's floor.

At her footsteps the birds roused from sleep and cried a greeting; the sky flushed and paled conscious of coming splendour; and overhead a file of swans pa.s.sed with broad strong flight to the reeded waters of the sequestered pool.

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

I pa.s.sed through the coppice and out into the fields beyond. The dew lay heavy on leaf and blade and gossamer, a cool fresh wind swept clear over dale and down from the sea, and the clover field rippled like a silvery lake in the breeze.

There is something inexpressibly beautiful in the unused day, something beautiful in the fact that it is still untouched, unsoiled; and town and country share alike in this loveliness. At half-past three on a June morning even London has not a.s.sumed her responsibilities, but smiles and glows lighthearted and smokeless under the caresses of the morning sun.

Five o'clock. The bell rings out crisp and clear from the monastery where the Bedesmen of St Hugh watch and pray for the souls on this labouring forgetful earth. Every hour the note of comfort and warning cries across the land, tells the Sanctus, the Angelus, and the Hours of the Pa.s.sion, and calls to remembrance and prayer.

When the wind is north, the sound carries as far as my road, and companies me through the day; and if to His dumb children G.o.d in His mercy reckons work as prayer, most certainly those who have forged through the ages an unbroken chain of supplication and thanksgiving will be counted among the stalwart labourers of the house of the Lord.

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

The cottage is dear to me in its quaint untidiness and want of rect.i.tude, dear because we are to be its last denizens, last of the long line of toilers who have sweated and sown that others might reap, and have pa.s.sed away leaving no trace.

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

A bee with laden honey-bag hummed and buzzed in the hedge as I got ready for work, importuning the flowers for that which he could not carry, and finally giving up the attempt in despair fell asleep on a b.u.t.tercup, the best place for his weary little velvet body. In five minutes-they may have been five hours to him-he awoke a new bee, sensible and clear-sighted, and flew blithely away to the hive with his sufficiency-an example this weary world would be wise to follow.

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

I answered, gaily.

The good man with beautiful readiness sat down on a heap of stones and bade me say on. "Read me a sermon in stone," he said, simply; and I stayed my hand to read.

He listened with courteous intelligence.

"You hold a roadmender has a vocation?" he asked.

"As the monk or the artist, for, like both, he is universal. The world is his home; he serves all men alike, ay, and for him the beasts have equal honour with the men. His soul is 'bound up in the bundle of life'

with all other souls, he sees his father, his mother, his brethren in the children of the road. For him there is nothing unclean, nothing common; the very stones cry out that they serve."

Parson nodded his head.

"It is all true," he said; "beautifully true. But need such a view of life necessitate the work of roadmending? Surely all men should be 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 the actual work, and earn our bread better in this than in any other way. No man is dependent on our earning, all men on our work. We are 'rich beyond the dreams of avarice' because we have all that we need, and yet we taste the life and poverty of the very poor. We are, if you will, uncloistered monks, preaching friars who speak not with the tongue, disciples who hear the wise words of a silent master."

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

"Ay, and with more than his pen," I answered. "I wonder was he ever so truly great, so entirely the man we know and love, as when he inspired the chiefs to make a highway in the wilderness. Surely no more fitting monument could exist to his memory than the Road of Grat.i.tude, cut, laid, and kept by the pure-blooded tribe kings of Samoa."

Parson nodded.

"He knew that the people who make no roads are ruled out from intelligent partic.i.p.ation in the world's brotherhood." He filled his pipe, thinking the while, then he held out his pouch to me.

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

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

He rose to go.

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

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

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

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

Ah, well! I am no Browning Junior, and Sherwood's name is not Sherwood.

CHAPTER VI

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

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

Jem walked at the leaders' heads; it is his rule when the waggon is empty, a rule no "company" will make him break. At first I regretted it, but soon discovered I learnt to know him better so, as he plodded along, his thickset figure slightly bent, his hands in his pockets, his whip under one arm, whistling hymn tunes in a low minor, while the great horses answered to his voice without touch of lash or guiding rein.

I lay as in a blissful dream and watched my road unfold. The sun set the pine-boles aflare where the hedge is spa.r.s.e, and stretched the long shadows of the besom poplars in slanting bars across the white highway; the roadside gardens smiled friendly with their trim-cut laurels and rows of stately sunflowers-a seemly proximity this, Daphne and Clytie, sisters in experience, wrapped in the warm caress of the G.o.d whose wooing they need no longer fear. Here and there we pa.s.sed little groups of women and children off to work in the early cornfields, and Jem paused in his fond repet.i.tion of "The Lord my pasture shall prepare" to give them good-day.

It is like Life, this travelling backwards-that which has been, alone visible-like Life, which is after all, retrospective with a steady moving on into the Unknown, Unseen, until Faith is lost in Sight and experience is no longer the touchstone of humanity. The face of the son of Adam is set on the road his brothers have travelled, marking their landmarks, tracing their journeyings; but with the eyes of a child of G.o.d he looks forward, straining to catch a glimpse of the jewelled walls of his future home, the city "Eternal in the Heavens."

Presently we left my road for the deep shade of a narrow country way where the great oaks and beeches meet overhead and no hedge-clipper sets his hand to stay nature's profusion; and so by pleasant lanes scarce the waggon's width across, now shady, now sunny, here bordered by thickset coverts, there giving on fruitful fields, we came at length to the mill.

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