Part 2 (2/2)
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.
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