The Roadmender

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The Roadmender

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Roadmender, by Michael Fairless
(#1 in our series by Michael Fairless)
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Title: The Roadmender
Author: Michael Fairless

Release Date: November, 1996 [EBook #705] [This file was first
posted on November 6, 1996] [Most recently updated: September 8,
2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE
ROADMENDER ***

Transcribed from the 1911 Duckworth and Co. edition by David Price,
email [email protected]

THE ROADMENDER

I have attained my ideal: I am a roadmender, some say stonebreaker.
Both titles are correct, but the one is more pregnant than the other. All
day I sit by the roadside on a stretch of grass under a high hedge of
saplings and a tangle of traveller's joy, woodbine, sweetbrier, and late
roses. Opposite me is a white gate, seldom used, if one may judge from
the trail of honeysuckle growing tranquilly along it: I know now that
whenever and wherever I die my soul will pass out through this white
gate; and then, thank God, I shall not have need to undo that trail.
In our youth we discussed our ideals freely: I wonder how many beside
myself have attained, or would understand my attaining. After all, what
do we ask of life, here or indeed hereafter, but leave to serve, to live, to
commune with our fellowmen and with ourselves; and from the lap of
earth to look up into the face of God? All these gifts are mine as I sit by
the winding white road and serve the footsteps of my fellows. There is
no room in my life for 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 life comes I shall join the company of weary old men who sit on the
sunny side of the workhouse wall and wait for the tender mercies of
God.
Just now it is the summer of things; there is life and music
everywhere--in the stones themselves, and I live to-day beating out the
rhythmical hammer-song of The Ring. There is real physical joy in the
rise and swing of the arm, in the jar of a fair stroke, the split and scatter
of the quartz: I am learning to be ambidextrous, for why should Esau
sell his birthright when there is enough for both? Then the rest-hour
comes, bringing the luxurious ache of tired but not weary limbs; and I
lie outstretched and renew my strength, sometimes with my face
deep-nestled in the cool green grass, sometimes on my back looking up
into the blue sky which no wise man would wish to fathom.
The birds have no fear of me; am I not also of the brown brethren in my
sober fustian livery? They share my meals--at least the little dun-coated
Franciscans do; the blackbirds and thrushes care not a whit for such
simple food as crumbs, but with legs well apart and claws tense with
purchase they disinter poor brother worm, having first mocked him
with sound of rain. The robin that lives by the gate regards my heap of
stones as subject to his special inspection. He sits atop and practises the
trill of his summer song until it shrills above and through the metallic
clang of my strokes; and when I pause he cocks his tail, with a
humorous twinkle of his round eye which means--"What! shirking, big
brother?"--and I fall, ashamed, to my mending of roads.
The other day, as I lay with my face in the grass, I heard a gentle rustle,
and raised my head to find a hedge-snake watching me fearless,
unwinking. I stretched out my hand, picked it up unresisting, and put it
in my coat like the husbandman of old. Was he so