The Roadmender | Page 2

ill-rewarded, I
wonder, with the kiss that reveals secrets? My snake slept in peace
while I hammered away with an odd quickening of heart as I thought
how to me, as to Melampus, had come the messenger--had come, but to
ears deafened by centuries of misrule, blindness, and oppression; so
that, with all my longing, I am shut out of the wondrous world where

walked Melampus and the Saint. To me there is no suggestion of evil in
the little silent creatures, harmless, or deadly only with the Death which
is Life. The beasts who turn upon us, as a rule maul and tear
unreflectingly; with the snake there is the swift, silent strike, the tiny,
tiny wound, then sleep and a forgetting.
My brown friend, with its message unspoken, slid away into the grass
at sundown to tell its tale in unstopped ears; and I, my task done, went
home across the fields to the solitary cottage where I lodge. It is old
and decrepit--two rooms, with a quasi-attic over them reached by a
ladder from the kitchen and reached only by me. It is furnished with the
luxuries of life, a truckle bed, table, chair, and huge earthenware pan
which I fill from the ice-cold well at the back of the cottage. Morning
and night I serve with the Gibeonites, their curse my blessing, as no
doubt it was theirs when their hearts were purged by service. Morning
and night I send down the moss-grown bucket with its urgent message
from a dry and dusty world; the chain tightens through my hand as the
liquid treasure responds to the messenger, and then with creak and
jangle--the welcome of labouring earth--the bucket slowly nears the top
and disperses the treasure in the waiting vessels. The Gibeonites were
servants in the house of God, ministers of the sacrament of service even
as the High Priest himself; and I, sharing their high office of servitude,
thank God that the ground was accursed for my sake, for surely that
curse was the womb of all unborn blessing.
The old widow with whom I lodge has been deaf for the last twenty
years. She speaks in the strained high voice which protests against her
own infirmity, and her eyes have the pathetic look of those who search
in silence. For many years she lived alone with her son, who laboured
on the farm two miles away. He met his death rescuing a carthorse
from its burning stable; and the farmer gave the cottage rent free and a
weekly half-crown for life to the poor old woman whose dearest terror
was the workhouse. With my shilling a week rent, and sharing of
supplies, we live in the lines of comfort. Of death she has no fears, for
in the long chest in the kitchen lie a web of coarse white linen, two
pennies covered with the same to keep down tired eyelids, decent white
stockings, and a white cotton sun-bonnet--a decorous death-suit

truly--and enough money in the little bag for self-respecting burial. The
farmer buried his servant handsomely--good man, he knew the love of
reticent grief for a 'kind' burial--and one day Harry's mother is to lie
beside him in the little churchyard which has been a cornfield, and may
some day be one again.
CHAPTER II

On Sundays my feet take ever the same way. First my temple service,
and then five miles tramp over the tender, dewy fields, with their
ineffable earthy smell, until I reach the little church at the foot of the
grey-green down. Here, every Sunday, a young priest from a
neighbouring village says Mass for the tiny hamlet, where all are very
old or very young--for the heyday of life has no part under the long
shadow of the hills, but is away at sea or in service. There is a beautiful
seemliness in the extreme youth of the priest who serves these aged
children of God. He bends to communicate them with the reverent
tenderness of a son, and reads with the careful intonation of far-seeing
love. To the old people he is the son of their old age, God-sent to guide
their tottering footsteps along the highway of foolish wayfarers; and he,
with his youth and strength, wishes no better task. Service ended, we
greet each other friendly--for men should not be strange in the acre of
God; and I pass through the little hamlet and out and up on the grey
down beyond. Here, at the last gate, I pause for breakfast; and then up
and on with quickening pulse, and evergreen memory of the weary
war-worn Greeks who broke rank to greet the great blue Mother-way
that led to home. I stand on the summit hatless, the wind in my hair, the
smack of salt