The Roadmender | Page 8

knew that tall
figure in the quaint grey smock, surely I knew the face, furrowed like
nature's face in springtime, and crowned by a round, soft hat? And the
pig, the black pig walking decorously free? Ay, I knew them.
In the early spring I took a whole holiday and a long tramp; and
towards afternoon, tired and thirsty, sought water at a little lonely
cottage whose windows peered and blinked under overhanging brows
of thatch. I had, not the water I asked for, but milk and a bowl of sweet
porridge for which I paid only thanks; and stayed for a chat with my
kindly hosts. They were a quaint old couple of the kind rarely met with
nowadays. They enjoyed a little pension from the Squire and a garden
in which vegetables and flowers lived side by side in friendliest fashion.
Bees worked and sang over the thyme and marjoram, blooming early in
a sunny nook; and in a homely sty lived a solemn black pig, a pig with
a history.

It was no common utilitarian pig, but the honoured guest of the old
couple, and it knew it. A year before, their youngest and only surviving
child, then a man of five-and-twenty, had brought his mother 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 and Joan.
"Ee be mos' like a child to me and the mother, an' mos' as sensible as a
Christian, ee be," the old man had said; and I could hardly credit my
eyes when I saw the tall bent figure side by side with the black pig,
coming along my road on such a day.
I hailed the old man, and both turned aside; but he gazed at me without
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. The
missus has been terrible bad this two mouths and more; Squire's in
foreign parts; and food-stuffs such as the old woman wants is hard
buying for poor folks. The stocking's empty, now 'tis the pig must go,
and I believe he'd be glad for to do the missus a turn; she were terrible
good to him, were the missus, and fond, too. I dursn't tell her he was to
go; she'd sooner starve than lose poor Dick's pig. Well, we'd best be
movin'; 'tis a fairish step."
The pig followed comprehending and docile, and as the quaint couple
passed from sight I thought I heard Brother Death stir in the shadow.
He is a strong angel and of great pity.
CHAPTER V

There is always a little fire of wood on the open hearth in the kitchen

when I get home at night; the old lady says it is "company" for her, and
sits in the lonely twilight, her knotted hands lying quiet on her lap, her
listening eyes fixed on the burning sticks.
I wonder sometimes whether she hears music in the leap and lick of the
fiery tongues, music such as he of Bayreuth draws from the violins till
the hot energy of the fire spirit is on us, embodied in sound.
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 God 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 grass 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