The Roadmender | Page 6

I'll kiss 'oo."
I worked on, hearing at intervals the old piping voice and the child-treble, much of a note; and thinking of the blessings vouchsafed to the simple old age which crowns a harmless working- life spent in the fields. The two under the hedge had everything in common and were boundlessly content together, the sting of the knowledge of good and evil past for the one, and for the other still to come; while I stood on the battlefield of the world, the flesh, and the devil, though, thank God, with my face to the foe.
The old man sat resting: I had promised him a lift with my friend the driver of the flour-cart, and he was almost due when the child's grandmother came down the road.
When she saw my other visitor she stood amazed.
"What, Richard Hunton, that worked with my old man years ago up at Ditton, whatever are you doin' all these miles from your own place?"
"Is it Eliza Jakes?"
He looked at her dazed, doubtful.
"An' who else should it be? Where's your memory gone, Richard Hunton, and you not such a great age either? Where are you stayin'?"
Shame overcame him; his lips trembled, his mild blue eyes filled with tears. I told the tale as I had heard it, and Mrs Jakes's indignation was good to see.
"Not keep you on 'alf a crown! Send you to the House! May the Lord forgive them! You wouldn't eat no more than a fair-sized cat, and not long for this world either, that's plain to see. No, Richard Hunton, you don't go to the House while I'm above ground; it'd make my good man turn to think of it. You'll come 'ome with me and the little 'un there. I've my washin', and a bit put by for a rainy day, and a bed to spare, and the Lord and the parson will see I don't come to want."
She stopped breathless, her defensive motherhood in arms.
The old man said quaveringly, in the pathetic, grudging phrase of the poor, which veils their gratitude while it testifies their independence, "Maybe I might as well." He rose with difficulty, picked up his bundle and stick, the small child replaced the kitten in its basket, and thrust her hand in her new friend's.
"Then 'oo IS grandad tum back," she said.
Mrs Jakes had been fumbling in her pocket, and extracted a penny, which she pressed on me.
"It's little enough, mister," she said.
Then, as I tried to return it: "Nay, I've enough, and yours is poor paid work."
I hope I shall always be able to keep that penny; and as I watched the three going down the dusty white road, with the child in the middle, I thanked God for the Brotherhood of the Poor.
CHAPTER IV

Yesterday a funeral passed, from the work-house at N-, a quaint sepulture without solemnities. The rough, ungarnished coffin of stained deal lay bare and unsightly on the floor of an old market- cart; a woman sat beside, steadying it with her feet. The husband drove; and the most depressed of the three was the horse, a broken- kneed, flea-bitten grey. It was pathetic, this bringing home in death of the old father whom, while he lived, they had been too poor to house; it was at no small sacrifice that they had spared him that terror of old age, a pauper's grave, and brought him to lie by his wife in our quiet churchyard. They felt no emotion, this husband and wife, only a dull sense of filial duty done, respectability preserved; and above and through all, the bitter but necessary counting the cost of this last bed.
It is strange how pagan many of us are in our beliefs. True, the funeral libations have made way for the comfortable bake-meats; still, to the large majority Death is Pluto, king of the dark Unknown whence no traveller returns, rather than Azrael, brother and friend, lord of this mansion of life. Strange how men shun him as he waits in the shadow, watching our puny straining after immortality, sending his comrade sleep to prepare us for himself. When the hour strikes he comes--very gently, very tenderly, if we will but have it so--folds the tired hands together, takes the way- worn feet in his broad strong palm; and lifting us in his wonderful arms he bears us swiftly down the valley and across the waters of Remembrance.
Very pleasant art thou, O Brother Death, thy love is wonderful, passing the love of women.
* * * * * *
To-day I have lived in a whirl of dust. To-morrow is the great annual Cattle Fair at E-, and through the long hot hours the beasts from all the district round have streamed in broken procession along my road, to change hands or to die. Surely the