A meek figure, indeed, he looked, and when he saw me advancing he said,
with a deference that was almost timidity:
"Good morning, sir."
"Good morning, brother," I returned heartily.
His face brightened perceptibly.
"Don't stop on my account," I said; "finish off your work."
He knelt again on his bit of carpet and proceeded busily with his
brushes. I stood and watched him. The lettering was somewhat crude, but
he had the swift deftness of long practice.
"How long," I inquired, "have you been at this sort of work?"
"Ten years," he replied, looking up at me with a pale smile. "Off and on
for ten years. Winters I work at my trade--I am a journeyman
painter--but when spring comes, and again in the fall, I follow the
road."
He paused a moment and then said, dropping his voice, in words of the
utmost seriousness:
"I live by the Word."
"By the Word?" I asked.
"Yes, by the Word," and putting down his brushes he took from an inner
pocket a small package of papers, one of which he handed to me. It bore
at the top this sentence in large type:
"Is not my word like fire, saith the Lord: and like a hammer that
breaketh the rock in pieces?"
I stood and looked at him a moment. I suppose no one man is stranger
than any other, but at that moment it seemed to me I had never met a
more curious person. And I was consumed with a desire to know why he was
what he was.
"Do you always paint the same sign?" I asked.
"Oh, no," he answered. "I have a feeling about what I should paint. When
I came up the road here this morning I stopped a minute, and it all
seemed so calm and nice"--he swept his arm in the direction of the
fields--"that I says to myself, 'I will paint "God is Love."'"
"An appropriate text," I said, "for this very spot."
He seemed much gratified.
"Oh, you can follow your feelings!" he exclaimed. "Sometimes near towns
I can't paint anything but 'Hell yawns,' and 'Prepare to meet thy God.'
I don't like 'em as well as 'God is Love,' but it seems like I had to
paint 'em. Now, when I was in Arizona----"
He paused a moment, wiping his brushes.
"When I was in Arizona," he was saying, "mostly I painted 'Repent ye.'
It seemed like I couldn't paint anything else, and in some places I felt
moved to put 'Repent ye' twice on the same rock."
I began to ask him questions about Arizona, but I soon found how little
he, too, had taken toll of the road he travelled: for he seemed to have
brought back memories only of the texts he painted and the fact that in
some places good stones were scarce, and that he had to carry extra
turpentine to thin his paint, the weather being dry. I don't know that
he is a lone representative of this trait. I have known farmers who, in
travelling, saw only plows and butter-tubs and corn-cribs, and preachers
who, looking across such autumn fields as these would carry away only a
musty text or two. I pity some of those who expect to go to heaven: they
will find so little to surprise them in the golden streets.
But I persevered with my painter, and it was not long before we were
talking with the greatest friendliness. Having now finished his work, he
shook out his bit of carpet, screwed the tops on his paint cans, wrapped
up his brushes, and disposed of them all with the deftness of long
experience in his small black bag. Then he stood up and looked
critically at his work.
"It's all right," I said; "a great many people coming this way in the
next hundred years will see it."
"That's what I want," he said eagerly; "that's what I want. Most people
never hear the Word at all."
He paused a moment and then continued:
"It's a curious thing, Mister--perhaps you've noticed it yourself--that
the best things of all in the world people won't have as a gift."
"I've noticed it," I said.
"It's strange, isn't it?" he again remarked.
"Very strange," I said.
"I don't know's I can blame them," he continued. "I was that way myself
for a good many years: all around me gold and diamonds and precious
jewels, and me never once seeing them. All I had to do was to stoop and
take them--but I didn't do it."
I saw that I had met a philosopher, and I decided that I would stop and
wrestle with him and not let him go without his story--something like
Jacob, wasn't it, with the angel?
"Do you do all this without payment?"
He looked at me in an injured way.
"Who'd pay me?" he asked. "Mostly people think me a sort of fool. Oh, I
know, but I don't mind. I live by the Word. No, nobody pays me: I am
paying myself."
By this time he was ready to start. So I said, "Friend, I'm going your
way, and I'll walk with you."
So we set off together down the hill.
"You see, sir," he said, "when a man has got the best thing in the
world, and finds it's free, he naturally wants to let other people know
about it."
He walked with the unmistakable step of those who knew the long road--an
easy, swinging, steady step--carrying his small black bag. So I
gradually drew him out, and when I had his whole story it was as simple
and common, but as wonderful, as daylight: as fundamental as a tree or a
rock.
"You see, Mister," he said, "I was a wild sort when I was young. The
drink, and worse. I hear folks say sometimes that if they'd known what
was right they'd have done it. But I think that conscience never stops
ringing little bells in the back of a man's head; and that if he doesn't
do what is right, it's because he _wants_ to do what is wrong. He thinks
it's more amusing and interesting. I went through all that, Mister, and
plenty more besides. I got pretty nearly as low as a man ever gets. Oh,
I was down and out: no home, no family, not a friend that wanted to see
me. If you never got down that low, Mister, you don't know what it is.
You are just as much dead as if you were in your grave. I'm telling you.
"I thought there was no help for me, and I don't know's I wanted to be
helped. I said to myself, 'You're just naturally born weak and it isn't
your fault,' It makes a lot of men easier in their minds to lay up their
troubles to the way they are born. I made all sorts of excuses for
myself, but all the time I knew I was wrong; a man can't fool himself.
"So it went along for years. I got married and we had a little girl."
He paused for a long moment.
"I thought _that_ was going to help me. I thought the world and all of
that little girl----" He paused again.
"Well, _she_ died. Then I broke my wife's heart and went on down to
hell. When a man lets go that way he kills everything he loves and
everything that loves him. He's on the road to loneliness and despair,
that man. I'm telling you.
"One day, ten years ago this fall, I was going along the main street in
Quinceyville. I was near the end of my rope. Not even money enough to
buy drink with, and yet I was then more'n half drunk, I happened to look
up on the end of that stone wall near the bridge--were you ever there,
Mister?--and I saw the words 'God is Love' painted there. It somehow hit
me hard. I couldn't anyways get it out of my mind. 'God is Love.' Well,
says I to myself if God is Love, he's the only one that _is_ Love for a
chap like me. And there's no one else big enough to save me--I says. So
I stopped right there in the street, and you may believe it or explain
it anyhow you like, Mister, but it seemed to me a kind of light came all
around me, and I said, solemn-like, 'I will try God.'"
He stopped a moment. We were walking down the hill: all about us on
either side spread the quiet fields. In the high air above a few lacy
clouds were drifting eastward. Upon this story of tragic human life
crept in pleasantly the calm of the countryside.
"And I did try Him," my companion was saying, "and I found that the
words on the wall were true. They were true back there and they've been
true ever since. When I began to be decent again and got back my health
and my job, I figured that I owed a lot to God. I wa'n't no orator, and
no writer and I had no money to give, 'but,' says I to myself, I'm a
painter. I'll help God with paint.' So here I am a-travelling up and
down the roads and mostly painting 'God is Love,' but sometimes 'Repent
ye' and 'Hell yawns.' I don't know much about religion--but I do know
that His Word is like a fire, and that a man can live by it, and if once
a man has it he has everything else he wants."
He paused: I looked around at him again. His face was set steadily
ahead--a plain face showing the marks of his hard earlier life, and yet
marked with a sort of high beauty.
"The trouble with people who are unhappy, Mister," he said, "is that
they won't try God."
I could not answer my companion. There seemed, indeed, nothing more to
be said. All my own speculative incomings and outgoings--how futile
they seemed compared with this!
Near the foot of the hill there is a little-bridge. It is a pleasant,
quiet spot. My companion stopped and put down his bag.
"What do you think," said he, "I should paint here?"
"Well," I said, "you know better than I do. What would _you_ paint?"
He looked around at me and then smiled as though he had a quiet little
joke with himself.
"When in doubt," he said, "I always paint 'God is Love,' I'm sure of
that. Of course 'Hell yawns' and 'Repent ye' have to be painted--near
towns--but I much rather paint 'God is Love.'"
I left him kneeling there on the bridge, the bit of carpet under his
knees, his two little cans at his side. Half way up the hill I turned to
look back. He lifted his hand with the paint brush in it, and I waved
mine in return. I have never seen him since, though it will be a long,
long time before the sign of him disappears from our roadsides.
At the top of the hill, near the painted boulder, I climbed the fence,
pausing a moment on the top rail to look off across the hazy
countryside, warm with the still sweetness of autumn. In the distance,
above the crown of a little hill, I could see the roof of my own
home--and the barn near it--and the cows feeding quietly in the
pastures.