[Illustration: The little church at the foot of the grey-green down]
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 earthly 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 on my cheek, all round
me rolling stretches of cloud-shadowed down, no sound but the shrill
mourn of the peewit and the gathering of the sea.
The hours pass, the shadows lengthen, the sheep-bells clang; and I lie
in my niche under the stunted hawthorn watching the to and fro of the
sea, and Æolus shepherding his white sheep across the blue. I love the
sea with its impenetrable fathoms, its wash and undertow, and rasp of
shingle sucked anew. I love it for its secret dead in the Caverns of
Peace, of which account must be given when the books are opened and
earth and heaven have fled away. Yet in my love there is a paradox, for
as I watch the restless, ineffective waves I think of the measureless,
reflective depths of the still and silent Sea of Glass, of the dead,
small and great, rich or poor, with the works which follow them, and
of the Voice as the voice of many waters, when the multitude of one
mind rends heaven with alleluia: and I lie so still that I almost feel
the kiss of White Peace on my mouth. Later still, when the flare of
the sinking sun has died away and the stars rise out of a veil of
purple cloud, I take my way home, down the slopes, through the hamlet,
and across miles of sleeping fields over which night has thrown her
shifting web of mist--home to the little attic, the deep, cool well,
the kindly wrinkled face with its listening eyes--peace in my heart and
thankfulness for the rhythm of the road.
[Illustration: My niche under the stunted hawthorn]
Monday brings the joy of work, second only to the Sabbath of rest,
and I settle to my heap by the white gate. Soon I hear the distant
stamp of horsehoofs, heralding the grind and roll of the wheels which
reaches me later--a heavy flour-waggon with a team of four great gentle
horses, gay with brass trappings and scarlet earcaps. On the top of the
craftily piled sacks lies the white-clad waggoner, a pink in his mouth
which he mumbles meditatively, and the reins looped over the inactive
whip--why should he drive a willing team that knows the journey and
responds as strenuously to a cheery chirrup as to the well-directed
lash? We greet and pass the time of day, and as he mounts the rise he
calls back a warning of coming rain. I am already white with dust as he
with flour, sacramental dust, the outward and visible sign of the stir
and beat of the heart of labouring life.
Next to pass down the road is an anxious ruffled hen, her speckled
breast astir with maternal troubles. She walks delicately, lifting
her feet high and glancing furtively from side to side with comb low
dressed. The sight of man, the heartless egg-collector, from whose
haunts she has fled, wrings from her a startled cluck, and she makes
for the white gate, climbs through, and disappears. I know her feelings
too well to intrude. Many times already has she hidden herself, amassed
four or five precious treasures, brooding over them with anxious hope;
and then, after a brief desertion to seek the necessary food, she has
returned to find her efforts at concealment vain, her treasures gone.
At last, with the courage of despair she has resolved to brave the
terrors of the unknown and seek a haunt beyond the tyranny of man. I
will watch over her from afar, and when her mother-hope is fulfilled I
will marshal her and her brood back to the farm where she belongs; for
what end I care not to think, it is of the mystery which lies at the
heart of things; and we are all God's beasts, says St Augustine.
Here is my stone-song, a paraphrase of the Treasure Motif.
[Illustration: Music]
What a wonderful work Wagner has done for humanity in translating the
toil of life into the readable script of music! For those who seek
the tale of other worlds his magic is silent; but earth-travail under
his wand becomes instinct with rhythmic song to an accompaniment of
the elements, and the blare and crash of the bottomless pit itself.
The Pilgrims' March is the sad sound of footsore men; the San Graal
the tremulous yearning of servitude for richer, deeper bondage. The
yellow, thirsty flames lick up the willing sacrifice, the water wails
the secret of the river and the sea; the birds and beasts, the shepherd
with his pipe, the underground life in rocks and caverns, all cry their
message to this nineteenth-century toiling, labouring world--and to me
as I mend my road.
[Illustration: Æolus shepherding his white sheep]
Two tramps come and fling themselves by me as I eat my noonday meal.
The one, red-eyed, furtive, lies on his side with restless, clutching
hands that tear and twist and torture the living grass, while his lips
mutter incoherently. The other sits stooped, bare-footed, legs wide
apart, his face grey, almost as grey as his stubbly beard; and it is
not long since Death looked him in the eyes. He tells me querulously
of a two hundred miles tramp since early spring, of search for work,
casual jobs with more kicks than halfpence, and a brief but blissful
sojourn in a hospital bed, from which he was dismissed with sentence
passed upon him. For himself, he is determined to die on the road
under a hedge, where a man can see and breathe. His anxiety is all for
his fellow; _he_ has said he will "do for a man"; he wants to "swing,"
to get out of his "dog's life." I watch him as he lies, this Ishmael
and would-be Lamech. Ignorance, hunger, terror, the exhaustion of past
generations, have done their work. The man is mad, and would kill his
fellow-man.
Presently we part, and the two go, dogged and footsore, down the road
which is to lead them into the great silence.