"Well, that beats everything. Now, I '_ave_ seen better days; worked in
a big brewery over near Maidstone--a town that, and something doing;
and now, 'ere I am, 'ammering me 'eart out on these blasted stones for
a bit o' bread and a pipe o' baccy once a week--it ain't good enough."
He pulled a blackened clay from his pocket and began slowly filling it
with rank tobacco; then he lit it carefully behind his battered hat,
put the spent match back in his pocket, rose to his feet, hitched his
braces, and, with a silent nod to me, went on to his job.
Why do we give these tired children, whose minds move slowly, whose
eyes are holden that they cannot read the Book, whose hearts are full
of sore resentment against they know not what, such work as this to
do--hammering their hearts out for a bit of bread? All the pathos of
unreasoning labour rings in these few words. We fit the collar on
unwilling necks; and when their service is over we bid them go out
free; but we break the good Mosaic law and send them away empty. What
wonder there is so little willing service, so few ears ready to be
thrust through against the master's door.
The swift stride of civilisation is leaving behind individual effort,
and turning man into the Dæmon of a machine. To and fro in front of
the long loom, lifting a lever at either end, paces he who once with
painstaking intelligence drove the shuttle. _Then_ he tasted the joy
of completed work, that which his eye had looked upon, and his hands
had handled; now his work is as little finished as the web of Penelope.
Once the reaper grasped the golden corn stems, and with dexterous sweep
of sickle set free the treasure of the earth. Once the creatures of
the field were known to him, and his eye caught the flare of scarlet
and blue as the frail poppies and sturdy corn-cockles laid down their
beauty at his feet; now he sits serene on Juggernaut's car, its guiding
Dæmon, and the field is silent to him.
As with the web and the grain so with the wood and stone in the
treasure-house of our needs. The ground was accursed _for our sake_
that in the sweat of our brow we might eat bread. Now the many live in
the brain-sweat of the few; and it must be so, for as little as great
King Cnut could stay the sea until it had reached the appointed place,
so little can we raise a barrier to the wave of progress, and say,
"Thus far and no further shalt thou come."
What then? Tins at least; if we live in an age of mechanism let us see
to it that we are a race of intelligent mechanics; and if man is to be
the Dæmon of a machine let him know the setting of the knives, the rise
of the piston, the part that each wheel and rod plays in the economy of
the whole, the part that he himself plays, co-operating with it. Then,
when he has lived and served intelligently, let us give him of our
flocks and of our floor that he may learn to rest in the lengthening
shadows until he is called to his work above.
So I sat, hammering out my thoughts, and with them the conviction that
stonebreaking should be allotted to minor poets or vagrant children of
nature like myself, never to such tired folk as my poor mate at the
cross-roads and his fellows.
At noon, when I stopped for my meal, the sun was baking the hard white
road in a pitiless glare. Several waggons and carts passed, the horses
sweating and straining, with drooping, fly-tormented ears. The men for
the most part nodded slumberously on the shaft, seeking the little
shelter the cart afforded; but one shuffled in the white dust, with an
occasional chirrup and friendly pressure on the tired horse's neck.
Then an old woman and a small child appeared in sight, both with
enormous sun-bonnets and carrying baskets. As they came up with me
the woman stopped and swept her face with her hand, while the child,
depositing the basket in the dust with great care, wiped her little
sticky fingers on her pinafore. Then the shady hedge beckoned them and
they came and sat down near me. The woman looked about seventy, tall,
angular, dauntless, good for another ten years of hard work. The little
maid--her only grandchild, she told me--was just four, her father away
soldiering, and the mother died in childbed, so for four years the
child had known no other guardian or playmate than the old woman. She
was not the least shy, but had the strange self-possession which comes
from associating with one who has travelled far on life's journey.
"I couldn't leave her alone in the house," said her grandmother, "and
she wouldn't leave the kitten for fear it should be lonesome"--with a
humorous, tender glance at the child--"but it's a long tramp in the
heat for the little one, and we've another mile to go."
"Will you let her bide here till you come back?" I said. "She'll be all
right by me."
The old lady hesitated.
"Will 'ee stay by him, dearie?" she said.
The small child nodded, drew from her miniature pocket a piece of
sweetstuff, extracted from the basket a small black cat, and settled in
for the afternoon. Her grandmother rose, took her basket, and, with a
nod and "Thank 'ee kindly, mister," went off down the road.
I went back to my work a little depressed--why had I not white
hair?--for a few minutes had shown me that I was not old enough for the
child despite my forty years. She was quite happy with the little black
cat, which lay in the small lap blinking its yellow eyes at the sun;
and presently an old man came by, lame and bent, with gnarled twisted
hands, leaning heavily on his stick.
He greeted me in a high, piping voice, limped across to the child, and
sat down.
"Your little maid, mister?" he said.