Tom o’ the Roads had ridden his last ride, and was now alone in the
night. From where he was, a man might see the white recumbent sheep and
the black outline of the lonely downs, and the grey line of the farther
and lonelier downs beyond them; or in hollows far below him, out of
the pitiless wind, he might see the grey smoke of hamlets arising from
black valleys. But all alike was black to the eyes of Tom, and all the
sounds were silence in his ears; only his soul struggled to slip from
the iron chains and to pass southwards into Paradise. And the wind blew
and blew.
For Tom tonight had nought but the wind to ride; they had taken his
true black horse on the day when they took from him the green fields
and the sky, men’s voices and the laughter of women, and had left him
alone with chains about his neck to swing in the wind for ever. And the
wind blew and blew.
But the soul of Tom o’ the Roads was nipped by the cruel chains, and
whenever it struggled to escape it was beaten backwards into the
iron collar by the wind that blows from Paradise from the south. And
swinging there by the neck, there fell away old sneers from off his
lips, and scoffs that he had long since scoffed at God fell from his
tongue, and there rotted old bad lusts out of his heart, and from his
fingers the stains of deeds that were evil; and they all fell to the
ground and grew there in pallid rings and clusters. And when these ill
things had all fallen away, Tom’s soul was clean again, as his early
love had found it, a long while since in spring; and it swung up there
in the wind with the bones of Tom, and with his old torn coat and rusty
chains.
And the wind blew and blew.
And ever and anon the souls of the sepultured, coming from consecrated
acres, would go by beating up wind to Paradise past the Gallows Tree
and past the soul of Tom, that might not go free.
Night after night Tom watched the sheep upon the downs with empty
hollow sockets, till his dead hair grew and covered his poor dead face,
and hid the shame of it from the sheep. And the wind blew and blew.
Sometimes on gusts of the wind came someone’s tears, and beat and beat
against the iron chains, but could not rust them through. And the wind
blew and blew.
And every evening all the thoughts that Tom had ever uttered came
flocking in from doing their work in the world, the work that may not
cease, and sat along the gallows branches and chirrupped to the soul
of Tom, the soul that might not go free. All the thoughts that he had
ever uttered! And the evil thoughts rebuked the soul that bore them
because they might not die. And all those that he had uttered the most
furtively, chirrupped the loudest and the shrillest in the branches all
the night.
And all the thoughts that Tom had ever thought about himself now
pointed at the wet bones and mocked at the old torn coat. But the
thoughts that he had had of others were the only companions that his
soul had to soothe it in the night as it swung to and fro. And they
twittered to the soul and cheered the poor dumb thing that could have
dreams no more, till there came a murderous thought and drove them all
away.
And the wind blew and blew.
Paul, Archbishop of Alois and Vayence, lay in his white sepulchre
of marble, facing full to the southwards towards Paradise. And over
his tomb was sculptured the Cross of Christ, that his soul might
have repose. No wind howled here as it howled in lonely tree-tops up
upon the downs, but came with gentle breezes, orchard scented, over
the low lands from Paradise from the southwards, and played about
forget-me-nots and grasses in the consecrated land where lay the
Reposeful round the sepulchre of Paul, Archbishop of Alois and Vayence.
Easy it was for a man’s soul to pass from such a sepulchre, and,
flitting low over remembered fields, to come upon the garden lands of
Paradise and find eternal ease.
And the wind blew and blew.
In a tavern of foul repute three men were lapping gin. Their names were
Joe and Will and the gypsy Puglioni; none other names had they, for of
whom their fathers were they had no knowledge, but only dark suspicions.
Sin had caressed and stroked their faces often with its paws, but the
face of Puglioni Sin had kissed all over the mouth and chin. Their food
was robbery and their pastime murder. All of them had incurred the
sorrow of God and the enmity of man. They sat at a table with a pack
of cards before them, all greasy with the marks of cheating thumbs.
And they whispered to one another over their gin, but so low that the
landlord of the tavern at the other end of the room could hear only
muffled oaths, and knew not by Whom they swore or what they said.
These three were the staunchest friends that ever God had given unto a
man. And he to whom their friendship had been given had nothing else
besides, saving some bones that swung in the wind and rain, and an old
torn coat and iron chains, and a soul that might not go free.
But as the night wore on the three friends left their gin and stole
away, and crept down to that graveyard where rested in his sepulchre
Paul, Archbishop of Alois and Vayence. At the edge of the graveyard,
but outside the consecrated ground, they dug a hasty grave, two digging
while one watched in the wind and rain. And the worms that crept in the
unhallowed ground wondered and waited.
And the terrible hour of midnight came upon them with its fears, and
found them still beside the place of tombs. And the three friends
trembled at the horror of such an hour in such a place, and shivered in
the wind and drenching rain, but still worked on. And the wind blew and
blew.
Soon they had finished. And at once they left the hungry grave with all
its worms unfed, and went away over the wet fields stealthily but in
haste, leaving the place of tombs behind them in the midnight. And as
they went they shivered, and each man as he shivered cursed the rain
aloud. And so they came to the spot where they had hidden a ladder and
a lantern. There they held long debate whether they should light the
lantern, or whether they should go without it for fear of the King’s
men. But in the end it seemed to them better that they should have
the light of their lantern, and risk being taken by the King’s men
and hanged, than that they should come suddenly face to face in the
darkness with whatever one might come face to face with a little after
midnight about the Gallows Tree.
On three roads in England whereon it was not the wont of folk to go
their ways in safety, travellers tonight went unmolested. But the three
friends, walking several paces wide of the King’s highway, approached
the Gallows Tree, and Will carried the lantern and Joe the ladder, but
Puglioni carried a great sword wherewith to do the work which must be
done. When they came close, they saw how bad was the case with Tom,
for little remained of that fine figure of a man and nothing at all of
his great resolute spirit, only as they came they thought they heard a
whimpering cry like the sound of a thing that was caged and unfree.
To and fro, to and fro in the winds swung the bones and the soul of
Tom, for the sins that he had sinned on the King’s highway against the
laws of the King; and with shadows and a lantern through the darkness,
at the peril of their lives, came the three friends that his soul had
won before it swung in chains. Thus the seeds of Tom’s own soul that he
had sown all his life had grown into a Gallows Tree that bore in season
iron chains in clusters; while the careless seeds that he had strewn
here and there, a kindly jest and a few merry words, had grown into the
triple friendship that would not desert his bones.
Then the three set the ladder against the tree, and Puglioni went up
with his sword in his right hand, and at the top of it he reached up
and began to hack at the neck below the iron collar. Presently, the
bones and the old coat and the soul of Tom fell down with a rattle, and
a moment afterwards his head that had watched so long alone swung clear
from the swinging chain. These things Will and Joe gathered up, and
Puglioni came running down his ladder, and they heaped upon its rungs
the terrible remains of their friend, and hastened away wet through
with the rain, with the fear of phantoms in their hearts and horror
lying before them on the ladder. By two o’clock they were down again in
the valley out of the bitter wind, but they went on past the open grave
into the graveyard all among the tombs, with their lantern and their
ladder and the terrible thing upon it, which kept their friendship
still. Then these three, that had robbed the Law of its due and proper
victim, still sinned on for what was still their friend, and levered
out the marble slabs from the sacred sepulchre of Paul, Archbishop
of Alois and Vayence. And from it they took the very bones of the
Archbishop himself, and carried them away to the eager grave that they
had left, and put them in and shovelled back the earth. But all that
lay on the ladder they placed, with a few tears, within the great white
sepulchre under the Cross of Christ, and put back the marble slabs.
Thence the soul of Tom, arising hallowed out of sacred ground, went
at dawn down the valley, and, lingering a little about his mother’s
cottage and old haunts of childhood, passed on and came to the wide
lands beyond the clustered homesteads. There, there met with it all the
kindly thoughts that the soul of Tom had ever had, and they flew and
sang beside it all the way southwards, until at last, with singing all
about it, it came to Paradise.
But Will and Joe and the gypsy Puglioni went back to their gin, and
robbed and cheated again in the tavern of foul repute, and knew not
that in their sinful lives they had sinned one sin at which the Angels
smiled.