I came one day upon a road that wandered so aimlessly that it was
suited to my mood, so I followed it, and it led me presently among deep
woods. Somewhere in the midst of them Autumn held his court, sitting
wreathed with gorgeous garlands; and it was the day before his annual
festival of the Dance of Leaves, the courtly festival upon which hungry
Winter rushes mob-like, and there arise the furious cries of the
North Wind triumphing, and all the splendour and grace of the woods
is gone, and Autumn flees away, discrowned and forgotten, and never
again returns. Other Autumns arise, other Autumns, and fall before
other Winters. A road led away to the left, but my road went straight
on. The road to the left had a trodden appearance; there were wheel
tracks on it, and it seemed the correct way to take. It looked as if
no one could have any business with the road that led straight on and
up the hill. Therefore I went straight on and up the hill; and here
and there on the road grew blades of grass undisturbed in the repose
and hush that the road had earned from going up and down the world;
for you can go by this road, as you can go by all roads, to London,
to Lincoln, to the North of Scotland, to the West of Wales, and to
Wrellisford where roads end. Presently the woods ended, and I came to
the open fields and at the same moment to the top of the hill, and saw
the high places of Somerset and the downs of Wilts spread out along
the horizon. Suddenly I saw underneath me the village of Wrellisford,
with no sound in its street but the voice of the Wrellis roaring as he
tumbled over a weir above the village. So I followed my road down over
the crest of the hill, and the road became more languid as I descended,
and less and less concerned with the cares of a highway. Here a spring
broke out in the middle of it, and here another. The road never heeded.
A stream ran right across it, still it straggled on. Suddenly it gave
up the minimum property that a road should possess, and, renouncing its
connection with High Streets, its lineage of Piccadilly, shrank to one
side and became an unpretentious footpath. Then it led me to the old
bridge over the stream, and thus I came to Wrellisford, and found after
travelling in many lands a village with no wheel tracks in its street.
On the other side of the bridge, my friend the road struggled a few
yards up a grassy slope, and there ceased. Over all the village hung a
great stillness, with the roar of the Wrellis cutting right across it,
and there came occasionally the bark of a dog that kept watch over the
broken stillness and over the sanctity of that untravelled road. That
terrible and wasting fever that, unlike so many plagues, comes not from
the East but from the West, the fever of hurry, had not come here—only
the Wrellis hurried on his eternal quest, but it was a calm and placid
hurry that gave one time for song. It was in the early afternoon, and
nobody was about. Either they worked beyond the mysterious valley that
nursed Wrellisford and hid it from the world, or else they secluded
themselves within their old-time houses that were roofed with tiles of
stone. I sat down upon the old stone bridge and watched the Wrellis,
who seemed to me to be the only traveller that came from far away into
this village where roads end, and passed on beyond it. And yet the
Wrellis comes singing out of eternity, and tarries for a very little
while in the village where roads end, and passes on into eternity
again; and so surely do all that dwell in Wrellisford. I wondered as
I leaned upon the bridge in what place the Wrellis would first find
the sea, whether as he wound idly through meadows on his long quest he
would suddenly behold him, and, leaping down over some rocky cliff,
take to him at once the message of the hills. Or whether, widening
slowly into some grand and tidal estuary, he would take his waste of
waters to the sea and the might of the river should meet with the might
of the waves, like to two Emperors clad in gleaming mail meeting midway
between two hosts of war; and the little Wrellis would become a haven
for returning ships and a setting-out place for adventurous men.
A little beyond the bridge there stood an old mill with a ruined
roof, and a small branch of the Wrellis rushed through its emptiness
shouting, like a boy playing alone in a corridor of some desolate
house. The mill-wheel was gone, but there lay there still great bars
and wheels and cogs, the bones of some dead industry. I know not
what industry was once lord in that house, I know not what retinue
of workers mourns him now; I only know who is lord there today in
all those empty chambers. For as soon as I entered, I saw a whole
wall draped with his marvellous black tapestry, without price because
inimitable and too delicate to pass from hand to hand among merchants.
I looked at the wonderful complexity of its infinite threads, my
finger sank into it for more than an inch without feeling the touch;
so black it was and so carefully wrought, sombrely covering the whole
of the wall, that it might have been worked to commemorate the deaths
of all that ever lived there, as indeed it was. I looked through a
hole in the wall into an inner chamber where a worn-out driving band
went among many wheels, and there this priceless inimitable stuff not
merely clothed the walls but hung from bars and ceiling in beautiful
draperies, in marvellous festoons. Nothing was ugly in this desolate
house, for the busy artist’s soul of its present lord had beautified
everything in its desolation. It was the unmistakable work of the
spider, in whose house I was, and the house was utterly desolate but
for him, and silent but for the roar of the Wrellis and the shout of
the little stream. Then I turned homewards; and as I went up and over
the hill and lost the sight of the village, I saw the road whiten and
harden and gradually broaden out till the tracks of wheels appeared;
and it went afar to take the young men of Wrellisford into the wide
ways of the earth—to the new West and the mysterious East, and into the
troubled South.
And that night, when the house was still and sleep was far off, hushing
hamlets and giving ease to cities, my fancy wandered up that aimless
road and came suddenly to Wrellisford. And it seemed to me that the
travelling of so many people for so many years between Wrellisford
and John o’ Groat’s, talking to one another as they went or muttering
alone, had given the road a voice. And it seemed to me that night that
the road spoke to the river by Wrellisford bridge, speaking with the
voice of many pilgrims. And the road said to the river: ‘I rest here.
How is it with you?’
And the river, who is always speaking, said: ‘I rest nowhere from doing
the Work of the World. I carry the murmur of inner lands to the sea,
and to the abysses voices of the hills.’
‘It is I,’ said the road, ‘that do the Work of the World, and take from
city to city the rumour of each. There is nothing higher than Man and
the making of cities. What do you do for Man?’
And the river said: ‘Beauty and song are higher than Man. I carry the
news seaward of the first song of the thrush after the furious retreat
of winter northward, and the first timid anemone learns from me that
she is safe and that spring has truly come. Oh but the song of all the
birds in spring is more beautiful than Man, and the first coming of the
hyacinth more delectable than his face! When spring is fallen upon the
days of summer, I carry away with mournful joy at night petal by petal
the rhododendron’s bloom. No lit procession of purple kings is nigh so
fair as that. No beautiful death of well-beloved men hath such a glory
of forlornness. And I bear far away the pink and white petals of the
apple-blossom’s youth when the laborious time comes for his work in
the world and for the bearing of apples. And I am robed each day and
every night anew with the beauty of heaven, and I make lovely visions
of the trees. But Man! What is Man? In the ancient parliament of the
elder hills, when the grey ones speak together, they say nought of Man,
but concern themselves only with their brethren the stars. Or when
they wrap themselves in purple cloaks at evening, they lament some old
irreparable wrong, or, uttering some mountain hymn, all mourn the set
of sun.’
‘Your beauty,’ said the road, ‘and the beauty of the sky, and of the
rhododendron blossom and of spring, live only in the mind of Man, and
except in the mind of Man the mountains have no voices. Nothing is
beautiful that has not been seen by Man’s eye. Or if your rhododendron
blossom was beautiful for a moment, it soon withered and was drowned,
and spring soon passes away; beauty can only live on in the mind of
Man. I bring thought into the mind of Man swiftly from distant places
every day. I know the Telegraph—I know him well; he and I have walked
for hundreds of miles together. There is no work in the world except
for Man and the making of his cities. I take wares to and fro from city
to city.’
‘My little stream in the field there,’ said the river, ‘used to make
wares in that house for awhile once.’
‘Ah,’ said the road, ‘I remember, but I brought cheaper ones from
distant cities. Nothing is of any importance but making cities for Man.’
‘I know so little about him,’ said the river, ‘but I have a great deal
of work to do—I have all this water to send down to the sea; and then
tomorrow or next day all the leaves of Autumn will be coming this way.
It will be very beautiful. The sea is a very, very wonderful place.
I know all about it; I have heard shepherd boys singing of it, and
sometimes before a storm the gulls come up. It is a place all blue and
shining and full of pearls, and has in it coral islands and isles of
spice, and storms and galleons and the bones of Drake. The sea is much
greater than Man. When I come to the sea, he will know that I have
worked well for him. But I must hurry, for I have much to do. This
bridge delays me a little; some day I will carry it away.’
‘Oh, you must not do that,’ said the road.
‘Oh, not for a long time,’ said the river. ‘Some centuries perhaps—and
I have much to do besides. There is my song to sing, for instance, and
that alone is more beautiful than any noise that Man makes.’
‘All work is for Man,’ said the road, ‘and for the building of cities.
There is no beauty or romance or mystery in the sea except for the men
that sail abroad upon it, and for those that stay at home and dream of
them. As for your song, it rings night and morning, year in, year out,
in the ears of men that are born in Wrellisford; at night it is part
of their dreams, at morning it is the voice of day, and so it becomes
part of their souls. But the song is not beautiful in itself. I take
these men with your song in their souls up over the edge of the valley
and a long way off beyond, and I am a strong and dusty road up there,
and they go with your song in their souls and turn it into music and
gladden cities. But nothing is the Work of the World except work for
Man.’
‘I wish I was quite sure about the Work of the World,’ said the stream;
‘I wish I knew for certain for whom we work. I feel almost sure that
it is for the sea. He is very great and beautiful. I think that there
can be no greater master than the sea. I think that some day he may
be so full of romance and mystery and sound of sheep bells and murmur
of mist-hidden hills, which we streams shall have brought him, that
there will be no more music or beauty left in the world, and all the
world will end; and perhaps the streams shall gather at the last, we
all together, to the sea. Or perhaps the sea will give us at the last
unto each one his own again, giving back all that he has garnered in
the years—the little petals of the apple-blossom and the mourned ones
of the rhododendron, and our old visions of the trees and sky; so many
memories have left the hills. But who may say? For who knows the tides
of the sea?’
‘Be sure that it is all for Man,’ said the road. ‘For Man and the
making of cities.’
Something had come near on utterly silent feet.
‘Peace, peace!’ it said. ‘You disturb the queenly night, who, having
come into this valley, is a guest in my dark halls. Let us have an end
to this discussion.’
It was the spider who spoke.
‘The Work of the World is the making of cities and palaces. But it
is not for Man. What is Man? He only prepares my cities for me, and
mellows them. All his works are ugly, his richest tapestries are coarse
and clumsy. He is a noisy idler. He only protects me from mine enemy
the wind; and the beautiful work in my cities, the curving outlines and
the delicate weavings, is all mine. Ten years to a hundred it takes to
build a city, for five or six hundred more it mellows, and is prepared
for me; then I inhabit it, and hide away all that is ugly, and draw
beautiful lines about it to and fro. There is nothing so beautiful as
cities and palaces; they are the loveliest places in the world, because
they are the stillest, and so most like the stars. They are noisy at
first, for a little, before I come to them; they have ugly corners not
yet rounded off, and coarse tapestries, and then they become ready for
me and my exquisite work, and are quite silent and beautiful. And there
I entertain the regal nights when they come there jewelled with stars,
and all their train of silence, and regale them with costly dust.
Already nods, in a city that I wot of, a lonely sentinel whose lords
are dead, who grows too old and sleepy to drive away the gathering
silence that infests the streets; tomorrow I go to see if he be still
at his post. For me Babylon was built, and rocky Tyre; and still men
build my cities! All the Work of the World is the making of cities, and
all of them I inherit.’