Читать книгу The Roadmender - Fairless Michael - Страница 4

Yesterday a funeral passed, from the workhouse at N – , a quaint sepulture without solemnities. The rough, ungarnished coffin of stained deal lay bare and unsightly on the floor of an old market-cart; a woman sat beside, steadying it with her feet. The husband drove; and the most depressed of the three was the horse, a broken-kneed, flea-bitten grey. It was pathetic, this bringing home in death of the old father whom, while he lived, they had been too poor to house; it was at no small sacrifice that they had spared him that terror of old age, a pauper's grave, and brought him to lie by his wife in our quiet churchyard. They felt no emotion, this husband and wife, only a dull sense of filial duty done, respectability preserved; and above and through all, the bitter but necessary counting the cost of this last bed.

It is strange how pagan many of us are in our beliefs. True, the funeral libations have made way for the comfortable bake-meats; still, to the large majority Death is Pluto, king of the dark Unknown whence no traveller returns, rather than Azrael, brother and friend, lord of this mansion of life. Strange how men shun him as he waits in the shadow, watching our puny straining after immortality, sending his comrade sleep to prepare us for himself. When the hour strikes he comes – very gently, very tenderly, if we will but have it so – folds the tired hands together, takes the wayworn feet in his broad strong palm; and lifting us in his wonderful arms he bears us swiftly down the valley and across the waters of Remembrance.

Very pleasant art thou, O Brother Death, thy love is wonderful, passing the love of women.

To-day I have lived in a whirl of dust. To-morrow is the great annual Cattle Fair at E – , and through the long hot hours the beasts from all the district round have streamed in broken procession along my road, to change hands or to die. Surely the lordship over creation implies wise and gentle rule for intelligent use, not the pursuit of a mere immediate end, without any thought of community in the great sacrament of life.

For the most part mystery has ceased for this working Western world, and with it reverence. Coventry Patmore says: "God clothes Himself actually and literally with His whole creation. Herbs take up and assimilate minerals, beasts assimilate herbs, and God, in the Incarnation and its proper Sacrament, assimilates us, who, says St Augustine, 'are God's beasts.'" It is man in his blind self-seeking who separates woof from weft in the living garment of God, and loses the more as he neglects the outward and visible signs of a world-wide grace.

In olden days the herd led his flock, going first in the post of danger to defend the creatures he had weaned from their natural habits for his various uses. Now that good relationship has ceased for us to exist, man drives the beasts before him, means to his end, but with no harmony between end and means. All day long the droves of sheep pass me on their lame and patient way, no longer freely and instinctively following a protector and forerunner, but driven, impelled by force and resistless will – the same will which once went before without force. They are all trimmed as much as possible to one pattern, and all make the same sad plaint. It is a day on which to thank God for the unknown tongue. The drover and his lad in dusty blue coats plod along stolidly, deaf and blind to all but the way before them; no longer wielding the crook, instrument of deliverance, or at most of gentle compulsion, but armed with a heavy stick and mechanically dealing blows on the short thick fleeces; without evil intent because without thought – it is the ritual of the trade.

Of all the poor dumb pilgrims of the road the bullocks are the most terrible to see. They are not patient, but go most unwillingly with lowered head and furtive sideways motion, in their eyes a horror of great fear. The sleek cattle, knee deep in pasture, massed at the gate, and stared mild-eyed and with inquiring bellow at the retreating drove; but these passed without answer on to the Unknown, and for them it spelt death.

Behind a squadron of sleek, well-fed cart-horses, formed in fours, with straw braid in mane and tail, came the ponies, for the most part a merry company. Long strings of rusty, shaggy two-year-olds, unbroken, unkempt, the short Down grass still sweet on their tongues; full of fun, frolic, and wickedness, biting and pulling, casting longing eyes at the hedgerows. The boys appear to recognise them as kindred spirits, and are curiously forbearing and patient. Soon both ponies and boys vanish in a white whirl, and a long line of carts, which had evidently waited for the dust to subside, comes slowly up the incline. For the most part they carry the pigs and fowls, carriage folk of the road. The latter are hot, crowded, and dusty under the open netting; the former for the most part cheerfully remonstrative.

I drew a breath of relief as the noise of wheels died away and my road sank into silence. The hedgerows are no longer green but white and choked with dust, a sight to move good sister Rain to welcome tears. The birds seem to have fled before the noisy confusion. I wonder whether my snake has seen and smiled at the clumsy ruling of the lord he so little heeds? I turned aside through the gate to plunge face and hands into the cool of the sheltered grass that side the hedge, and then rested my eyes on the stretch of green I had lacked all day. The rabbits had apparently played and browsed unmindful of the stir, and were still flirting their white tails along the hedgerows; a lark rose, another and another, and I went back to my road. Peace still reigned, for the shadows were lengthening, and there would be little more traffic for the fair. I turned to my work, grateful for the stillness, and saw on the white stretch of road a lone old man and a pig. Surely I knew that tall figure in the quaint grey smock, surely I knew the face, furrowed like nature's face in springtime, and crowned by a round, soft hat? And the pig, the black pig walking decorously free? Ay, I knew them.

In the early spring I took a whole holiday and a long tramp; and towards afternoon, tired and thirsty, sought water at a little lonely cottage whose windows peered and blinked under overhanging brows of thatch. I had, not the water I asked for, but milk and a bowl of sweet porridge for which I paid only thanks; and stayed for a chat with my kindly hosts. They were a quaint old couple of the kind rarely met with nowadays. They enjoyed a little pension from the Squire and a garden in which vegetables and flowers lived side by side in friendliest fashion. Bees worked and sang over the thyme and marjoram, blooming early in a sunny nook; and in a homely sty lived a solemn black pig, a pig with a history.

It was no common utilitarian pig, but the honoured guest of the old couple, and it knew it. A year before, their youngest and only surviving child, then a man of five-and-twenty, had brought his mother the result of his savings in the shape of a fine young pig: a week later he lay dead of the typhoid that scourged Maidstone. Hence the pig was sacred, cared for and loved by this Darby and Joan.

"Ee be mos' like a child to me and the mother, an' mos' as sensible as a Christian, ee be," the old man had said; and I could hardly credit my eyes when I saw the tall bent figure side by side with the black pig, coming along my road on such a day.

I hailed the old man, and both turned aside; but he gazed at me without remembrance.

I spoke of the pig and its history. He nodded wearily. "Ay, ay, lad, you've got it; 'tis poor Dick's pig right enow."

"But you're never going to take it to E – ?"

"Ay, but I be, and comin' back alone, if the Lord be marciful. The missus has been terrible bad this two months and more; Squire's in foreign parts; and food-stuffs such as the old woman wants is hard buying for poor folks. The stocking's empty, now 'tis the pig must go, and I believe he'd be glad for to do the missus a turn; she were terrible good to him, were the missus, and fond, too. I dursn't tell her he was to go; she'd sooner starve than lose poor Dick's pig. Well, we'd best be movin'; 'tis a fairish step."

The pig followed comprehending and docile, and as the quaint couple passed from sight I thought I heard Brother Death stir in the shadow. He is a strong angel and of great pity.