The Roadmender | Page 9

it all the nightingales sang--and sang!
The night wind bent the listening trees, and the stars yearned earthward
to hear the song of deathless love. Louder and louder the wonderful
notes rose and fell in a passion of melody; and then sank to rest on that
low thrilling call which it is said Death once heard, and stayed his
hand.

They will scarcely sing again this year, these nightingales, for they are
late on the wing as it is. It seems as if on such nights they sang as the
swan sings, knowing it to be the last time--with the lavish note of one
who bids an eternal farewell.
At last there was silence. Sitting under the big beech tree, the giant of
the coppice, I rested my tired self in the lap of mother earth, breathed of
her breath and listened to her voice in the quickening silence until my
flesh came again as the flesh of a little child, for it is true recreation to
sit at the footstool of God wrapped in a fold of His living robe, the
while night smoothes our tired face with her healing hands.
The grey dawn awoke and stole with trailing robes across earth's floor.
At her footsteps the birds roused from sleep and cried a greeting; the
sky flushed and paled conscious of coming splendour; and overhead a
file of swans passed with broad strong flight to the reeded waters of the
sequestered pool.
Another hour of silence while the light throbbed and flamed in the east;
then the larks rose harmonious from a neighbouring field, the rabbits
scurried with ears alert to their morning meal, the day had begun.
I passed through the coppice and out into the fields beyond. The dew
lay heavy on leaf and blade and gossamer, a cool fresh wind swept
clear over dale and down from the sea, and the clover field rippled like
a silvery lake in the breeze.
There is something inexpressibly beautiful in the unused day,
something beautiful in the fact that it is still untouched, unsoiled; and
town and country share alike in this loveliness. At half-past three on a
June morning even London has not assumed her responsibilities, but
smiles and glows lighthearted and smokeless under the caresses of the
morning sun.
Five o'clock. The bell rings out crisp and clear from the monastery
where the Bedesmen of St Hugh watch and pray for the souls on this
labouring forgetful earth. Every hour the note of comfort and warning
cries across the land, tells the Sanctus, the Angelus, and the Hours of

the Passion, and calls to remembrance and prayer.
When the wind is north, the sound carries as far as my road, and
companies me through the day; and if to His dumb children God in His
mercy reckons work as prayer, most certainly those who have forged
through the ages an unbroken chain of supplication and thanksgiving
will be counted among the stalwart labourers of the house of the Lord.
Sun and bell together are my only clock: it is time for my water
drawing; and gathering a pile of mushrooms, children of the night, I
hasten home.
The cottage is dear to me in its quaint untidiness and want of rectitude,
dear because we are to be its last denizens, last of the long line of
toilers who have sweated and sown that others might reap, and have
passed away leaving no trace.
I once saw a tall cross in a seaboard churchyard, inscribed, "To the
memory of the unknown dead who have perished in these waters."
There might be one in every village sleeping-place to the unhonoured
many who made fruitful the land with sweat and tears. It is a
consolation to think that when we look back on this stretch of life's
road from beyond the first milestone, which, it is instructive to
remember, is always a grave, we may hope to see the work of this
world with open eyes, and to judge of it with a due sense of proportion.
A bee with laden honey-bag hummed and buzzed in the hedge as I got
ready for work, importuning the flowers for that which he could not
carry, and finally giving up the attempt in despair fell asleep on a
buttercup, the best place for his weary little velvet body. In five
minutes--they may have been five hours to him--he awoke a new bee,
sensible and clear-sighted, and flew blithely away to the hive with his
sufficiency--an example this weary world would be wise to follow.
My road has been lonely to-day. A parson came by in the afternoon, a
stranger in the neighbourhood, for he asked his way. He talked awhile,
and with kindly rebuke said it was sad to see a man of