But this doth hatred make in love to brenne,
And heavy heart with comfort doth rejoyce.
Who would not to this vertue rather yeeld his voice?”
At such times he speaks little, except a few words of nonsense to strangers who come in; but he smiles continually, as if he had forgiven all things, and even as if he silently preached forgiveness to all the world. His tenderness to children and animals is wonderful. He would pass as a saint, an angelic doctor, or even something higher. To some, indeed, he might seem to be the original from which field artists have everywhere modelled the scarecrow. The young men recognise the resemblance and smile. The older men perhaps see in him an apotheosis of themselves, more twisted, more starved, greener in the hat and coat, and they do not smile. He has a lean, acorn-coloured face, adorned with relenting blue eyes, small hawk nose, clear-cut shrivelled lips and chin, and fresh brown hair hanging like a lion skin over his head and neck, and curling sumptuously.
I can fancy him a lesser god in some mythology. To him come the weak and ashamed; the shamefaced female tramp who went hungry, having asked for a direction to Maidstone instead of for food, because the farmer’s voice was hard and he was young and strong and her skirt was old and her breast shrunken; and he who looked through the hedge at some fair children playing and then, because one of them screamed at catching sight of him in searching for a nest, raised a hideous cry and sent them terrified away; the curst, scandalous lean maid who melts with momentary tenderness over her starved and piebald cat, and calls him “Prettiest”; all such as are foolish and slow of thought and slower of speech, and laugh at what they love because others do and then weep in solitude; those who, unable to care for anything much, grow ardent in a simulated affection and blush when a cruel strong one finds them out; those who know not what they desire except a little tranquillity before the end and know that they shall not obtain it; the drunken and obscene who are without graces, but also without repentance; those who vainly complain and fret about the evils which they have deserved and cannot endure; those who cannot keep up with life because of one beautiful or terrible thing in the past; those who mourn, they know not why; the little base ones who admire good and lovely things, and fear to hurt them by approval. And they should come to this god, Robert, as one in whom each saw his little unknown virtue and should be lifted up thereat. They should bring to his altars sour bread and rotten flesh and fruit fallen before its time, and worn-out, shattered things; and his priests, leprous, and scrofulous, and squint-eyed all, should rejoice then and tell the worshippers to be no more cast down, because in this, their god, were to be found all their little virtues, and behold! he endured for ever and looked upon them pitifully and interceded continually with the high gods. Then would they drink until they were thoroughly drunken, and the god would tell them that death came soon, and that their sleep would be heavier than they could dream of, for no king, or judge, or policeman, or clergyman, could ever disturb their sleep, though armed with sharpest swords and most cruel words.
CHAPTER XXVI
NOVEMBER RAIN
Close, perpendicular, quiet rain came upon me when I was ten miles from last night’s shelter and ten miles from my end. Shelter was not near, nor indeed to be thought of in an untrodden lane which had been, for some time, and seemed to go on for ever, winding through the delicious, vacant country of a late autumn Sunday, while it was yet early in the day and yet not so early but that the milking was over, and the milk carts gone, and the cattle satisfied and slow after their first questing in the fields. The rain was so dense, and the light so restrained, and the drops hung so about my eyes, and the sound and the sweetness of it made my brain so well contented with all that umber country asleep, that what I saw was little compared with what reached me by touch and by darker channels still. I rarely see much in the country—a few herbs underfoot, the next field, the horizon woods, some brief light that shows only its departing hem; for, like others, I always carry out into the fields a vast baggage of prejudices from books and strong characters whom I have met. My going forth, although simple enough to the eye, is truly as pompous as that of a rajah who goes through the jungle on a tall and richly encrusted elephant, with a great retinue, and much ceremony and noise. As he frightens bird and beast, and tramples on herb and grass, so I scatter from my path many things which are lying in wait for a discoverer. There is no elephant more heavy-footed and no rifle more shattering than the egoism of an imitative brain. And thus the little thing I saw was an unusual discovery.
It was a triangular, six-acre wood below me, across a bare and soaking ploughland. The wood was mainly of ash and the myriad stems were a grey mist, only denser and a little clearer than the rain itself. Out of them rose half a hundred oaks which were exuberant in foliage of hues so vigorous and splendid in their purple that it was impossible to think of it as on the edge of death, but easy to think of it as in a deathless prime. One thrush sang heartily somewhere deep among the ash trees, and that was the only sound, for the sound of the rain was but a carpet on which that song walked forth, delicate footed, haughty and beautiful....
When I had walked another mile, the wood was out of sight, the thrush unheard. The wood is now purple immortally, for ever that song emerges from its heart, as free from change as one whom we remember vividly in the tip-toe of his exulting youth, and dying then has escaped huskiness, and a stoop, and foul breath, and a steady view of life.