第3章

On the top of the craftily piled sacks lies the white-clad waggoner, a pink in his mouth which he mumbles meditatively, and the reins looped over the inactive whip - why should he drive a willing team that knows the journey and responds as strenuously to a cheery chirrup as to the well-directed lash? We greet and pass the time of day, and as he mounts the rise he calls back a warning of coming rain.I am already white with dust as he with flour, sacramental dust, the outward and visible sign of the stir and beat of the heart of labouring life.

Next to pass down the road is an anxious ruffled hen, her speckled breast astir with maternal troubles.She walks delicately, lifting her feet high and glancing furtively from side to side with comb low dressed.The sight of man, the heartless egg-collector, from whose haunts she has fled, wrings from her a startled cluck, and she makes for the white gate, climbs through, and disappears.Iknow her feelings too well to intrude.Many times already has she hidden herself, amassed four or five precious treasures, brooding over them with anxious hope; and then, after a brief desertion to seek the necessary food, she has returned to find her efforts at concealment vain, her treasures gone.At last, with the courage of despair she has resolved to brave the terrors of the unknown and seek a haunt beyond the tyranny of man.I will watch over her from afar, and when her mother-hope is fulfilled I will marshal her and her brood back to the farm where she belongs; for what end I care not to think, it is of the mystery which lies at the heart of things; and we are all God's beasts, says St Augustine.

Here is my stone-song, a paraphrase of the Treasure Motif.

[Music score which cannot be reproduced.It is F# dotted crotchet, F# quaver, F# quaver, F# dotted crotchet, D crotchet, E crotchet.

This bar is then repeated once more.]

What a wonderful work Wagner has done for humanity in translating the toil of life into the readable script of music! For those who seek the tale of other worlds his magic is silent; but earth-travail under his wand becomes instinct with rhythmic song to an accompaniment of the elements, and the blare and crash of the bottomless pit itself.The Pilgrim's March is the sad sound of footsore men; the San Graal the tremulous yearning of servitude for richer, deeper bondage.The yellow, thirsty flames lick up the willing sacrifice, the water wails the secret of the river and the sea; the birds and beasts, the shepherd with his pipe, the underground life in rocks and caverns, all cry their message to this nineteenth-century toiling, labouring world - and to me as Imend my road.

Two tramps come and fling themselves by me as I eat my noonday meal.The one, red-eyed, furtive, lies on his side with restless, clutching hands that tear and twist and torture the living grass, while his lips mutter incoherently.The other sits stooped, bare-footed, legs wide apart, his face grey, almost as grey as his stubbly beard; and it is not long since Death looked him in the eyes.He tells me querulously of a two hundred miles tramp since early spring, of search for work, casual jobs with more kicks than halfpence, and a brief but blissful sojourn in a hospital bed, from which he was dismissed with sentence passed upon him.For himself, he is determined to die on the road under a hedge, where a man can see and breathe.His anxiety is all for his fellow; HE has said he will "do for a man"; he wants to "swing," to get out of his "dog's life." I watch him as he lies, this Ishmael and would-be Lamech.

Ignorance, hunger, terror, the exhaustion of past generations, have done their work.The man is mad, and would kill his fellowman.

Presently we part, and the two go, dogged and footsore, down the road which is to lead them into the great silence.