Jem walked at the leaders' heads; it is his rule when the waggon is
empty, a rule no "company" will make him break. At first I
regretted it, but soon discovered I learnt to know him better so,
as he plodded along, his thickset figure slightly bent, his hands
in his pockets, his whip under one arm, whistling hymn tunes in a
low minor, while the great horses answered to his voice without
touch of lash or guiding rein.
I lay as in a blissful dream and watched my road unfold. The sun
set the pine-boles aflare where the hedge is sparse, and stretched
the long shadows of the besom poplars in slanting bars across the
white highway; the roadside gardens smiled friendly with their
trim-cut laurels and rows of stately sunflowers--a seemly proximity
this, Daphne and Clytie, sisters in experience, wrapped in the warm
caress of the god whose wooing they need no longer fear. Here and
there we passed little groups of women and children off to work in
the early cornfields, and Jem paused in his fond repetition of "The
Lord my pasture shall prepare" to give them good-day.
It is like Life, this travelling backwards--that which has been,
alone visible--like Life, which is after all, retrospective with a
steady moving on into the Unknown, Unseen, until Faith is lost in
Sight and experience is no longer the touchstone of humanity. The
face of the son of Adam is set on the road his brothers have
travelled, marking their landmarks, tracing their journeyings; but
with the eyes of a child of God he looks forward, straining to
catch a glimpse of the jewelled walls of his future home, the city
"Eternal in the Heavens.
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