The Friendly Road [18]
here--"
"I saw the verse on the table in the arbour," said I.
"And it is true," said Mr. Vedder. "We got a long, long way from God for many years: here we seem to get back to Him."
I had fully intended to take the road again that afternoon, but how could any one leave such people as those? We talked again late that night, but the next morning, at the leisurely Sunday breakfast, I set my hour of departure with all the firmness I could command. I left them, indeed, before ten o'clock that forenoon. I shall never forget the parting. They walked with me to the top of the hill, and there we stopped and looked back. We could see the cottage half hidden among the trees, and the little opening that the precious garden made. For a time we stood there quite silent.
"Do you remember," I said presently, "that character in Homer who was a friend of men and lived in a house by the side of the road? I shall always think of you as friends of men--you took in a dusty traveller. And I shall never forget your house by the side of the road."
"The House by the Side of the Road--you have christened it anew, David Grayson," exclaimed Mrs. Vedder.
And so we parted like old friends, and I left them to return to their garden, where "'tis very sure God walks."
CHAPTER IV. I AM THE SPECTATOR OF A MIGHTY BATTLE, IN WHICH CHRISTIAN MEETS APPOLLYON
It is one of the prime joys of the long road that no two days are ever remotely alike--no two hours even; and sometimes a day that begins calmly will end with the most stirring events.
It was thus, indeed, with that perfect spring Sunday, when I left my friends, the Vedders, and turned my face again to the open country. It began as quietly as any Sabbath morning of my life, but what an end it had! I would have travelled a thousand miles for the adventures which a bounteous road that day spilled carelessly into my willing hands.
I can give no adequate reason why it should be so, but there are Sunday mornings in the spring--at least in our country-- which seem to put on, like a Sabbath garment, an atmosphere of divine quietude. Warm, soft, clear, but, above all, immeasurably serene.
Such was that Sunday morning; and I was no sooner well afoot than I yielded to the ingratiating mood of the day. Usually I am an active walker, loving the sense of quick motion and the stir it imparts to both body and mind, but that morning I found myself loitering, looking widely about me, and enjoying the lesser and quieter aspects of nature. It was a fine wooded country in which I found myself, and I soon struck off the beaten road and took to the forest and the fields. In places the ground was almost covered with meadow-rue, like green shadows on the hillsides, not yet in seed, but richly umbrageous. In the long green grass of the meadows shone the yellow star-flowers, and the sweet-flags were blooming along the marshy edges of the ponds. The violets had disappeared, but they were succeeded by wild geraniums and rank-growing vetches.
I remember that I kept thinking from time to time, all the forenoon, as my mind went back swiftly and warmly to the two fine friends from whom I had so recently parted:
How the Vedders would enjoy this! Or, I must tell the Vedders that. And two or three times I found myself in animated conversations with them in which I generously supplied all three parts. It may be true for some natures, as Leonardo said, that "if you are alone you belong wholly to yourself; if you have a companion, you belong only half to yourself"; but it is certainly not so with me. With me friendship never divides: it multiplies. A friend always makes me more than I am, better than I am, bigger I am. We two make four, or fifteen, or forty.
Well, I loitered through the fields and woods for a long time that Sunday forenoon, not knowing in the least that Chance held me close by the hand and was leading me onward to great events. I knew, of course,that I had yet to find a place for the night, and that this might be difficult on Sunday, and yet I spent that forenoon as a man spends his
"I saw the verse on the table in the arbour," said I.
"And it is true," said Mr. Vedder. "We got a long, long way from God for many years: here we seem to get back to Him."
I had fully intended to take the road again that afternoon, but how could any one leave such people as those? We talked again late that night, but the next morning, at the leisurely Sunday breakfast, I set my hour of departure with all the firmness I could command. I left them, indeed, before ten o'clock that forenoon. I shall never forget the parting. They walked with me to the top of the hill, and there we stopped and looked back. We could see the cottage half hidden among the trees, and the little opening that the precious garden made. For a time we stood there quite silent.
"Do you remember," I said presently, "that character in Homer who was a friend of men and lived in a house by the side of the road? I shall always think of you as friends of men--you took in a dusty traveller. And I shall never forget your house by the side of the road."
"The House by the Side of the Road--you have christened it anew, David Grayson," exclaimed Mrs. Vedder.
And so we parted like old friends, and I left them to return to their garden, where "'tis very sure God walks."
CHAPTER IV. I AM THE SPECTATOR OF A MIGHTY BATTLE, IN WHICH CHRISTIAN MEETS APPOLLYON
It is one of the prime joys of the long road that no two days are ever remotely alike--no two hours even; and sometimes a day that begins calmly will end with the most stirring events.
It was thus, indeed, with that perfect spring Sunday, when I left my friends, the Vedders, and turned my face again to the open country. It began as quietly as any Sabbath morning of my life, but what an end it had! I would have travelled a thousand miles for the adventures which a bounteous road that day spilled carelessly into my willing hands.
I can give no adequate reason why it should be so, but there are Sunday mornings in the spring--at least in our country-- which seem to put on, like a Sabbath garment, an atmosphere of divine quietude. Warm, soft, clear, but, above all, immeasurably serene.
Such was that Sunday morning; and I was no sooner well afoot than I yielded to the ingratiating mood of the day. Usually I am an active walker, loving the sense of quick motion and the stir it imparts to both body and mind, but that morning I found myself loitering, looking widely about me, and enjoying the lesser and quieter aspects of nature. It was a fine wooded country in which I found myself, and I soon struck off the beaten road and took to the forest and the fields. In places the ground was almost covered with meadow-rue, like green shadows on the hillsides, not yet in seed, but richly umbrageous. In the long green grass of the meadows shone the yellow star-flowers, and the sweet-flags were blooming along the marshy edges of the ponds. The violets had disappeared, but they were succeeded by wild geraniums and rank-growing vetches.
I remember that I kept thinking from time to time, all the forenoon, as my mind went back swiftly and warmly to the two fine friends from whom I had so recently parted:
How the Vedders would enjoy this! Or, I must tell the Vedders that. And two or three times I found myself in animated conversations with them in which I generously supplied all three parts. It may be true for some natures, as Leonardo said, that "if you are alone you belong wholly to yourself; if you have a companion, you belong only half to yourself"; but it is certainly not so with me. With me friendship never divides: it multiplies. A friend always makes me more than I am, better than I am, bigger I am. We two make four, or fifteen, or forty.
Well, I loitered through the fields and woods for a long time that Sunday forenoon, not knowing in the least that Chance held me close by the hand and was leading me onward to great events. I knew, of course,that I had yet to find a place for the night, and that this might be difficult on Sunday, and yet I spent that forenoon as a man spends his