{"collection":"ritual-magic","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_56101/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_56101","id":"gutenberg_56101","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/56101","summary":null,"tags":["Category: American Literature","Category: Novels","Mysticism -- Fiction","Supernatural -- Fiction","Virginia -- Fiction"],"text":"SWEET ROCKET\n\n\n\n\nBOOKS BY\nMARY JOHNSTON\n\nSWEET ROCKET\nMICHAEL FORTH\nFOES\nSIR MORTIMER\n\nHARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK\n\nESTABLISHED 1817\n\n\n\n\nSWEET ROCKET\n\n_by_\nMARY JOHNSTON\n\nAUTHOR OF\n\"SIR MORTIMER\" \"MICHAEL FORTH\"\n\"TO HAVE AND TO HOLD\" \"FOES\" ETC.\n\n[Illustration: Logo]\n\nHarper & Brothers Publishers\nNew York and London\n\n\nSWEET ROCKET\n\nCopyright, 1920, by Mary Johnston\nPrinted in the United States of America\nPublished October, 1920\n\n\n\n\nSWEET ROCKET\n\n\n\n\nI\n\n\nThe woman driving turned the phaeton from the highway into a narrow\nroad. Almost immediately the forest through which they had been passing\nfor a mile or more deepened. It was now a rich woodland, little cut,\nseldom touched by fire. Apparently the road knew little use. Narrow and\nin part grass-grown, soft from yesterday's rain, dimmed by many trees,\nnow it bent and now it ran straight, a dun streak, cut always in front\nby that ancient, exquisite screen of bough and leaf. The highway dropped\nout of sight and mind. The woman to whom this countryside was new,\nsitting beside the woman driving, drew a breath of pleasure. \"Oh, smell\nit! It goes over you like balm!\"\n\n\"It washes the travel stains away. Take off your hat.\"\n\nThe other obeyed, turning and placing it upon the back seat beside a\nlarge and a small traveling bag. She drew off her gloves, too, then,\nstraightening herself, sighed again with happiness. \"How deep it goes\n... and quiet! It's thousands of miles away!\"\n\n\"Hundreds of thousands, and right at hand!\"\n\nLeaves were beginning to turn. Maples had lighted fires, hickories were\nmaking gold, dogwood and sumac dyeing with crimson. Ironweed, yet\nblooming, blotched the roadside with purple. Joe-pye lifted heads of\nashy pink, goldenrod started forth, in places farewell-summer made a low\nmist of lilac. The road dipped into a dell. The gray horse, the phaeton,\ncrossed a brown streamlet, sliding, murmuring. Mint filled the air. The\nroad lifted and ran on again into mystery. Blackbirds flew across, a\nwoodpecker tapped and tapped, a squirrel ran up an oak. But for all of\nfaint, stealthy rustle, perpetual low sound and small movements without\nend, deep, deep, deep rest was the note. Rest and solitude.\n\nThe old, strong, gray horse was named Daniel. This was his road since he\nwas a colt. Sometimes he might find upon it Whitefoot and Bess, the farm\nhorses, drawing the farm wagon, but oftenest it was solitary like\nthis--his road--Sweet Rocket road. The phaeton moving its wheels rolled\nit, droned it forth--\"Sweet Rocket road--Sweet Rocket road.\"\n\n\"There are five miles of it,\" said Marget. Her tone added, \"I love\nit--its solitariness, its ownness!\"\n\n\"It's miraculously beautiful,\" answered her companion. \"It aches, it is\nso beautiful!\"\n\n\"Sweet Rocket road--Sweet Rocket road,\" said the wheels. \"Way to Sweet\nRocket--way to Sweet Rocket.\"\n\n\"It is straight and single-minded as an arrow. No one goes but one who\nwishes to travel to Sweet Rocket. It is our road in and our road out.\nThere seems to be no other.\"\n\n\"'Seems'?\"\n\n\"I mean that it is the only road made with spade and pick.\"\n\nThey traveled again in silence. The visitor sat, a small, elderly woman,\nwith a thin, strong, intelligent face. Something about her, alike of\nstrength and of limitation, said, \"Teacher for long years.\" She sat with\nher hands in her lap, looking at that truly beautiful road and the\nforest walls. But at last with a sigh of appreciation she turned to\ntalk. \"Twenty years and more since we last met! But you keep young,\nMarget. I had no difficulty in picking you out of the station crowd.\"\n\n\"Nor I you, dear Miss Darcy! But then I've always kept you in mind and\nheart. I owe you so much!\"\n\n\"Ah, Marget, not much!\"\n\n\"I owe you learning. It is a good deal to take a country girl, charge\nscarcely anything for her and see that she gets knowledge and learns how\nto get more--and more--\"\n\n\"You are of those who reward teaching. Don't let us talk about that\nwhich was neither load nor task and so is no debt. The 'now' interests\nme. You look well. Your face is a rose under clear brown.\"\n\n\"I am well.\"\n\n\"And happy?\"\n\n\"Yes, happy.\"\n\n\"I know that you couldn't be happy unless you were helping.\"\n\n\"I don't know how much I help. I help some.\"\n\n\"You were never given to long letters. There really is much that I don't\nat all know about you! And such as they are, I have had very few letters\nof late years. It was the sheerest accident my finding out that this was\nyour part of the country. I might have gone to the Conference and never\nknown that you were not twenty miles away!\"\n\n\"The day before I had your card I knew that something pleasant was going\nto happen.\"\n\n\"Well, tell me what you do--\"\n\nMarget Land looked over Daniel's ears, down the vista of the road. At\nthis point hemlocks grew to either hand, cones of a green that was\nalmost black. Between rose sycamores with pale arms and leaves like\nsilky brown hair. At the road edge the farewell-summer made a lacework,\nand above it glowed the sumac torches. Blue sky roofed the autumn earth.\nThe air just flowed, neither hot nor cold, milk warm, happy. Summer and\nwinter had made a bargain, struck a compromise, achieved a diagonal.\nGold autumn, crimson autumn, violet autumn, dusky and tawny\nautumn--autumn balm--autumn drawn up into a gracious figure--Keats's\nautumn--a goddess!\n\nShe drew a light, sighing breath. \"I told you that I was happy.... Isn't\nit strange--living? Isn't it strange and sweet the way things come\nabout? There's magic, all right! Sweet Rocket.... I was born in the\noverseer's house at Sweet Rocket. That was ten years after the war and\nthere wasn't much nor many for my father to oversee. I love my father.\nHe was what the mountain folk call 'a getter-on.' He had ability and a\nlot of goodness and a lot of kindness. Education from books had not come\nhis way, but he knew many things. He had worked hard and saved, and\nafter the war, when he gave up overseeing, or it gave him up, and when\nhe turned merchant in Alder, over there, he made money--as we looked at\nit in Virginia in those days. Some money, that is. He had ten thousand\ndollars in bank when old Major Linden died, and Mary Linden married and\nwent away, and Sweet Rocket was sold for debt. He bought it--though he\nkept a steady face, he was so proud to buy it! I was nine years old when\nwe moved out of the overseer's house into the big house--my mother, my\nfather, my two brothers, and I. I loved it, loved it, loved it--love\nit, love it, love it!\"\n\n\"I remember the very way in which you used to say it, 'Sweet Rocket!'\"\n\n\"We became at once land poor. And my father had an illness, and, though\nhe seemed to recover, never did quite recover. When it came to choosing\nand bargaining, making and laying by, he was never again the man he had\nbeen. My mother, too, who had worked so hard when she was young--too\nhard--began to fail. Will, my elder brother, went West. Edgar, the\nyounger, wanted to go, too. He did not like it here. You see ... every\none still said: 'The old overseer bought it. They were all born in the\noverseer's house. Now they rattle around in the Lindens' house! Bottom\nrail--!' It was still called 'the Linden place.' As I grew old enough to\nhave cared for what they said I somehow escaped caring. But Edgar cared.\nIt was hard on the boy.... But I loved Sweet Rocket, loved it, love it!\nI love the overseer's house and the big house--which isn't, of course,\nvery big, for the place was always a simple one--simple and still and\nout of the way!\"\n\nShe seemed to pause somewhat deeply to vision something within. Miss\nDarcy watched the moving walls, now standing close, now a little\nreceding, now opening as it were into gateways through which were seen\nforest lawns and aisles. They shut in again. A golden bough brushed the\nphaeton. She who had been speaking put out her hand and touched it. \"How\ncould one help but love it? To me it is forever so old and forever so\nnew! I lock with it.... What was I saying? Well, Edgar did not like it,\nand my mother failed, and father had less money and less money--and\nstill we went on ... five years, eight years, ten years. Then in one\nyear my father died and my mother died.... Will came home. He and Edgar\nsaid that we must sell Sweet Rocket. I wasn't eighteen. We knew about\nthe mortgage, but we didn't know about some other debts. When it was\nsold there was hardly anything to divide among us--\"\n\n\"The Lindens didn't buy it back, then?\"\n\n\"No, not then. Northern people bought it. Will went back to Wyoming, and\nEdgar with him. I went to my mother's sister--Aunt Hester--who lived in\nRichmond. I went to her with my two hundred and fifty dollars a year.\nShe's one of the best of women. I never had anything but kindness from\nher--and one of the greatest was when she spoke of me to you!\"\n\nShe put her hand over Miss Darcy's hand. \"I had been to school a little,\nof course. There were some books at home, and I had borrowed where I\ncould. But in Richmond, to you, I really began to go to school.\"\n\n\"You studied as very few study, Marget. You studied as though waves of\nthings were coming happily back into memory.\"\n\n\"Yes. But you released something. Always fire is lit from fire. Always\none comes to any that sit in darkness.... Well, I went to school for\nthree years. Then off you go from that school to Canada, to England, to\nI don't know where! I stayed in Richmond and went to a business school.\nI learned typewriting and stenography. I began to earn my living.\"\n\n\"You were with Baker and Owen?\"\n\n\"Yes. And then I passed into library work. I went to Washington. I was\nin the library there for five years. I saved. I wrote a few papers that\nwere published. I took what they brought me and what I had saved, and I\nleft the library and I went around the world, second class and third\nclass--and at times fourth--and I learned and enjoyed. I taught English\nhere and there, and so I paid as I went. I came back in four years--back\nto Richmond and Aunt Hester, until I might look about me and see what I\ncould do, for I must earn.\"\n\n\"If you had written to me then in New York--\"\n\n\"I felt that. But there is something--don't you know there is\nsomething?--that guides us.... I lay one night thinking of Sweet Rocket.\nI could always come back here, just as really--come back from the ends\nof the earth! I came back often. There has always been, along the\ngarden wall, sweet rocket--dame's violet, you know. Some of it is white\nand some is purple--shining clusters growing above your waist. I could\ngather them in my arms and feel them against my cheek. I could get\n_into_ the dark cedars that come up from the river. I lay in Richmond,\nmore than half feeling, more than half seeing.... There's a country, you\nknow, out of which things come down to you.... It came down--knowledge!\nI meant to go back to Sweet Rocket.\"\n\nShe paused. \"Look at that tree--\"\n\n\"It is so splendid! A sugar maple, isn't it? And that one?\"\n\n\"Mountain linden. It puts on a clear, pale gold, like the old saints'\nhaloes.\"\n\n\"I hear water.\"\n\n\"It is the little stream that we cross. See how sweet and clear and\nsounding it goes! Hemlock Run. All right, Daniel!\"\n\nDaniel bent mouth to water and drank.\n\n\"No check rein?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\nGray horse and old phaeton moved again. The wood grew richer and deeper.\n\"We are nearing the river.\"\n\n\"And then, in Richmond, you heard about Sweet Rocket?\"\n\n\"Aunt Hester had a letter from Alder. Richard Linden, old Major Linden's\nnephew, had bought Sweet Rocket. I was glad that some one who must love\nit was there. Aunt Hester said that he had visited it once or twice as a\nyoung boy. He would remember it then as I remembered it. The second\nletter said that he was almost blind, and alone on the place save for\nthe colored people. Then I saw his advertisement in the Richmond papers.\nHe wanted a secretary, one who could read aloud well. So I answered, and\nwas taken--five years ago.\"\n\n\"How old a man is he?\"\n\n\"He is forty-seven and I am forty-four.\"\n\n\"You have inner youth--higher youth.\"\n\n\"Yes. Childhood there. So has he.\"\n\n\"Do you love him, Marget?\"\n\n\"Love him? Yes! But not the once-time way, if that is what you mean. As\nhe loves me, but not the once-time way. So we shall not marry, in the\nonce-time way. But we live here together all the same.\"\n\n\"Well, if it is as fair as this road--\"\n\n\"It is just a simple house in the bent arm of a little river and with\nhills all around, and behind the hills, mountains. There are fields and\nan orchard and garden. It is hidden like a lost place, and happy like a\nplace for evermore finding itself.\"\n\n\"Tell me about Mr. Linden.\"\n\n\"No, let us wait for that. Or I can tell outward things--how we live?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"He has only a small, fixed income. It wouldn't at all go round the\nyear, so we farm. We have an excellent man, Roger Carter, who lives in\nthe overseer's house. Wheat, corn, buckwheat, hay, and apples! So we\nlive and can buy--though with an elegant spareness--books and red-seal\nVictor records and more and more flowers for the flower garden.\"\n\n\"Of course you have help about the house?\"\n\n\"There are two colored men and a boy, and Mimy the cook and Zinia the\nhousemaid. But with the home garden and cornfield and orchard and the\ntwo cows and the chickens and ducks and Daniel and Whitefoot and Bess\nthere is more than enough to do. You will be surprised to see how much\nhe does himself.\"\n\n\"How can he see?\"\n\n\"He can tell light from darkness, and the dim mass of things. And then,\nwhen you are blind, you grow so skillful with the other senses! And of\ncourse in a measure all of us are eyes to him. He has a great, strong\nbody. He hoes and digs. He knows always what is beneath his fingers. He\ncan weed a garden as well as I can. He gathers fruit and berries and\nvegetables and knows the perfect from the imperfect. He does no end of\nthings. Perhaps he may work with his hands four hours a day.\"\n\n\"And then?\"\n\n\"There are letters. I write them, and I keep his accounts, and, of\ncourse, the house. Then we read. It is a sandwiched business, but we\nmust average three hours a day with books. He gets up very early and\nwalks before breakfast, and usually again in the afternoon. Sometimes I\ndrive him on this road. Sometimes I walk with him, sometimes he goes\nalone. After supper we read, or listen to the Victor singing and\nplaying, or we talk, or sit by the fire, still and thinking. Or on the\nporch steps when weather is warm, where I can see and he can image the\nstars.\"\n\n\"I see a good life.\"\n\n\"We are not without neighbors, though it seems so lonely. And then folk\ncome to us. His blindness was an accident, you know. He has had life in\nthe world as I have had life in the world. We _have_ life in the world.\"\n\n\"He is one, then, that may be loved?\"\n\n\"He is a great poet, though he would never call himself so. He just\nfeels and acts so.... I think his face is beautiful.\"\n\n\"I think that your face is beautiful,\" thought Miss Darcy.\n\nThe tawny road turned a little east. Trees yet green, trees that wore\nthe one color the year round, blended with golden trees and scarlet\ntrees. Wild grapes with twisted and shaggy stems and yellowing leaves,\nwith blue grapes hanging over, ran and mounted, held by the forest arms\nup to the sun. Sumac that was somehow like the Indian, that seemed to\nhold memories of the Indian in the land, grew in each minute clearing.\nThere arose a little, rustling wind, the ineffable blue air moving\nlightly. Brown butterflies abounded. The sense grew strong of\nremoteness, of calm that was not indolence, of beauty gathered and at\nhome.\n\nMiss Darcy moved a little. Marget Land turned toward her. \"You feel it,\ndon't you?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"They that come feel it. They are drawn. There are centers of\nintegration. This is one. I do not know who started it. Probably many,\nworking in at different times. But now it is in action.\"\n\n\"Is that mysticism?\"\n\n\"No. It is fact.\"\n\nThe forest stopped with clean decision. The road ran through fields\nwhere the corn had been cut and shocked. The shocks stood in rows like\nbrown wigwams. Daniel and the phaeton came down to a little river, very\nclear, falling and murmuring over stones above and below a ford, but at\nthe ford a mirror, reflecting autumn hills and heaven. Across the ford\nstretched a little pebbly beach, crowned with trees and grass, and\nbehind the trees stood a brick house, old-red, not so large as large\nhouses go, but of excellent line. It had a porch with Doric pillars,\nweather-softened. It stood among fine trees in a small valley shut in on\nall sides by hills and mountains, all forested to the top. Only the road\nand the river seemed to have way out and in, only road and river and\nair and birds. Valley and colored mountain walls were proportioned,\nmodeled, tinted to some wide and deep artist's taste. The tone was rest\nwithout weakness, movement without fury, solitude that had all company.\n\n\"How could you help but love it!\" said the visiting woman.\n\n\"I don't try to help it.... If it burned down--if the hills sank and the\nwood was destroyed--still it would endure, and still I could come here.\nNow we cross the river. Look at the bright stones and the minnows,\ngliding, darting!\"\n\nUp from the river, across the pebbly shore, rose cedars dark and tall.\n\"They are like warders. Only there's nothing, really, to ward out. All\nthings may meet here. We go this way, to the back of the house.\"\n\n\"It feels enchanted.\"\n\n\"It is so simple. You might call it meek. There are people who pass who\nsay, 'How lonely!'\"\n\nThey were now at the back of the house, where the road skirted the\nflower garden. Here was the back door, with three rounded, moss-grown\nsteps of stone. Daniel and the phaeton stood still. The two women left\nthe vehicle. A colored man appeared. \"Miss Darcy, this is Mancy. Mancy,\nthis is Miss Darcy, come to stay with us as long as she will.\"\n\nMancy, tall and spare, with an Indian great-grandmother, said that he\nwas glad to see her, and took her bags. In the brick kitchen in the\nyard, Mimy was singing:\n\n\n    \"Swing low, sweet chariot,\n    Coming for to carry me home--\"\n\n\n\n\nII\n\n\n\"I might stay a week.\" Anna Darcy spoke to herself, standing at the\nwindow of the room where Marget had left her. She looked down upon\nflowers and out to the southern wall that closed in the valley. The\nmountains had the tints of desert sands at sunset. They had long wave\nforms; they were not peaked, nor very high. They were so old, she\nknew--Appalachians--older than Apennine or Himalaya. They were wearing\ndown here, disintegrating. The weather would be lowering them year by\nyear. They were removing and building elsewhere. They had granaries full\nof memories, and they must have somewhere, springing like the winter\nwheat, as many as the blades of wheat, anticipations. Down in the garden\nshe saw marigolds and zinnias, late blooming pansies, mignonette,\nsnapdragon and aster and heliotrope, larkspur, mourning bride, and\ncitronalis. A rosy light bathed garden and fields. This was the back of\nthe house. She saw two or three cabins and a barn, stacked hay, and a\nrail fence worn and lichened, fostering a growth of trumpet vine and\ntraveler's joy. She heard cow bells. A boy with a good-natured ebony\nface crossed the path below, carrying two milk pails. Chickens, turkeys,\nand guineas walked about in the barnyard. From the kitchen, fifty feet\nfrom the house, floated a smell of coffee and of bread in the oven. All\nthe place was clean, friendly.\n\nShe turned to the large, four-windowed room. The walls had a paper of\nlavender-gray, on which hung three prints. The bed was a four-poster,\nwith a linen, ball-fringed valance. Books stood ranged above an ancient\ndesk; a blue jug held asters. There was a large closet and--modern\nblessing--a bathroom, white tubbed, pleasant and light. It had been, she\nsaw, an old dressing room between the two chambers upon this side of the\nhall, with a door for each. Both doors being ajar, she saw Marget's\nroom, large like this one, furnished not unlike this one. But that,\nsomething told her, was really the spare room, and this that she was to\ndwell in was Marget's room. It had the feel of Marget. \"It is the\npleasantest, and so she has given it to me.\"\n\nShe bathed and changed her dress. All the time old, happy rhythms ran in\nher head. Dressed, she sat down by one of the western windows, in the\nyet warm light. She rested her head against the back of the chair, her\neyes closed. She was no longer a young woman, and she had had a tiring\nyear, and it was grateful to her to rest thus. Rest! It was the word,\nit was the feeling, that was dwelling in this place. Rest, rest, deep\nrest without idleness.\n\nThe air was so rare and fine--mountain air. She remembered that they\nsaid that the valley itself lay high. Mountain air. But even while she\nthought that she had a sudden sense of sea air, fine and strong and\ndrenched with sun.\n\nThere would be five or six rooms on this floor. All were large, and the\nhall between was large. The stairway was very good, the woodwork\neverywhere good. The ceilings were high. They used lamps and candles.\nThe day had been warm. Fire was not needed. But wood was laid in the\nfireplace and the wood box beside it held chestnut and pine.\n\nThis window gave upon the west. Here were grass and the red and gold\ntrees, and the pebbly beach and the sickle of the water, and the\nlion-colored fields and the wood through which they had driven, and the\namethyst mountains. The sun had set, but the sky stayed aglow. The\nfatigue went out of the old teacher's face. \"'Cast thy bread upon the\nwaters, and after many days it shall return to thee!'\" She did not\nconsciously repeat this, but the saying overhung her.\n\nShe had slightly opened the door giving upon the hall, so that Marget,\nreturning, might know that she was ready. Stair and hall floor were bare\nwood. A step sounded upon the one and then upon the other. She was\nsensitive to the way folk trod. \"That is Mr. Linden.\"\n\nHe passed her door and she heard him enter his room across the hall.\n\nMarget presently came for her. \"Let us go into the garden until the bell\nrings.\" The garden lay spread in breadths of violet brocade. They walked\non brick paths and smelled box and mignonette. Then Zinia rang the\nsupper bell.\n\nThe two entered the lower hall yet drenched with the afterglow. A man,\ntall and big framed, turned at their step. \"Miss Darcy, this is Mr.\nLinden.\" He put out his hand; the visitor laid hers in it. It was a\nstrong hand, likable. His voice, when he spoke, was the voice for the\nhand. \"I am glad to see you, Miss Darcy! Marget and I are glad.\"\n\nThere was light enough to show a strong-featured, clean-shaven face. The\neyes were blue-gray. They were not disfigured. She also came to think\nhis face a beautiful one.\n\nThey went into the dining room, where two lamps were lighted. The\nmahogany table had a blue bowl of larkspur. Zinia, in a blue cotton\ndress and white apron, waited. There were coffee, delicate rolls, a\nperfection of butter and of cream, a salad, coddled apples, and sugar\ncakes. Marget sat behind the coffee urn and cups and saucers. Richard\nLinden did not take the foot of the table, but sat beside her, at the\nright. She aided him quietly, perfectly, nor did he need as much aid as\nmight be thought. He was so skillful; eyes must be in fingers. Zinia,\ntoo, marked his needs, forestalled things. She called him Mr. Dick. She\nhad for him a low, rich, confidential whisper. \"The salt, Mr. Dick.\"\n\"Cottage cheese, Mr. Dick.\" Marget called him Richard.\n\nThe three talked of the ring of this valley and of the ring without and\naround it, of Miss Darcy's doings and of Sweet Rocket's, and of\neverybody's. It seemed that papers, magazines, the news, must come here.\nEarth was the earth of the beginning of the third decade of the\ntwentieth century. There was news enough.\n\nSupper over, they went into the parlor that was opposite the dining\nroom, and was no more parlor than library. It stretched around, a big\nroom with old pictures, old furniture, with books. A fire flamed and\nsang. They sat in the firelight, Richard Linden on one side of the\nhearth and Marget on the other, and Miss Darcy beside the latter. Still\nthere was talk. The visitor would have gathered where they stood on\nquestions of the day, then suddenly saw that they stood all round and\nthrough, and that the day to them was so old and young that it included\nyesterday and to-morrow. That being so, their solutions were not always\nthose currently offered.\n\nShe also found that though they talked they were not talkative. With\nthem conversation became a rhythmic thing--tranquil pause, deep\nretirement, then again the word. And it startled her almost, how\ncompletely they were one.\n\nWhen they had sat by the fire an hour Marget, rising, put violin music\nupon a victrola. Hafitz played to them a Hebrew melody; Kreisler played,\nand Maud Powell. The flames danced, the world heightened. Then, one\nafter the other, came three songs, and between each, as between the\nviolin pieces, they watched the fire, and the forest and the night wind\nwere felt around.\n\n\n     \"Oh, that we two were maying!\"\n\n\nThe song ended, the fire burned, they heard the river, the forest was\nall around. A man's voice was lifted.\n\n\n     \"Oh, that I knew where I might find Him, that I might come into\n       His Presence!\"\n\n\nAgain the wide and deep pause, and then the third song.\n\n\n     \"And the world shall go up with a shout unto God.\"\n\n\nMarget shut the victrola. Again they sat in that quiet. It was systole\nand diastole, it was in and out, and inexpressibly it rested! And that\nwas what she wanted, rest.\n\nMarget lighted a lamp that stood upon the table. Linden said, \"Hadn't\nyou rather not read, to-night?\"\n\n\"No. We won't read long.\"\n\nHe turned to the visitor. \"Do you mind listening?\"\n\nMiss Darcy was glad to listen. Marget began to read. Her old teacher\nremembered that she had read well twenty years ago. She read better now.\nThe book was Lafcadio Hearn's _West Indies_. \"We travel so,\" said\nLinden. \"We take a right journeyer and journey with him.\"\n\nThe fire flickered, then seemed to pass into actual fire of sun. They\nwere in Martinique, under Pel\u00e9e, in Saint Pierre, in Grand Anse. Again\nshe was startled to feel how real it was. She touched, she knew, the\npeople of Martinique.\n\nLater, when the book had been closed, when they had said good night, one\nto the other, when she lay in bed in the dark quiet, she experienced\nstrongly what a certain number of times in her life she had been able to\nexperience faintly. She experienced coherence that was wider than old\ncoherences. She interlocked with this place and her hosts. She held\nthem, they held her. At the end of the week she must go afar. \"But never\nany more so far that I lose the tune--never any more!\" She went to sleep\nwith a strange, fair feeling of sea about her. Not that the forest, the\nhills and mountains, were not there, but she felt the sea likewise. \"Of\ncourse it is there, but I never thought to look at it or taste it! The\nsea and mountains and they and me, threaded together, talking together!\"\nShe slept.\n\n\n\n\nIII\n\n\nAs she dressed, the next morning, she heard Mimy singing, but no stir of\nher hosts. The sun was shining. In at window streamed life-giving air.\nHer mind was upon the evening before and its current of happenings. As\nshe had gone to sleep with the sea, of which they had read, about her,\nso now the three songs to which they had listened returned to mind,\nreturned almost to sense. That was one remarkable thing about this\nplace--the great vividness and depth of perception.... She knew the\ndifference between usual or even intent thinking and intuition. Her\nintuitions had not been vigorous--she had looked at them with a kind of\ngray wonder, as at pale children from afar. They came at long intervals,\nbut were never forgotten. It now seemed that this was a good clime for\nthem.\n\nShe stood still in the middle of her room. Her mind opened. \"'Oh, that\nwe two were maying!' That is man and woman love, time out of mind; love\nand cry of love! It is Romeo and Juliet, it is Tristan and Isolde. 'Oh,\nthat I knew where I might find Him, that I might come into His\npresence!' That is religious love that goes up from man and woman love.\nThat is the onward going, the seeking of Great Lovers. 'And the world\nshall go up with a shout unto God.' That is when we move and feel and\nthink, not as men and women, but as Humanity. The Great Mating.\"\n\nThe little firmament closed like eyelids and hid the greater. She was a\nsmall, gray woman, and she had beaten about in the intellect, and when\ngleams came like this she had taken them and promptly, when the sky\nclosed, had doubted if they had ever existed. But to-day she was less\ninclined to doubt. There remained a faint luminousness in mind, a sense\nof depth behind feeling. She thought, \"If I could stay in that garden I\nshould indeed know bloom and music!\" She moved about the room. \"The\npoint is that there _is_ such a garden.\"\n\nShe finished dressing, and went downstairs. Zinia met her in the hall.\n\"Good mahning! I hope you slept well? Miss Marget says you're to have\nbreakfast on the porch. It's so warm and beautiful this mahning.\"\n\n\"She has had hers?\"\n\n\"Yes'm. She said tell you Sweet Rocket was home. I put the table here.\nBut if it's too sunny I can move it.\"\n\n\"It's not too sunny. I like sun,\" said Miss Darcy.\n\n\"I like it, too,\" said Zinia, and departed kitchenward. Anna Darcy sat\nand slowly ate Catawba grapes. The porch was wide, the table placed\nbetween high, mellowed pillars. Beyond them the autumn turf ran to great\ntrees colored like Venetian glass. The river crescent sparkled in light.\nBeyond it she saw the fields and the woods through which they had\ndriven. All was closed by the mountain wall, very soft and gracious in\nthe sun, in the still, warm air.\n\nZinia brought coffee and rolls. There was honey upon the table, and an\nold blue basket-dish filled with red-amber grapes. Zinia was very dark,\nsupple, and strong. She had large, kind, African eyes, and beautiful\nteeth, and she moved with an ample and conscious majesty. Miss Darcy\nloved to watch her.\n\nThe evening before, a collie lay upon the steps. Miss Darcy asked of\nhim.\n\n\"Tam? He's gone with Mr. Dick.\"\n\nZinia stood by a pillar, watching with kind eyes the visitor's evident\nenjoyment of her breakfast. Miss Darcy had noted before, and noted now,\nthe lack of any servility at Sweet Rocket. They all seemed too much a\npart of one another for that. But there was also that fine courtesy and\nfeeling that did not speak out of the way when speech was not wanted.\nThey all seemed to sail upon some inner current of understanding.\n\nShe finished breakfast, and, rising, helped Zinia to carry away the\ntable. Dining room and pantry shone clean and simple. Zinia had flowers\nin the pantry, and upon the shelf below the china press an open book.\nMiss Darcy glanced. \"What are you reading?--_Pilgrim's Progress?_\"\n\n\"Yes'm,\" said Zinia, in her rich voice. \"I like that girl Mercy.\"\n\nThe house was clean and sunny; still, and yet singing somehow, like a\ngreat shell held to ear. She walked about, and at last went out into the\nhigh morning and the flower garden. The brick paths glistened. Box\nsmelled sweet, mignonette and citronalis. Around flowed bird life and a\nvast insect life. Multitudinous song and hum and chirr fell into\nharmony. She walked up and down the paths and partook of garden\namusements, then went out by a wicket gate and found herself near the\noutdoor kitchen. A brown four-year-old was seated on the stone step. She\nstopped before him. \"Good morning!\"\n\n\"Mahning.\"\n\n\"What is your name?\"\n\n\"Just So.\"\n\n\"Just So?\"\n\n\"Yass'm.\"\n\nMimy appeared in the doorway. Mimy was a small woman with a face like a\ncarved cherry stone for wrinkles. \"He's my grandson, ma'am, Just So.\"\n\n\"I heard you singing,\" said Miss Darcy. \"I loved it.\"\n\n\"Singing's like butter on the griddle,\" said Mimy. \"It helps you turn\nthings!\" She sighed portentously, and then she groaned. \"I've had a lot\nof things to turn! Yes'm, I've lived long and turned a lot of things!\"\n\nHer voice was gloom, and yet carried more than a suspicion of rich\nchuckle. She enjoyed her old woes, disaster had grown so shallow. \"I,\ntoo,\" thought the visitor, \"have had a lot of things to turn! I, too,\nhave come to where I can stand back and see the drama and feel the play\nthrill!\"\n\nJust So was a solemn young one. He sat and gazed as though in\ncontemplation of the many things he would have to turn. Then a brown hen\ncame by, and he put out a brown toe and dug in the earth, and said,\n\"Shoo!\" and laughed. Miss Darcy left him playing with a string of spools\nand a broken coffee mill. Mimy in the kitchen was toasting coffee and\nsinging. The coffee smelled better than good, the singing was without\nage in the voice.\n\n\n     \"Who built the Ark?\n     Oh, Noah built the Ark!\n         It rained forty days,\n         And it rained forty nights!\n         'There ain't any sun and there ain't any heights!'\n     Oh, Noah built the Ark!\"\n\n\nMiss Darcy's path led on to the barn. Cocks and hens, white and red,\nheld the barnyard. She watched them with pleasure, and the sun on the\ngray walls and the barn swallows going in and out. Then she found Mancy\nsitting under a shed, mending a wagon shaft.\n\n\"Good morning!\"\n\n\"Good morning!\"\n\n\"It's a lovely day.\"\n\n\"It is so, ma'am! You're from the city, aren't you?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"I hope you like Sweet Rocket?\"\n\n\"I do. It makes you feel whole.\"\n\nMancy glanced at her. He was a long, brown man, with features between\nnegro and Indian. What you liked very much was his smile. It dropped\nover his face slowly, like sun on brown hills, out of quiet, cloudy\nweather. \"That's a true saying!\" he offered. \"That's what I think about\nheaven. We'll just feel and know that we're well and whole.\"\n\nThe school-teacher's mind said: \"The negro is a religious character. He\nis always willing to talk of the Lord and of heaven.\"\n\n\"All the little torn bits coming together,\" finished Mancy.\n\nHe sat mending the wagon shaft. It came to her, standing watching him,\nto say something of the distracted and warring earth. His slow smile\nstole again over his face. \"Yes'm. We hurt ourselves right often.\"\n\n\"You call it that--hurting oneself?\"\n\n\"Yes'm. What do you call it?\"\n\n\"I don't know.... I suppose it _is_ hurting one's self--suicidal mania!\"\nshe thought. \"Perhaps all the history I have ever taught has been the\nstory of self hurt and self heal--perhaps we fight our self in Europe\nand Asia and America. Perhaps, in the tissue wide as space, centers here\nand centers there are beginning to learn self heal above self hurt--\"\n\nShe stood looking at the mountains while Mancy worked on at the wagon\nshaft. Presently she said, \"You would say that this was a very lonely\nplace, but I have touched a thousand things since I came that run out\nand touch everywhere!\"\n\n\"Mountains aren't walls,\" said Mancy.\n\nShe left the barn and walked on to the orchard. The apples had been\ngathered, but a few red orbs yet hung from the branches. She walked\nbeneath the trees and she thought of old, dull troubles and anxieties\nthat had attended her life. This morning light seemed at work among\nthem, disintegrating them.\n\nThe sun came down between the trees. The air blew soft and fine. She\nreturned to the house, and upon the porch steps found Mrs. Cliff with\nbaskets to sell, woven of white-oak splits, in a mountain cabin, by her\nson and herself. She was waiting for Marget and seemed content to wait\nas long as the sun shone. She wore a faded calico and a brown sunbonnet,\nand she dipped snuff.\n\n\"Good morning!\"\n\n\"Mornin'!\"\n\nMrs. Cliff put her snuffbox in her pocket. \"Don't you want to buy a\nbasket? These three are fer Miss Marget.\"\n\nMiss Darcy examined and admired. \"I'd like this little one.\" Mrs. Cliff\nput it aside. \"I hain't seen you here before.\"\n\n\"I've just come. You've got a lovely country.\"\n\n\"Yaas. We think so. Do you see yon clearing on mountain? I come from\nthar.\" Miss Darcy sat down, and she and the mountain woman talked of\nbasket weaving and of the times, which Mrs. Cliff said were hard. \"What\ndo you think sugar is? An' what you got to give fer a pair of shoes?\nYou've got to sit an' fergit, even while you're rememberin', or you\ndon't git nowhar! I wish Jesus Christ would come on back!\"\n\n\"He is somewhat needed,\" Anna Darcy agreed.\n\n\"I had a funny thing happen to me yesterday,\" said Mrs. Cliff. \"I had\njest finished that basket. I was setting on the step an' awful tired,\nan' I shet my eyes an' leaned my head back against the door. An jest\nlike that I thought, 'He's in little bits in all of us, an' we've got to\nput him together.' An' jest thinking it, all in a minute I felt so big\nand rested! But it couldn't last. I wish it would come again.\"\n\nMarget's voice was heard, speaking to Zinia. \"She's come back. They're\nmighty kind folk here!\"\n\n\"I know that.\"\n\n\"They _like_ doin' you a good turn,\" said Mrs. Cliff, and, getting to\nher feet, gathered up her baskets.\n\n\n\n\nIV\n\n\nIn the afternoon the three and Tam went for a walk. They crossed the\nriver by a footbridge and walked a mile by waterside. This brought them\nto valley end. The stream slipped on between close-standing hills, but\nthe strollers turned aside into a glade from which the greater forest\nhad been cut. Young trees and tall old trees were set with some\nspareness. All wore robes like princes; all glowed in a dream of spring\nbehind winter. The ground had gray moss and green moss, and all manner\nof minute and charming growths. The sun so came into this glade that the\nwild grape found and took advantage. It leaned its wine-hued, shaggy\nstem against trunks; it climbed and overran, and made bridges from tree\nto tree. Its festoons shone aloft, its broad leaves and blue clusters\ndreamed against autumn sky. The air breathed dry and fine. Sunshine lay\non ground in shafts and plaques of gold.\n\nRichard Linden used a staff. Marget kept near him and Tam just ahead.\nWalking so, you would not think he was a blind man. Indeed, he seemed to\nhave a sixth sense, he moved so easily. The three walked without much\nspeech. The day was the sumptuous speaker; these woods, this feather\nair, the admirable poise of the year before its journey from hearth\nfire, the plain chant of the crickets, the trill of the bird.\n\nIn a roll over his shoulder Linden carried a wide and thick plaid.\nPresently Marget said: \"Let us rest before we turn back. Miss Darcy\nisn't the tramp that we are!\" whereupon they pitched camp for half an\nhour, spreading the plaid beneath a tree. Richard Linden, resting\nagainst a chance bowlder, locked his hands behind his head and lifted\nhis face to the high, free sky. Marget took off her wide hat and lay\ndown beside Miss Darcy, who sat on a stone. Tam had the dry grass and\nmoss and the fringe of the plaid.\n\nMarget spoke. \"We are under a young hickory, Richard. It is all gold.\nThere is a dogwood close by, and its leaves are red, and it is very full\nof berries. Wild grape has started by the dogwood and crossed to the\nhickory. It is far and near and up and down. The leaves are half green\nand half yellow, and there are a thousand bunches of grapes.\"\n\n\"I see!\" he said; \"and I hear a woodpecker.\"\n\n\"It's yonder on a white oak. It's a flicker. There isn't a cloud in the\nsky, and far, far up, small as a dragon fly, is a buzzard sailing.\nThere's a cedar waxwing in the dogwood stripping berries. There is\nanother--a third! We frightened them away, but they are coming back.\nThey're after the grapes. There will be fifty in a moment--\"\n\nThey kept still and watched, Marget's hand on Tam. Slender, graceful,\ntawny, crested birds came in a flock. They entered the hickory and the\ndogwood. With quick movements of head and body they stripped the grapes\nand the scarlet dogwood berries. They perched and removed, and perched\nagain. They kept up a low talk among themselves and a perpetual flutter\nof wings. It was as though a wind were in the trees, so continuous was\nthe sound. Blue grapes, dogwood berries, dropped upon the ground. For\nten minutes the flock fluttered and fed, while with intent, pleased\nfaces the human beings watched or listened. Then Tam became aware of a\nrabbit down the glade and started up. Away flew the cedar waxwings.\n\n\"Oh, wasn't it lovely?\"\n\nThey sat still. Richard Linden, resting against the rock, kept his face\nraised to blue sky. \"Their life!\" he said. \"As we enter upon their\nlife--\"\n\nTam came back, the rabbit having vanished. \"Lie still, Tam, lie still!\nGet into your life-to-be for a little, and be quiet shepherd on a hill\ninstead of shepherd's dog!\"\n\n\"Their life--\"\n\nThe visitor to Sweet Rocket sat still, with her eyes upon the gold\nfretwork of the hickory. She was thinking of the birds. It was very\nsunny, very still in the glade. Her companions also rested silent. They\nseemed to be in reverie, to be going where they would in their inner\nworlds.\n\nMiss Darcy followed the waxwings in their flight. She saw the flock that\nhad been here, and other flocks, stripping wild grape and dogwood and\ncedar berries. They were far and near, in many a woodland glade. In\nthousands they twined and turned, they talked in the clan, their wings\nmade a windy sound. And the woodpeckers! Hammer and hammer, through the\nforests of the world! And the thrush that she had heard this morning,\nand the humming bird in the garden--and the crows that had cawed from a\nhillside, the hawk and the owl.... Suddenly she saw in some space an\neagle rise to its nest upon a crag edge. From the one she saw others.\nEagles in all the lands. For one instant she caught a far glimpse of the\nIdea, the absolute eagle. There was the rush of a loftier sense. Then\nshe sank from that, but she saw eagles in all the lands. She saw the\ngreat hawks and the condors. Green waves were beneath her; with sea\nbirds she skimmed them in the first light, and the cries of her kind\nwere about her. On the ice floes walked the penguins, the albatross\nwinnowed solitude. With heron and flamingo and crane she knew shore and\nmarsh. The white swan and the black swan oared their way through still\nwaters. In their right circle moved the peacock and the pheasant, the\nlyre bird, the bower bird, and the bird of paradise. The nightingale\nsang in deep woods, and in southern thickets of yellow jessamine sang\nthe mocking bird. The lark mounted into the air, the cuckoo called from\nthe hedge, the wren built under the eaves. In the gray dawn, from a\nthousand farms and hamlets, crowed the cocks. Over all the earth clucked\nthe hen, peeped the downy chick. The swallows crossed a saffron sky and\nthe whippoorwill cried in the night, and in the morning the quails said\n\"Bob White!\" Migrating hordes, like scuds of clouds, drove before\nfavorable winds, north, south! She was plunged in the life of birds,\nwhere they waded between deep water and solid shore, where they lived in\na world of green, where they flew aloft and afar, over land, over\nsea--all their plumage, shapes, and magnitudes. She seemed to hear their\ncheepings, cries and songs, to hear them and touch them, their\nsleekness, lightness, threaded beauty! Over all the earth spread the\npassionate wooing, the daylong song. Here were the nests, the\nmultitudes, and the eggs, green and blue and white and dark. The nests\nand eggs became transfigured. The straw of the nests burned lines of\nwhite fire, the cup was diamond light, the shell of the egg no more than\na window, and through it was seen the bird-past, and the bird desire and\nwill and power. Out of the egg the young--she heard the nightingales in\nthe woods, the lark in the sky!\n\n\"See the love and beauty and power and daring! See the thought and\nfeeling pressing on--see them trooping into fuller being--see them men\nand women, their tribes and nations! When we have gone far, far on, see\ntheir human earth!\"\n\nIt was Linden, she thought, who said that. She came back with a great\nthrob of her heart to the earth beneath a golden hickory, to the October\nsun, in a little Virginian valley. Yet the two reclining there seemed\nstill in a brown study, gone away. She thought: \"I am come into a\nstrange country! Are they knowing, feeling all that life more intensely\nthan I, for all that they lie there so quietly, thinking, one would say,\nof to-morrow's work, of a book they are reading, or of the cedar\nwaxwings?... It is all in the range of perception, could I run like\nlight all over the earth! There are those birds and their life. I only\nsaw what _is_!\"\n\nBut she felt that while she had had a wave of it those two had a whole\nbreadth of ocean. She felt that they were expert, adept. She felt again\nthe breath of wonder. It was at once wonder and homelikeness.\n\"Glad--glad--glad that I came! My gray road turns!\"\n\nRichard Linden dropped his hands from behind his head and passed them\nover his eyes. Marget rose to her knees. There was deep light in her\nface. She lifted then let fall her arms. \"Oh, the _beauty_ when life is\nseen as a landscape, heard as a symphony, smelled as a garden, tasted as\nnectar, dwelt in as a house!\" She rose to her feet. \"The sun is gone\nfrom the grass. It is dawn in Tibet. Come, Tam, let us be going home!\"\n\nThey folded the plaid and left the hickory and the dogwood. The glade\nwas turning violet, but the hilltops showed golden and the mountains\nstood in light. A rich scent breathed from the earth, while the air\ncarried a spear from the north. Leaving the wood, they took again the\npath by the river, that sang toward them, that held pools of light.\n\nWalking so, Marget fell to talking of Anna Darcy's life, the manner of\nit, her steadfast work from year to year, and all her kindnesses, and\nall that she had given. At first Miss Darcy tried to stop her, but then\nshe could not try any longer, the appreciation was so sweet. Her life\nhad been difficult, isolated for all the stir around her, subject to\nsorrows, a little withered and gray. She felt the exquisite caress of\ntheir interest. It was more than that to her; it was recognition.\n\nHow would it be if all were truly interested in all? If there were\ngeneral recognition?\n\nAs she walked, the valley and the hills, the river and warm, dusky air,\nthe collie, the man and woman with her, herself, seemed to shift and\nquiver into one. Walls vanished. There happened rest, understanding,\nimperviousness to harm, blood warmth, and new and strange aspiration.\n\nIt was impossible for her to hold the moment. She seemed to herself to\nsink again to the rigid and small shape of Anna Darcy, like an Egyptian\nfigure graved on stone, a plane figure. But she did not wholly fit back\ninto the figure. She felt that above it was fullness and youth and song,\nand that they were hers as well as another's.\n\n\n\n\nV\n\n\nAgain, the next morning, she found neither of her hosts. \"We breakfast\nearly and work early,\" Marget had said. Again Zinia served her alone,\nagain she walked in the flower garden, again she went farther afield.\nThe day was brilliantly, vividly clear, white clouds in the sky, and\nbetween, great seas of cobalt. She went at once to the river path, but\nturned this morning up the stream. The day hung joyous, the high and\nmoving clouds, the light and shadow had magnificence. She felt very\nwell; she really looked five years younger. Before her, beyond a spur of\norchard, she made out the roof of a building. When she came nearer she\nfelt an assurance that this was the overseer's house. \"Where Marget was\nborn,\" she thought; \"where she lived with her father and mother and\nbrothers.\"\n\nPresently she stood still to regard the place.\n\nThe house was a small one, two-storied, frame, painted white with green\nblinds. It had a small porch with a window to either side. At the back\nshe made out a wider porch, and there were outbuildings. The whole was\nburied among locust trees and old shrubs, that when she came nearer she\nrecognized for lilac and althea and syringa. Door and windows stood\nopen. At first she thought she would turn from the river to the house,\nbut then she said, \"No, not till she herself brings me here some day.\"\nBut the place was plain before her where she stood. When she had moved a\nfew paces she looked full to the door, between locust trees and bushes.\nShe was now beside a giant sycamore, very old, all copper colored as to\nleaf, with dappled white and brown arms. Built around the bole was a\nwooden bench, old and weather-worn. \"She played here when she was a\nchild. They have all set here beneath this tree. She comes here now, I\nfancy, often.\"\n\nShe took her seat. No one came in or out of the house door a stone's\nthrow away. The place was sunny and deserted. There came, as it were, a\nveil over it. She shut her eyes the better to look at child life here\nwith father and mother and Will and Edgar. The old overseer, who had\nfought in the war for the old order, but who, when it came crash! had\nbuilt in the new; and the mother, Elizabeth Land, overworked and\nuncomplaining; and the boys with their desires and broodings and\nhopes--she felt them all.\n\nSitting with her eyes shut, she passed into feeling them very strongly.\nThe place turned to be of thirty, forty years ago. She moved with the\noverseer as he went to his work and came from it. With Marget Land's\nmother she was cooking, sewing, cleaning. She was with the three\nchildren, the boys older than the girl, at tasks and in play. Swim in\nthe river, swing under the locust tree, go for berries, for persimmons,\nchinquapins, walnuts, for grapes and haws, go for the cow, work in the\ngarden patch, shell the peas, shuck the corn, look for eggs, pick the\ncurrants and gooseberries, split the kindling, gather the chips, wash\nthe dishes, clean the lamps, sit by the fire and study reading, writing,\nand arithmetic--she was deep in it, deep in a slow, steady current of\nparticipation. It did not seem to curve, but now it was her own\nchildhood, her parents and brothers and sisters, an old town house and a\nleafy town square--life, life, so varied and so the same! Deep, deep\nwash of deep waves, and so pleasant, so sweet, all the pang and ill\nlost! A past that was winnowed, understood, forgiven, appreciated, loved\nby mind and heart of Farther On, and that was present, gone nowhere,\nhere, in finer space and finer time, a vast country capable of being\nvisited! Going into it was to find the deathless taste of eternity. It\nwas not dark; you could fill it with golden light. The forms there were\nnot immovable, not dead. As you understood, they lived and were\nyourself. As you remembered, you saw that you were remembering, that you\nwere re-collecting from far and near, your Self.\n\nAnna Darcy sat very still. \"I had to wait till I was fifty-eight years\nold to see that.\"\n\nAs on yesterday it had grown out of a commonplace of imagination and\nmemory. Memory and imagination had, by degrees, entered _their_ deeper\nselves.\n\nAgain, as on yesterday, she could not hold it. Increased energy,\nincreased perception, what the ancients called the Genius, and the\nmystic called illumination, or voice of God, and the moderns higher\nvibration, superconsciousness--whatever it was, and perhaps the name did\nnot much matter, she had touched it and then lost it. But she knew that\nit had been touched, and that it was desirable to know it or its like\nagain.\n\nShe was a member of the church, a praying woman. She bent her forehead\nupon her hands: \"O God, let thy kingdom come! As it comes near us, send\nthy breezes!\"\n\nPresently, rising, she went on up the stream. It was not wide; it just\ncame into the category of river, headwater, she knew, of a greater\nriver. October painted it with russets and golds and reds. Midcurrent\nshowed the ineffable blue of the sky, or when clouds drove by the\nzenith, the clouds. She walked on until before her she saw the eastern\ngate of the vale. The hills closed in, leaving a bit of grassy meadow on\neither side the stream. This narrowed. The hills grew loftier,\ninsensibly became mountains. She was in a mountain pass, gray cliff to\nthe right, hemlocks overhanging the water that was broken now by\nbowlders, d\u00e9bris of an ancient rock. The path was cool and dark and\nwashed by the scent of the conifers. Only here and there the climbing\nsun sent splashing through an intensity of light that showed every\nfallen needle, every cone or twig or leaf upon the path. Not far before\nher the path turned and went up over the mountain. She thought, \"That\nwill be the way to Mrs. Cliff's.\"\n\nShe came upon a fisherman. He sat among the roots of a hemlock, and was\nengaged in reeling in his line. He was a man neither old nor young, with\na long, easy frame, and a short, graying beard. His dress was that of a\nfisherman who goes forth from the city to fish--but not for the first\nnor the second nor the third time. Nothing that he had on was new, but\nall was well cut.\n\n\"Good morning!\" he said.\n\n\"Good morning!\"\n\nHe worked on at his reel. \"Each time that I do this I say that it is the\nlast time.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"I grow too damned able--I beg your pardon!--to put myself in the fish's\nplace.\"\n\n\"Have you caught any?\"\n\n\"This morning? Not a ghost of one! Yet they say this is a good stream! I\nthink that I warn them off the hook. 'Monsieur Black Bass, or Signor\nTrout, as it may be, my desire not to take you is gaining, I feel, upon\nmy desire to take you! Your own desire naturally aiding the first, I\ngrow to feel that we make a strong combination!'\"\n\nHe laughed, putting up his rod. Then his mustaches went down and his\nface became serious enough, \"So much mangling! I've had my fill.\"\n\n\"How did you come? Over the mountain?\"\n\n\"Yes. I am camping with a dozen New York and Washington fellows on\nanother little river over there. The others fish that stream. I'm like\nMrs. Elton. I adore exploring! I slept last night in a mountain\ncabin--Cliff's. Can you tell me how far I am from Sweet Rocket farm?\"\n\n\"Less than a mile.\"\n\n\"No! I didn't think from what the mountain folk said that it was so\nnear. I knew before I came that he was somewhere in these parts.\"\n\n\"Do you know Mr. Linden?\"\n\n\"I was his classmate at the university. Then, fifteen years ago, I met\nhim in Southern Russia. We had a couple of weeks together, and then I\nmust hurry on to Constantinople, where I was due. He went into the\nCaucasus. I lost sight of him. It was two years later that I heard of\nthat accident which blinded him, and I've heard since only second-and\nthird-hand things. The other day in the club a man told me that he was\nliving where his people had lived, down here in Virginia. I meant to go\nto see him, but I meant to write first.\"\n\n\"I am a visitor at Sweet Rocket. But I am sure that Mr. Linden would\nwish you to come on to the house. Had you not better do so?\"\n\n\"Why, yes, then, I think that I shall.\" He stood up from the hemlock\nroots. \"You are very good. My name is Curtin--Martin Curtin.\"\n\nShe gave her own. He took up fisherman's paraphernalia and a light coat.\nThey moved out of ravine into meadow strip; before them lay the jewel\nvalley. Mr. Curtin drew a deep breath.\n\n\"And he hasn't eyes to look at it!\"\n\nAnna Darcy found herself answering with certitude. \"He sees it and a\nthousand places beside.\"\n\nThey walked on, Mr. Curtin gazing at river, hills, and mountains, and\nquiet valley floor. \"I have known of his doing some splendid things in\nlife--simple and splendid--the kind that steals into folk, and they do\nlikewise!\"\n\n\"Yes, I should think that.\"\n\n\"What is that house?\"\n\n\"In old times it is the overseer's house. Now the young farmer who helps\nhim lives there.\"\n\n\"'In old times it _is_'--that's an unusual phrase.\"\n\n\"I mean that to me, for reasons, it stays that way and _is_.\"\n\n\"I agree! When you turn to a thing it _is_. Turn with decision enough,\nand your overseer would come out to meet you. That's a sycamore for you!\nDo you ever feel the Indians by these streams? If you can see your\noverseer you can see your Indians, too.\"\n\nThey walked on. \"Is that the house?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"It's a simple place, too--but I like it. Houses, now! I make a\nspecialty of keeping them in duration.\"\n\nAnna Darcy thought, \"A week ago I wouldn't have understood that.\"\n\nThe house where she was born, the house facing, across a row of box and\na finely wrought iron paling, the old, leafy city square, walked bodily\ninto her. She was through it, up and down, like the air. It seemed to\nher that there wasn't anything she didn't know about it, and it all came\ntogether into an inner aroma, taste and tone, dry, warm, pungent and\nlikable, idiosyncratic, its very own. It had been a loss, a grief, when\nthe city had taken and torn down that house. And all the time it was\nwaiting for her, in a deep reality, to walk in and take possession!\n\nShe thought: \"What is happening? I shall never be lonely again!\"\n\nMr. Curtin looked from side to side of Sweet Rocket valley. \"It's like a\nbeaker of Venetian glass! You'd say there was a magic drink in it....\nBut how clean and drenched with sun is this air!\"\n\n\"Yes!\"\n\n\"He never married? Archer said he thought not.\"\n\n\"No, he didn't marry.\"\n\n\"He's rather the kind that marries the world.\"\n\n\"Yes, I think so. We turn here to the house. Have you the time?\"\n\n\"It's almost noon.\"\n\n\"He will be home, then. He works upon the farm as though he had eyes.\"\n\nThey left the pebbly beach and went by the cedars up to the house. Tam\ncame to meet them, and Linden rose from the bench upon the porch.\n\n\n\n\nVI\n\n\n\"And so he was killed,\" said Curtin, speaking with strongly controlled\nemotion. \"And I can tell you that when I heard it I felt physically that\nshock and crash and mortal bruising. It wasn't only my heart that was\nwounded. My nerves and my flesh felt it. Even now I think that there\nmust be but one body--I got away for a time after he was buried. I went\ndown to Hy\u00e8res. I used to sit there by the sea. He was a lovable fellow,\nsquare as they make them. We were brothers and friends, too. Well, that\nis the way it runs! Life--death. Life--death! I would give a good\ndeal--\"\n\nHe had been thirty-odd hours at Sweet Rocket. They had sent up mountain\nto Cliff, who took down to his camp news that he would be gone for some\ndays. They had given him the room next to Linden, and he had become at\nonce delightfully at home.\n\nWhen with Miss Darcy he had stepped upon the porch Linden had said:\n\"Don't think you take me by surprise! I saw you in my looking-glass this\nmorning!\"\n\n\"It is good to find you again, Linden! What do you mean by your\nlooking-glass?\"\n\nLinden laughed, his hands upon the old classmate's shoulders. \"Only that\nI had been thinking of you. And the other night I was with you by the\nSea of Azof. I thought, 'I should like to see him again!' And you know\nyourself that when you make a current boats appear upon it!\"\n\nNow, as the four sat about the fire in the big parlor, before the lamp\nwas lighted, he had been telling of the death of his brother, an\naviator. There had followed silence; then, \"Well, let us talk of\nsomething else!\" said Curtin. He took up the pipe he had laid upon the\nhearth beside him, and raking out a coat from the fire, relit it. \"What\ndo you think is going to happen now, Linden?\"\n\nThey sat and talked, and the flames leaped, many and small, in the\nmahogany of the room. At ten they rose to separate for the night.\n\n\"Come look at the sky,\" said Linden. \"The first week in October, and\ndiamond clear!\" They went out to the porch, and then, so majestic was\nthe night, to the sweep before the house, whence they might see the\ngreat expanse. It was very still. The river sounded, but the air rested\na thin and moveless veil. It was not cold. Richard Linden stood\nbareheaded, his face uplifted to the vault that writes forever its runes\nbefore men.\n\n\"By George! I forgot!\" thought Curtin. \"But doubtless he knows them so\nwell that he knows where they are, season by season.\" It seemed that it\nmight be so. Linden spoke as though he saw. \"See the Pleiades and\nCapella and Aldebaran! The Great Square is at its height. The Cross and\nthe Eagle and the Lyre. The mountains hide Fomalhaut.\" They walked a\nlittle way upon the road. Immense and tingling was that view, looking\noutward, looking inward, upon those stars. At last they came indoors and\nsaid good night.\n\nMartin Curtin lay in a big four-poster bed and stared out of window.\nUpon going to bed he had slept quickly and soundly. Now he was awake,\nand he thought it might be past four of the morning. He felt the subtle\nturn toward the day. He heard a dog bark and a cock crow. He was aware\nthat he had waked suddenly and completely. He was wide awake, and more\nthan that. There was a keenness, an awareness; keen, sharpened, but also\nwide. His body lying very still, he began to remember, but it was\nremembering with a deeper and fuller pulse than was ordinarily the case.\nHe remembered that younger brother who was dead, and not him alone, but\nmany another, kindred and friends and associates. The past lived again,\nbut lived with a difference. What multitudes of kindred, and friends,\nand associates! The meeting went deep and wide. Had he touched all those\nin one life or had it been in many lives? Was the whole texture coming\nalive, and in effect did it include the whole past, the whole dead and\ngone? However it might be, it was a world transmuted and without pain.\nHe lay still, regarding it. It was strong and light, and he and it grew\ntogether with a sense of frictionlessness, of exquisite relief, even\nwith a kind of golden humorousness. None had been truly any better or\nworse than another, nor in any way miraculously different, and now they\ncould understand and laugh together! The sense of union was exquisite,\nand the sense of variousness hardly less so. The variousness was without\nhostility. It glided and turned smoothly, much as personal thought and\nmood might glide and turn. The sense of well-being flowed in every\nrealm. The perception included environment. Remembered, recalled persons\nmeant remembered, recalled houses, towns, country, forest and river,\nfields and gardens, a thousand, thousand places! Where were they all?\nThey were all over the earth--light and golden--loved places and the\nright people in them! There was nothing rigid--even the places\nunderstood one another. Curtin felt a profound happiness. This one body,\nlying at Sweet Rocket, was not wholly forgot nor relinquished. It came\ninto the pattern of variousness. But Curtin himself was moving in a\nwider consciousness. All these people, all these selves of himself! and\nhe understood their old difficulties and he understood their old\nmisunderstandings. The _piece_ understood, the beautiful tissue! The\nmusic understood, the notes moving so richly together! It was throbbing\nin the present and in the understood, the appropriated past. He never\nthought, \"How grotesque the thought that we are dead!\" The thought could\nnot even occur.\n\nFor one flash, for less than an instant, the plane lifted. There started\nforth a high, a tremendous sense of unity--Presence. It towered, it\noverflowed him, he was of it--then the instant closed. As it had come\nlike a towering wave, so it sank like a wave. But there was left the\nlasting thrill of it, and there was left undying aspiration. \"Ah, to\nfind it again! Ah, if it will come again!\"\n\nWhere had been sense of the whole, again befell fragmentariness.\nLoss--great loss--and yet was there falling sweetness, exquisiteness\nstill of order! He felt again the wide world that they said was dead,\nand yet surely was no such thing. There happened again wide and subtle\nchange. Out of a stillness, a silence, an isolation, exquisite and\ntingling, a state of clarity and poise, one spoke to him _within_,\n\"Martin!\"\n\nHe answered in that space. \"Yes, John.... No, grief is absurd!... Just\nbecause we're ignorant!\"\n\n\"You can be content. We can be content.\"\n\n\"Yes, I see! We are all in one, who cannot be destroyed.\"\n\nThere came no more, but the world was a rhythm, swinging, swinging.\nThere reigned great rest and calm. Out of this, with much of it yet\nclinging, he sank to the square, clean, sparely furnished bedroom at\nSweet Rocket, with the cock crowing, with the old clock in the lower\nhall striking five. Curtin lay very quiet in the big bed. Dawn was\ncoming, but his sense was that of an afterglow. He had felt beauty and\nstill wonder like this in high mountains, watching Alpine glow. It faded\nand faded, but there was left with him assurance, rest, the sense of a\ndawn to be, a consciousness behind this consciousness, another\nconsciousness towering, sun-gilt, in the future. He lay very still, at\nrest, hardly wondering. The great things, the beautiful things, were the\nnatural things. The wholly full and blissful would be the finally\nnatural. Dawn came in rose and amethyst.\n\nWhen it was full light Curtin left his bed, dressed, and went\ndownstairs. He thought that he would walk by the river or in the garden.\nThe house was still, the front door open. Early though it was, he found\nLinden on the porch starting forth with Tam. He had found, he said, that\nhe must see Roger Carter, who was riding to-day to Alder and would be\nstarting presently. \"Will you walk with me? But you shouldn't miss your\nbreakfast. I've had bread and milk.\"\n\n\"I won't go now,\" answered Curtin. \"I'll walk up and down before the\nhouse for a while. Something happened to me last night, or I happened\ninto something. I'd like to talk to you about it, Linden--but it won't\nfade before you come back. I don't indeed think it will ever fade.\"\n\nThere was that in Linden's remembered face, when Linden himself had gone\naway toward Roger Carter's, that made Curtin think, walking now before\nthe house as they had walked the night before under the stars: \"Does he\nknow what I felt? Could he even have helped--put a shoulder to the\nwheel, seeing that I was grieved and uncertain?\" Not so long ago he\nmight have answered, \"That's fantastic!\" but he did not so answer now.\n\nHe went into the garden and walked up and down. Before seven Marget came\nout to him. \"I saw you walking in the dawn like a man in a ballad. Could\nyou not sleep?\"\n\n\"I slept till nearly five.\"\n\nThey walked by the late asters and the stocks. Said Curtin: \"I remember\na line of Masefield's:\n\n\n     \"... the dim room had mind, and seemed to brood.\n\n\nAnd again:\n\n\n     \"And felt the hillside thronged by souls unseen\n     Who knew the interest in me and were keen\n     That man alive should understand man dead.\n\n\nMiss Land, do you think that is true?\"\n\n\"Yes. Surely.\"\n\n\"Do you think we can be reassured about the dead--all the dead--and\nourselves when we die?\"\n\n\"Yes, I do. Very safe, very sure.\"\n\n\"Well, I think so this morning.\"\n\nThey walked by the marigolds and larkspur. \"Where do you meet the dead?\nIn this space?\" He indicated it with a wide gesture.\n\n\"No. In space that permeates this space. In added space. When and where\nwe make space. Though I think,\" said Marget, \"that one day the edges\nwill have so flowed together that we shall say 'in this space.'\"\n\n\"You and Richard Linden both have that assurance?\"\n\n\"Yes. Many have it now.\" She added, \"I think, perhaps, that it is more\neasily felt in some places than in others.\"\n\nHe thought, \"As we put telescopes on heights.\"\n\nThey walked by the wall with the ivy. Her quiet, dark eyes were upon\nhim, friendly, kindly. He thought: \"No less than Linden she hoped such a\nnight for me. Perhaps--\"\n\nA bell rang. \"That is for us. Miss Darcy, too, comes down early now.\"\n\nThey went indoors. Anna Darcy met them in the hall and they went\ntogether into the bright dining room, to their pleasant breakfast, and\nZinia waiting, with \"that girl Mercy\" still at heart.\n\n\n\n\nVII\n\n\nThe next day was Sunday. Zinia and Mimy and Mancy walked early to their\nchurch, two miles down the river. Marget and Miss Darcy, Linden and\nCurtin, went to Alder in the phaeton, drawn by Daniel and Bess. It was\nas sunny and still a day as might be found in any autumn land, and most\nbeauteous was that forest through which they drove. Anna Darcy was glad\nto see it again. It rested forever in her mind, a true magic approach.\nMarget drove, Curtin sitting beside her, Miss Darcy and Richard Linden\nbehind them. The jewel miles went by and the pleasant, pleasant air.\nHere rose Alder on a green hill, and Alder had three streets, a hundred\ndwelling houses, and three white-spired churches. The houses were brick\nor frame, with shady yards and late-blooming flowers. They drove by a\nsmall, quaint courthouse, a rambling hotel, and several stores, closed\nto-day. The trees were maples and Lombardy poplars and a few ancient\nmulberries. Folk were going to church, and they spoke to Sweet Rocket\nand Sweet Rocket to them.\n\nBefore them rose a church of white frame, set in an ample churchyard,\nall glowing maples with a mosaic of red and gold leaves underfoot.\nStreet before it and bordering lane held horses and buggies and Fords\nand Buicks. The second bell had not rung. Men and boys waited around the\ndoors, talk and laughter at a Sunday pitch. Women were entering, some\nwith children in their hands. Sweet Rocket folk, leaving the phaeton,\nwalking up churchyard path, took and gave greeting. They entered the\nchurch, Marget's hand upon Linden's arm, just guiding him to a pleasant\npew by a pleasant, open window, the weather being yet so warm. Curtin\ntook his seat, and, turning a little, watched the folk enter. He did not\nknow when he had been in a village church like this, nor, indeed, had he\nbeen for long in any church at all, barring the cathedrals and churches\nabroad, into which he went as artist. A clear, sweet sound, overhead,\nrang the second bell. Men and youths came in; the building filled. A\nsimple place, it was well proportioned and to-day filled with a dreamy,\ngolden, softened light. In that soft, flowing atmosphere, men and women\nand children were gathered as in a bouquet. The choir assembled, the\nyoung woman who was the organist took her place. A woman in the pew\nbehind Curtin leaned over and gave him an opened hymn book. The minister\nappeared, a kindly faced, small, elderly man. The bouquet became more\nand more Sunday.\n\nCurtin glanced at Linden. He sat as always, with ease, and a certain\nstill power. He seemed to Curtin as simple and whole as a planet in the\nsky. This village Methodist church seemed within his frontier, as, when\nyou thought of it, all other places seemed within it. Curtin remembered.\nThey were talking, he and Linden, in Odessa, in their hotel, after\nhaving been to a great service in a great church. Linden was telling him\nthat Religion held all religions, and that he, Linden, belonged solely\nto no one church, but liked at times to go sit in any one of them. He\nhad gone on to say other things, but Curtin--and Curtin remembered this\nwith a certain pang--had yawned, and said that it had been a tiring day\nand that he would off to bed. \"My God, I was crass in those years!\"\nthought Curtin. He still watched Linden, who could not know that he was\nbeing watched; and at the thought Linden turned his head and smiled at\nhim. His face said as distinctly as if his voice had uttered it, \"Yes,\nthat night at Odessa!\"\n\nAgain Curtin, startled at first, felt the startling vanish. He\nthought--and, as on last night, his thought seemed to lay hold upon and\ngive form to a down-draught from some upper region--\"Truly the startling\nshould be over mind broken from mind, not over mind beginning to heal!\"\n\nHe sat in a deep study. There came like a picture into his mind Jesus\nof Nazareth's parable of the talents. \"Ability to perceive thought! If\nthe world should take that talent and improve it, a different world we\nshould have anon!\"\n\n\"Let us pray,\" said the minister. When they had prayed, he said, \"Let us\nsing hymn number--\"\n\nThey sang:\n\n\n     \"Sun of my soul, thou Saviour dear,\n     It is not night if thou be near--\"\n\n\n\"I will read,\" said the minister, \"from the twenty-fifth chapter of the\nGospel according to Matthew.\"\n\nCurtin heard read the parable of the talents. He thought:\n\"Intercommunication. It widens and deepens and heightens perpetually.\nNow it gets to be wireless, independent of gesture or the vocal cords,\nor the handwriting.\" There thronged echoes of his experience of the\nother night. \"Intercommunication becomes communion. Communion becomes\nidentity. At last 'we know even as we are known.'\"\n\nThe reading ended. They sang\n\n\n     \"Rock of Ages, cleft for me.\"\n\n\nAll the congregation sang; men, women, and children's piping voices.\nThey sat down. The minister took his text from the parable he had read.\n\nIt was a good, plain sermon, in which the preacher said more than he\nknew he said. The air came in at window, bees buzzed without, a brown\nbutterfly passed. The congregation breathed gently, rhythmically. The\nsun gave life to the flowers upon the women's and the children's hats.\nThere were young faces and old faces, dull faces and quick faces, intent\nfaces and wandering faces. Some were rich flowers, and others little\nflowers not far from weeds, but all were in the garden. Curtin thought:\n\"They are like the thoughts and moods of a man, many and various, but\nall in the man. One Man.... It was Balzac who said, 'There is but one\nanimal.' One Man--his name Adam-Eve, or Humanity, as you choose--or,\nperhaps, when he finds himself, his name is Christ.\"\n\nHe looked again at Linden, sitting with that pleased and quiet light\nupon his face. The sermon was not extraordinary, the congregation the\naverage village and country congregation, the church had no especial\ngrace of interior or exterior. Linden was not habit-bound to it, he did\nnot hug the letter of its creed. Any one of those around might say: \"No,\nhe does not belong to any church--which is a great pity! No, it isn't\nhis church.\" Yet Curtin saw that Linden, sitting there, loved this\nplace, the feel of the folk around him, the sense of what they were\ndoing, were striving to do, and, on the whole, were slowly doing. He\ncomprehended that to Linden it was very simply his own, as were the\nother two churches of Alder, and the colored church down the river, and\nthe Greek church at Odessa. He saw that Linden's possessive was\nlarge--Linden's and Marget Land's.\n\nMiss Darcy sat very still, her thin hands crossed in her lap. At first\nshe had listened to the sermon, but now she was in the old church in the\nold city, and there was another congregation around her, and another\nclergyman, a kinsman, in the pulpit. At first it was like opening a\npotpourri jar, and then warmth and light came back to the rose leaves.\n\"I am there, they are here! Never could I do this or feel this until\nnow--or I did it so weakly and palely that it did not seem to count!\"\n\nThe sermon ended. \"Let us pray.... Let us sing.\" Benediction followed,\nthen a moment's pause, and then the folk turned from the pews and moved\nslowly toward the doors. There were greetings for Sweet Rocket, and\nSweet Rocket greeted in return. All had a grace of friendliness. Anna\nDarcy thought: \"That is another thing that has come or is coming! What\ndoes it matter now if your name is or is not on the register of a\nchurch? It didn't use to be so. Something gracious and understanding,\ninvisibly binding, is coming!\" She thought: \"Those two are the most\nbeautiful here, but in their degree all are beautiful. And all move on\nto completer beauty. Oh, life is coming alive!\"\n\nThey drove through Alder and by Alder highway, and at last upon that\nlovely forest road to Sweet Rocket. Curtin and Linden fell to talk of\ntheir student days, of such and such teachers and mates, and such and\nsuch happenings. \"I had forgotten that!\" said Curtin, and again, \"I had\nforgotten that!\" At last he said, abruptly, \"You've got an astounding\nmemory!\"\n\nLinden answered, \"Oh, we learn how to use and deepen memory!\" The smell\nof the forest, the voice of the forest, circled and penetrated. \"I\nshould like to know how you do it,\" said Curtin.\n\n\"It is like all other things. Practice makes perfect.\"\n\n\"It is not only remembering. You remember with a strange understanding\nof things. You direct later light upon the past. The line is there, the\nform is there, even the color and tone, but you make it understood as I\nam very certain we did not understand it then! I see now what we were\ndoing! It's intelligent at last, and bigger.\"\n\n\"All that you have,\" said Linden, \"isn't too much to apply to the past.\nThe past has served you, now serve the past. Serve and redeem! Bring it\nup, even and great, into the present! To understand past time is to have\npresent power. Only by understanding it can you love it, unless you wish\nto remain infant and love with infant's love.\"\n\nThe many-hued woods went on, the leafy, narrow, remote road, the scents\nand sounds, the miracle of many centered into sole delight. The air was\nso fine you could gather what the upper air must be. Daniel and Bess,\nthe phaeton, the four, stepped and rolled through a magic world, artist\nworld of the Ancient of Days. Here was the river and the flashing water\nof the ford.\n\nThat afternoon they walked upstream as far as the overseer's house. It\nwas shining, late afternoon. They saw, seated on the porch and the porch\nsteps, Roger Carter and his wife, with Guy, her brother, who worked on\nthe farm, and old Mr. and Mrs. Morrowcombe, her parents, paying their\nSunday visit. A little Roger, three years old, played absorbedly with a\nchinquapin string and a rag doll that his grandmother had brought him.\n\n\"Let us go across to them,\" said Marget. \"Just so did my father and\nmother use to sit.\"\n\nCarters and Morrowcombes made them welcome. Linden and Curtin sat upon\nthe porch steps, Tam beside them. Miss Darcy now played with the young\nRoger and now listened to Mrs. Morrowcombe's gentle, flowing talk of\nturkeys, and rag carpets, and Sam come home from the war. Mary Carter\nhad dark eyes and wavy hair, bright color in a round cheek, a shy and\ntender smile--a Murillo face. She sat holding a year-old babe, and she\ntalked shyly and listened with intent eyes. There listened, too, old\nMr. Morrowcombe, with a long, white beard, and a gnarled hand resting on\na stick marvelously carved by himself in prison, long ago, in the old\nwar. Roger Carter proved a quick, dry talker, with not a little wit and\npower of mimicry. He had a way of throwing what he saw and heard and\nconcluded into a homely story, both telling and amusing. He seemed to\nlove to make Linden and Marget laugh, and they loved to draw him out.\nCurtin saw with what skill they opened fields to him where he might\nrejoice in his talent. He saw how they understood fellowship.\n\nPresently Marget asked Mary if she might take Miss Darcy into the house\nand out on the back porch and to the lilac hedge. \"Certainly, Miss\nMarget, you go right in! It's all straight. Go upstairs, too. Anywhere\nyou like.\"\n\nThe two went. \"This was mother's room. Here I was born. When I was a\nlittle girl I slept in this tiny room next door. The rain on the roof\ndrummed me to sleep. This was the boys' room. This is the back porch,\nwhere we did much of the work. It is so lovely and broad! There is the\nold well. Yonder is the lilac clump where once, in May, I saw the Spirit\nof the Lilac.\"\n\nWhen, half an hour later, they walked homeward along the river bank,\nthere renewed itself the question of prolonging a visit. \"Well, I'm\ngoing to stay, anyhow,\" declared Curtin. \"I like it better here than at\nthat camp. If you will keep me a month--\"\n\n\"Oh, we will!\"\n\nAnna Darcy said: \"I can't stay that long. But I'll stay just as long as\nI can.\"\n\nThat matter settled, they walked on, quietly, in the amber and violet\nhour. There was a sound of water, a smell of wood smoke. The house rose\nbefore them, richly colored in the sunset.\n\n\n\n\nVIII\n\n\nThe weather changed. On the heel of soft sunshine and quietude came\nautumn storm, wind and rain, lashed trees, leaden and heavily sagging\ncloud. In the late afternoon Zinia appeared at the parlor door. \"Miss\nMarget, there are two men on horseback. They've come over Rock Mountain\nand missed their way. They say it's getting late, and they say, could we\ntake them in for the night?\"\n\n\"I'll go see,\" said Linden, and left the room.\n\n\"Of course you will?\"\n\n\"Yes, of course,\" answered Marget. \"I had better go see about the room.\"\nCurtin and Miss Darcy, left alone, watched the flame. At last Curtin\nsaid, abruptly, \"Had you ever thought of humanity moving on into\nsuperhumanity?\"\n\n\"I think that I have been blind and deaf to a great many things! I\nsuppose I thought that there would be slow, general improvement. But I\ndid not think of marked betterment here. I thought of the soul at death\nspringing alive into heaven.\"\n\n\"Or hell?\"\n\n\"Yes, we were taught that.\"\n\n\"And it was going to reach heaven or hell at one stride! No degree\nhere, no degree there!\"\n\n\"It was irrational!\"\n\n\"Naturally, being yet in Time, there are those ahead. Some cross the\nline earlier than others.\"\n\nMarget returned. \"They are two young men, foresters, I think, from the\ngovernment purchase on Rock Mountain. They are wet through. Mancy has\nbuilt them a fire and Richard is looking after them.\" She stood by the\nwindow. \"The gray rain is chanting up and down the mountains! Queen Rain\nand King Wind!\"\n\nCurtin put a chair for her as she came to the hearth. She sat down, and\nbending herself, looked into the fire. She held her hands to the flame\nand appeared to gather it into them. \"The fire!\" said Marget, \"the\nspirit that is fire, that is will--that are living, endless powers, the\nHost of the Lord!\"\n\nThere fell a silence that was voice. Then said Anna Darcy: \"I have\nalways said, 'I remember--I remember.' But since I came to Sweet Rocket\nI have learned far and away more of how to remember.\"\n\nMarget turned toward her with a great sweetness. \"When we have found a\ngood thing we so naturally wish to share it! Now you must learn the\nUniversal Man's present sharing--and his future sharing. You who have\nalways said, 'I remember,' and who have been unselfish, will have little\ntrouble.\"\n\nHer look included Curtin, who sat staring into the fire. He drew a long\nbreath. \"Two weeks ago I should have said that adventure and youth had\npassed from my life.\"\n\n\"You are just beginning to find them! Henceforth you will find rest and\nromance, salt in life and the true wine and the uncloying honey and the\nbread of right wheat. You will find water of Moses's spring, and the\nBurning Bush.\"\n\nThe rain and the wind sang against the pane. The fire made shape upon\nshape. The high, inward vibration lowered, but it left a memory of\nitself. There was the Jericho rose in the sandal box to say, \"When there\ncomes moisture again to my root, then shall I bloom again!\"\n\nLinden entered the parlor with the two guests, now with dried clothing,\nrested and refreshed. It was growing dusk. The room looked warm and\nbright to them, a happy haven after a battering day. They were young\nmen; twenty-seven, twenty-nine, forestry graduates, resuming forestry\nafter an interlude of war. Linden presented them. \"Mr. Randall--Mr.\nDrew.\"\n\nThe evening closed in stormy. They had supper, a small bright feast,\nwith talk and laughter. Randall proved lively, good company. Drew was\nmuch the quieter of the two. Supper over, they returned to the big\nparlor and the generous fire. The boy Jim had brought in a great armful\nof wood. It was a night to heap logs, as the rain drummed against the\npane. Randall was talkative. He flowed like a mountain stream, trilled\nlike a care-free bird.\n\nForests and forestry came into the room. It appeared that both had had\nfrom childhood a taste, not to say a passion, for woodland life. Randall\nhad lived in the country, so it came natural. But Drew had lived in a\ncity. But forests were a passion with him; he had to get into them, and\ndid so at every chance, and at last left for good a clerkship in a\nstockbroker's office, and scraped together enough for that course in a\nforestry school. This gave him surface learning, but he exhibited a\ndeeper knowingness, gained somewhere. \"Drew's like an Indian in the\nwoods!\"\n\n\"No. Not like an Indian,\" said Drew.\n\nLinden asked, \"Like whom, then?\"\n\nHe sat in a corner of the great fireplace, Tam, who came indoors upon\nnights like these, lying at his feet. \"Drew,\" said Randall, \"tell them\nabout that night in France! He's got a curious story. He won't tell it\nto everybody. But I don't know--somehow we're all at home here.\" His\nquick song went on. \"You see, my folk and Drew's are English. We're just\na generation from fields and things that we've heard about all our\nlives. So when England went in, we thought we'd better go over, and we\ndid. We were in the same company, and this was before Verdun. Go on,\nnow, Drew!\"\n\nDrew began at once, without prelude, his eyes upon the blind man. \"It\nwas something that happened to me. Sometimes I think that it was a\ndream, and then I know that it wasn't. I'm more and more certain as time\ngoes on that it wasn't. I've got a kind of feeling about Reality, that\nwe are like swallows skimming it. I suppose that now and then a swallow\ntumbles into it. Well, it was a big, dark wood, fairly early in the war.\nA detachment, sent we did not know by whom nor for what, moved through\nit from one station to another. I was second lieutenant. Well, there\ncame news of a trap, and most of us turned off in a hurry, out of that\nwood. But--I don't to this day know how it was--as many as twenty were\naway from the rest, sent to find out something, somewhere. It was night,\nand there was no path. We got the warning, too, and we swung round and\ntried to get back to the main body. There came a spattering of shot.\nThere were men besides ourselves in that wood. They rose like partridges\nand struck like hawks. We struck back. There was fighting. Something\ncame down on my head like a falling tree. I remember that I thought it\nwas a falling tree. Then everything went black, and it seemed both a\nlong time and a short time till dawn.\n\n\"It came at last, dawn. I sat up, and it had been a falling tree. My\nforehead had an aching lump and a gash, but luckily just a branch had\nstruck me and I had rolled clear. It was a very old oak, brought down\nby the high wind. Upon the branch beside me was growing mistletoe. I\nwouldn't touch it, for I thought, 'It is not for me to touch it, but\nsurely it saved my life!' There was gray light, and one red streak far\ndown the forest where, after a time, would be the sun. And then I\nremembered that it was Lutwyn who had saved my life, crying out, and\npushing me away, where I had thrown myself down for one moment's rest. I\nlooked beyond the mistletoe and I saw that the tree had caught and\npinned down a man. I crept on hands and knees, for I was dizzy yet, and\nI found Lutwyn. He lay pale and twitching, his leg and part of his body\nunder the trunk of the oak. It was very still and lonely in the forest,\nand the first cold light made me shiver, and I was afraid of the\nmistletoe, so near. I got Lutwyn from under the tree, and it took all my\nstrength to do it. The spring that we called Red Deer was hardly a spear\nthrow away. I had on a cap of otter skin, and I filled this with water\nand brought it back to Lutwyn. When I had dashed it over his face and\nput it between his lips, he sighed, and came to himself, opening his\neyes and trying to sit up. He said, 'I thought it would catch you, and I\ntried to thrust you out of its way--'\n\n\"I said: 'Are you badly hurt? Can you walk?'\n\n\"He tried, but he could only drag himself a little way, holding by a\nbranch of the tree. The light had grown stronger, the red line down the\nforest was a red splash. We were both thinking of Guthlac and his men,\nwho were after us because, being outlaws, we had set upon and stopped a\nbullock wagon and helped ourselves. We had strong belief that when they\nfound us they would hang us. We had no great start of them.\n\n\"Lutwyn said: 'You go on, Oswy! I'll make myself at home here, by the\nmistletoe.'\n\n\"That couldn't be. I couldn't carry him. He was, if anything, a little\ntaller and larger than I. He tried again to move, but it was not his leg\nalone; his body had been hurt, terribly hurt, I now saw. He could not\nmake a step. It was I who drew him back to the tree. He settled down\ninto the hollow made by the trunk and a bough, and I looked at his\nhurts, but could do little for them. I saw that they were filled with\ndanger. The mistletoe grew so near him. I looked at it, and I wished it\nwould heal. Lutwyn said: 'Now you go on, Oswy! I don't want you to be\nhanged.' I said, 'Save your breath!' and sat down beside him. We rested\nside by side against the tree, and he said that he was not in pain, but\nonly now and then drowsy. He was very clear in his mind and wanted to\ntalk. I listened for Guthlac and his men, and looked at the mistletoe.\nThe sun was up now and it was growing gold--the mistletoe--a great bunch\nof it. I did not hear Guthlac. It was likely to be some time before\nthey found us, having to wait till day to see our track. Now and then I\nfelt Guthlac's rope around my neck. And then I looked at the mistletoe,\nand it seemed to be growing by Woden's chair. Then Lutwyn came awake\nagain and we talked. We were twin brothers. We talked of when we were\nboys, and of our mother, and Lutwyn the Strong, our father, and of\nplaces we had seen and the earth we had trod. The Earth that was us, we\nthought, springing up in us all toward Father Sun. And all the wrong\nthat we had done went away, and the mistletoe grew more golden. He\ndrowsed away for longer and longer times.\n\n\"Far away I heard Guthlac's horn. It blew, and another answered. They\nhad found our track and were drawing together. Lutwyn waked, and heard\nit, too. 'But there's another horn for me,' he said. 'Don't you hear\nthat one?' He had slipped from the hollow of the oak and his head was on\nmy knee. The horn blew louder and nearer. The mistletoe was all golden.\nI could feel Guthlac's rope around my neck. But I was glad they would\nnot hang Lutwyn. He was dead.\n\n\"The horn blew louder in the wood. I heard them shouting. The mistletoe\nwas burning gold. I said, 'Woden, Woden! we be brothers, Lutwyn and me!'\nThey broke upon us, shouting, and all went black--\"\n\nDrew stopped speaking. He sat bent over, looking at the fire. Putting\ndown a hand he stroked Tam. Straightening himself, he looked at Linden\nand Marget. \"All that was actual,\" he said. \"Just as actual, just as\nreal, just as day and night and earthly and conscious as this room and\nthe fire and we six and the dog!\"\n\nHe made a movement toward Randall. \"You tell the rest.\"\n\nRandall's voice came in. \"The detachment drove the Germans out of the\nwood and chased them a good long way. It was dawn when we stopped and\nwent back to gather up our hurt and dead. There were a dozen dead,\nGermans and us, and a good many hurt, all scattered through that wood\nthat was full of big trees. We found Drew propped against a very great,\nold, fallen tree. He had been struck over the head in the hand-to-hand\nfighting and had a cut or two besides. Nothing odd in that, but what was\nodd was that he was cherishing a dead German--had his head lying on his\nknee! Of course, enemies lying as close as lovers wasn't any novelty!\nBut Drew had crept some little way to this man, and had tried to stop\nhis bleeding, all there in the dark, and had given him water, and then\nhad gathered him into his arms. He said: 'Yes, he was Drew, but he was\none Oswy, too. Yes, that was a German, but it was Lutwyn, too.' He said\nthey were twin brothers. We were used to men out of their heads, so we\ngathered him up and took him on. He wanted us to stop and bury the\nGerman, but there wasn't time for that. The funny thing is that he\ncertainly isn't out of his head now! Yet he still believes that story,\nthough he won't tell it to every one....\"\n\nThe rain beat, the fire burned. \"I've tried to get back,\" said Drew,\n\"back to Guthlac and the bullock wagon and why we were outlaws. If I\ncould find even now what we did--if I could get farther back still, to\nthe point where we decided to do it, and redecide, decide more wisely,\nhaving long light upon it, I think that even now I could change in some\nway the whole world! Changing it to Lutwyn and me would mean changing\nthe whole texture.\"\n\n\"You are right,\" said Linden. \"And seeing it that way you have begun to\nput your change into operation.\"\n\nThe fire shined, the rain beat upon the panes, the wind came with the\nimpact of sea in storm. Pictures shifted before the inner eye. Lands and\ntimes held the earth. Now they seemed foreign pictures, now there was a\nfaintly conscious participation. \"We are Earth, to-night,\" said Linden.\n\"All these are in our memory. Earth is growing conscious. A conscious\nSpirit. That is what we mean to-day when we say, 'There is a new world\njust beneath the horizon.'\"\n\n\n\n\nIX\n\n\nIn the night the storm ceased. The household woke to a high, clear,\nstirring morning, the clouds riding in archipelagoes with, between\nisles, a sea bluer than the \u00c6gean. The shaken trees had spread a Persian\ncarpet. All the flowers hung heavy with wet, snails marched on the\npaths, Sweet Rocket glistened.\n\nRandall and Drew must ride away, so at ten o'clock Jim brought their\nhorses.\n\nMarget and Anna Darcy walked through the flower garden. \"I am going to\nMimy's house for a little. Will you come, too?\"\n\nMarget had a basket upon her arm. \"It is full of silk and cotton scraps\nfor Julia's quilts. The day I met you in Alder I begged of two or three\nfriends and they gave me all this! It is Julia's intense industry and\nhappiness, piecing quilts.\"\n\n\"Who is Julia?\"\n\n\"Mimy's lame daughter. Lame in her body and just a little lame in her\nmind.\"\n\n\"Where does Just So come in?\"\n\n\"Oh, he's Susan's! Susan has been away upon a visit, but she's home\nagain. Zinia is Mimy's niece, and Jim is her grandson. Mimy and her\nhusband, old Uncle Jack, who is dead, 'belonged,' as they call it, to\nthe Lindens. When Richard bought Sweet Rocket she was living in Alder,\nand she rode over in a wagon one day and told him she wanted to come\nhome--just like me!\" said Marget, with a happy laugh. \"The old cabins\nwere tumbling down. Richard built her a real house. He said that any who\ncame and said, 'This is home'--\" Her dark eyes looked afar to the valley\nrim.\n\n\"Where does Mancy live?\"\n\n\"Over there, behind the big field. He and Delia, his wife, and William,\nwho is Roger Carter's right-hand man.\"\n\nMimy, in the kitchen, was singing:\n\n\n     \"Roll, Jordan, roll!\n     I want to go to heaven to hear Jordan roll.\n     Oh, roll, Jordan, roll!\"\n\n\nMarget stopped at the door. \"We're going to your house, Aunt Mimy, with\nquilt pieces for Julia.\"\n\nMimy interrupted her singing. \"Are you gwine take company?\"\n\n\"Well, she isn't company.\"\n\n\"You'll find a mighty mess in that house! I don't think I ought to let\nyou go, Miss Marget! You see, Susan's been away, and Julia can't get\naround, and when Zinia comes from the big house she wants to _read_!\ninstead of straightening up. I reckon you better not go.\"\n\nMarget laughed. \"Aunt Mimy, you know how we'll find the house!\"\n\n\"Well, go along!\" said Mimy, gloomily. \"Julia'll be glad to get the\npieces.\"\n\nThey left the kitchen behind them.\n\n\n     \"And I want to go to heaven to hear Jordan roll!\"\n\n\nMarget's low, warm laughter sounded again. \"Her house is like a pin, and\nshe's so proud of it, and she wouldn't for anything miss having you see\nit! The same little rhyme is said to every guest we have. And '_read!_'\nMimy's so proud to see Zinia sit at a table and read! Jim can read, too,\nbut he doesn't like to. But Zinia is fond of books.\"\n\nMimy's house rose beside the orchard, a pretty cottage with a dooryard\nfilled with cockscomb and larkspur and marigold. At the gate grew a bush\nof myrrh, and the porch had over it a gourd vine. Just So sat in the\nmiddle of the path, playing with red and blue blocks. At the sound of\nvoices Susan appeared, a clear-brown, neat, and active woman. \"Just So,\ndon't you clutter up the path like that! Come this-a-way, Miss Marget!\"\nShe took them across the porch, where the gourd vine made so pleasant a\npattern, into a little parlor, bright as a pin. They sat and talked, and\nthen Susan said that she would bring Julia, and, leaving the room,\nreappeared, pushing a wheeled chair. In this sat Julia, who was almost a\nmiddle-aged woman, and had a slender, pleasing face, and was only a\nlittle lame in her mind.\n\nMarget emptied the basket. \"Oh, my!\" said Julia, and again, \"Oh, my!\"\nWith eager fingers she spread the bits of silk and velvet and satin and\nstriped or flowered ribbon. \"Flower-garden pieces! It will be a\nflower-garden quilt. I'll make a quilt like they have in heaven!\"\n\n\"Shoo! Julia!\" exclaimed Susan. \"They don't have quilts in heaven. It\nain't cold there!\"\n\nJulia's face took on an imploring, almost a frightened look. She turned\nto Marget. \"If they don't have quilts I won't have anything to do!\"\n\nWith all that she knew of Marget Land, Miss Darcy could but wonder at\nthe luminous sweetness, the depth and the play with which Marget, seated\nby Julia, dealt with the latter's fears. All the bright pieces were\nspread over the knees of both. \"In heaven you'll put rose and blue\ntogether, and this violet and green. And look how these flowered pieces\ngo! Your quilts are for warmth and beauty, Julia, aren't they? Shut your\neyes and see warmth and beauty, warmth and beauty!\" She put her hand\nover the lame woman's hand. The latter's plaintive look changed, her\neyes brightened, and she nodded her head. \"Yes! To keep us warm; and\nthey are lovely, like the flowers! Warm like the sun is!\"\n\n\"Yes. Warmth and beauty--warmth and beauty! So in heaven you're to keep\non with warmth and beauty. And you'll learn, too, how well wisdom goes\nwith them. Their quilts aren't just like these quilts, but you won't\ncare for that. You'll be putting together and giving beautiful, bright\nthings!\"\n\nJulia caressed a length of flowered ribbon. \"That's what I think.\nThey're warm and beautiful, warm and beautiful! And every one I give a\nquilt to says, 'I'm so glad I've got one!'\"\n\n\"When you put that piece in, think 'warm and beautiful' for Mrs. Gray.\nShe gave it to you. And Miss Lucy Allen gave the beautiful blue piece.\"\n\nWhen they had quitted the porch with the gourd vine, and the dooryard,\nand the gate by the myrrh bush, and were under the orchard trees, Marget\nsaid: \"She's been making quilts for twenty years. Perhaps two a year,\nand into each one goes I do not know what dim thinking and feeling,\nwarmth and beauty, for such and such a one!\"\n\nIt was Miss Darcy's habit to rest a little in her own room after dinner.\nIn the midafternoon, coming downstairs, she found the door of Linden's\nstudy open. Linden turned his head, hearing her step. \"Come in! Here are\nMarget and Curtin.\"\n\nIt was the first time she had entered this room. Her eyes took it in as\nshe crossed the threshold, and found it a simple, grave place, as simple\nand grave and charged with its own aroma and spirit as a pine wood. It\nspread a large room, with plenty of space for pacing up and down. The\nbookcases, the desk, the chairs, an old, long cane and wood sofa were\nfor use. The plain walls held a few prints. In one of the deep windows\nstood a large globe.\n\nCurtin put Miss Darcy a chair. \"I've just come in,\" he said. There had\ngrown between them, beginning the morning upon which she found him\nfishing, or not fishing, in the gorge that closed the valley, a quiet\nliking and friendship, with a sense, perhaps, of standing even in the\ninner world. \"Linden was saying--\"\n\nMarget sat before the desk not far from the fireplace, in which burned a\nlight flame. She had been writing, and Linden dictating from his big\ncane chair by the long window. She had turned from the desk and he had\nmoved his chair to where he sat, half in firelight, half in tawny\nsunlight. To Anna Darcy's sense the room had strongly that luminousness\nwhich in some sort she found in the whole of Sweet Rocket, in valleys,\nhills, house, and folk. The whole made a sun-filled cluster that, acting\nas a cluster, redoubled so all effects. But undoubtedly Linden and\nMarget were the center of the cluster.\n\n\"I am glad you have come in,\" said Curtin. \"Linden was speaking of\ntheir life here--\"\n\n\"I told you, you remember, driving through the woods, of our outer\nlife,\" Marget said. \"Sitting here before the fire we had begun to talk\nof that far larger life within the outer.\"\n\nLinden spoke. \"Martin asked me, and I was telling him as clearly as I\ncould. It is not wholly clear, you must not think, to Marget and me, our\nprogression and our life. 'Man is a bridge,' says Nietzsche. A living\nbridge that crosses from himself to himself. Always the provisional, the\nhalfway, gone afar even while we say, 'Here am I!' How to name a thing\nthat travels so fast! The life of Marget and me changes and grows, as\ndoes yours and yours. The history of one--the history of all. There is\nat once divine difference, divine sameness. No hand and no word will\nhold our life!\"\n\n\"I don't know anyone like you,\" said Curtin.\n\n\"No. But you will presently begin to know more and more who differ from\nus and yet who belong in the order--the order of those who are aware\nthat present man is a bridge and who begin consciously to act, feel, and\nknow in a larger existence.\"\n\n\"And that is still inward?\"\n\n\"The world still calls it inward. To those in that existence inward and\noutward, past, present, and future, come into one. The old words, then,\nare but retained words of convenience. As to the ultimate mind Martin\nand Richard, Marget, Anna, are but words of convenience, names for\nstrands of experience. All are comprehended, combined, surpassed.\"\n\nThe sun lighted his hair, his bronzed face, his quiet eyes, the sight of\nwhich he seemed so little to miss. After a moment's pause he spoke on:\n\"To-day many and many are aware of the richness of destiny. Some more\nso, some less so, but aware! Faculties that in a host are but germinal\nbuild in and for others realities. The momentary, superficial present,\nnot being the true present, there _are_, not 'there have been' since the\ndawn of history, many such men and women. Very many; a host. There are\nmany to-day; to-morrow there will be more. If you regard with intentness\nyou may see the new Humanity forming.\"\n\n\"What of those who neither dream, nor divine, nor wish, who come on so\nslow?\"\n\n\"Their not divining nor dreaming nor wishing is more apparent than real.\nAll come on. The slowest, who thinks he has no direction, is drawn\nunconscious until the day when he discovers the compass.\"\n\n\"Will any never cross?\"\n\n\"I don't think so.\"\n\n\"And when the last human being has crossed?\"\n\n\"Then will the others come on into humanity--they that we call the\nanimals. And those behind them will lift to where they were. But our\nwave goes on into the spiritual world that is the world of subtler\nmatter, vaster energy, understanding at last, love at last, beauty at\nlast. Well, Marget and I are conscious travelers thitherward, as are you\nand you.\"\n\n\"Ah, you are ahead of me!\"\n\n\"And of me!\"\n\n\"In some ways we may be ahead. And in others you may have store of\nenergy and experience that sets you ahead. That matters not in the\nleast. Whitman said that when he said:\n\n\n     \"By my side or back of me, Eve following,\n     Or in front, and I following her, just the same.\n\n\nLike him, too:\n\n\n     \"Content with the present and content with the past,\n\n\nyet lassoing the past and the present with the future!\"\n\nCurtin shook his head. \"You have powers that are not mine.\"\n\n\"If we have them, they will be yours. Marget and I think that we have,\nas it were, a blueprint. But not yet do we walk in the full and great\ntemple! We do faintly and weakly what one day we shall do with all\nvigor. And many things that we do not yet dream we shall do! And you\nalso, you and Anna. When you begin to feel continuity, when no matter\nwhere you move you take possession of yourself--\"\n\nHe rose from his chair, and, standing before them, put a hand upon\nCurtin's shoulder and a hand upon Anna Darcy's. \"'With all your getting,\nget understanding.' 'The kingdom of heaven is within you.' God is _I\nam_.\"\n\nThe sun struck through the western window, the fire burned, the room was\nlighted and warmed. Flame and stirring air made a low singing.\n\n\n\n\nX\n\n\nThe next day Drew came back. Curtin, seated on the porch, saw him cross\nthe river and ride up by the cedars. Shutting his book, he descended the\nsteps to meet him. \"Good day, Drew! Glad to see you back! Nothing\nwrong?\"\n\nDrew dismounted. \"No. I wanted to talk to Mr. Linden.\"\n\nJim, coming around the house, took the horse. \"He's out somewhere on the\nplace,\" said Curtin. \"Miss Land, too. But they will be back by twelve.\nDid you ride from Rock Mountain this morning?\"\n\n\"Yes. It's not so far once you know the way.\"\n\nHe took the chair that Curtin hospitably pushed forward, and sat\napparently in a brown study, while the other speculated. At last said\nDrew: \"This is a good, big farm with room, I shouldn't be surprised, for\nanother worker. At any rate, I've ridden over to ask Mr. Linden to\nemploy me.\"\n\n\"Do you like farming better than forestry?\"\n\n\"I like it better plus some other things.\" His eyes swept the hills\nthat shut in the vale. \"There is rich forest here. Any woodland that he\nhas I could cut and replant. I know something of farming, too, and I can\nlearn more. I'd give good work in return for the other things that they\ncan teach me, and that I want.\"\n\nHe regarded Curtin with brooding eyes. \"Ever since I could remember I\nhave been beset by the past. A man told me once that I was conscious\nthere, but hadn't co-ordinated it with the present and the future. It\nwas some time ago, and he went away at once and I never found his like\nagain--until I came here. I don't think there are many of them, living\nat any one time. The only wisdom I've got is the wisdom of going where I\nthink I may find help.\"\n\n\"How about Randall?\"\n\n\"I'm very fond of Randall. But he can't help me here, nor I him. He\nthinks it's just my 'queerness.' There's a man in Washington who will be\nmighty glad to get my job. He's a friend, too, of Randall's. I want to\nstay here for a year. Then I may go foresting again with Randall. I\ndon't want to lose him. If Mr. Linden can't use another man this winter\nperhaps he will take me in the spring. In that case I'll go, and come\nagain. I've talked it all out with Malcolm Smith, our chief at Rock\nMountain. Brown in Washington will come down right away.\"\n\nAt twelve appeared Linden. He stood in the hall door. \"Is it you, Drew?\nI will be down in a moment to shake hands.\" They heard his step going up\nto his room. \"Blind, and not blind!\" said Curtin. \"There's some profound\ndevelopment of sensibility.\"\n\n\"I am not a scholar,\" said Drew. \"I haven't got the names to give to\nthings. That's a part of my need.\"\n\nMarget and Miss Darcy came up from the river path. They had been, it\nseemed, to the overseer's house. Marget gave her hand to Drew. \"I am\nglad to see you again!\" There was no surprise in her warm and happy\nvoice. \"Your room is all ready for you.\"\n\nThey had dinner. When it was over Drew went with Linden into his study.\nThe three others lingered a little in the pleasant, wide hall. The day\nwas again right October; amber and garnet and sapphire; balm with\nnothing of lethargy.\n\nSaid Curtin, \"When we come and come, what do you do at last?\"\n\nMarget laughed. \"Oh, you come and go! You never really go, you know! But\nyou have to take your bodies here and there over earth. But once come,\nwe keep you and you keep us!\"\n\n\"You know people all over the earth?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Do they write?\"\n\n\"Oh, now one and now another writes! But we hardly need letters. That\nis, they are needed, of course, for minute information, for news of\nbodily movement. But there is communion whether we write or not.\"\n\nMarget returned to the dining room to talk with Zinia. Anna Darcy went\nup to her chamber for her rest, and Curtin took his book to the porch.\n\nThe books at Sweet Rocket. He fell to pondering them. There were,\nperhaps, five thousand, not in one room, but up and down. Many were old,\nand many neither old nor new, and many new. They seemed to touch all\nsubjects.\n\nCurtin, pondering, going deeper and deeper, fell into some border\ncountry of Reality. With swiftness, with electric shock, he touched, not\nthousands of leaves of paper printed over, but conscious, intelligent,\nand powerful life. Or rather, it seemed to touch, to descend upon him,\nto well through him, coming down, coming from within, occupying space\ninternal to all this tranquil, outer, October space. It was presence, it\nwas personality, overwhelming. Books! What were true books? Will,\nDesire, Intelligence, living, active, not unclothed or unbodied, living\nPresence, present Activity, being in mass, active being, present and\nactive here in this valley and present and active elsewhere, present and\nactive throughout he knew not what infinity! He felt again that wide and\ndeep shock of reality. The world lived!--had always lived--only he had\nnot known it.\n\nVigor streamed into vein and nerve. He sprang to his feet, and, leaving\nthe porch, moved down past the cedars to the river path, and along it.\n\"It is not Richard Linden and Marget Land, nor the one nor the other! It\nis all of us. It is the Whole. The Whole has found them and is bringing\nthem in accord.\" He felt exquisitely a touch of bliss. \"It will bring me\nin accord, too. Drew and Miss Darcy and me--and many others.\" He felt a\nsatisfaction such as he had never dreamed. \"All others. One by one, all\naccorded, all remembered. The Already Remembered, forever increasing in\nstrength, gathering, drawing, the scattered and fragmentary and\nincipient!\"\n\nHe walked, hardly knowing that he walked. \"Goodness and largeness! The\ndawn of them is synchronous with the dawn of Allness. All our words,\nmercy, justice, love, wisdom, power, joy, are but terms for the natural,\nhabitual feeling of the One who is Whole. It is not that they are\n'virtues'! They are the hue and tone and sense of health!\"\n\nHe went up the river as far as the overseer's house. Here, upon the\nbench built around the sycamore, he found old Mr. Morrowcombe, who had\nstayed over with the Carters. In his old brown clothes, with hair and\nlong beard, pale as the pale patches of the sycamore trunk and boughs,\nleaning forward upon his stick, he looked, as it were, the huge old tree\ncome forth into human form.\n\nCurtin sat down beside this old man. The cane upon which the elder\nleaned was now close to his eye and he saw that it was covered with\nfinely cut words. Thick, and shaped like a shepherd's crook, the graving\nran all over it. \"May I look?\"\n\n\"Surely!\" said Mr. Morrowcombe, and gave it into his hand. \"The year I\nwas in prison at Camp Chase I carved around it the twenty-third psalm.\"\n\nCurtin examined the quite beautifully done work. \"Trust and Consolation\nin your hand--walking with them for fifty years!\" He sat musing.\n\nMr. Morrowcombe's old, gentle voice began like the zephyr in the\nsycamore, whose beginning you could hardly guess. \"Yes, sir! That\nstaff's me now. Just as a good dog that goes with you gets to be you.\nIt's helped me, week days and Sundays; that staff I made myself. I made\nit myself, and I didn't make it. I didn't make the tree that grew it and\nI didn't make the psalm; nor David that made the psalm. But I cut the\nstaff from the tree and I carved the words there. So I reckon I have my\npart.\"\n\n\"You cut it in prison?\"\n\n\"Do you see that piece just thar?\" The old finger traced the line.\n\"'_Thou settest me a table in the presence of mine enemies._' I cut that\ndeep and fierce!\"\n\nHe looked at the river and then again at Curtin. \"Now, whatever it\nmeans, I know it doesn't mean what then I wanted it to mean!\"\n\nHis old, gentle face grew meditative, contemplative. A more tranquil\nform and face it would have been hard to find. \"I kind of sense the\nmeaning, but I can't put it into words. But when you feel at last with\nfolks and things you can't feel against them. When I was young I must\nhave hated a lot of folk! I don't now.\"\n\n\"What is your healing herb?\"\n\n\"Put yourself in his place. Don't oust him from the place, but\nunderstand him. Flow into him deep! Then you'll find that there is\nSomething inside or above you and him which understands and straightens\nout both of you. Next thing you find is that you haven't got any real\ncontroversy.\"\n\n\"Do you call that something God?\"\n\n\"That's what I call it. I used to think that you _had_ to call it God. I\ndon't now. But it's a mighty good word! We've hallowed it. It's the\nbiggest word we've got.\"\n\n\"Mr. Morrowcombe, when we join God, don't you think we shall say 'I'?\"\n\n\"_That_ will say 'I.' Yes.\"\n\nThey sat gazing at the river and the colored hills. \"Ain't this a lovely\nplace?\" said Mr. Morrowcombe. \"It's like Beulah Land!\"\n\n\"Do you ever talk to Mr. Linden?\"\n\n\"Surely! Him and Marget Land. They're of those in our time who are\nremembered early.\"\n\nHe glided into one of his gentle silences. Curtin pondered that matter\nof re-membering, re-collecting, re-storing.\n\nSaid Mr. Morrowcombe, \"I knew Marget Land when she was a little girl and\ncame to Sunday school. She was baptized in our church, but she ain't now\none of our church members. That used to grieve and puzzle me--make me a\nlittle angry, too, I reckon! Now I don't bother about it. She's in the\nLiving Church, all right.\"\n\nHe looked up into the bronze and silver sycamore. \"I've sat on this\nbench in old Major Linden's time, when John Land was overseer and lived\nin the house yonder. His wife, Elizabeth, was just the salt of the\nearth. Those children used to be playing around this tree. I remember\nMarget, a bare-legged, big-eyed little thing. She's sat by me often on\nthis bench and made me tell her stories. Now it seems a long time ago,\nand now it seems yesterday!\"\n\nHis voice sank again into the October sunshiny stillness. His lips\nclosed, but Curtin felt him speaking on in thought and consciousness. It\ncame to him, in another of those revelational flashings: \"That is the\nultra-violet of speech, the high, subtle, inaudible, continual speech!\nWhen we begin to catch it, when we begin to hear thought--\" He felt\nagain the shock of going together, of rivers pouring into ocean.\n\nMr. Morrowcombe's lips parted. \"The war turned me serious, and I found\nreligion two years after the surrender. I'd tell her Bible stories. I\nhad a kind of gift that-a-way. Roger Carter, that's my nephew as well as\nmy son-in-law, has got the same gift, though it ain't always Bible\nstories that he tells--except I reckon as all true stories are Bible\nstories! I used to tell her about David and Jonathan, and Joseph and his\nbrethren, and Ruth and Naomi, and Mary and Martha and Lazarus, in\nBethany.... Mary and Martha in yourself, and Lazarus who was long dead\nbut could be raised, and Christ, who could judge and portion and raise,\nall in yourself! She used to listen, sitting just there. She had mind\nthen, and she's got mind now--more'n I have in a lot of ways. She and\nhim. Mind and goodness, and spirit that is power, and a body that you\nlove to look at! They're the kind of folk that ought to be. Yes, sir, I\nwas thinking when you came along of Marget sitting there, a little\nthing, and saying, 'Now tell me about the children of Israel'--or 'about\nBethlehem,' as it might be.\"\n\nWith distinctness Curtin felt that which the old man also seemed to\nfeel, for he turned his head, lowering it and his eyes a little, and\nsmiling. The movement was precisely that of turning and smiling into a\nchild's eyes. Again through Curtin poured that thrill of a freshness of\nknowledge. If this tree, this place, were strongly in a consciousness,\nin a memory, surely then that conscious spirit itself might in some\nsort be felt here! At any rate, he was aware of Marget, though to all\noutward senses appeared only the warm-colored October air. He had again\nthe sense of etheric life. He lost it. It was so bright, it was so\ntransient! The unquenchable desire was to bring it lasting.\n\nHe presently walked back to Sweet Rocket House. Drew was on the porch.\n\"I'm going to stay. I'll write to Brown, and ride to Rock Mountain\nto-morrow to tell Mr. Smith and Randall, and pack up my things.\"\n\n\n\n\nXI\n\n\nThe next day Drew returned to Rock Mountain to make his arrangements.\n\"Why not ride with him?\" Linden looked at Curtin. \"There is a fair\ntrail. You have an extraordinarily fine view from the top.\"\n\nDrew urged it likewise. \"But I haven't a horse.\"\n\n\"Roger Carter has a good saddle mare. He will be glad, I know, to let\nyou have her.\"\n\nDrew, mounted as he came, Curtin on Dixie, set out before noon for Rock\nMountain. The cliffy crest that gave it its name peered above the\nsouthern hills and ridges facing Sweet Rocket. Crossing the river the\ntwo kept for some little distance to the Alder road, then at a pine tree\nleft it for a just discernible track. \"This is where we changed, Randall\nand I, the other day. Until we saw the river we thought that we were\ngoing to Alder, but we were going to Sweet Rocket instead.\"\n\nThe trees closing in behind them, they were plunged into forest. There\nwas now no green save the green of occasional pine or hemlock. All was\ngold or red or russet. Moreover, the earlier trees to turn were fast\nflinging their mantles upon the earth. The sky met less obstruction, the\nsunlight spread a royal carpet. The air equaled exhilaration. As Curtin\nrode he thought that he faintly remembered all the forests of the world.\n\"Is it infectious? Is it because in some sort Drew remembers, or is it\nbecause I have been--and surely I _have_ been--in all the forests of the\nworld? Like him, I remember best the temperate and the northern forests,\nbecause in time they are the nearer.\"\n\nFor a while they rode in silence. There was only the sound of their own\nbreathing and movement, and the very inner voice of the forest, low\nspeech of branches that brushed them, break of twigs, flutter of wings,\ntap of woodpeckers, whisk of squirrel, and once, a little way off, the\nheavy whir of a pheasant. At last Drew broke the silence. \"My mother\ndied when I was fifteen years old, and my father when I was twenty. I\nremember my mother's mother and my father's mother and father. I know a\ngood deal about their life after I was born and their life before I was\nborn. I have a fair notion of my grandparents' parents, and I know\nsomething of the way of life of the generation behind that one. I have\nbeen told and I have read. Of course there are presently ancestors of\nwhom I have been told nothing, and behind these countless others. Of\ncourse I know that people often imaginatively share the experience of\nparents and kindred. They say: 'It must have been so and so with my\nmother and my father--or with my grandparents--or my ancestors\ngenerally. They had these experiences and they must have felt and done\nthis way. It seems almost as if I were there!' I think when you say that\nyou are beginning. But it's grown to be more than that with me. After\nall, what are you but your parents, your grandparents, your\ngreat-grandparents, and so on? Your experience under your immediate name\nand your experience under your old names--their names. And alike, what\nare they but you? Share and share, comprehend and comprehend, include\nand include! I tell you that I am aware of the pyramid behind this\ncleaving point that is talking to you. I _remember_.\"\n\n\"Do you mean that you remember actually thinking, feeling, doing what\nmen say your ancestors did?\"\n\n\"I don't get it clear. It's all wrought into some kind of unity. I don't\nremember clearly sharp, isolated experiences--except that one time I\ntold you about, and that was clear and sharp repetition. But I remember,\nall the same. I don't feel any wall between my father and myself,\nbetween my mother and myself, my grandparents and myself. You don't know\nhow curiously I seem to share their life! Sometimes, lying still at\nnight, I simply, naturally, am Edward Drew as well as Philip Drew. I\nlook out of the Edward Drew window--or out of the Andrew or Robert or\nMargaret or Janet window--and then I turn and look out of the Philip\nDrew window. I had a great-grandfather who was a sailor. I can't tell\nyou what feel of the deck beneath my feet, what a sense of sea by day\nand by night, I have at times!... But then, of course, in the far back I\nmust join many sailors.... I _am_ those folk. That's my own life they\nled. I lead their life. Wherever they are, they lead mine!\"\n\nHe fell silent, and Curtin, too, rode silent. They were now above the\nvalley, their road climbing. Overpassing a great hill they came to a\nthreadlike, green vale, and crossing this climbed Bear Mountain, behind\nwhich rose the great head of Rock. When they reached a gushing mountain\nspring they dismounted, and, seated on moss and leaves under a tall\nmountain linden, all palely gold, ate the bread and cheese and damson\ntart and drank the cider that Sweet Rocket had put in the bag they\ncarried. Their feast ended, they rested on the springy, fragrant earth.\n\nDrew began again. \"Remembrance! If I had a hundred per cent better\nbrain--and I suppose one day the brain of all of us will be a hundred, a\nthousand per cent, ahead of what it is now--I am convinced that I could\nremember not only down the stalk of myself, but out into the branches\nright and left. The tree conscious from leaf to root, from root to\nleaf! The whole tree conscious, aware up and down and to and fro--and,\nas somewhere all the forest joins on, the forest conscious and aware up\nand down of its history. Then the forest runs into all the forests high\nand low. The everlasting Forest and all its adventures!\" He looked as\nthough he rode in that forest. \"Out of it comes the Tree that sheds the\nforests! And never once need we lose consciousness in finding that Tree!\nThat's what Mr. Linden said to me. He said: 'You're the Ash Yggdrasil.\nYou're all things and all people. You share them and they share you.\nYou're to extend, extend, your sense of that. The One is to come down\nand lay hold upon you--and still you shall find it home and yourself!'\"\n\nOn they rode over Bear Mountain, and at last up Rock. Five hundred feet\nbelow the top lay a green depression named Hall's Gap. Here a half-dozen\ncabins made Hall's Town. The people now owned Rock Mountain, its rich\nforests and rushing waters. A road was in the making and that and other\ndepartment plans brought to Hall's Gap preliminary groups, the present\ngroup being a surveying, engineering, and reporting one, with Malcolm\nSmith for head. Under him he had Cooper and Morris, Randall and Drew,\nwith axmen and spademen hired from the mountain. The cabins in the Gap\nlodged them all.\n\nCurtin and Drew reached this place before sunset. The men were coming\nin, dogs barked, the smell of coffee and bacon hung in the air. Randall\nwelcomed them, and presently Malcolm Smith appeared and shook hands.\nThey had supper in Hall's big double cabin, with Hall and Mrs. Hall and\nhalf a dozen flaxen-haired young Halls, but after supper they went to a\nneighboring cabin, for the time being their own. Pine knots blazed on\nthe hearth. Malcolm Smith and Cooper and Morris, Randall and Drew and\nMartin Curtin stretched tired limbs and smoked and talked. Morris and\nCooper presently played checkers. Malcolm Smith read the newspaper, but\nafter a little put it down and talked. He talked of aviation, and\nwireless, and of Einstein's notion of space, and of atomic energy. \"I've\nan idea that ideas, ideation generally, imagery, perhaps memory, are\nsimply that energy functioning! We imagine, and that energy has\nconstructed a form in ether. We use it blindly, weakly, unintelligently.\nBut if--\"\n\n\"I see.\"\n\n\"But if we used it enormously more strongly--and wisely--we'd be\ncreators all night! It's getting very important to know what we do want\nto create. If we don't look out, presently we may find that our\nimaginations have life! We've got to choose, I suppose, what kind of\nlife we'll give; silly or monstrous life, or intelligent, kindly,\nstrong, beautiful life!\"\n\nCurtin enjoyed the evening on Rock. Flame and odor of burning pine, and\nthe pleasantly grotesque shadows on the cabin walls, made for rich\nfancies. In one of the easy silences the men grouped in this brown and\nflame-hued place seemed to him genii, gathered here before they drove\ntheir roads over mountains or harnessed their plunging water steeds. He\nthought: \"We are genii! How wonderful it is to be what we are--and shall\nbe!\"\n\nMen at Hall's went to bed before ten. Curtin found in a small cabin a\nhard couch and honest sleep. He slept without turning till five of the\nmorning, when he waked with a great sense of refreshment. \"Where I have\nbeen I don't know, but it was where vigor flows!\" The stars shone in at\nhis window. He lay still for a few minutes, then rose. The air was not\ntoo chill. He found when he was dressed that he was warm enough. Opening\nthe cabin door he went out, moving softly so as not to waken Drew and\nRandall. The morning star hung in the east, and near it the moon in her\nlast quarter. The cold, first hyacinth of dawn streaked the sky. Drew\nhad pointed out the path to the top of the mountain. Curtin, finding it,\nclimbed it alone. Half an hour brought him to the summit. When he\nreached it the earth was bathed in the cool and violet first light. He\nfound a great projecting rock, shaped like a chair, and took his seat\nhere. The planet, from gold, was become silver, and the moon hung like\na dream canoe. Here or there mist hid the vast expanse below, but for\nthe most part earth lay clear. The outthrust rock that was his seat gave\nhim two-thirds of the circle.\n\nStillness with depth and power possessed Curtin. He looked out, and\ndown, and over. Range on range, with narrow vales between, rolled the\nmountains. In the strengthening light the autumn hue of them gave desert\ntints; then he picked out clearings, and white points that were hamlets\nand farmhouses. He turned eyes to where would be Sweet Rocket, though he\ncould not see that valley. It was dawn. Richard Linden would be up.\nPerhaps, guessing that Curtin might watch dawn brighten from this rock,\nhe might be here in mind and spirit.\n\nEven as he thought this, the presence of Linden not there but here, or\nboth here and there, came to Curtin in a wave. He felt company in\nsolitude, doubled life. And not, as he presently perceived, Linden only.\nLinden meant thousands of others, as thousands of others meant Linden.\nThousands and thousands.... That was himself ... thousands and\nthousands.\n\nHe looked north and east and west; by rising and moving he looked south.\nThe horizon rim lay very far. Using knowledge, he let it farther drop\naway, drop away. Underneath him was the bulk of the earth. Use power and\nmake it as crystal, penetrable as water or air! Overhead and all around\nwas air, thinning afar into ether. He saw his globe in space and time. A\nten-minute road of light ran between it and the sun. He sat very still,\nbut within he moved into the land of contemplation. Here much time came\ninto no-time, so subtle swift was motion. He entered into touch with\nmuch for which he had not yet found name or names. He might say, there\nis deep water and rich land. He might say, the world is other than we\nthought it. There are Americas ripe for discovery, and there are farther\nand future Americas forming.\n\nBy degrees might lessened. Muscle could not yet hold, nor sense be\naware. He came nearer surface. Yet still there was vision. Phosphor was\npaling, the moon a dim curve of pearl, and all the spread of earth in\nstronger light. Curtin gazed, and the eyes of the mind outran the eyes\nof the flesh. Not just Virginia, but all the forty-eight states. Not\njust the forty-eight, but all America, Canada, and Mexico, and the\nislands and the republics of the South. He looked to the Atlantic and\nsaw on the farther side Europe and Africa, and on to the east Asia and\nthe Pacific. He saw the continents and the nations. It was not so much\nthat he saw their earth, their body, though he saw that, too. But he saw\nthem, touched them, heard them, as persons. The most of them had lately\nbeen at fierce war, fibers of each dissenting, but the bulk warring.\nExhausted from war, haggard and torn, yet still they made gestures with\nbroken weapons. He saw them in the throes of economic and political\nchange, of change from knowledge to knowledge, and of religious change.\nHe saw traits and actions, deep, deep; yesterdays at the point of\nto-day, and all the morrows being built of yesterdays and to-days. He\nsaw as it were stain and chaff and guilt, and through all these\nwhite-running Fire and Life and Upspringing. They were Persons, but a\ngreater Person held them. Light broke. He saw the earth and the world\nand the heavens as Person. Upon him broke in deluge the vaster Selfhood.\n\nThe sun rose over Rock Mountain, the long ranges and the vales. The air\nhad the exquisite fresh energy of Hope. Curtin moved down the path to\nthe cabins. All his being seemed lit and harmonized. \"It is what the old\nsaints called conversion. My times fall into the hand of the One that I\nAm!\"\n\nThe rosy light shone on Hall's below him as it shone on Sweet Rocket and\nAlder and the Virginia farms and villages and towns, and the farms and\nvillages and towns of every state, and of all the Americas, and of the\nearth. Fragrant smoke rose from the chimneys. He heard the cheerful\nvoices. A great love of the neighbor pervaded Curtin's consciousness,\nand with it entered the neighbor. His consciousness and the neighbor's\nconsciousness became to a degree one.\n\n\n\n\nXII\n\n\nThe men at work had breakfast at Hall's in great beauty of weather.\nAfterward Curtin went with them along the proposed line of road. It\nproved a cheerful group, doing basic work well. The wine of the air and\nthe lift of the earth and the beams of the sun helped amain. Axes rang,\npick and shovel sounded. There was a center of work and there were\noutlying explorations. One hallooed to another. Morris was a master\nwhistler, and you heard him like a redbird. Dave Hall had an\ninterminable mountain ballad which he chanted as he worked. The buzz of\nthe whole might be caught a long way over the mountain slope. Where they\nworked would be a great driveway for holiday folk. Young and old would\npass that way, drinking the great views and the mountain air, pierced by\nbeauty and largeness. Young and old, man and woman, a many and a many,\nthrough years heaped like sand!\n\n\"I like public work!\" said Randall.\n\nDrew answered: \"I like it, too! If a scholar wants to help all and a\nteacher wants to help all, then going to school and teaching are public\nworks. But I'm coming back to help hold the forests for themselves and\nthe people.\"\n\nThe morning went by quickly. At noon they had dinner by Indian Creek,\nthat rushed and leaped. Three young Halls brought their food in baskets.\nIt was spread under hemlocks, and they ate as it were in Arden. Dinner\nover, for half an hour they smoked and rested, stretched out beneath the\ntrees.\n\n\"Tell us a story, Cooper!\"\n\n\"I haven't one. Call Dave Hall over.\"\n\nDave came, tall and lank and brown as ale. \"Sit under that tree, Dave,\nand tell us a story.\"\n\n\"I kin sing you about John Horn and Betsy at the dance.\"\n\n\"No. Tell us a story. Tell us about the mountain woman you began about\nthe other day when the storm came up.\"\n\n\"Miss Ellice?\"\n\n\"Yes, Miss Ellice.\"\n\nDave settled himself, with his back to the wine-red trunk of a hemlock.\nHe was lean and tanned, wide-eyed, with a rich, drawling voice. \"She was\na see-er, that woman! This-a-time that I was telling about the mountain\nbarked like a dawg at her, and showed its teeth and tried to\nbite--because she said an awful thing! She said that a time would come\nwhen every man and woman could do the things that Jesus did. She said\nChrist was an abstract description of the state of being folks would\ncome to some day, and Jesus was a great laborer who got there earlier\nthan 'most anybody else. Said he was an example, sure enough, and a\nshower of the way, and who could help loving and wondering? But,\n'cording to her, the best way to love Jesus was to _learn_. Stop jest\ndo-less wondering, and grow! Said that Bethlehem and Nazareth and\nGalilee and Jerusalem and the New Jerusalem were where any man or woman\nwas! Brother Carraway preached against her, and the mountain decided she\nwasn't healthy for it. She was living all alone, but the mountain\ndecided that her cabin had better be emptier yet. She was a tall woman,\nabout the age of my mother, and when you looked at her you'd think at\nfirst she wasn't strong....\n\n\"Brother Carraway, after he had preached, went on home, but James Curdy\nalways took what he found in the Word and tried to do it. What he found\nwas usually right harsh. James had black eyes pushed 'way in, and long\nhair that always seemed to me to be blowing in a wind. He was awful fond\nof the word 'punish.' 'Now you're Punished!' 'God will Punish you!' He\nused to stride around and do his best to see that God didn't forget it.\nHe was one to see that God did his duty, was James! He couldn't always\nmake the mountain look at things same as he did, but after Brother\nCarraway's sermon, and the lightning striking Barber's house and killing\nold Mrs. Barber, he got two-thirds of it worked right up to his\nfeelings! That was Tuesday after Sunday, the lightning having struck on\nSaturday, and Mrs. Barber buried on Monday. He got about thirty men and\nboys together at John Williams, and a lot of them had had whisky--I\ndon't know that this air interestin'? I could sing to you about John\nHorn and Betsy.\"\n\n\"No, go on! They were going to drive Miss Ellice off the mountain?\"\n\n\"That was the intention. But this very Indian Creek about a mile from\nhere makes a pool that's called Dumb Child Pool, because little Johnny\nNelson that was dumb was drowned there. He fell in while the children\nwere gathering nuts and he couldn't make them hear. Well, those that had\nhad something stronger than water, they were all for seeing if Miss\nEllice wasn't a witch! You know how folk used to prove a witch? That was\nabout twenty of the eager ones, mostly young men. This wasn't very\nrecent. I wasn't living on this mountain, but on Stormy Mountain over\nthar. I came here when Lucinda Nelson and me married. But I've heard all\nabout it.\"\n\nHe spat vigorously. \"Now, this is where her seeing with other eyes than\nlike yourn and mine comes in! And how I come to know about some things\nthat others don't was that that very Lucinda Nelson that I married\nhappened to be at Miss Ellice's that day. Nelsons ain't afraid of\nanything, and Miss Ellice had done them neighborly turns, sitting up\nwith the sick and sharing coffee, and such as that. Anyhow, Lucinda was\nthere, and Miss Ellice was braiding a rug and seemed extraordinarily\ncheerful and sunny. 'Long about two of the clock, as it were, she broke\noff her talk and finished her row, as it might be, without looking at\nit. Then she says to Lucinda--and Lucinda says she was that still and\nsunny, like a day that comes sometimes, that she was 'most afraid of\nher, just as you're 'most afraid sometimes of that kind of day, and yet\nyou want to stay by it and it to stay by you--she says, says she, 'I'd\nlike you to stay longer, Lucinda, but I find that I've got something to\ndo! You go along, honey, and if I don't see you again I want you to\nremember that I like you and think you're on the right road!' And with\nthat she got up and kissed Lucinda and stood in the door to watch her\ndown the path. Lucinda went along home. Well, in about two hours, here\nthey come, James Curdy and Mat Waters and Jonathan Morgan, and the\nothers, drunk with whisky and with what they thought was the Word of\nGod. They had a rope, and they meant the Dumb Child Pool.\"\n\nHe spat again. \"'Twas Jonathan Morgan that told me, and Lucinda the rest\nof it. He was young and wild in those days. Jonathan says he hadn't been\ndrinking, and for all that now and then he shouted with the rest he had\nnever seen a day so sunny and still, and just the minute after he'd\nshouted he'd see the whole as in a picture--his crowd and the Dumb\nChild's Pool, and Miss Ellice's cabin. Kind of saw it out of himself as\nit were, as though he was sitting on the bough of a tree looking, seeing\nthar as well as here. But the rest of them, I reckon, didn't see nothing\nbut a witch and something exciting to do--unless it was James Curdy--and\nwhat he saw and felt Lord knows! Something like a nightmare, I reckon!\n\n\"Miss Ellice's cabin was high on the mountain. They stopped shouting\nwhen they got nearly up thar. They thought that if before that Miss\nEllice heard them she'd just think it was some jamboree going on\nalongside of mountain. James Curdy had such a rule that he could bring\neven the drunken ones quiet for a bit. So they stole up the path, and\nJonathan said that the cabin above them looked like a goldy leaf hanging\nstill, or like an empty nest. So they went up in a string till they got\nto where the trees stopped and there was just some bushes and grass. And\nthen they spread out, and went on in a bunch, and James Curdy cried in a\nloud voice, 'Woman, come forth!' But the shut door didn't open. Then he\ncried it again, and then he opened that tight mouth of his the third\ntime. He had more learning than most of the mountain and he used big\nwords. 'Blaspheming atheist, come forth!' But the others wouldn't stay\nquiet any longer, and they shouted, 'Witch! Witch!'\n\n\"The door stayed shut, and Jonathan said that the cabin hung like a\ngoldy leaf or a nest high up on a bright, still winter day. Jonathan\nsays there was something so still and sunny there that it stilled the\nshouting. Then they opened the door, for it wasn't bolted, and those\nthat could get in went in--James Curdy at the head. Those outside spread\naround so's they could catch her if she run out. But Miss Ellice wasn't\nat home. She was gone.\n\n\"Thar was her half-braided rug and her chair and a little fire on the\nhearth. But she wasn't there. It turned out that she had taken a bag and\na basket with her clothes, and a little money she had. And then Mat\nWaters found the letter on the table, and Jonathan Morgan read it,\nbecause James Curdy had left his spectacles at home. And if you'll\nbelieve me it was directed to 'James Curdy and Matthew Waters and\nJonathan Morgan and their Company.' Inside it said just this: 'I've\nloved this cabin and this mountain. But now I remove myself from among\nyou. Yet I love this place where I have been, and am, and shall be. Now\nabideth Faith, Hope, and Charity, but the greatest of these is Charity.'\nAnd then there was the name, Ann Ellice.\n\n\"Jonathan said half of them were still drunk and outrageous because they\ncouldn't have their fun at Dumb Child's Pool. A lot didn't even listen\nto the letter, seeing with their own eyes that Miss Ellice was gone.\nJames Curdy listened, and his face got white and his eyes red coals.\n'She's brazen!' says he. 'The devil talks Scripture to his own\ndamnation!' He went out of door and looked about him. But most of the\nrest didn't see anything but that they'd lost something exciting to do.\nThey began to break up the furniture. Then some one raked the coals and\nbrands out over the floor and they set the straw bed on fire. But\nJonathan took the letter and a book or two she had--Lucinda's got the\nbooks now. But James Curdy stood outside and looked down mountain.\n'That's Harris's cabin a mile over thar. It's likely she's thar.' And he\nbegan to go down over mountain side. Mat Waters and Jonathan Morgan\nfollowed him, and so did about half of the others. The rest stayed to\nburn the cabin. The witch had gone off on a broomstick for them!\n\n\"The Harrises were a kind of lonely folk that didn't go much to church\nor nowhar. They mightn't even have heard of Brother Carraway's sermon.\nShe might be thar, as James Curdy thought. But she wasn't. She had been\nthar, they said, jest a minute. She'd looked in on old Aunt Viny Harris\nand said she was going away. Said she was going to foot of mountain to\nNorwood, whar you get the train. Aunt Viny asked when she was coming\nback, and Miss Ellice smiled and said she didn't think she was coming\nback. 'Whar was she going to live?' She said she didn't exactly know,\nbut she had kinsmen who would take care of her. 'Aye,' said Aunt Viny,\n'you're a master weaver and worker, and any folk ought to be glad to\nhave such a handy woman around!' Which shows that the Harrises hadn't\nheard anything. And so Aunt Viny said Miss Ellice said good-by very\nfriendly, and went on down mountain. James Curdy wanted to set a hound\nof Harris's on her track, and the drunk ones shouted at that, and one\nstaggered out to get the dawg. But Jonathan, he represented that Miss\nEllice would be 'most down mountain now and out on big road where the\ntracks would be all mixed up and covered, and anyhow the folk down there\nwouldn't understand and let it be done. By that time the cabin was\nburning up on mountain above them. They could see the smoke and light.\nJames Curdy had to let it be, though doubtless he had some hard thoughts\nof the Almighty. Well, that is the end of it! She didn't ever come back.\nIt ain't much of a story. I don't know why I told it to you.\"\n\n\"You don't know where she went?\"\n\n\"No. Mountain folk ain't curious in them ways. You'd better have let me\nsing to you about John Horn. Lucinda says she took her body away, but\nnot her spirit. Says she can feel her any still and sunny day. I reckon\nJonathan Morgan feels the same way. I don't know. It's been a long time\nago! Brother Carraway's dead and Jonathan Morgan is Brother Morgan now\nand preaches in the old church. Things air sure changing in this world!\nLast summer I heard him say myself that Christ was inside us and not\noutside--might never have been outside us, so much in the world being\nparable! James Curdy's so old now he couldn't do anything but look mad\nas an old beast in winter and get right up and go out of church, looking\nlike a snow cloud and talking to himself.... Lucinda says people keep on\nacting and persuading if we see them or if we don't see them!\"\n\nHe lifted himself, long, lank, and brown, and moved from the hemlock.\n\"You air welcome--Mr. Smith, you'd better speak to Jim Harris about them\nlogs.\"\n\n\n\n\nXIII\n\n\nMalcolm Smith, talking with Curtin in the cool twilight, before Hall's,\nhad no word against Drew's departure for Sweet Rocket. \"He's a valuable,\nlikable fellow! There's a curious sense when you are with him of depth\nor background that he doesn't understand himself. Violin wood! He says\nthat this friend of yours has something to teach that he wants to learn.\nThat's all right! I can generally tell when a man's real destiny is\nruling him. I've got that feeling now about Drew. He needs to buy in a\ncertain city and he's going there. If we're here next year--and there's\na lot to do on Rock Mountain--I'll be glad to take him on again.\"\n\nBedtime came. Again Curtin slept profoundly, restfully, waked early, and\nclimbed again to crest of mountain to see again the sun rise over so\ngreat expanse. He sat in the stone chair and before him hung the morning\nstar and the senescent moon. Below them was spread violet and jonquil\nand one strange sea of blue.\n\nAgain he felt the Spiritual Sun. He thought: \"This is what they have\nperceived at Sweet Rocket. They have not waited for death. They live\nnow, and forever, and know it. This body will go from them, but they are\nbuilding or remembering--I do not know which, and perhaps it is both--a\nlife that will not go from them. And I also, also, though I am a babe\nyet--\"\n\nSitting in the hollow of stone at the top of the upraised wave of earth\nhe watched the sunrise from Rock Mountain.... He conceived that what was\ntrue of him was true of others, had been true age after age, was true\nnow over this round earth of others. He thought: \"There has always been\na fellowship. The eidelweiss does not guess the roses and the\nheliotrope, nor the violet and the meadow rue. But at last the garden of\nthe earth guesses! It becomes the living garden. The living garden\nbecomes the living man. Naught is right, naught is reasonable, until you\nget it from the whole.\"\n\nThe sun rose, the earth turned ruddy. Curtin went down the path to\nHall's, breakfasting there with the men who worked with head and hands.\nThis morning he and Drew would start for Sweet Rocket. Drew's slender\nluggage was going down mountain to Norwood, whence the train would take\nit to Alder. Every one liked Drew, even Cooper who laughed at him. \"Good\nluck, old farmer! Ride over and see us sometime!\"\n\nThe two rode down Rock and crossed a vale, like a green and gold ribbon,\nand went up Bear Mountain, where the oaks were all deep colored, and\ndown Bear and over forested hills and on by the trail that struck into\nthe Alder road. They went rather silently, but in a deep, contented\ncompanionship. Once Drew spoke. \"He said, 'A good present is one in\nwhich the past betters its condition.'\" When he said \"he\" there was\nmeant Richard Linden. After this there was silence again, both having\nstruck some road within, where is the network composed of all the roads\nof the world.\n\nThey approached Sweet Rocket. The forest fell away. Before them shone\nthe river, the wheat and orchard land, and the ruddy house with its\npillars of mellowed white, and the hills that inclosed. Through part of\nthe day clouds had been driving across the sky. Now they were sinking\nbefore the southwest wind, leaving the blue arch. They were variformed,\ncastles and towers, bridges, alps, cities, ships, mythical beasts,\ngiants. Light embraced them in a spray of colors. Crossing to it, for\none instant, Curtin saw Sweet Rocket transfigured. All that was strong\nand fair became a hundredfold stronger, fairer. All that deterred or\nroughened or overweighted or twisted or weakened vanished in warmth and\nlight. A sheath, or husk, or burr fell away. Interior power rousing\nitself, he saw the place in its seraph aspect, eternal in the heavens.\nDrew seemed to share the perception. He said, abruptly, \"There is\nsplendor!\"\n\nThey felt splendor; then it closed, like light withdrawn, warmth\nscreened away. There stood Sweet Rocket in its earthly estate. That is,\nthey thought it its old earthly estate. But by that much it had become\nendowed and was not the old earthly estate. They had checked their\nhorses. Curtin said, \"So it was always in poetry!\"\n\nThe younger man had a curious gesture. \"We gather all the household gear\ninto the long ship, and put forth!\"\n\nBut Curtin thought, \"In the Bible Noah gathers all the lifeseed into the\nArk and rides the waters into a new world.\"\n\nThey crossed the river and went up the little glistening beach and by\nthe cedars to the house. Sweet Rocket welcomed them home, the white folk\nand the colored folk and Tam. They found the household increased by two.\n\nLinden said, \"These are my cousins, Robert and Frances Dane, who come\nfor a little while each year to Sweet Rocket.\"\n\nThey were a married pair, a little above forty, perhaps, the mark of the\ncity upon them. They had quick and nervous bodies, thin, lined faces,\neyes well apart, burning deep and very steady, lips tending to\ncompression. They seemed tired--about them breathed something of\nsoldiers after a long day's march through hostile elements. This was\nbivouac, this was rest! At first they were too tired, there was almost\nresentment. \"O God, _how_ can you be still and ageless?\" This changed,\nlittle by little, at Sweet Rocket. The overtension disappeared. They\nwere left taut, collected, wary--workers worthy of praise in a dangerous\nworld.\n\nAt the supper table that evening Curtin made out more and more of their\nlife. They had come yesterday, a little before their set time, and Anna\nDarcy had the start of him in acquaintanceship. Intellectual radicals\ncertainly, members of some group in action, probably of more groups than\none, jack of all agitations and master of one. He could hear them\nspeaking, in halls, and under open sky, and he could see the face of the\nthrong to which they spoke. They would be speaking of Soviet Russia, of\nGuild Socialism, of Employer and Employed and the Course of Labor that\ndid never yet run smooth. There were causes, not so apparently economic,\nfor which also they would work. He heard them speaking for the Suffrage\nAmendment and likewise for the release of Conscientious Objectors. They\nbelonged here, they belonged there. The one, he was later told, was\nAssociate Editor of a Journal that was making the step from liberalism\nof the left to communism of the right. The woman was an admirable\nviolinist. He knew that they lived on little and gave much of that\nlittle away. They lived where it was possible to live in one big room\nand three small rooms. They had a son who was doing well at a school\nthey liked in the country. To look at them was to see how hard they\nworked, and to look into their eyes was to see the beacon that set them\nand kept them at work. They also had vision of Oneness.\n\nThough in talking Linden and Marget used in a much less marked degree\nthe terminology used by the newcomers, it seemed to present no\ndifficulties to them. They seemed to understand these guests, as they\nunderstood those others who had come to Sweet Rocket this October, to\nunderstand and to travel with them. Curtin thought: \"They sympathize. It\ndoes not occur to them to say, 'Do something else, take another road!'\"\nHe thought: \"That is their strength. They utterly share.\"\n\nFrances Dane had brought her violin to Sweet Rocket. Yesterday it had\nbeen laid in the parlor. Now, after supper, sitting by the fire in the\nold room, the violin spoke. It told of the player's passion for the\nworld, of the man who wrote that music's passion for the world, of the\npassion for the world of all makers of violins, and of the trees whose\nwood was used, of the passion for the world that is progression and\nrevolution, of the passion for the world that is the slower rate that is\ncalled withstanding progression and revolution, of the passion for the\nworld that is music, of the passion for the world yesterday, to-day, and\nforever, of the passion for the world that every heart of us knows!\n\n\n\n\nXIV\n\n\n\"It is something like this,\" said Linden. \"We are One Being with its\nmighty potencies. All that comes in comes to us, all that goes forth\ngoes from us. The points that take, ponder, sort, combine, alter to\nbetter liking; the mighty poles, the mighty afferent and efferent that\nflow from pole to pole, all that is movement, that is gravitation, that\nis cohesion, that is justice, that is harmony, that is love, are Ours.\nWe go as we have gone through time, from and toward--the from that is\nalso toward, the toward that is also from. But something beyond Time as\nwe have known it, beyond Space and Causation as we have known them,\nincreases upon us. Consciousness in some sort of the whole orb,\nawareness through and through, is momentously upon us to-day. In the end\nall desire is desire for that.\"\n\n\"We shall move then in four-space?\"\n\n\"If you choose to put it so. It is an allowable figure. All that present\nlanguage can devise is but a word, a figure, a symbol. What we mean is\nthe next advance in consciousness. When you have it you know it.\"\n\nThey were treading a slender path through October fields. Now they were\nin a great, climbing cornfield, all stacked corn like brown wigwams, and\nhere and there upon the brown and stubbly earth the orange of pumpkins.\nThe air folded them in violet and gold dust and faint frankincense. The\nhills had changed in color, so many leaves being shaken down. On days\nlike this the mountains were evidently entranced. It was Indian summer\nbefore the Indian summer time. \"A new consciousness?\" said Frances Dane,\nwalking with Curtin. \"A farther-on consciousness? It is in the air\nto-day!\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Wise men saying, 'We have seen His star in the east--' Oh, that's a\nfigure!\"\n\n\"There is some Reality, or thousands of us would not be hearkening, as\nwe are hearkening.... A new man, a new creature.... It's a consummation\ndevoutly to be desired!\"\n\nThe heaped corn stood around, the orange globes made constellations on\nthe earth. They were now well up the slope, at their feet Sweet Rocket\nand the little sliding river. All was reflected, all was veiled, but now\nand again eyes looked through the veil. Reaching the top of the hill\nthey found there a tall, solitary tree--a black gum--and built around it\na bench. It linked in Curtin's mind with the sycamore before the\noverseer's house.\n\nThey sat upon the bench and upon the ring of brown grass that ran\naround the tree. The view was fair and they rested in silence. It was\nAnna Darcy who noticed how much silence there was at Sweet\nRocket--silence that sang, that caressed. Moments went by, silence held\nthem, fair solitude, sense of one person here alone. Tam moved, coming\nnearer to Linden. The latter's hand dropped to Tam's head. Anna Darcy\nheard a low sigh of relief and burden lifted. It came, she thought, from\nFrances Dane, who sat near her upon the grass. But it might have come\nfrom more than Frances, from all.\n\nStillness and silence deepened. There grew a cathedral sense, a desert,\nan ocean sense. Into that entered a wealth of light and strength. A vast\nwave of freedom, an access of life, lifted them. They had life and they\nhad it more abundantly. They seemed to themselves to flash together, and\nof them all was made a god. For an instant there held an intense vision\nof this valley and of Sweet Rocket transfigured. Color and sound lived,\nevery movement was of joy. That broke away, vanished like the image of a\nrose into the image of a garden of ten thousand. Then that was gone into\nan image of all the earth, and then that into intense, sheer, mighty\nLiving, with small regard to old space and time, abounding, keen, a\nReality leaving old reality behind.\n\n\"When it is all done, when it is all known, all felt, when we are fully,\ncompletely ourself, when we remember our Godhood and live it, when we\ndo not look through storm for the lighthouse ray because we are Light,\nwhen we do not cry Father and Son because we are both and know it, when\nthere is glory of home, glory of health, glory of love--\"\n\nWho had spoken they did not know; it seemed their common voice. Perhaps\nit was Linden, but if so he spoke as their common voice. Into it came\nnot only the voice of the seven there, but the voice of old Mr.\nMorrowcombe and the Carters, and of Mrs. Cliff and Mimy and Zinia and\nMancy and the others; not just the voice of Sweet Rocket, but the voice\nof Alder, and of many an Alder, big and little, the voice of the city\nand the country, the land and the sea. \"To be well! Oh, rise within me,\ntruest Self, with healing in thy wings!\"\n\nThe great, golden feeling passed, leaving echoes, leaving memory. These\nfolk were separate again where they had been one, but not so separate.\nIn and out hovered that breath of transfiguration, a day of spring in\nlate winter, dying, but with a tongue to tell of a time when it would\nnot die. Where all had been vivid, singing, laughing, now was the wonted\ngentleness of this valley, a dreaminess shot with gold, taking and\ngiving, but doing it subtly, silently, only now and then bestowing\nevidence of a vast interpenetrative life, showing like the eyes through\nthe veil of this Indian summer day.\n\nThey went down through the corn and out by a gate, set in the gray and\nlichened rail fence, where grew sumac and farewell-summer and the\nfeathery traveler's-joy. They walked in meadows by the river, and at\nlast through the orchard, and so to the house. Mimy, in the kitchen, was\nsinging:\n\n\n     \"Oh, Jesus tell you once befo',\n     Babylon's fallin' to rise no mo'.\n     Oh, go in peace and sin no mo',\n     Babylon's fallin' to rise no mo'!\"\n\n\nIn the evening Frances played again to them, and the rich and sweet\nmusic filled the old room. The violin put by, they talked by the fire;\nthen Linden said, \"Read for a little while, Marget.\" She took up a\nvolume of Blake, and read. \"Read that letter to Butts.\" She read:\n\n\n     \"... Over sea, over land\n     My eyes did expand\n     Into regions of fire,\n     Remote from desire;\n     The light of the morning\n     Heaven's mountains adorning;\n     In particles bright,\n     The jewels of light\n     Distinct shone and clear.\n     Amazed and in fear\n     I each particle gazed,\n     Astonished, amazed;\n     For each was a Man\n     Human formed. Swift I ran,\n     For they beckoned to me,\n     Remote by the sea,\n     Saying: 'Each grain of sand,\n     Every stone on the land,\n     Each rock and each hill,\n     Each fountain and rill,\n     Each herb and each tree,\n     Mountain, hill, earth and sea,\n     Cloud, meteor and star,\n     Are men seen afar.'...\n     My eyes, more and more,\n     Like a sea without shore,\n     Continue expanding,\n     The heavens commanding;\n     Till the jewels of light,\n     Heavenly men beaming bright,\n     Appeared as One Man,\n     Who complacent began\n     My limbs to enfold\n     In his beams of bright gold;\n     Like dross purged away\n     All my mire and clay.\n     Soft consumed in delight,\n     In his bosom sun bright\n     I remained. Soft He smiled.\n     And I heard his voice mild,\n     Saying: 'This is my fold,\n     O thou ram horned with gold,\n     Who awakest from sleep\n     On the sides of the deep.'...\"\n\n\n\n\nXV\n\n\n\"Energy in larger units, affinities gathering strength and flowing\ntogether with power!\" said Curtin. \"Everyone has seen it and felt it in\nsome wise. When it is blamable, unguided, 'mob spirit'! When it is\npraised, '_esprit de corps_, mass heroism, mass enthusiasm,\nconflagration of genius, voice of the people, unity of spirit,' what\nnot! Most folk have a glimpse of the fact that there is an ocean of\ndesire, emotion, will, as well as rivers and rivulets.\"\n\nMarget came and sat with them on the steps of the little summer-house in\nthe flower garden. She wore a great check apron, denoting housekeeping\nand helping Zinia. She sat down beside them. \"What have you been doing,\nMarget?\"\n\n\"Once a week Zinia and I have a general straightening day. Then my\nmother and I have been visiting together.\"\n\n\"Truly, truly, Marget?\"\n\n\"Truly. But in a little wider order, my dear, a little wider order! The\norder above this order--into which this will melt. Mother and father,\nand Will and Edgar.\"\n\n\"Two of those are living and two are dead.\"\n\nMarget smiled. \"Ask Wordsworth!\"\n\n\"I see,\" said Anna Darcy.\n\n\"Very well. Do more than that. _Touch!_\"\n\nWith a trail of ivy in her hand she looked past the snapdragon and\nmarigold and larkspur, still blooming, so rich and mild had been this\nautumn. \"Then, as the rooms grew clean, I was with my mother in her\nbirthplace, two hundred miles from here. We were there as adults,\nmoving, loving, understanding with a grown mind, but there in her\nchildhood and girlhood as well, loving to contemplate all the past that\nwas us two! Mine as hers, hers as mine. Mind and feeling ran and caught\nup with her brothers and sisters, her parents and friends. Her parents\nremembered their parents and those remembered theirs. Home rose after\nhome, garden after garden, loved place after loved place.\" Her eyes were\nupon Drew, whose eyes were upon her. \"Do you not see that you can, that\nyou will, recover it all? All that you have been, and you have been very\nmuch; all that you are, and you are very much!\"\n\nMimy's singing floated to them from the kitchen:\n\n\n     \"There's a great camp meeting in the Promised Land,\n     Oh, pat yo' foot, chillun, don't you get weary!\n     There's a great camp meeting in the Promised Land.\"\n\n\n\"And then,\" said Marget, \"I was in Rome with Richard. The sun shone, the\nwind was in cypress and pine, the fountains made liquid sound. Father\nTiber glided, Saint Peter's stood. We went to the Sistine Chapel, and\nthen it was the Capitol within and without, and then the Appian Way and\nall the Campagna--all Rome--not to-day alone, but _all_ Rome. And then\nnot Rome, but starlight nights from the decks of ships. And then--\"\n\n\"This was actuality, while your hands swept and dusted the parlor\nthere?\"\n\n\"My body was in its duty and happy there. Yes. Actuality, but of another\norder, an order we are coming into. The order of intensified, guided,\n_realized_ memory and imagination.\"\n\n\"And of reason?\"\n\n\"And of reason. Profoundly so. It is reason that is guiding. Reason has\nits higher levels, grows comprehensive, knows longer sequences,\ncompleter syntheses. And from the decks of ships we were in the desert\nwatching the stars, shepherds on the hills and shepherds on the plains,\nshepherds and villagers and wanderers of far days!\" She lifted hand and\narm in a curious and commanding gesture. \"Watching the skies above Queen\nRain and King Wind! In desert and plain and upon hills and on seas,\nthousands and thousands of us strewn in time!\"\n\nFor an appreciable moment, to some degree, those listening to her became\naware of, made, as it were, junction with their own far wandering, far\nwondering, savage and barbarian self. It was evident that Drew made\njunction. They touched the mind struggling there, and the lifted gaze.\nThe sense was one of enormous, calm pervasion. They entered into, they\naided, their own early man, where he marked the heavens, and around them\nwas the wistfulness of early lands.\n\nMarget spoke on. \"Then while I worked we were building pyramids and\nmountains of the god. We were watching and watching, patterning and\nnaming, comparing, all the skies, the moon, and the planets and the\ntimes of the sun, and the white path through the heavens and the great\nnamed princes--everywhere, swarthy folk and pale folk! Now we were many\nand many. Then in us rose the Devoted, the Searchers of the skies,\nseeking from city roofs and temple roofs knowledge of the Whole for the\nWhole.\"\n\nTheir interior self opened its wings and used its eyes. As space\nexpanded, so did time. They were there in the October sunshine, on the\nsummer-house steps, but likewise they attended, and in some vast,\nliberated way they were that collective effort, that process. They might\ncarry the method over into all processes. There swam across the mind\nother words--\"commerce\"--\"government\"--\"family\"--many and many a word.\n\nMarget's voice went on. \"Now one has made a telescope. Our theories\nchange; we stand on dead theories and study on. Thousands of us\nstudying, thousands building knowledge, learning vision! We gaze, we\nwatch, we turn to desks and write and figure, we reason, we divine, we\nbetter our instruments, we gather results and make fortunate guesses, we\nhearken to intuition. We stand on a mossy stone in space and study the\nPromised Land, the universe that is ours, the ever perpetuating, the\never bettering! Time widens. Here are mountain summits and the\nobservatories of this day, and the clockwork and the pierced dome, and\nthe great eye that we have made, and the photograph. Mind sits at the\nknee of Great Mind and learns its alphabet. And all the thousands that\nwere and are and will be are one Astronomer, and it is I, still working\nto know!\" She ceased to speak, and sat wrapped in the golden light.\n\nSaid Robert Dane: \"We follow where you step. You make us follow you.\"\n\n\"I do not make you. You walk with me because you can walk. We walk. It\nis your Self as it is mine.\"\n\n\"We move and we feel, then, where you are. You live there more fully and\nkeenly than we, but we can breathe and feel and see. Go on! We would\nhave your life, as you have ours.\"\n\n\"Then, after the stars, while I wound the clocks, I walked into the\nminute. Again thousands of us working and watching, noting,\ndivining--thousands and thousands, years past and to-day and to-morrow!\nAnd one devises the microscope. All the laboratories!... Into the cell,\ninto the atom, the infinite dance of relativities and small collections!\nAnd the intensed, pointed endeavor, using perception as fine as the\nmillionth part of a hair--we knowing, marking, understanding ourself\nthere, where we are moving clouds! We working there, patient, patient,\nthe god working! The great and the small. We who forever remember and\nmake richer ourself. We the I-- And then I was again with my dead, who\nare just as much and just as little dead as I myself! And then I came\nout into the garden.\"\n\nThey sat on the summer-house steps, and the marigolds glowed around\nthem. She spoke again. \"Here and there, throughout the past, and often\nnow I think in our own day, a man or woman lays hold upon faculties that\nsome day all will lay hold upon. _And greater things than these._\nForerunners, pioneers! Regard this late flood of books describing\ncommunion with the dead and giving detail of the life hereafter. What\nthey describe is the widening consciousness here and now! The increasing\nawareness. One does not wait for death. Richard and I would not have you\nthink that we are deep, deep, deep in that realm. Were it so nothing\ncould hide it. Were we or any full in the next order you would see the\nshining. We are not there, but we are in motion toward it, as are many\nto-day. The road thitherward has its great scenery and long, thrilling\nadventure! And you, too, all of you, too, are in motion toward it. In\nthis day of ours, each day of the sun, more and more are in motion.\"\n\nShe rose from the step. \"I have rested this body that we call Marget\nLand and now I shall put it again to work in the house we call Sweet\nRocket.\"\n\n\n\n\nXVI\n\n\nThat evening, after she had played to them, Frances fell to telling of a\ncrippled boy, almost a man, living in a poor flat in New York, the\nfather an overworked head clerk, the mother a strong, gadabout,\nwell-meaning person, more apt to reproach than to sustain. There was a\nsister, a stenographer, who meant to marry, if she could, some employer.\nThis nineteen-year-old boy had a passion for travel, who could rarely\ntravel as far as the street. At intervals, when his father had leisure\nto accompany him, he went to a movie. If the piece had scenery, country\nand ocean and strange cities, moving throngs and great buildings and\nplaces of which he had read, he was happy. He took the _Geographic_, and\ngot travel books from a library. He knew more of the earth's surface\nthan did many a \"traveled\" person. But it was hot in the city, in his\nlittle stuffy room, or it was cold in the city in houses that could\nnever buy coal in quantity. He had a good deal of pain, and his eyes got\nbigger and bigger.\n\nCurtin had claimed the small bedroom at the end of the upper hall. Drew\nslept in the dormer-windowed room above. Frances and Robert Dane\npossessed the large room opposite Marget's, next to Linden's. Here were\nfour windows and each narrow bed placed where it might look forth. This\nnight the Danes talked awhile, then addressed themselves to sleep.\nRobert slept, but Frances found that she was wakeful. Yet she had\ndefinitely turned from care and question of the day, from concern for\nher own work left in suspension, even from the face and incident of\nSweet Rocket. From her pillow she saw the stars as they rimmed and rose\nabove the mountains. At first she seemed to be over there, with the\nshadow below and the diamond above, but then to herself she left it all.\nThere seemed naught about her but cool space. She lay without fret at\nwakefulness, though she was intensely awake.\n\nShe became aware that, waking, she was becoming rested, refreshed, as\nthough she had profoundly slept. She was awake above the old waking. The\nold waking was dreaminess to this state. Vigor poured into her being,\nand all the past was passed. That is, it was passed in its heaviness and\nfriction, its strain and anxiety. All that seemed to drop away, like\ndross leaving gold. It was curious, her sense of gold color of all\nthings in a gold light of their own, not from without. She became\ndistinctly aware of influences. They were good. She acquiesced, \"Yes, I\nwill travel with you.\" Will consenting, her strength was added to those\nother strengths. In the plane where she now was flashed out\nco-operation.\n\nMarget--Richard! Certainly they were where she had been wont to call\n\"within her.\" But certainly she felt them, was aware of them, presently\nsaw them, as never had she done before in that \"within,\" though often in\nmemory, thought, and imagination she, like others, had been with Marget\nand Richard there \"within.\" She had used those words as a matter of\ncourse. Even then that \"within\" had, when you examined it, its own space\nand time, its own mechanics, warmth, color, and sound. That \"within\" and\nthis \"within\" were of a piece, but where that had been faintly real this\nwas vividly real. She had no doubt of its reality. It was so, but\nreality of another, of a farther on, order. Marget that afternoon had\ntalked of another order. It seemed that one might rise or deepen into\nit. She was consciously there now, though in the order below it she\nrested at Sweet Rocket. It was not the plane of tremendous power and\nillumination, but it was a state of developed powers. It was as far as\njust then she could go.\n\nThe boy Stuart--Stuart Black. How many a time had she wished that she\ncould give this boy travel! \"If I might take him and let him see!\" As he\nhad longed, as he had imagined himself traveling with Mr. and Mrs. Dane.\n\"If I could travel with you!\" And now to-night they had somehow caught\nand held to the ether and were seeing what they wished to see. The\ninfluence, the individuality that was Marget and Richard strongly aided.\n\nShe was in Rome with Marget and Richard and Stuart Black. She did not\nquestion them nor him, and the boy did not question. They were there,\nand it was sunny weather, and they were strong and happy. They stayed in\nno hotel, they depended on no cab nor car, they needed no food of the\nold sort. When they looked at one another they saw body, since where is\nstill multiplicity must still be body. There was something of old bodies\nin these bodies, but also there was difference, and all to the good. Old\ndefect had vanished. Stuart Black was no cripple; she herself had lost\nfatigue. There was translucence, a golden appearance, and where they\nwished to go they were. She wished for Robert, and immediately felt that\nin wishing she had said to the others, \"I wish.\" They strengthened her\nwish with theirs. Here, then, was Robert with them, though\nintermittently, not on the whole so strongly, but coming as he could\nanswer, sleeping there at Sweet Rocket. And now and then another joined\nthem, though somewhat dimly, and that was the boy's father, whom he\nloved and wished to include in his joy.\n\nThe body of Rome, too, was like and not like the old body of Rome. Rome\nhad a Self to match this Self of theirs. Spirit and body and mind and\nsoul, Rome understood itself better. There rose a Rome richer, purer;\nnothing of fair and wonderful lost, all such quality strengthened; the\nunfair, unwise, unstrong of old, everywhere tending to drop the prefix.\nYet to the new self Rome was herself, singing, enchanted, of the past\nand present and future.\n\nMarget and Richard, who seemed truly Marget-and-Richard, one word, had\nsaid, \"a week in Rome,\" and that was what seemed to pass. They saw as in\nold travel they had seen, they went about as in old travel they had gone\nabout, they enjoyed as in old times they had enjoyed, but with freedom\nand power and joy that left the old behind. All was vigor, heightened\nand transfiguring perception, and yet friendly, homelike, not solemn nor\nstilted, the boy here enjoying like a boy. Frances became aware of a\ncontrol, keeping experience to a vivid and fair finiteness, not\nsacrificing current form. That was for the boy's sake, perhaps for her\nand Robert also.\n\nAnd after Rome, Athens--an Athens, too, sublimed. And after Athens, for\nthe splendid richness of things and for the boy, the vast North, forest\nand plain, and an intense exhilaration of life that swept out upon the\ngreat sea and encircled the earth. They spent long, bright days in ships\nand at ports of call. Then they went to China, and India, and Egypt.\nThey crossed the desert of Sahara, and again in a great ship passed\nbetween the Pillars of Hercules. Followed ocean days, and that greater\nwill and awareness slowly diminishing, gently returning upon its still\nhabitual self. Diminishing, diminishing, slower, slower, a little\nmelancholy, but tranquil, with a subtle smile.... A sense of a giant\nwoman in stone rising from an islet in a harbor--a sense of a familiar\ncity in the year 1920--a sense of dreamy farewells, a quiet darkness and\nlapse....\n\nFrances turned herself in her bed at Sweet Rocket. Starlight flooding\nthe room dimly revealed walls and furniture. Across by the other window\nRobert lay sleeping. How much time had passed, or how little, or how\nwidely could you live in no time at all? Here was reality, but there,\ntoo, had been reality! It had been real, that companionship and that\ntravel. The memory of it was memory of reality. Mind had attended there\nnot less, but more than here. The whole compound self had achieved a\nunity and power. Achievement--ungrown wings--first flights! She thought:\n\"The possibilities! O life of life, our possibilities!\" Old warmth and\ndrowsiness took her. There was a kindly fatigue, as though she had\nwalked on a bright day to mountain top and back and now thrown herself\ndown for rest. She saw the stars through half-open eyes, then slept.\n\nThe sun was streaming in when she waked; Robert already up and\ndressing. She raised herself upon her arm. \"Good morning!\"\n\n\"Good morning!\"\n\nShe rubbed her eyes. \"There is a strange and happy feeling of 'there'\nbeing here!\"\n\nRobert said: \"That somehow hits it. I had the most vivid dream of long,\nsunny travel, with you and Marget and Richard and Stuart Black! It\nwasn't like a dream. I feel as if I were just off the ship--had all the\nmemories and a most tremendous refreshment! I could take down any wall\nthis morning!\"\n\n\"Why do you put it that way?\"\n\n\"I don't know. We have so walled ourselves in from wide doing--are so\nafraid of our own landscape!\" He stood by the window. \"I think I'll ask\nyou a question that never, never would occur to Mr. Gradgrind to ask! Do\nyou remember it, too? For instance, Athens and some dim, northern\nforest--and a lot of islands with palms? Do you remember music?\"\n\n\"Oh, it was all music--and I think that I'll play it all my life!\"\n\nDressed, they went down to the others, Zinia's bell ringing for coffee,\nomelet, honey, and cakes. Linden and Drew had eaten and gone to meet\nRoger Carter and William where the winter wood was being cut. Marget sat\nbehind the coffee urn. \"Good morning, Robert and Frances!\" Her face of a\nsubtle, moving beauty, more of look than of feature, did not turn upon\nthem with a \"Do you remember?\" It seemed to assume that they remembered.\nFrances thought, \"Certainly she remembers, and as much more strongly\nthan I as I remember more strongly than Robert!\" It was of a piece with\nall that they had talked of. \"At last, with all of us, talk passes to\naction.\" Frances Dane drank her coffee. All of them in the room seemed\nbound in a ribbon, Linden and Drew also, wherever they might be in the\nforest, and Stuart Black in that small, dark room in New York, and how\nmany others! She did not name them, but she knew they were many, in fact\nall. In a flash she saw how, to Marget and Richard, might appear not\nmany selves and binding ribbon, but One Self. To realize this was to\nrealize that for her, also, there was but One Self.\n\n\n\n\nXVII\n\n\nThree days after this Curtin and Anna Darcy, who often walked together,\nhaving gone to the pass of hemlock, cliff and tumbling water, turned in\nthe broken sunlight and shadow back to Sweet Rocket. The maples of the\nupper slopes had cast almost all their leaves, but the oaks stood yet in\ncarmine. Yesterday had fallen light rain. Earth lay moist, and soil and\nleaf and fern and moss sent out a haunting odor. The sun stood in\nScorpio. The drama of the year was on the homeward road. It saw ahead\nthe Archer and the Goat and the Water Bearer, the Fishes of the great\ndeep, and the Ram that, springing forth, should take once more the road,\nthe old road, the new road, the old-and-new road!\n\nNow Curtin and Anna Darcy spoke, and now they were silent. It was a\nblessed feature of this valley that none need be talkative in order to\nconvey, \"I am at home with you.\"\n\nHer visit was approaching its end. That was what people would say.\n\"Physical presence and metaphysical presence!\" said Curtin, answering\nher thought. \"Physical and above-physical--and the generations to come\nwill find the inclusive word.\"\n\n\"Oh, I shall be here still--or 'here' will be with me in the city--or it\nwill be both. At any rate, no desolate parting!\"\n\nThey passed from under hemlock and gray rock to beech trees and a\ndappled path. The small river calmed itself and began to flow through\ncultivated land. Gentian and farewell-summer made a purple fringe for\nthe way.\n\n\"In old romances one walked into an inn or house by the road--always\nsaying, 'It is by the road that goes on as it went before, and I\npresently again with it!' But never again as it was before, and never\nagain I as before! For just there befalls the adventure that sets one\nclimbing to a new road.\"\n\nSweet Rocket vale opened before them. Each time they looked it grew\nfairer, and that, they had begun to see, was because it was not\nseparated from anything.\n\nSaid Anna Darcy, presently: \"Do you know Morris's _Earthly Paradise_? Do\nyou remember the Story of Rhodope? I used to know almost all of it by\nheart. When Rhodope is born the countryman, her father, dreams, and he\nseems to himself to be standing with the mother, watching\n\n\n     \"... a little blossom fair to see.\"\n\n\nThen:--\n\n\n     \"The day seemed changed to cloudiness and rain,\n     And the sweet flower, whereof they were so fain,\n     Was grown a goodly sapling, and they gazed\n       Wondering thereat, but loved it nothing less.\n     But as they looked, a bright flame round it blazed,\n       And hid it for a space, and weariness\n       The souls of both the good folk did oppress,\n     And on the earth they lay down side by side,\n     And unto them it was as they had died.\n\n     \"Yet did they know that o'er them hung the tree\n       Grown mighty, thick-leaved, on each bough did hang\n     Crown, sword or ship, or temple fair to see;\n       And therewithal a great wind through it sang,\n       And trumpet blast there was; and armor rang\n     Amid that leafy world, and now and then\n     Strange songs were sung in tongues of outland men.\n\n\n\"It is something like that that I feel for any place--and perhaps now it\nwill be so for this and every place! It was such a blossom and now it is\nsuch a tree. All hangs therein, peoples and nations, things past and\nthings to come! When I go away I shall find it so in any place.\"\n\n\"That is what you will do--and I also. Everywhere that Tree, that Man,\nthat God!\"\n\nThe vale widened at the overseer's house. The sycamore by the river\nstretched in the sun its great arms of white and brown, and these and\nthe blue vault made a pattern. A dozen turkeys crossed the path in a\nstately, slow-stepping procession. Mary Carter was singing in the house,\nand little Roger singing after her. As they approached the tree and the\nbench around it other voices reached them; then one voice reading\naloud. They saw the two Danes seated there--Frances, reading a letter.\n\"So I _did_ travel with you and Mr. Dane. It was so wonderful--it is all\naround me now! I don't clearly remember little, sharp bits of it, but I\nremember the whole. It has shown me a lot of things. I don't any longer\nmind living. It's funny, but father, too--\"\n\nFrances looked up as Curtin and Anna stepped under the tree. Bright\ntears stood in her eyes. She shook them away and smiled at the two.\n\"It's a letter from the crippled boy I told you about--\"\n\nThe four walked back to Sweet Rocket House. \"Robert and I have but a\nweek longer. But this place tempers the wind of the whole year. It drops\nhoney into winter days.\"\n\nCurtin asked Robert Dane, \"Forth from here you go on with the work you\nare doing?\"\n\n\"Of course. That is a department of this. But I wish to work without\nbitterness or violence.\"\n\nThe day shone about them. Rain of the night had brought into late autumn\na sense of spring. Spring and autumn seemed to touch across shortened\nwinter. The air held a divine, sweet freshness. They were aware of new\nlife, and all objects of perception tossed back vigor and luster.\n\n\"The world renews--the world renews!\" sang the river.\n\nA little later Robert and Frances Dane at their window saw, coming up\nfrom the river, a somewhat worn automobile. Stopping before the porch\nthe driver and owner descended and mounted the steps. \"There's an old\ntype!\" said Robert. \"Tall and thin, black clothes and soft hat, low\ncollar and string tie, white hair, mustache and imperial--look, Frances,\nit's a picture! Once it was the horse, and he swung himself down--then\nthe carriage, and at the door he helped out the ladies. Now it's the\ncar. To-morrow he will descend from the airship--just like that!\"\n\nShe looked over his shoulder. \"It's old Major Hereward from Oakwood. He\nwas here four years ago, that time I came alone. He's all the past! But\nthat car's symbolic, too. He's all the past beginning to say, 'For all\nmy fighting I begin to find myself, with all I care for, here in the\npresent--perhaps also in the future!' He's beginning to think that it\nmay be so with the airship. There with all that he really, really cares\nfor! 'I always said that they couldn't get along without me, and now I\nbegin to see that neither can I get along without them!'\"\n\nMajor Hereward appeared at the dinner table. It seemed that he, too, was\na cousin of Linden's, on the other side from the Danes. His place was\nOakwood, twenty miles away. Old Major Linden and he had been boyhood\nfriends. He breathed knowledge of Sweet Rocket in ancient days. His\nmanner to Marget was delightful, though perhaps he still held in\ncomparison, in a \"this--that,\" Sweet Rocket House and the overseer's\nhouse. His manner to all was delightful--like old wine.\n\nRobert Dane pondered that, and also Frances's words of the morning. Like\nothers, he could speak as though the past, the present, and the future\nwere islands with nothingness between. But truly he knew it was not so,\nand he assumed that much self-knowledge in those to whom he spoke. Now\nhe had it, in a flash of vision, how the old wine and wheat, how the old\nstrength of man and woman, did go on. All within the whole flashed and\nchanged. But the whole held all. The tangential itself only went so far,\nthen returned, and was met and welcomed. _The prodigal son._ He saw that\ncontrary winds were not so contrary after all. \"In the whole, and in the\nwhole only, I am not contrary to him nor he to me. In the end one sail\nand one wind--and the sail due to arrive and the wind favorable.\"\n\nThat afternoon Major Hereward walked over the place; with him, Linden\nand Curtin. \"I came to talk to you about something, Richard. But we'll\nleave it till night. I can always pull things together better\nthen--after the day. Here's the oak Phil Linden and I planted the day we\nheard of First Manassas! He was eighteen and I was sixteen. The next\nyear we both went in.\"\n\nThey stood beneath the tree. Said Curtin, \"Much water has gone over the\nwheel since then!\"\n\nMajor Hereward nodded. \"Much! But Phil Linden and I seem to stand here\ntogether. Not just of the mind we were, but together! _And many a foe\ngrew to be a friend._\"\n\nThe bright day declined. The sun set in a coral sea, a crescent moon\nappeared, earth grew an amethyst, the stars came out. Brush was being\nburned and wood smoke clung in the air, and there was the multitudinous\nchirping, chirping in grass and bush of late autumn. It was almost\nNovember, and they built larger fires. The old parlor gleamed.\n\n\"It's a dear room, a dear, dear room!\" said Major Hereward. \"I don't\nbelieve any here can love these portraits as I do. Richard may look at\nthem often, but--\" He broke off. \"I forgot that he is blind! I'm always\nforgetting it! Well, he may see the reality of them.\"\n\nRichard entered, and a moment later Marget. \"It's a night of the gods!\nHow the fire leaps!\"\n\nThey sat around it, Anna Darcy and Curtin and Drew and the two Danes and\nMajor Hereward, Linden and Marget. Anna Darcy was saying: \"I went down\nto Mimy's before supper. The preacher is there for the night--Brother\nRobinson.\"\n\nLinden answered her. \"Yes. He will be here presently. He always comes\nto us for an hour or so. He's a fine fellow.\"\n\nRising, he fetched Frances's violin. \"What deep and dear pleasure you\ngive, Frances!\"\n\nShe played old music and new, into which the old glided, until there\nseemed neither old nor new, but a content very vast and rich. The wing\nof the music lifted them; music and flame blended. They sat in reverie,\nand the wealth of the world flowed, circularly flowed.\n\nWithout, in the night, a lantern passed the windows. \"There is Brother\nRobinson,\" said Marget. Richard went out--they heard his voice in the\nhall--then he returned with the negro preacher and Zinia. He said, \"Mr.\nRobinson--friends, all of us!\" The circle widened. The preacher sat down\nbetween Linden and Robert Dane, and Zinia sat between Marget and\nFrances. \"Play a little longer, Frances!\"\n\nThe music blended with the flame, the wealth of the world flowed,\nflowed, circularly flowed. The Rev. William Robinson sat, a gaunt, dark\nfigure, in long-preserved broadcloth, with a rugged, deep brown face.\nWhen he spoke his voice had unction--like the voices of most of his\npeople--unction, but not too much of it. By sheer indomitableness he had\ngained a fair education, and he was a good man and a wise one. In her\nblue dress Zinia sat beside Marget Land. She kept silence, but her poise\nwas like her poise in the dining room and pantry, or on the porch when\nMiss Darcy had taken her breakfasts there. The latter always thought of\nher standing beside the pillar, or in the clean, airy pantry, by the jar\nof flowers and the open _Pilgrim's Progress_, always heard her rich\nvoice, saying, \"I like that girl Mercy!\"\n\nIt seemed that Robert Dane had met Brother Robinson before this at Sweet\nRocket. When the violin was put by the two talked together a little, as\nfolk might talk who liked each other. Curtin, from his corner, watched\nwith interest Sweet Rocket in Virginia. A voice from somewhere went\nthrough his head: _Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision\nnor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ is\nall and in all_. He looked at Major Hereward, and the old man, who had\nstiffened at the \"Mr. Robinson\" and the seating in the circle about the\nfire, seemed now to rest at ease, in a brown study, as one who regards\nthe expanse of things.\n\nMiss Darcy spoke. \"At Mimy's this afternoon you had begun to tell me of\nthe building of your church and schoolhouse down the river. Then they\ncalled me and I had to go--\"\n\n\"Tell them now, brother,\" said Linden.\n\nBrother Robinson told, and what he told had humor and pathos and\nheroism. There passed, as upon a screen, the littles gathered that were\nmuch to spare, quaint efforts at money raising, labor at twilight and\ndawn given by laboring men, the women's extra work and their festivals.\nBrother Robinson was a born raconteur. Into the sheaf of his homely\nnarrative fell vast swaths of human effort and aspiration. \"And Brother\nLinden helped us, and old Mr. Morrowcombe gave us five dollars.\"\n\nA voice came from the corner of the hearth, from Major Hereward: \"I'd\nlike to help you, too, Brother Robinson! Put me down for ten dollars.\"\n\nThey left the material building of the schoolhouse and the church. Said\nBrother Robinson: \"I've got something else I want to tell you. I've had\nan Experience, and it's taken the heart out of my bosom and crumbled it\nbetween its fingers and put in a new one! I came to Sweet Rocket to tell\nit to you, Mr. Linden. But I don't see anyone here that I'd be afraid to\ntell it to.\"\n\n\"There isn't any such,\" said Linden. \"Tell it!\"\n\n\n\n\nXVIII\n\n\n\"I was going to preach,\" said Brother Robinson, \"at Piny Hill Church,\nthat's twelve miles from Old Lock, where I live. I started out Saturday\nafternoon to walk, counting on a lift or two on the road, and I got\nthem. I was going to sleep at Will Jones's, who works at the mill on\nPiny Creek. The first lift I got was from a wagon full of hay going to\nCherry Farm. That was two miles. Then I walked three miles. Then a Ford\ncame along and said, 'Hey, Brother Robinson, are you going as far as\nLlewellyn?' I said that I was, and farther, and the Ford took me to\nLlewellyn. That didn't leave but four miles to do, and that was nothing.\nSo I was a-walking, and the leaves hung red and yellow, and the evening\nwas powerful sweet! I went through the woods by the Thessaly place. I\nwas thinking as I was walking. And then, just like that, Mr. Linden,\nthinking with words stopped! My old body stopped, too. I just lowered it\nunder a cedar tree and left it there.\n\n\"But I myself went higher and wider. I was everywhere and all over! I\nwas in and through everything! They were just shapes in me. It was like\nbeing air, or like that inside air you told me about, called ether. You\ntold me about that, but when you told it I hadn't experienced, and so it\nwas just words. Now I have experienced. Everything was right here and\nnow, or there and then, it didn't matter a mite which!\n\n\"The first thing I felt was just infinite cleanness and coolness. It was\nme and it was not me. If it was me it was something vast in me that had\ngot the upper hand. There was a me, a self, like a tired, dirty child.\nTo that me the other was God. But God turning out to be me, too. I had\npreached about God for thirty years, but I never really tasted or\ntouched God till that day. It was cool and whole and pure, and bigger\nthan the sky. And it forgave all my sins, or it saw clean through them.\nIt saw a long way and all at once.... The tired and dirty me was\neverybody else, too. It was me and it was everybody, and we were healed\nby our God, and that was us, too, us, and more than we had ever dreamed\nof in that us! It healed with its might, and the lower part understood\nand went up.... I can't give you a description. It was awe and joy. The\nlittle body of William Robinson couldn't have held it, but something\nbigger than that held it. And then, just as light changes on the\nmountains here--when you are on top of Rock Mountain maybe, and see\neverything below you--and it's all there, but it's got another tone and\nyou feel it in a different way--just so that cool awe and greatness\nchanged a little. It was joy still, but now it was friendly and natural.\nIt was the whole earth looking like a garden, and all mine, all me, and\nin that me was all I had ever thought was you or him or her, and all\nthat I had ever said was it. The bird and the beast were there, the\ntrees and the grass and the air. And it was lovely; it was just love,\nand beauty!\" He brushed his hand across his eyes. \"I can't tell you\nabout that beauty. And we weren't dead; all was living. If you'll think\nof the very best moment you ever had, when you were deepest friends with\nyourself and found that it took in everybody, it might be something like\nthat a million times over. It was innocent and wise. And all the times\nthat I'd ever thought I was happy were just plain misery beside it! I\ncouldn't hold it, any more than a young robin can hold the flight he\nwill hold after a while. I reckon we're all fledglings! Back I flopped\ntoward William Robinson. Here was old Virginia, and the woods and the\nroad and the hills and the mountains, and Old Lock, and Piny Hill\nChurch. But just before I settled in I got for just a minute this very\ncountry and our daily life in the light and the glow and the music and\nthe wonder! All that was fair kept in and strengthened, and all that was\nunfair just melted out! I knew then that though we talk about it we\nhaven't begun to love our country. It went, too, into the world. 'For\nGod so loved the world.' ... Well, that vanished, too. I was back. I was\njust the colored preacher, William Robinson. I was back, but I could\nremember! I've touched what it's like to be God.\"\n\nHe ceased speaking, and sat bent toward the fire. A little of that\nluminousness of which he had told seemed to show through his flesh, a\ndark translucence. He said, under his breath, \"'Little children, love\none another!'\" and rested silent, in communion with the flame.\n\n\"'For all we are members one of another.' Feeling that,\" said Linden,\n\"is to feel as One. Then the One no longer counts as separate his\nmembers. He says I AM.\"\n\nStillness held in the old room. The fire gave it crimson and amber life\nand warmth. The canvases on the walls, the pictured men and women,\nseemed self-luminous. Major Hereward spoke abruptly: \"Where are the\ndead? Where are my brother Dick, my son Walter, my mother and father?\"\n\n\"They are here. Re-member yourself and you shall find them.\"\n\n\"Where is heaven?\"\n\n\"It is here, the moment you begin to perceive it.\"\n\n\"You mean that you perceive the dead, Richard?\"\n\n\"Yes. Do not you?\"\n\nThe old man stared. He drew a long breath. \"Never before did I think\nthat I did!\"\n\nRobert Dane spoke. \"You mean that as the Great Consciousness expands it\nbecomes aware of itself there, too? That that realm becomes open?\"\n\n\"Yes. Discovery there is within the grasp of our age. It is not so far\naway as many might think! As Power comes through. The 'dead' and the\n'living' do meet. They have met all the time. The general recognition\nand use of the fact is to be strengthened, developed.\"\n\n\"It is not the only recognition and use of Oneness impending!\"\n\n\"By no means! No. In every field there is ripening corn. How should it\nnot be so?\"\n\nMajor Hereward's voice came in again. \"'The spiritual sense of the\ndead.' I've heard that phrase. I didn't know what it meant. Do you mean\nthat when I seem to myself to move about in company with Dick, when\nthings come into my mind that he knew about or that we did together,\nwhen I seem, as I go on, to understand his character better and better,\nand to see life as he did, when he seems here with me or when we are\njust happy together in old places--that it's _true_? And Walter and my\nmother and father and Helen and others--oh, scores of others--they enter\nmy mind and heart just as though they came in at a door! Do you mean\nthat when I think of them suddenly and strongly, feel them as it were,\nthat _they_ are doing part of it, that there _is_ intercourse? Good\nLord! I thought it was only myself!\"\n\n\"I mean that,\" said Linden. \"It will grow to be more than that. A\nhigher, fuller thing than that.\"\n\nThe old man rose. Face and voice showed emotion. \"I've got what I came\nfor. God bless you, Richard, and God bless you, too, Brother Robinson!\nOh, we've been little! Marget, I'll say good night, my dear. Out of my\nlife goes fear and loneliness!\"\n\nBrother Robinson likewise, with Zinia, rose to say good night. \"I'll see\nyou in the morning,\" said Richard. \"I want to talk to you about the\nschool.\"\n\nThat night Curtin, also, increased his sense of life, life that included\nthose that were said to be dead. There had been no repetition of the\nhour when, lying in the room where now slept Robert and Frances Dane, he\nhad touched with an inward sense that brother who had fallen from the\naeroplane, who had been jostled out of the body, but who lived! Surely\nthe life was not quite that of the old life, though surely built from\nthat; certainly Curtin might not fully understand until he, too, slipped\nthe body. Yet there was life and living. He had not experienced that\nhour again, and he had tried doubting if he had ever experienced it. But\ndoubt did not prove to be a going proposition. Memory smiled it down.\nYet the experience had not been repeated, or rather what had come had\ndiffused itself in the wide awakening of these Sweet Rocket weeks. Nor\ndid its distinctive _klang_ return to-night. There was not the same\nwhite keenness. That which beamed about him now was more like that which\nMarget had spoken of on the summerhouse steps. Not one now, but many of\nhis dead; not the human only, but the flower and the tree, the bird and\nthe beast, the scene, the water, land and sky. \"The old and sweet is\nhere, but chosen, redeemed, gathered up, understood, become immortal!\nAnd we have had it all the time. It has been here all the time! Just as\nwe had electricity and did not know it.\"\n\nHe fell asleep, rocked by the waves of a sunny sea of love and home and\nkindred.\n\n\n\n\nXIX\n\n\nMajor Linden spent two days at Sweet Rocket, chiefly sitting upon the\nporch in the sunshine or walking about the place, sometimes in company,\nsometimes alone, but never, Curtin noticed, with an old man's look of\nloneliness, though he thought that at times before this Major Hereward\nwould have shown that loneliness. But now there was vigor in him, vigor\nand interest and life. \"If they are here, living for me as I for them,\ntalking to me and I talking to them--it is the strangest thing what life\ndoes when it comes!\" His laughter had a clear and happy ring. \"I had\nthought of all kinds of solutions! And here it is, the needle threaded,\nwhile I was still looking for it in the haystack!\" He stood beneath the\noak he had planted almost sixty years ago. \"Phil is here. Trying, wasn't\nit, Phil, when I said, 'Oh, fancy!' or, 'It's just Wilmot Hereward\ntalking to himself!'\"\n\nWhen he met Linden on the porch he said: \"Richard, if it's so with those\nfolk whom we so promptly insisted hadn't any reality in them, isn't it\nso all over? When I'm pondering Bob who's in England, or when I'm\nthinking of nothing in particular and in he walks into mind and\naffection--\"\n\n\"Yes. It is part of the same truth. It all rests on the oneness of\nBeing. That is why you must in some wise grasp that Oneness first. A\ntime will come where there will be no saying 'My brother Dick,' or 'Bob\nin England,' because they and Wilmot Hereward and all others will have\nadvanced beyond all such divisions. But on the road there you will meet\nmany a fair power!\"\n\nThe old man went the next morning back to Oakwood in his battered car.\nHe went alone and not alone, with a peaceful face.\n\nIn the afternoon Anna and Curtin, Drew and the two Danes, walked down\nthe river, in among the partly forested, partly grassy hills that here\nclosed the valley. Indian summer had now stolen over the land. The air\nhung smoky amethyst, and still as still! No motion was in the fallen\nleaves, the birds sailed stilly by, the stubble fields dreamed, the\nriver sang low. Wood smoke clung in the nostril. Turning, coming\nhomeward, the brick house and yellowed pillars stood pictured. They\npassed through the orchard and by a small cider mill. Zinia, on the back\nporch, poured for each out of an amber pitcher an amber glassful.\n\"_Was-hael!_\" said Drew, and lifted the glass. Curtin caught from memory\nthe answering phrase, \"_Drink-hael!_\" A shaft of wonder, like a gleam\nof light, touched them all with strange fingers. Something trembled in\nthe air. If it said aught it said, \"So Earth begins to _live_ Poetry!\"\nDrew set down the cup with a sharp, clear sound. \"Life, everlasting\nlife!\" he said. \"I see it now! We have always lived!\"\n\nAgain evening in the old parlor, the fire and music, Tam lying beside\nLinden, Marget seated by Anna Darcy. Robert Dane spoke. \"This finding\nourselves in all and all in us, this lifting the all into a mighty I,\nthis is it behind the slowly accelerating movements of the ages, behind\nall efforts for freedom, for knowledge, for interchange and intercourse,\nswifter and swifter, subtler and subtler intercourse--this is it?\"\n\n\"Yes. Behind a hundred shapes of dawn.\"\n\n\"Effort does not cease?\"\n\n\"No. But effort, too, is finer and far more powerful. You act now from\nwithin upon the within.\"\n\n\"To touch through and through that we are one! Hercules's labor isn't in\nit!\"\n\n\"Yet it is done and to be done. Find me if you can an individual to-day\nwho has not some dim perception of it, or who is not in some wise acting\ntoward it! Even the most unpromising--look and you will see! It is so\ntremendous, that finding, it runs through every fiber. We can cut out no\npattern, but we move from light to light, from love to love!\"\n\nIn her room that night, when she had put out the lamp, Anna Darcy,\nlying in bed, watched the firelight on wall and ceiling. A cricket\nchirped, she could hear the river. Her visit to Sweet Rocket was ending.\n\"Only it will never end; it is immortal within me!\"\n\nShe saw how all life interlocked, how shock to one was taken up by the\nwhole, how joy to one thrilled through all. \"What we call space is\nBeing; what we call time is our own Story, our colored, toned\nlastingness! Give and take, forever and forever, forever and forever!\nFind lovely things to give, and from the other side of us take lovely\nthings, lovelier and lovelier! Know thyself--know thyself--know Thyself.\n'If ye do it unto one, the least of these, ye do it unto Me.' 'And all\nwe made One.'\"\n\nThe walls of the room disappeared. Anna Darcy, a slight, worn, teaching\nwoman, sixty years old, vanished or altered. There was wide life, land\nand sea, deep life that did not talk in births and deaths, lofty life\nthat said, \"Better than this wave even, shall you know!\"\n\nIt was Strength, it was Peace, it was Wisdom and Balm.\n\nAcross the hall Robert Dane lay thinking. In his youth he had the\npassion of a Shelley for a regenerate world. Older, the vision dulled,\nand yet he worked on doggedly, heroically, one with thousands of others\nbreaking and making a road for the feet of Coming Man. He worked\nheroically, never sparing himself, a devoted life. Sometimes the gleam\nshone fair before him, oftener mists made it faint, sometimes he lost\nit. Then it shone again. He worked on. To-night, lying here at Sweet\nRocket, his youth came back, but higher, fuller, wiser! He saw what\nmight be done, what was doing. He saw the interrelated roads and the\ntravelers upon them, the hosts of travelers. A vision came to him in the\nnight. His body lay very still, but he himself saw clearly a great\nthing.\n\nThere was a City that was country also, and sea and land and sky, that\nwas a world, harmonious, great, not a dead thing, not unintellectual,\nbut living, living with a vast fervor and beauty and interest and\nknowledge, throwing out even, it might be, silver lines toward a world\nyet more light, more fervent, more living! But it was there, all that he\ncould now image of body and spirit, mind and soul's desire:\n\nHe saw like a pale film another city that was pale and sorrowful to\nthis. And he saw that city, as it were, send out itself, by rivers and\nseas and roads, thousands and thousands of paths, upon a journey to the\nother. There was hardly a point--truly he thought there was not any\npoint--that did not travel. So many living beings, so many ships or\nrafts, caravans or solitary travelers to that Desired Haven! All going,\nsome ahead, some behind, but all going. The pale and sorrowful city was\nmoving into that other, and brightening as it moved. That other was\ndrawing it, steadily, steadily! He felt it like a loadstone; he felt it\nlike a mother calling home.\n\nThe vision passed, but there was left Assurance. He lay still in the\nstarry night. The mind kept up an underhumming with words like\n\"reintegration,\" \"superconsciousness,\" but the spirit dealt only with\nthe bliss of a great coming to itself. He slept at last, and his sleep\nwas dreamless and profoundly renewing.\n\n\n\n\nXX\n\n\n\"It is the flowering land, it is the music land. You go to it through\nevery moment and incident and encounter of the day. You read, and it is\nbehind the words. You think, and it smiles through. It is the Higher Us\nthat resolves the discords and reaps the fields. Experience it once, and\nit is miracle and wonder; experience it twice, and you say, 'Columbus\nwas not the only discoverer!' Experience it thrice, and you work for it\nday and night! You yourself, drawing yourself out of the old man and the\nold house. Read 'The Chambered Nautilus.'\"\n\n\"It is religion--\"\n\n\"It always has been Religion.\"\n\n\"And the gloom and storm of our day?\"\n\n\"It is _not_ gloom, it is _not_ storm. It is the pains of growth. Feel\nthe epic and voyage that it is!... Every proper and general noun in all\ndictionaries now and to come is my name, as it is yours. Every verb is\nmy doing, as it is yours. The use of language, use and _dis_-use, is\nmine as it is yours--\"\n\nThey were walking in the orchard beneath the apple trees, whose leaves\nwere slow to fall. There had been, this morning, a heavy frost. The\ngarden flowers were going, the creeper over Mimy's house had shed its\nscarlet leaves, but held its dark-blue berries. The heavens hung a blue\ncrystal. The air had the cool of mountain water.\n\nIt was the day when Anna Darcy must leave Sweet Rocket. After dinner\nDaniel and the phaeton and Marget would take her to Alder to the\nnorth-going train. Now, with Marget, she went the round of the place,\nsaying good-by. They had been to Mimy's, and had talked to Mancy at the\nbarn. \"Come again!\" said Mancy. \"But you ain't really going, you know!\nSweet Rocket will hold you, and you'll hold Sweet Rocket.\"\n\nThey came by the kitchen. Mimy was singing:\n\n\n     \"Swing low, sweet chariot,\n     Coming for to carry me home--\"\n\n\n\"You gwine back inter the troubled world?\" said Mimy. \"They say hit's\nawful! But, Lord! there ain't any bars ter trouble! I've seen a lot.\"\n\nThey walked up the river to the overseer's house, where they were made\nwelcome by Mary Carter and small Roger, and by old Mr. Morrowcombe, who\nwas staying over from Sunday, which was yesterday. He said, much as\nMancy had said: \"I'm sorry you are going! But thar! You ain't going in\nthe old, harsh ways.\"\n\nMarget, sitting beside him on the step of the porch, rested her arm\nupon his knee. Her brown, slender hand touched his great horny one.\n\"Grandfather Morrowcombe!\" she said. He answered her: \"I see you as a\nnine-year-old, Marget, and I see you as a woman in Sweet Rocket Valley,\nand I see you as something that stands above child and woman. It isn't\nany more big than it is subtle-fine. It's puzzling to find words. But\nwhen I look at you and think of you I seem to hear the air stirring over\nthe whole world. All kinds of things that I had forgotten, and all kinds\nof things that I have read....\"\n\nShe and Anna sat for five minutes under the sycamore by the water.\nReturning then to Sweet Rocket, they walked in the garden that was\nmaking ready for winter. As it happened, Mrs. Cliff came this day down\nmountain to borrow some sugar. She sat on the steps of the back porch,\nin the violet light of November. \"Howdy!\" she said to Miss Darcy. \"I'm\nglad you stayed on. When I come here I want to stay on, too. But thar! I\ntake the memory of it up to my home. You wouldn't think how often thar\nI'm here, too!\"\n\nTo-day she had a braided rug to sell, and Marget bought it. Mrs. Cliff's\nlong, wrinkled hand put the money in her pocket. \"Times isn't betterin'\nany, Miss Marget.\"\n\nMarget laughed. \"Oh, the poor old times!\"\n\nIt startled Anna Darcy, too, so joyous and care-free and lilting was\nthe voice. Mrs. Cliff stared at her. The mountain woman's face was not\nwhat one would call a cheerful one. Whoever was behind it was caught in\na network of fine, anxious lines. Now these held for a perceptible\nmoment, then faded as though the twine were mist. That one immortally\nyouthful and insouciant looked forth as it had looked from Marget. Sun\ncame out over meadow, plain, and hill, and Mrs. Cliff laughed. \"I reckon\nyou're right, Miss Marget! You generally are. I reckon we've seen so\nmuch that we can afford to take it tranquil--which ain't to say that\nwe're either do-less or keerless!\"\n\nShe spoke to Anna. \"You remember my tellin' you about that feeling I\nhad? I 'ain't had it full again. But I've caught glimpses of it, maybe\nin the day, maybe in the night. I know the minute when anything like it\ncomes my way. When you've had a feeling like that all your life's set to\nfeeling it again.\"\n\nBut Marget had taken it joyously.\n\nWhen Mrs. Cliff had said good-by and gone mountainward the two, crossing\nthe pleasant porch, entered the house. They walked from room to room,\nAnna's consciousness gathering each. \"Any time you may feel me here!\"\n\n\"We shall feel you here all the time.\"\n\nThey stood in the study, against the broad mantelshelf. \"At first, when\nI thought of this room, I thought, 'Richard Linden's study.' But it is\nof and for and to both of you.\"\n\n\"Ah yes! To both.\"\n\nShe seemed to give forth light. Anna thought, \"Is it only the sun\nshining on her?\"\n\nLater, in her own room, all packing done, dressed for her journey, Anna\nwent and sat beside the window as she had sat the first evening at Sweet\nRocket. She still heard Mimy singing, she still saw the garden, though\nit was dreaming now of spring. \"I have been here only a month, but in it\nI have had years and years.\"\n\nThe quiet room filled with a sunny stillness, an eternal assurance.\nAgain, as on that first evening, the mountains were here and the wind of\nthe sea was here. Love and wisdom and power were here.\n\nThe boy Jim brought Daniel and the phaeton to the door below. Marget\ncame for her, and they went down, and through the hall to the porch, to\nfind there Linden and Curtin and Robert and Frances and Drew, and Zinia\nand Mimy, and Mancy and Tam.\n\nAcross the river, at the edge of the wood, Marget checked Daniel so that\nAnna might look back and see the house again, the house and the trees\nand the hills, and the holding arms of the mountains. \"But you are to\ncome again,\" said Marget. \"Never part, and come again!\"\n\n\"Yes, oh yes!\"\n\nThe wheels turned and went on upon the Alder road. They entered the\nforest, old forest, great trees that sloughed their leaves again and\nagain and again, through centuries past number, sloughed their leaves,\nsloughed their old bodies, made soil, and stood upon it and builded\nhigher. Behind and in and through every stem and leaf rose the\nsubjective forest, and behind and in and through the whole the ideal,\nthe spiritual forest, the divine forest. Around and onward went the\nwheels on the leafy road. Anna sat beside Marget. The two spoke little,\nhaving now no great need of words. The light came down between bare\nbranches. Far and near branch and blue air made a marvel of lacework.\nAgainst this pines and hemlocks stood like pyramids and pillars. Song\nand twitter of a month ago was not now. \"The birds go south--the birds\ngo south!\" said Marget. \"But there are enough left for winter company.\nThere is a bluebird on yonder bough!\"\n\nRound went the wheels, making hardly a sound. The forest hung still, so\nstill. For one moment, to Anna Darcy, it all went away. It was _maya_,\nillusion, the forest, Indian summer, this day of our Lord, the phaeton\nand Daniel, Sweet Rocket and Alder and New York, Marget Land and Anna\nDarcy. What was left was fullness of Being. Did it choose to analyze\nitself it might be into Power, Wisdom, and Bliss. The revealing flash\nwent as it came, ere one could say, It lightens! _Maya_ again, Marget\nLand and Anna Darcy, Daniel and the phaeton, the forest, Sweet Rocket\nand Alder and the train to be met. But each time the sheath thinned and\nthere was left stronger light.\n\nThe train came, the friends embraced. Anna Darcy looked from window at\nMarget and then at Alder, the fields and hills and rivers and mountains.\nThe train roared through a tunnel, and when it emerged the scenery was\nchanged. There were fields and mountains, but not these fields and\nmountains. \"And yet they run into those. There is no impassable wall nor\naching gulf. There are the finest gradations--\"\n\nMarget and Daniel and the phaeton went homeward along the Alder road.\n\n\n\n\nXXI\n\n\nNovember rains wrapped Sweet Rocket. November winds rocked and bent the\ntrees. The world was gray, or iron-gray, with rust-hued streakings.\nIndoors they built larger fires.\n\nIt was five days after Anna's departure. Unless the storm held him\nCurtin was going on the morrow. In January his profession would take him\nabroad, to the nearer East. He could not tell when he would be\nreturning.\n\n\"But Sweet Rocket goes with me!\"\n\n\"Just. As all the East and you flow here.\"\n\n\"What kind of a general world are we coming into, Linden? What kind of a\npolitical, social, economic world? I believe that, as to much of it,\nRobert and Frances are far seeing. In the large, those changes are upon\nus, and in the large they are for the better. They are built into the\nroad we are going. I agree, I welcome! But I would see more completely\nif I could.\"\n\nLinden, in the cane chair by the study window, seemed to pay attention\nto the storm. At last he spoke. \"I cannot see in detail. I think there\nwill be a great simplification. Power out of a thousand tortuous\nchannels mingling, running broad and deep! There are signs on every\nside. The old banks crumble. The great sea lifts other continents.\"\n\n\"I see everywhere how we are seeking.\"\n\n\"Yes. The seeker finds, the finder seeks on, seeks farther. The great\nages are ever the seekers.\"\n\n\"You would say it is a great age?\"\n\n\"Yes. A very great one. Who is not in some way aware of it? This\nfriction of opinion on the top is but the wildness of the outermost\nleaves as the strong wind blows.\"\n\n\"And wherever I go I shall find the seeking and the greatness?\"\n\n\"The world is One,\" said Linden.\n\nThe storm continued. Sweet Rocket had early supper. Zinia and Mimy, with\nraincoats and a huge umbrella, went by the swaying, chanting orchard to\ntheir own fireside, to Sarah and Julia and Jim and Just So. The Danes\nand Curtin and Drew, Linden and Marget, sat or moved about in the old\nSweet Rocket parlor. They might watch the storm from the windows, or\nthey might sit by the fire. The great wind blew through Sweet Rocket\nValley. They heard the stream rushing, and the trees had a voice, as\nthough they had taken foot out of ground and were now a herd. The rain\nwas driven against the panes, and the wind hurled dead leaves with the\nrain. Wall and roof and glass shut out the physical rain, but the\npsychical man cognized it far and near, rain since the world began. And\nthe fire also, and the warm room, and they in company listening to the\nstorm. The momentary outlines shifted. There fell a sense of having done\nthis times and times and times, a sense of hut and cave, so often, so\nlong, in so many lands, that there was a feel of eternity about it. Rain\nand the cave and the fire, and the inner man still busied with his\ndestiny! There was something that awed in the perception that ran from\none to another, that held them in a swift, shimmering band. \"How\nold--how old! How long have we done this?\"\n\nThe rhythm of the storm, the rhythm of the room, the rhythm of the fire,\npassed into a vast, still sense of ordered movement. \"Of old, and now,\nand to-morrow--everywhere and all time--until we return above time and\nplace, and division is healed.\"\n\nThey felt a lightness, a detachment. The spirit soared with the mind and\nmade it look.\n\n\"There is the natural man and there is the spiritual man. That last\nfinds himself in all selves, and all selves in him. There is the\nspiritual man, and there is the divine man who works with power. Both\nare words of inclusion. It is to leave the old small I for the spiritual\nI, and it is to transcend the last and enter that which is above. Then\nis left the shrunken pond for the ocean! Only we say it upside down. It\nis the ocean that overflows and drinks up the pond.\"\n\n\"When God enters life there will still be said I?\"\n\n\"Otherwise, still pond and ocean, still separation! Who shall lose his\nlife here shall find it. But never sink to thinking that it is what in\nthe past we have meant when we said I! When God enters how shall he not\nsay I? But it is the ocean now that speaks! The pond is gone.\"\n\nThey sat still, and the fire played and leaped.\n\nThrough the night the rain beat and the wind blew, but at dawn it\ncleared. There was wreckage about the world, but life laughed and took\nher wreckage and built with it anew. Valley, hills, and mountains\ngleamed like precious stones. Navies of clouds rode for a while, then\nmelted into the deep azure. The upper sea hung so calm and clear that\ndown through it to the earth bottom ran light that seemed intenser than\nthe light of every day.\n\nCurtin said good-by, and went. Marget and Linden drove him to Alder.\n\nThe river ran swollen, the road lay deep in leaves, few leaves now on\nthe trees. The trees stood still in vast ranks. They seemed to be\nholding something, to be turning it over in mind. There flashed across\nCurtin, \"Who lifts, all lifts.\"\n\n\"Yes!\" said Marget, beside him, as though he had spoken.\n\nIt was what he carried with him from this valley.\n\nLinden and Marget drove home through the wood. \"How still it is! Barring\nfoot and wheel on the wet leaves you would say there was no stir. We are\npassing pine trees. How fragrant!\"\n\n\"A bluebird is watching us from a maple. Now here is the great beech. It\nholds its leaves, though they are brown and curled upon themselves like\ncocoons. The ground underneath is clean and brown. A grapevine goes over\nand up with those young trees. There are yet bunches of grapes and they\nhang so still! There are brown loops for swings for all the forest\nchildren, whether they be Indians or dryads and fauns.\"\n\n\"I see them,\" said Linden, \"all the graceful, tawny forest children!\"\n\n\"Here is the oak glade with the grass yet green far down it, to where\nhangs the purple curtain. The outstanding great roots glisten, and the\nmoss holds the water drops. You see a long way. Yonder is tree trunk and\nstone, light and shadow, that looks like a hermit's cell. It is an alley\nfor the whole Middle Ages to come riding down--for a paladin to come\nriding down, the Red Cross Knight, or Guyon, or Galahad, or Parsifal--or\nit might be Robin Hood in Lincoln green!\"\n\n\"I see.\"\n\n\"Here are green brier and red dogwood berries, and witch-hazel with\ndull gold fingers. Can you hear the water?\"\n\n\"Yes. Three silver threads of it, like a lute!\"\n\n\"The day is a castle and a church, the day is a city and a star! Now we\npass the great rock and the two hemlocks, like cathedral spires. Here\nare the little oaks, and there is a guess of crimson about them yet. The\nbirch and the hickory and the tall oaks, and the tops are far and fine\nand melt into the sky--\"\n\nThey came down to the river, and crossed. \"The light washes the pillars,\nthe cedars are little earth clouds. The arch of the sky has none, it\nsprings clear blue. Music of home!\"\n\n\"Yes. Music of home!\"\n\nAfter supper, with Robert and Frances and Drew they watched the fire.\n\"Anna sends the city to us, and Curtin sends the rush of the train and\nthe flying scenery. As we send this place and this mood and this thought\nto the city and the train!\"\n\nThe violin bow drew across the strings. Frances played, and love and\nrelease filled the ancient room. The world entered into harmony.\n\nThe next day rose gray pearl. Linden and Drew went with the woodcutters.\nMarget sat at her typewriter in the study. Robert and Frances took a\nlong walk. Three days, and they, too, must go cityward. Now they walked\nby the Alder road, and at the great pine took the Rock Mountain trail.\n\nThe pearly light filled the forest like a water. All sound lay subdued.\nWhen a stone rolled underfoot it was not loudly; when a branch broke it\nwas with a slow, deliberate, musing voice. When they saw a wild thing,\nthe wild thing had no motion of flight, but pottered stilly on upon its\nbusiness of the time. \"We are far away! We have crossed to another land.\nIt is as though we died, and this is the quiet ground where we take our\nreckoning before we find another busy world. Oh, a busy world in each of\nus, and a quiet land!\"\n\nThey rested upon a bowlder half sunken in brown leaves. \"There is a\ntouch of eternity about this day.... Yet in five days how busy a world\nfor you and me!\"\n\n\"Yet I love that as I love this. How happy that we are so rich!\"\n\nThey sat still on the gray bowlder in the gray wood in the pearl-gray\nair. Minutes passed. A bird flew across the path, a gray squirrel ran up\nan oak. \"Something is coming down the trail.\"\n\nThe something proved to be a man on horseback. The intervening boughs,\nbranches, twigs, made him to be seen like a horseman behind a great\nwindow filled with small, leaded panes. He came close, and, seeing them,\ndrew rein. \"Good day!\"\n\n\"Good day!\"\n\n\"From Sweet Rocket?\"\n\n\"Yes, from Sweet Rocket.\"\n\n\"Do I speak to Mr. Linden? My name is Smith--Malcolm Smith from the\nReserve on Rock Mountain.\"\n\nRobert gave their names. Mr. Smith said: \"Have you ever seen a stiller\nday? It is one of the still days that set you on new action. I thought I\nwould ride over. I want to see Drew, and there is something else--\"\n\nAfter a minute or two he addressed himself again to the path. \"I'll go\non, as I have only this afternoon and to-night. I must get back to camp\nto-morrow.\" He made no doubt, it might be noticed, of the hospitality of\nSweet Rocket. \"I shall see you again?\"\n\n\"Yes. We shall turn presently.\"\n\nThey watched him along the trail until, as the figure had entered, so it\nvanished from the leaded window. They sat awhile longer in the\ngray-pearl world, and then they rose and followed the horseman down to\nSweet Rocket.\n\n\n\n\nXXII\n\n\nMalcolm Smith and Drew had their talk, walking by the river in the\nstill, November dusk. Drew said: \"I was glad to be on Rock Mountain, and\nafter a few months, if you will have me, I am going there again. But I\nam glad that I came here. I am growing to see that it is not here nor\nthere, camp on mountain or Sweet Rocket, that a man goes to find\nhimself. But yet there are helpers.... There's a principle of induction,\ndon't you think, sir? Those who find start a wave of finding. The wave\ncaught them, too. There isn't any first or last.\"\n\nTurning, they saw fire gleaming through the window. \"He says that we\n(and when he says that he means the whole of us. When he says 'I' it is\nthe other word for 'we.' It is the Whole of the many) are growing fast\nto-day. Sometimes he says Evolving Life, sometimes the Principle of\nIntegration, or the Great Synthesis. He may say Humanity Awake, or Going\nHome, or Realizing Deity, or Liberation in God, or Becoming Real, or\nFulfilling Want, or Recollection, or Union, or the Eternal, Including\n_SELF_, or Love at Last. He seems to think that almost any phrase will\nanswer if you know the thing.\"\n\nZinia's bell rang from the porch behind them. They went in to the\npleasant supper table, set with wholesome, delicate bread, and fragrant\ncoffee, cottage cheese, and baked apples and cream. The table talk was\nmerry this evening, after the dreamy day. Supper over, all walked out to\nsee the night, and found it clearing, with river banks of clouds and\nstars between like lit craft sailing, sailing. The air breathed\nexquisitely mild, warm to-night as early October. \"Let us sit by the\nriver and watch awhile.\" They took capes and coats and went down to\nwhere, before the cedars, was placed a long bench. Sitting here, though\nno entire constellation was visible, yet they pieced out the figures.\n\nThey sat in silence, watching the ships of the universe. At last said\nthe visitor: \"I have been thinking a good deal about you down here by\nthis river, and about Drew, and of two or three things Mr. Curtin said\nwhen he was at camp. So I came down. I have been thinking a good deal.\nLook! there is Pleiades, a magic island in a sea. I have had my inklings\nof the way currents arise in this world. Let's grant that it is a\nuniverse of thought and will and feeling, and that, from ignoring as\nmuch as we could that fact, and then from wondering about it, and then\nfrom in some wise earning it, we begin to be it--\"\n\n\"Just,\" said Linden. \"Well?\"\n\nThe other continued, \"Once, when I was recovering from an illness, I\nfound or was found by--and I don't suppose the expressions matter--\"\n\n\"No. They are distinctions without a difference.\"\n\n\"Once, then, I walked into a state of consciousness that transcended the\nlevel that I had thought was the true level. I was there for it might be\nfive seconds of our time. But though again in mass we parted, there\nremained an influence--like one of those rivers up there. The world has\nnever since been just the old world. But the main experience did not\nrepeat itself, though there have been times when I have met the shadows\nof it. Until the other night. But I will come to that presently. Though\nit was not repeated I have known ever since that there is a\nconsciousness as much above our usual one as the latter is above the\nape's. A consciousness that it is profoundly desirable to reach. Before\nthat moment I was like almost any European of say 1491. During it--for\nthat one minute--I was in America. After it, though I returned to\nEurope, I could say, there is America!\"\n\n\"Yes. Just.\"\n\n\"But I had fallen out of America and I could never get quite back,\nthough I often tried. And then the other night--\"\n\nHe broke off, and seemed to ponder the sky. \"I rode over from Rock\nMountain because the other night I had, not that first experience again,\nbut one that was again in America--New America. From what I have heard I\nfelt certain that this place knows these experiences. I wanted to\ncompare, and be confirmed. So I rode over.\" He was speaking to Linden.\n\"I had meant to ask to talk with you alone, but I see that there is\nnothing here that jars or makes it difficult. It's a good place, this\nbench, with the river sounding, and the clouds and the stars.\"\n\n\"There is just ourself here.\"\n\n\"I was coming down from the top of Rock. I had had a still twenty\nminutes there, watching the sunset. I had thought of nothing in\nparticular, only gathered rest. I was halfway down when this torrent\nrose and overtook me. I stood still. I remember a pine tree, and beyond\nthat a great wash of sky. But I--I was in the torrent that now seemed\nOcean, and now seemed Air, and now was Fire. The combination called\nMalcolm Smith was gone into that, like rain into sea or a candle flame\ninto sun. And yet--and that was the miracle of it--there was an I, only\nit was oceanic, only it was the sun! It held in a sheaf, it sucked out\npith and marrow of all the small 'me's' in creation, and soared and\nrang, an All-Person. But what are words? If I could give you that\nsense--\"\n\n\"Perhaps you do. As long ago we developed gesture in order faintly to\nunderstand and be at one, and then developed speech, so now the Will\nwithin is propelling and the Will within is receiving these mightier\nwaves. I feel what you would give. Go on.\"\n\n\"If I could find the words! I passed into a subtle consciousness that\nwent everywhere, and all our old time became space to it. There was\nmotion, as of all the winds of the world brought into one current--only\nnor air nor fire is swift enough, vast enough! And yet you would say\n'Quietude.' ... All the movements of our world penetrated, understood,\nfurthered--all the honey fields, all the bees, all the hives--and\nValhalla and Olympus and Paradise, where the honey is eaten! And it is\nall a figure, but what will you have! I can but stammer. I have seen\nhome.\"\n\nHe rose, and walked up and down beneath the cedars. \"I talk about it so\ncalmly, and yet all that I ever believed or hoped, all that I ever\nthought or felt or did, is babyhood to that! I am patient, and that\nastonishes me; I who am back at Malcolm Smith!\"\n\n\"You are not wholly back. The rising pendulum swings, but now a great\npart of you is above the old, lower range. And at the last not\nanticipation, but reality, not light of home, but home!\"\n\nThe river sounded, the stars shone in the upper rivers with the cloud\nbanks. The clouds made rivers, but, the clouds dissolved, there were no\nmore rivers, but Ocean, but Space, but the Eternal Fire!\n\n\"It is all I have to tell,\" said Smith. \"It sank with long\nreverberations, and there was the pine tree, and the camp below, and\nMalcolm Smith.\"\n\nThey sat in silence. At last, said Linden: \"America is a term of\nvastness. They who adventured there and arrived found all manner of\nexperience, but all in America. They sailed in many crafts--and yet in\nthe end all were as one ship, all being for America. They landed north\nor south, in varying climes; they stayed by the sea or went toward the\nmountains, but all in America. They met with great variety in adventure,\nthe land being so vast and so rich in might, but all was American\nadventure.... So it is, I hold, with the New America, the New World now\nlighting the horizon. It resounds and flames thus to this one, and thus\nto the other one. But it resounds and flames. The Great Symphony takes\nin all the music. Feel it as you can, know it as you can! In proportion\nas you draw the breath of the All, comparisons become odious. You have\naccess as I have access. Enter by the door of your inner nature!\"\n\n\"A new man is born?\"\n\n\"Yes. Everywhere. Including and transcending men. Men fading into Man,\nmen left behind. Man moving toward his full Consciousness. What in\nprophecy we have called Christ.\"\n\nThey watched the clouds and the stars, and they saw, each of them, a\nnew Country that was fair and strong and keen and glowing....\n\nAt last they rose and went back to the house, and by the fire listened\nto the violin.\n\n\n\n\nXXIII\n\n\nDay rose in sapphire, tranquil, pure, still and sunny, white smoke going\nstraight up from morning fires. Malcolm Smith, mounting his horse,\nturned again to his mountain. Sweet Rocket bade him good-by, but Linden\nand Marget said, \"All who come together in this consciousness part no\nmore!\"\n\n\"I believe that.\"\n\nHe rode away, and in the afternoon was back with his work. But the inner\neye might view, between mountain and Sweet Rocket, a shimmering,\nethereal highway, a nerve, as it were, thrown from space to space,\njoining and making one.\n\nRobert and Frances and Marget, on this last day of the Danes' visit,\nwalked to the hill with the solitary tree atop. The sapphire day\ncontinued, quiet and sunny, the air being of an extreme fineness charged\nwith light. Far and near the mountains made a cup of amethyst. Fields\nand hillsides at hand were a lighted umber. They saw long rows of\nstacked corn, and in the meadows hayricks. Beyond the orchard they made\nout the steep roof of the great barn. There were corn and wheat for the\nmill, there were stored apples. In the wood below them they heard the\nwoodman's ax.\n\n\"I can see,\" said Robert Dane, \"I can see that Humanity is mastering its\nown organism. I see that it is lifting toward Unitary Consciousness.\nHere, now, in this present year as in past years, each year now with\ngreater momentum. Reaction and recoil, of course--but back again, and\nfarther! Everywhere shows the swift inter-approach. All over, all\nthrough, America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and the islands of\nthe sea. The revolutions of our day are woven of it. We are leaving\nseparation and partialness, fortress and dungeon.\"\n\n\"Yes. All our 'movements' rush into the one. All our vortices approach\nwith a fearful joy the Great Vortex. The Correlation will be\nestablished, the Summation made. We go to join and strengthen the\nAncient Heavens. The Ancient of Days draws and redeems and fuses and\nOnes another layer of his being. Faster and faster our age begins to see\nwhat is happening. The language men use to describe it does not so much\nmatter. The poet names it Life, Beauty, and Joy; the scientific man says\nKnowledge and Use; the philosopher says Energy and Substance in\nconscious union; the Hindu says the _SELF_; our peoples say God.... All\none.\"\n\nThey came to the hilltop and stood to look about them. \"There is such\njoy!\" went on Marget. \"Pain and pleasure outgrown, now blooms the joy!\n'Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.' The\nbeing found and the finding. One after another lays hand upon that\nworld, clings, braces himself, draws himself up and over and finds the\nmanna lying around him. Joy, wisdom and power! and the taste of them but\nbegun. Possession still to be possessed--forever and forever!\"\n\nThey sat beneath the tree and all around sprang the valley and the\nmountains and Virginia and the world. \"Alive--deathlessly alive! The\nvalley and the mountains, Virginia and the world!\"\n\nFrances spoke. \"I know a woman who speaks in the terms of the East. Is\nit the Principle of Sensibility--the Buddhic plane?\"\n\n\"Yes. Atma is yet to arrive. What we see is the light before his face.\nWhen he fully comes that is the Day of the Lord. What all work has been\ntoward, all toil, all hoping. As Atma rises in us--as Christ rises in\nus--comes newer and richer life, fuller and fuller, inner powers and\nprincipalities, thrones and dominions, and their objective garments. But\nwhen WE ARE THE LORD--I know not! There is Light there that is as\ndarkness to us yet.\"\n\nThe exquisite valley heightened its values throughout, became richer.\nThe mountains around hung in the eye like the Delectable Mountains.\n\n\"If one grows, all things and all places grow with that one?\"\n\n\"Inevitably so! The wealth is for all.\"\n\n\"The new consciousness that we feel is a pale film to what will be?\"\n\n\"Yes. A borderland, the islands fringing the New World. But such as it\nis it wipes out the old, blind, scattered, little consciousnesses. To\nwhat shall be felt and shall be known it is the one leaf of green, it is\nthe olive leaf that the dove brings. But before us are enormous growth,\nstrange and fair adventure, work, joy, love--\"\n\nThrough the air they felt the ether, through the sunlight they felt the\nGreat Sun. Light and warmth came to them from the Sun behind the sun. It\ntouched, it passed, but each time it came they strengthened.\n\nThat night by the fire they sat in silence that was full and rich and\nunderstanding. \"To-morrow night, here at Sweet Rocket, just Richard and\nMarget and Drew--and all the rest of us!\"\n\nThe next day dawned, and still it was Indian summer. Robert and Frances\nwent from place to place, as had gone Curtin and Anna Darcy, saying\nfarewell. \"We wish and hope to bring our bodies here again next year.\nBut if that is not done, still, still, still we shall have Sweet\nRocket!\"\n\n\"You have access now to all places and times and peoples. You are\nthrough the gate, you two! All your good dreams now will come true. If\nnot in this way then in that. Every dream that does no injury to the\nWhole.\"\n\nRichard and Marget, Daniel and the phaeton, took them to Alder. The\nstill forest was clothed to-day in purple. For much of the way silence\nheld within the phaeton as without. But it was the silence that Anna\nDarcy had early noted. It was rhythmic, it was thronged, it was fused\nand made into the richest solitude.\n\n\n     \"But such a tide as moving seems asleep,\n       Too full for sound or foam,\n     When that which drew from out the boundless deep\n       Turns again home.\"\n\n\nNow and then they spoke. Once Robert said, abruptly, \"And all the effort\nof the world is to stand and grow in grace?\"\n\n\"Just. All the effort. Everywhere! Whether it be stone or plant or\nanimal or man or over-man. And where the Emerging Character is so mighty\nnone is to despise his brother's path or rate of speed. Once it was his\nown. Everything has been and is our own. Work! but who hates or despises\nhalts and weakens the effort.\"\n\n\"But work!\"\n\n\"Yes, steadily. In all realms. 'What thy hand findeth to do, do with thy\nmight.' What thy judgment findeth to do. The other name of Lubber Land\nwas Good Enough.\"\n\nThey came to Alder with its churches and sere gardens lying in violet\nlight. Here was the little station--in a few moments they heard the\ntrain.\n\n\"Good-by!\"\n\n\"Good-by!\"\n\nFrances and Robert looked through the car window. The platform had men,\nwomen, and children upon it. Two or three arriving travelers found\nfriends to meet them; there were the workers about the station and the\nloafers, with country folk and village folk brought by some business,\nand in the throng Richard Linden and Marget Land. Just the usual village\nstation. Then all of it sprang into light, into music, into\nsignificance, into importance. The train moved. There was a cry of\n\"Good-by! Come again!\" All seemed to enter into it, to cry it out.\n\nThe houses went by, the village street, the hills, the river, and all,\nall, and this train upon which they found themselves had color and music\nand significance and importance.\n\n\"The I that says of every living thing, 'It is I,' says it and means it\nand understands it and proceeds to live from it, says it of the total\nobjective, and so takes the objective up into the Subject--that I is\nover the verge of the old into the New--\"\n\nThe hills went by, the river gleamed.\n\nMarget and Richard traveled homeward through the purple forest. To-day\nthey hardly used the outer voice. The blind man sat with a smile upon\nhis lips as though he saw, with such a face as could only have come from\nmuch seeing. The woman, too, sat still, the body relaxed, the spirit\ngleaming in the soul. Daniel drew them through the forest; nor did\nDaniel, either, lack some sense of growth, dim belief in a higher world,\ndim will to reach it. Below Daniel the forest felt that, and below the\nforest the rock. The utter stream of pilgrims--\n\n\nTHE END","title":"Sweet Rocket","tradition":"ritual-magic","translated_text":null,"word_count":43111}