Part 5

Mimy's house rose beside the orchard, a pretty cottage with a dooryard filled with cockscomb and larkspur and marigold. At the gate grew a bush of myrrh, and the porch had over it a gourd vine. Just So sat in the middle of the path, playing with red and blue blocks. At the sound of voices Susan appeared, a clear-brown, neat, and active woman. "Just So, don't you clutter up the path like that! Come this-a-way, Miss Marget!" She took them across the porch, where the gourd vine made so pleasant a pattern, into a little parlor, bright as a pin. They sat and talked, and then Susan said that she would bring Julia, and, leaving the room, reappeared, pushing a wheeled chair. In this sat Julia, who was almost a middle-aged woman, and had a slender, pleasing face, and was only a little lame in her mind.

Marget emptied the basket. "Oh, my!" said Julia, and again, "Oh, my!" With eager fingers she spread the bits of silk and velvet and satin and striped or flowered ribbon. "Flower-garden pieces! It will be a flower-garden quilt. I'll make a quilt like they have in heaven!"

"Shoo! Julia!" exclaimed Susan. "They don't have quilts in heaven. It ain't cold there!"

Julia's face took on an imploring, almost a frightened look. She turned to Marget. "If they don't have quilts I won't have anything to do!"

With all that she knew of Marget Land, Miss Darcy could but wonder at the luminous sweetness, the depth and the play with which Marget, seated by Julia, dealt with the latter's fears. All the bright pieces were spread over the knees of both. "In heaven you'll put rose and blue together, and this violet and green. And look how these flowered pieces go! Your quilts are for warmth and beauty, Julia, aren't they? Shut your eyes and see warmth and beauty, warmth and beauty!" She put her hand over the lame woman's hand. The latter's plaintive look changed, her eyes brightened, and she nodded her head. "Yes! To keep us warm; and they are lovely, like the flowers! Warm like the sun is!"

"Yes. Warmth and beauty--warmth and beauty! So in heaven you're to keep on with warmth and beauty. And you'll learn, too, how well wisdom goes with them. Their quilts aren't just like these quilts, but you won't care for that. You'll be putting together and giving beautiful, bright things!"

Julia caressed a length of flowered ribbon. "That's what I think. They're warm and beautiful, warm and beautiful! And every one I give a quilt to says, 'I'm so glad I've got one!'"

"When you put that piece in, think 'warm and beautiful' for Mrs. Gray. She gave it to you. And Miss Lucy Allen gave the beautiful blue piece."

When they had quitted the porch with the gourd vine, and the dooryard, and the gate by the myrrh bush, and were under the orchard trees, Marget said: "She's been making quilts for twenty years. Perhaps two a year, and into each one goes I do not know what dim thinking and feeling, warmth and beauty, for such and such a one!"

It was Miss Darcy's habit to rest a little in her own room after dinner. In the midafternoon, coming downstairs, she found the door of Linden's study open. Linden turned his head, hearing her step. "Come in! Here are Marget and Curtin."

It was the first time she had entered this room. Her eyes took it in as she crossed the threshold, and found it a simple, grave place, as simple and grave and charged with its own aroma and spirit as a pine wood. It spread a large room, with plenty of space for pacing up and down. The bookcases, the desk, the chairs, an old, long cane and wood sofa were for use. The plain walls held a few prints. In one of the deep windows stood a large globe.

Curtin put Miss Darcy a chair. "I've just come in," he said. There had grown between them, beginning the morning upon which she found him fishing, or not fishing, in the gorge that closed the valley, a quiet liking and friendship, with a sense, perhaps, of standing even in the inner world. "Linden was saying--"

Marget sat before the desk not far from the fireplace, in which burned a light flame. She had been writing, and Linden dictating from his big cane chair by the long window. She had turned from the desk and he had moved his chair to where he sat, half in firelight, half in tawny sunlight. To Anna Darcy's sense the room had strongly that luminousness which in some sort she found in the whole of Sweet Rocket, in valleys, hills, house, and folk. The whole made a sun-filled cluster that, acting as a cluster, redoubled so all effects. But undoubtedly Linden and Marget were the center of the cluster.

"I am glad you have come in," said Curtin. "Linden was speaking of their life here--"

"I told you, you remember, driving through the woods, of our outer life," Marget said. "Sitting here before the fire we had begun to talk of that far larger life within the outer."

Linden spoke. "Martin asked me, and I was telling him as clearly as I could. It is not wholly clear, you must not think, to Marget and me, our progression and our life. 'Man is a bridge,' says Nietzsche. A living bridge that crosses from himself to himself. Always the provisional, the halfway, gone afar even while we say, 'Here am I!' How to name a thing that travels so fast! The life of Marget and me changes and grows, as does yours and yours. The history of one--the history of all. There is at once divine difference, divine sameness. No hand and no word will hold our life!"

"I don't know anyone like you," said Curtin.

"No. But you will presently begin to know more and more who differ from us and yet who belong in the order--the order of those who are aware that present man is a bridge and who begin consciously to act, feel, and know in a larger existence."

"And that is still inward?"

"The world still calls it inward. To those in that existence inward and outward, past, present, and future, come into one. The old words, then, are but retained words of convenience. As to the ultimate mind Martin and Richard, Marget, Anna, are but words of convenience, names for strands of experience. All are comprehended, combined, surpassed."

The sun lighted his hair, his bronzed face, his quiet eyes, the sight of which he seemed so little to miss. After a moment's pause he spoke on: "To-day many and many are aware of the richness of destiny. Some more so, some less so, but aware! Faculties that in a host are but germinal build in and for others realities. The momentary, superficial present, not being the true present, there _are_, not 'there have been' since the dawn of history, many such men and women. Very many; a host. There are many to-day; to-morrow there will be more. If you regard with intentness you may see the new Humanity forming."

"What of those who neither dream, nor divine, nor wish, who come on so slow?"

"Their not divining nor dreaming nor wishing is more apparent than real. All come on. The slowest, who thinks he has no direction, is drawn unconscious until the day when he discovers the compass."

"Will any never cross?"

"I don't think so."

"And when the last human being has crossed?"

"Then will the others come on into humanity--they that we call the animals. And those behind them will lift to where they were. But our wave goes on into the spiritual world that is the world of subtler matter, vaster energy, understanding at last, love at last, beauty at last. Well, Marget and I are conscious travelers thitherward, as are you and you."

"Ah, you are ahead of me!"

"And of me!"

"In some ways we may be ahead. And in others you may have store of energy and experience that sets you ahead. That matters not in the least. Whitman said that when he said:

"By my side or back of me, Eve following, Or in front, and I following her, just the same.

Like him, too:

"Content with the present and content with the past,

yet lassoing the past and the present with the future!"

Curtin shook his head. "You have powers that are not mine."

"If we have them, they will be yours. Marget and I think that we have, as it were, a blueprint. But not yet do we walk in the full and great temple! We do faintly and weakly what one day we shall do with all vigor. And many things that we do not yet dream we shall do! And you also, you and Anna. When you begin to feel continuity, when no matter where you move you take possession of yourself--"

He rose from his chair, and, standing before them, put a hand upon Curtin's shoulder and a hand upon Anna Darcy's. "'With all your getting, get understanding.' 'The kingdom of heaven is within you.' God is _I am_."

The sun struck through the western window, the fire burned, the room was lighted and warmed. Flame and stirring air made a low singing.

X

The next day Drew came back. Curtin, seated on the porch, saw him cross the river and ride up by the cedars. Shutting his book, he descended the steps to meet him. "Good day, Drew! Glad to see you back! Nothing wrong?"

Drew dismounted. "No. I wanted to talk to Mr. Linden."

Jim, coming around the house, took the horse. "He's out somewhere on the place," said Curtin. "Miss Land, too. But they will be back by twelve. Did you ride from Rock Mountain this morning?"

"Yes. It's not so far once you know the way."

He took the chair that Curtin hospitably pushed forward, and sat apparently in a brown study, while the other speculated. At last said Drew: "This is a good, big farm with room, I shouldn't be surprised, for another worker. At any rate, I've ridden over to ask Mr. Linden to employ me."

"Do you like farming better than forestry?"

"I like it better plus some other things." His eyes swept the hills that shut in the vale. "There is rich forest here. Any woodland that he has I could cut and replant. I know something of farming, too, and I can learn more. I'd give good work in return for the other things that they can teach me, and that I want."

He regarded Curtin with brooding eyes. "Ever since I could remember I have been beset by the past. A man told me once that I was conscious there, but hadn't co-ordinated it with the present and the future. It was some time ago, and he went away at once and I never found his like again--until I came here. I don't think there are many of them, living at any one time. The only wisdom I've got is the wisdom of going where I think I may find help."

"How about Randall?"

"I'm very fond of Randall. But he can't help me here, nor I him. He thinks it's just my 'queerness.' There's a man in Washington who will be mighty glad to get my job. He's a friend, too, of Randall's. I want to stay here for a year. Then I may go foresting again with Randall. I don't want to lose him. If Mr. Linden can't use another man this winter perhaps he will take me in the spring. In that case I'll go, and come again. I've talked it all out with Malcolm Smith, our chief at Rock Mountain. Brown in Washington will come down right away."

At twelve appeared Linden. He stood in the hall door. "Is it you, Drew? I will be down in a moment to shake hands." They heard his step going up to his room. "Blind, and not blind!" said Curtin. "There's some profound development of sensibility."

"I am not a scholar," said Drew. "I haven't got the names to give to things. That's a part of my need."

Marget and Miss Darcy came up from the river path. They had been, it seemed, to the overseer's house. Marget gave her hand to Drew. "I am glad to see you again!" There was no surprise in her warm and happy voice. "Your room is all ready for you."

They had dinner. When it was over Drew went with Linden into his study. The three others lingered a little in the pleasant, wide hall. The day was again right October; amber and garnet and sapphire; balm with nothing of lethargy.

Said Curtin, "When we come and come, what do you do at last?"

Marget laughed. "Oh, you come and go! You never really go, you know! But you have to take your bodies here and there over earth. But once come, we keep you and you keep us!"

"You know people all over the earth?"

"Yes."

"Do they write?"

"Oh, now one and now another writes! But we hardly need letters. That is, they are needed, of course, for minute information, for news of bodily movement. But there is communion whether we write or not."

Marget returned to the dining room to talk with Zinia. Anna Darcy went up to her chamber for her rest, and Curtin took his book to the porch.

The books at Sweet Rocket. He fell to pondering them. There were, perhaps, five thousand, not in one room, but up and down. Many were old, and many neither old nor new, and many new. They seemed to touch all subjects.

Curtin, pondering, going deeper and deeper, fell into some border country of Reality. With swiftness, with electric shock, he touched, not thousands of leaves of paper printed over, but conscious, intelligent, and powerful life. Or rather, it seemed to touch, to descend upon him, to well through him, coming down, coming from within, occupying space internal to all this tranquil, outer, October space. It was presence, it was personality, overwhelming. Books! What were true books? Will, Desire, Intelligence, living, active, not unclothed or unbodied, living Presence, present Activity, being in mass, active being, present and active here in this valley and present and active elsewhere, present and active throughout he knew not what infinity! He felt again that wide and deep shock of reality. The world lived!--had always lived--only he had not known it.

Vigor streamed into vein and nerve. He sprang to his feet, and, leaving the porch, moved down past the cedars to the river path, and along it. "It is not Richard Linden and Marget Land, nor the one nor the other! It is all of us. It is the Whole. The Whole has found them and is bringing them in accord." He felt exquisitely a touch of bliss. "It will bring me in accord, too. Drew and Miss Darcy and me--and many others." He felt a satisfaction such as he had never dreamed. "All others. One by one, all accorded, all remembered. The Already Remembered, forever increasing in strength, gathering, drawing, the scattered and fragmentary and incipient!"

He walked, hardly knowing that he walked. "Goodness and largeness! The dawn of them is synchronous with the dawn of Allness. All our words, mercy, justice, love, wisdom, power, joy, are but terms for the natural, habitual feeling of the One who is Whole. It is not that they are 'virtues'! They are the hue and tone and sense of health!"

He went up the river as far as the overseer's house. Here, upon the bench built around the sycamore, he found old Mr. Morrowcombe, who had stayed over with the Carters. In his old brown clothes, with hair and long beard, pale as the pale patches of the sycamore trunk and boughs, leaning forward upon his stick, he looked, as it were, the huge old tree come forth into human form.

Curtin sat down beside this old man. The cane upon which the elder leaned was now close to his eye and he saw that it was covered with finely cut words. Thick, and shaped like a shepherd's crook, the graving ran all over it. "May I look?"

"Surely!" said Mr. Morrowcombe, and gave it into his hand. "The year I was in prison at Camp Chase I carved around it the twenty-third psalm."

Curtin examined the quite beautifully done work. "Trust and Consolation in your hand--walking with them for fifty years!" He sat musing.

Mr. Morrowcombe's old, gentle voice began like the zephyr in the sycamore, whose beginning you could hardly guess. "Yes, sir! That staff's me now. Just as a good dog that goes with you gets to be you. It's helped me, week days and Sundays; that staff I made myself. I made it myself, and I didn't make it. I didn't make the tree that grew it and I didn't make the psalm; nor David that made the psalm. But I cut the staff from the tree and I carved the words there. So I reckon I have my part."

"You cut it in prison?"

"Do you see that piece just thar?" The old finger traced the line. "'_Thou settest me a table in the presence of mine enemies._' I cut that deep and fierce!"

He looked at the river and then again at Curtin. "Now, whatever it means, I know it doesn't mean what then I wanted it to mean!"

His old, gentle face grew meditative, contemplative. A more tranquil form and face it would have been hard to find. "I kind of sense the meaning, but I can't put it into words. But when you feel at last with folks and things you can't feel against them. When I was young I must have hated a lot of folk! I don't now."

"What is your healing herb?"

"Put yourself in his place. Don't oust him from the place, but understand him. Flow into him deep! Then you'll find that there is Something inside or above you and him which understands and straightens out both of you. Next thing you find is that you haven't got any real controversy."

"Do you call that something God?"

"That's what I call it. I used to think that you _had_ to call it God. I don't now. But it's a mighty good word! We've hallowed it. It's the biggest word we've got."

"Mr. Morrowcombe, when we join God, don't you think we shall say 'I'?"

"_That_ will say 'I.' Yes."

They sat gazing at the river and the colored hills. "Ain't this a lovely place?" said Mr. Morrowcombe. "It's like Beulah Land!"

"Do you ever talk to Mr. Linden?"

"Surely! Him and Marget Land. They're of those in our time who are remembered early."

He glided into one of his gentle silences. Curtin pondered that matter of re-membering, re-collecting, re-storing.

Said Mr. Morrowcombe, "I knew Marget Land when she was a little girl and came to Sunday school. She was baptized in our church, but she ain't now one of our church members. That used to grieve and puzzle me--make me a little angry, too, I reckon! Now I don't bother about it. She's in the Living Church, all right."

He looked up into the bronze and silver sycamore. "I've sat on this bench in old Major Linden's time, when John Land was overseer and lived in the house yonder. His wife, Elizabeth, was just the salt of the earth. Those children used to be playing around this tree. I remember Marget, a bare-legged, big-eyed little thing. She's sat by me often on this bench and made me tell her stories. Now it seems a long time ago, and now it seems yesterday!"

His voice sank again into the October sunshiny stillness. His lips closed, but Curtin felt him speaking on in thought and consciousness. It came to him, in another of those revelational flashings: "That is the ultra-violet of speech, the high, subtle, inaudible, continual speech! When we begin to catch it, when we begin to hear thought--" He felt again the shock of going together, of rivers pouring into ocean.

Mr. Morrowcombe's lips parted. "The war turned me serious, and I found religion two years after the surrender. I'd tell her Bible stories. I had a kind of gift that-a-way. Roger Carter, that's my nephew as well as my son-in-law, has got the same gift, though it ain't always Bible stories that he tells--except I reckon as all true stories are Bible stories! I used to tell her about David and Jonathan, and Joseph and his brethren, and Ruth and Naomi, and Mary and Martha and Lazarus, in Bethany.... Mary and Martha in yourself, and Lazarus who was long dead but could be raised, and Christ, who could judge and portion and raise, all in yourself! She used to listen, sitting just there. She had mind then, and she's got mind now--more'n I have in a lot of ways. She and him. Mind and goodness, and spirit that is power, and a body that you love to look at! They're the kind of folk that ought to be. Yes, sir, I was thinking when you came along of Marget sitting there, a little thing, and saying, 'Now tell me about the children of Israel'--or 'about Bethlehem,' as it might be."

With distinctness Curtin felt that which the old man also seemed to feel, for he turned his head, lowering it and his eyes a little, and smiling. The movement was precisely that of turning and smiling into a child's eyes. Again through Curtin poured that thrill of a freshness of knowledge. If this tree, this place, were strongly in a consciousness, in a memory, surely then that conscious spirit itself might in some sort be felt here! At any rate, he was aware of Marget, though to all outward senses appeared only the warm-colored October air. He had again the sense of etheric life. He lost it. It was so bright, it was so transient! The unquenchable desire was to bring it lasting.

He presently walked back to Sweet Rocket House. Drew was on the porch. "I'm going to stay. I'll write to Brown, and ride to Rock Mountain to-morrow to tell Mr. Smith and Randall, and pack up my things."

XI

The next day Drew returned to Rock Mountain to make his arrangements. "Why not ride with him?" Linden looked at Curtin. "There is a fair trail. You have an extraordinarily fine view from the top."

Drew urged it likewise. "But I haven't a horse."

"Roger Carter has a good saddle mare. He will be glad, I know, to let you have her."

Drew, mounted as he came, Curtin on Dixie, set out before noon for Rock Mountain. The cliffy crest that gave it its name peered above the southern hills and ridges facing Sweet Rocket. Crossing the river the two kept for some little distance to the Alder road, then at a pine tree left it for a just discernible track. "This is where we changed, Randall and I, the other day. Until we saw the river we thought that we were going to Alder, but we were going to Sweet Rocket instead."

The trees closing in behind them, they were plunged into forest. There was now no green save the green of occasional pine or hemlock. All was gold or red or russet. Moreover, the earlier trees to turn were fast flinging their mantles upon the earth. The sky met less obstruction, the sunlight spread a royal carpet. The air equaled exhilaration. As Curtin rode he thought that he faintly remembered all the forests of the world. "Is it infectious? Is it because in some sort Drew remembers, or is it because I have been--and surely I _have_ been--in all the forests of the world? Like him, I remember best the temperate and the northern forests, because in time they are the nearer."

For a while they rode in silence. There was only the sound of their own breathing and movement, and the very inner voice of the forest, low speech of branches that brushed them, break of twigs, flutter of wings, tap of woodpeckers, whisk of squirrel, and once, a little way off, the heavy whir of a pheasant. At last Drew broke the silence. "My mother died when I was fifteen years old, and my father when I was twenty. I remember my mother's mother and my father's mother and father. I know a good deal about their life after I was born and their life before I was born. I have a fair notion of my grandparents' parents, and I know something of the way of life of the generation behind that one. I have been told and I have read. Of course there are presently ancestors of whom I have been told nothing, and behind these countless others. Of course I know that people often imaginatively share the experience of parents and kindred. They say: 'It must have been so and so with my mother and my father--or with my grandparents--or my ancestors generally. They had these experiences and they must have felt and done this way. It seems almost as if I were there!' I think when you say that you are beginning. But it's grown to be more than that with me. After all, what are you but your parents, your grandparents, your great-grandparents, and so on? Your experience under your immediate name and your experience under your old names--their names. And alike, what are they but you? Share and share, comprehend and comprehend, include and include! I tell you that I am aware of the pyramid behind this cleaving point that is talking to you. I _remember_."

"Do you mean that you remember actually thinking, feeling, doing what men say your ancestors did?"