Part 7

Again he felt the Spiritual Sun. He thought: "This is what they have perceived at Sweet Rocket. They have not waited for death. They live now, and forever, and know it. This body will go from them, but they are building or remembering--I do not know which, and perhaps it is both--a life that will not go from them. And I also, also, though I am a babe yet--"

Sitting in the hollow of stone at the top of the upraised wave of earth he watched the sunrise from Rock Mountain.... He conceived that what was true of him was true of others, had been true age after age, was true now over this round earth of others. He thought: "There has always been a fellowship. The eidelweiss does not guess the roses and the heliotrope, nor the violet and the meadow rue. But at last the garden of the earth guesses! It becomes the living garden. The living garden becomes the living man. Naught is right, naught is reasonable, until you get it from the whole."

The sun rose, the earth turned ruddy. Curtin went down the path to Hall's, breakfasting there with the men who worked with head and hands. This morning he and Drew would start for Sweet Rocket. Drew's slender luggage was going down mountain to Norwood, whence the train would take it to Alder. Every one liked Drew, even Cooper who laughed at him. "Good luck, old farmer! Ride over and see us sometime!"

The two rode down Rock and crossed a vale, like a green and gold ribbon, and went up Bear Mountain, where the oaks were all deep colored, and down Bear and over forested hills and on by the trail that struck into the Alder road. They went rather silently, but in a deep, contented companionship. Once Drew spoke. "He said, 'A good present is one in which the past betters its condition.'" When he said "he" there was meant Richard Linden. After this there was silence again, both having struck some road within, where is the network composed of all the roads of the world.

They approached Sweet Rocket. The forest fell away. Before them shone the river, the wheat and orchard land, and the ruddy house with its pillars of mellowed white, and the hills that inclosed. Through part of the day clouds had been driving across the sky. Now they were sinking before the southwest wind, leaving the blue arch. They were variformed, castles and towers, bridges, alps, cities, ships, mythical beasts, giants. Light embraced them in a spray of colors. Crossing to it, for one instant, Curtin saw Sweet Rocket transfigured. All that was strong and fair became a hundredfold stronger, fairer. All that deterred or roughened or overweighted or twisted or weakened vanished in warmth and light. A sheath, or husk, or burr fell away. Interior power rousing itself, he saw the place in its seraph aspect, eternal in the heavens. Drew seemed to share the perception. He said, abruptly, "There is splendor!"

They felt splendor; then it closed, like light withdrawn, warmth screened away. There stood Sweet Rocket in its earthly estate. That is, they thought it its old earthly estate. But by that much it had become endowed and was not the old earthly estate. They had checked their horses. Curtin said, "So it was always in poetry!"

The younger man had a curious gesture. "We gather all the household gear into the long ship, and put forth!"

But Curtin thought, "In the Bible Noah gathers all the lifeseed into the Ark and rides the waters into a new world."

They crossed the river and went up the little glistening beach and by the cedars to the house. Sweet Rocket welcomed them home, the white folk and the colored folk and Tam. They found the household increased by two.

Linden said, "These are my cousins, Robert and Frances Dane, who come for a little while each year to Sweet Rocket."

They were a married pair, a little above forty, perhaps, the mark of the city upon them. They had quick and nervous bodies, thin, lined faces, eyes well apart, burning deep and very steady, lips tending to compression. They seemed tired--about them breathed something of soldiers after a long day's march through hostile elements. This was bivouac, this was rest! At first they were too tired, there was almost resentment. "O God, _how_ can you be still and ageless?" This changed, little by little, at Sweet Rocket. The overtension disappeared. They were left taut, collected, wary--workers worthy of praise in a dangerous world.

At the supper table that evening Curtin made out more and more of their life. They had come yesterday, a little before their set time, and Anna Darcy had the start of him in acquaintanceship. Intellectual radicals certainly, members of some group in action, probably of more groups than one, jack of all agitations and master of one. He could hear them speaking, in halls, and under open sky, and he could see the face of the throng to which they spoke. They would be speaking of Soviet Russia, of Guild Socialism, of Employer and Employed and the Course of Labor that did never yet run smooth. There were causes, not so apparently economic, for which also they would work. He heard them speaking for the Suffrage Amendment and likewise for the release of Conscientious Objectors. They belonged here, they belonged there. The one, he was later told, was Associate Editor of a Journal that was making the step from liberalism of the left to communism of the right. The woman was an admirable violinist. He knew that they lived on little and gave much of that little away. They lived where it was possible to live in one big room and three small rooms. They had a son who was doing well at a school they liked in the country. To look at them was to see how hard they worked, and to look into their eyes was to see the beacon that set them and kept them at work. They also had vision of Oneness.

Though in talking Linden and Marget used in a much less marked degree the terminology used by the newcomers, it seemed to present no difficulties to them. They seemed to understand these guests, as they understood those others who had come to Sweet Rocket this October, to understand and to travel with them. Curtin thought: "They sympathize. It does not occur to them to say, 'Do something else, take another road!'" He thought: "That is their strength. They utterly share."

Frances Dane had brought her violin to Sweet Rocket. Yesterday it had been laid in the parlor. Now, after supper, sitting by the fire in the old room, the violin spoke. It told of the player's passion for the world, of the man who wrote that music's passion for the world, of the passion for the world of all makers of violins, and of the trees whose wood was used, of the passion for the world that is progression and revolution, of the passion for the world that is the slower rate that is called withstanding progression and revolution, of the passion for the world that is music, of the passion for the world yesterday, to-day, and forever, of the passion for the world that every heart of us knows!

XIV

"It is something like this," said Linden. "We are One Being with its mighty potencies. All that comes in comes to us, all that goes forth goes from us. The points that take, ponder, sort, combine, alter to better liking; the mighty poles, the mighty afferent and efferent that flow from pole to pole, all that is movement, that is gravitation, that is cohesion, that is justice, that is harmony, that is love, are Ours. We go as we have gone through time, from and toward--the from that is also toward, the toward that is also from. But something beyond Time as we have known it, beyond Space and Causation as we have known them, increases upon us. Consciousness in some sort of the whole orb, awareness through and through, is momentously upon us to-day. In the end all desire is desire for that."

"We shall move then in four-space?"

"If you choose to put it so. It is an allowable figure. All that present language can devise is but a word, a figure, a symbol. What we mean is the next advance in consciousness. When you have it you know it."

They were treading a slender path through October fields. Now they were in a great, climbing cornfield, all stacked corn like brown wigwams, and here and there upon the brown and stubbly earth the orange of pumpkins. The air folded them in violet and gold dust and faint frankincense. The hills had changed in color, so many leaves being shaken down. On days like this the mountains were evidently entranced. It was Indian summer before the Indian summer time. "A new consciousness?" said Frances Dane, walking with Curtin. "A farther-on consciousness? It is in the air to-day!"

"Yes."

"Wise men saying, 'We have seen His star in the east--' Oh, that's a figure!"

"There is some Reality, or thousands of us would not be hearkening, as we are hearkening.... A new man, a new creature.... It's a consummation devoutly to be desired!"

The heaped corn stood around, the orange globes made constellations on the earth. They were now well up the slope, at their feet Sweet Rocket and the little sliding river. All was reflected, all was veiled, but now and again eyes looked through the veil. Reaching the top of the hill they found there a tall, solitary tree--a black gum--and built around it a bench. It linked in Curtin's mind with the sycamore before the overseer's house.

They sat upon the bench and upon the ring of brown grass that ran around the tree. The view was fair and they rested in silence. It was Anna Darcy who noticed how much silence there was at Sweet Rocket--silence that sang, that caressed. Moments went by, silence held them, fair solitude, sense of one person here alone. Tam moved, coming nearer to Linden. The latter's hand dropped to Tam's head. Anna Darcy heard a low sigh of relief and burden lifted. It came, she thought, from Frances Dane, who sat near her upon the grass. But it might have come from more than Frances, from all.

Stillness and silence deepened. There grew a cathedral sense, a desert, an ocean sense. Into that entered a wealth of light and strength. A vast wave of freedom, an access of life, lifted them. They had life and they had it more abundantly. They seemed to themselves to flash together, and of them all was made a god. For an instant there held an intense vision of this valley and of Sweet Rocket transfigured. Color and sound lived, every movement was of joy. That broke away, vanished like the image of a rose into the image of a garden of ten thousand. Then that was gone into an image of all the earth, and then that into intense, sheer, mighty Living, with small regard to old space and time, abounding, keen, a Reality leaving old reality behind.

"When it is all done, when it is all known, all felt, when we are fully, completely ourself, when we remember our Godhood and live it, when we do not look through storm for the lighthouse ray because we are Light, when we do not cry Father and Son because we are both and know it, when there is glory of home, glory of health, glory of love--"

Who had spoken they did not know; it seemed their common voice. Perhaps it was Linden, but if so he spoke as their common voice. Into it came not only the voice of the seven there, but the voice of old Mr. Morrowcombe and the Carters, and of Mrs. Cliff and Mimy and Zinia and Mancy and the others; not just the voice of Sweet Rocket, but the voice of Alder, and of many an Alder, big and little, the voice of the city and the country, the land and the sea. "To be well! Oh, rise within me, truest Self, with healing in thy wings!"

The great, golden feeling passed, leaving echoes, leaving memory. These folk were separate again where they had been one, but not so separate. In and out hovered that breath of transfiguration, a day of spring in late winter, dying, but with a tongue to tell of a time when it would not die. Where all had been vivid, singing, laughing, now was the wonted gentleness of this valley, a dreaminess shot with gold, taking and giving, but doing it subtly, silently, only now and then bestowing evidence of a vast interpenetrative life, showing like the eyes through the veil of this Indian summer day.

They went down through the corn and out by a gate, set in the gray and lichened rail fence, where grew sumac and farewell-summer and the feathery traveler's-joy. They walked in meadows by the river, and at last through the orchard, and so to the house. Mimy, in the kitchen, was singing:

"Oh, Jesus tell you once befo', Babylon's fallin' to rise no mo'. Oh, go in peace and sin no mo', Babylon's fallin' to rise no mo'!"

In the evening Frances played again to them, and the rich and sweet music filled the old room. The violin put by, they talked by the fire; then Linden said, "Read for a little while, Marget." She took up a volume of Blake, and read. "Read that letter to Butts." She read:

"... Over sea, over land My eyes did expand Into regions of fire, Remote from desire; The light of the morning Heaven's mountains adorning; In particles bright, The jewels of light Distinct shone and clear. Amazed and in fear I each particle gazed, Astonished, amazed; For each was a Man Human formed. Swift I ran, For they beckoned to me, Remote by the sea, Saying: 'Each grain of sand, Every stone on the land, Each rock and each hill, Each fountain and rill, Each herb and each tree, Mountain, hill, earth and sea, Cloud, meteor and star, Are men seen afar.'... My eyes, more and more, Like a sea without shore, Continue expanding, The heavens commanding; Till the jewels of light, Heavenly men beaming bright, Appeared as One Man, Who complacent began My limbs to enfold In his beams of bright gold; Like dross purged away All my mire and clay. Soft consumed in delight, In his bosom sun bright I remained. Soft He smiled. And I heard his voice mild, Saying: 'This is my fold, O thou ram horned with gold, Who awakest from sleep On the sides of the deep.'..."

XV

"Energy in larger units, affinities gathering strength and flowing together with power!" said Curtin. "Everyone has seen it and felt it in some wise. When it is blamable, unguided, 'mob spirit'! When it is praised, '_esprit de corps_, mass heroism, mass enthusiasm, conflagration of genius, voice of the people, unity of spirit,' what not! Most folk have a glimpse of the fact that there is an ocean of desire, emotion, will, as well as rivers and rivulets."

Marget came and sat with them on the steps of the little summer-house in the flower garden. She wore a great check apron, denoting housekeeping and helping Zinia. She sat down beside them. "What have you been doing, Marget?"

"Once a week Zinia and I have a general straightening day. Then my mother and I have been visiting together."

"Truly, truly, Marget?"

"Truly. But in a little wider order, my dear, a little wider order! The order above this order--into which this will melt. Mother and father, and Will and Edgar."

"Two of those are living and two are dead."

Marget smiled. "Ask Wordsworth!"

"I see," said Anna Darcy.

"Very well. Do more than that. _Touch!_"

With a trail of ivy in her hand she looked past the snapdragon and marigold and larkspur, still blooming, so rich and mild had been this autumn. "Then, as the rooms grew clean, I was with my mother in her birthplace, two hundred miles from here. We were there as adults, moving, loving, understanding with a grown mind, but there in her childhood and girlhood as well, loving to contemplate all the past that was us two! Mine as hers, hers as mine. Mind and feeling ran and caught up with her brothers and sisters, her parents and friends. Her parents remembered their parents and those remembered theirs. Home rose after home, garden after garden, loved place after loved place." Her eyes were upon Drew, whose eyes were upon her. "Do you not see that you can, that you will, recover it all? All that you have been, and you have been very much; all that you are, and you are very much!"

Mimy's singing floated to them from the kitchen:

"There's a great camp meeting in the Promised Land, Oh, pat yo' foot, chillun, don't you get weary! There's a great camp meeting in the Promised Land."

"And then," said Marget, "I was in Rome with Richard. The sun shone, the wind was in cypress and pine, the fountains made liquid sound. Father Tiber glided, Saint Peter's stood. We went to the Sistine Chapel, and then it was the Capitol within and without, and then the Appian Way and all the Campagna--all Rome--not to-day alone, but _all_ Rome. And then not Rome, but starlight nights from the decks of ships. And then--"

"This was actuality, while your hands swept and dusted the parlor there?"

"My body was in its duty and happy there. Yes. Actuality, but of another order, an order we are coming into. The order of intensified, guided, _realized_ memory and imagination."

"And of reason?"

"And of reason. Profoundly so. It is reason that is guiding. Reason has its higher levels, grows comprehensive, knows longer sequences, completer syntheses. And from the decks of ships we were in the desert watching the stars, shepherds on the hills and shepherds on the plains, shepherds and villagers and wanderers of far days!" She lifted hand and arm in a curious and commanding gesture. "Watching the skies above Queen Rain and King Wind! In desert and plain and upon hills and on seas, thousands and thousands of us strewn in time!"

For an appreciable moment, to some degree, those listening to her became aware of, made, as it were, junction with their own far wandering, far wondering, savage and barbarian self. It was evident that Drew made junction. They touched the mind struggling there, and the lifted gaze. The sense was one of enormous, calm pervasion. They entered into, they aided, their own early man, where he marked the heavens, and around them was the wistfulness of early lands.

Marget spoke on. "Then while I worked we were building pyramids and mountains of the god. We were watching and watching, patterning and naming, comparing, all the skies, the moon, and the planets and the times of the sun, and the white path through the heavens and the great named princes--everywhere, swarthy folk and pale folk! Now we were many and many. Then in us rose the Devoted, the Searchers of the skies, seeking from city roofs and temple roofs knowledge of the Whole for the Whole."

Their interior self opened its wings and used its eyes. As space expanded, so did time. They were there in the October sunshine, on the summer-house steps, but likewise they attended, and in some vast, liberated way they were that collective effort, that process. They might carry the method over into all processes. There swam across the mind other words--"commerce"--"government"--"family"--many and many a word.

Marget's voice went on. "Now one has made a telescope. Our theories change; we stand on dead theories and study on. Thousands of us studying, thousands building knowledge, learning vision! We gaze, we watch, we turn to desks and write and figure, we reason, we divine, we better our instruments, we gather results and make fortunate guesses, we hearken to intuition. We stand on a mossy stone in space and study the Promised Land, the universe that is ours, the ever perpetuating, the ever bettering! Time widens. Here are mountain summits and the observatories of this day, and the clockwork and the pierced dome, and the great eye that we have made, and the photograph. Mind sits at the knee of Great Mind and learns its alphabet. And all the thousands that were and are and will be are one Astronomer, and it is I, still working to know!" She ceased to speak, and sat wrapped in the golden light.

Said Robert Dane: "We follow where you step. You make us follow you."

"I do not make you. You walk with me because you can walk. We walk. It is your Self as it is mine."

"We move and we feel, then, where you are. You live there more fully and keenly than we, but we can breathe and feel and see. Go on! We would have your life, as you have ours."

"Then, after the stars, while I wound the clocks, I walked into the minute. Again thousands of us working and watching, noting, divining--thousands and thousands, years past and to-day and to-morrow! And one devises the microscope. All the laboratories!... Into the cell, into the atom, the infinite dance of relativities and small collections! And the intensed, pointed endeavor, using perception as fine as the millionth part of a hair--we knowing, marking, understanding ourself there, where we are moving clouds! We working there, patient, patient, the god working! The great and the small. We who forever remember and make richer ourself. We the I-- And then I was again with my dead, who are just as much and just as little dead as I myself! And then I came out into the garden."

They sat on the summer-house steps, and the marigolds glowed around them. She spoke again. "Here and there, throughout the past, and often now I think in our own day, a man or woman lays hold upon faculties that some day all will lay hold upon. _And greater things than these._ Forerunners, pioneers! Regard this late flood of books describing communion with the dead and giving detail of the life hereafter. What they describe is the widening consciousness here and now! The increasing awareness. One does not wait for death. Richard and I would not have you think that we are deep, deep, deep in that realm. Were it so nothing could hide it. Were we or any full in the next order you would see the shining. We are not there, but we are in motion toward it, as are many to-day. The road thitherward has its great scenery and long, thrilling adventure! And you, too, all of you, too, are in motion toward it. In this day of ours, each day of the sun, more and more are in motion."

She rose from the step. "I have rested this body that we call Marget Land and now I shall put it again to work in the house we call Sweet Rocket."

XVI

That evening, after she had played to them, Frances fell to telling of a crippled boy, almost a man, living in a poor flat in New York, the father an overworked head clerk, the mother a strong, gadabout, well-meaning person, more apt to reproach than to sustain. There was a sister, a stenographer, who meant to marry, if she could, some employer. This nineteen-year-old boy had a passion for travel, who could rarely travel as far as the street. At intervals, when his father had leisure to accompany him, he went to a movie. If the piece had scenery, country and ocean and strange cities, moving throngs and great buildings and places of which he had read, he was happy. He took the _Geographic_, and got travel books from a library. He knew more of the earth's surface than did many a "traveled" person. But it was hot in the city, in his little stuffy room, or it was cold in the city in houses that could never buy coal in quantity. He had a good deal of pain, and his eyes got bigger and bigger.

Curtin had claimed the small bedroom at the end of the upper hall. Drew slept in the dormer-windowed room above. Frances and Robert Dane possessed the large room opposite Marget's, next to Linden's. Here were four windows and each narrow bed placed where it might look forth. This night the Danes talked awhile, then addressed themselves to sleep. Robert slept, but Frances found that she was wakeful. Yet she had definitely turned from care and question of the day, from concern for her own work left in suspension, even from the face and incident of Sweet Rocket. From her pillow she saw the stars as they rimmed and rose above the mountains. At first she seemed to be over there, with the shadow below and the diamond above, but then to herself she left it all. There seemed naught about her but cool space. She lay without fret at wakefulness, though she was intensely awake.