Part 9

"The first thing I felt was just infinite cleanness and coolness. It was me and it was not me. If it was me it was something vast in me that had got the upper hand. There was a me, a self, like a tired, dirty child. To that me the other was God. But God turning out to be me, too. I had preached about God for thirty years, but I never really tasted or touched God till that day. It was cool and whole and pure, and bigger than the sky. And it forgave all my sins, or it saw clean through them. It saw a long way and all at once.... The tired and dirty me was everybody else, too. It was me and it was everybody, and we were healed by our God, and that was us, too, us, and more than we had ever dreamed of in that us! It healed with its might, and the lower part understood and went up.... I can't give you a description. It was awe and joy. The little body of William Robinson couldn't have held it, but something bigger than that held it. And then, just as light changes on the mountains here--when you are on top of Rock Mountain maybe, and see everything below you--and it's all there, but it's got another tone and you feel it in a different way--just so that cool awe and greatness changed a little. It was joy still, but now it was friendly and natural. It was the whole earth looking like a garden, and all mine, all me, and in that me was all I had ever thought was you or him or her, and all that I had ever said was it. The bird and the beast were there, the trees and the grass and the air. And it was lovely; it was just love, and beauty!" He brushed his hand across his eyes. "I can't tell you about that beauty. And we weren't dead; all was living. If you'll think of the very best moment you ever had, when you were deepest friends with yourself and found that it took in everybody, it might be something like that a million times over. It was innocent and wise. And all the times that I'd ever thought I was happy were just plain misery beside it! I couldn't hold it, any more than a young robin can hold the flight he will hold after a while. I reckon we're all fledglings! Back I flopped toward William Robinson. Here was old Virginia, and the woods and the road and the hills and the mountains, and Old Lock, and Piny Hill Church. But just before I settled in I got for just a minute this very country and our daily life in the light and the glow and the music and the wonder! All that was fair kept in and strengthened, and all that was unfair just melted out! I knew then that though we talk about it we haven't begun to love our country. It went, too, into the world. 'For God so loved the world.' ... Well, that vanished, too. I was back. I was just the colored preacher, William Robinson. I was back, but I could remember! I've touched what it's like to be God."

He ceased speaking, and sat bent toward the fire. A little of that luminousness of which he had told seemed to show through his flesh, a dark translucence. He said, under his breath, "'Little children, love one another!'" and rested silent, in communion with the flame.

"'For all we are members one of another.' Feeling that," said Linden, "is to feel as One. Then the One no longer counts as separate his members. He says I AM."

Stillness held in the old room. The fire gave it crimson and amber life and warmth. The canvases on the walls, the pictured men and women, seemed self-luminous. Major Hereward spoke abruptly: "Where are the dead? Where are my brother Dick, my son Walter, my mother and father?"

"They are here. Re-member yourself and you shall find them."

"Where is heaven?"

"It is here, the moment you begin to perceive it."

"You mean that you perceive the dead, Richard?"

"Yes. Do not you?"

The old man stared. He drew a long breath. "Never before did I think that I did!"

Robert Dane spoke. "You mean that as the Great Consciousness expands it becomes aware of itself there, too? That that realm becomes open?"

"Yes. Discovery there is within the grasp of our age. It is not so far away as many might think! As Power comes through. The 'dead' and the 'living' do meet. They have met all the time. The general recognition and use of the fact is to be strengthened, developed."

"It is not the only recognition and use of Oneness impending!"

"By no means! No. In every field there is ripening corn. How should it not be so?"

Major Hereward's voice came in again. "'The spiritual sense of the dead.' I've heard that phrase. I didn't know what it meant. Do you mean that when I seem to myself to move about in company with Dick, when things come into my mind that he knew about or that we did together, when I seem, as I go on, to understand his character better and better, and to see life as he did, when he seems here with me or when we are just happy together in old places--that it's _true_? And Walter and my mother and father and Helen and others--oh, scores of others--they enter my mind and heart just as though they came in at a door! Do you mean that when I think of them suddenly and strongly, feel them as it were, that _they_ are doing part of it, that there _is_ intercourse? Good Lord! I thought it was only myself!"

"I mean that," said Linden. "It will grow to be more than that. A higher, fuller thing than that."

The old man rose. Face and voice showed emotion. "I've got what I came for. God bless you, Richard, and God bless you, too, Brother Robinson! Oh, we've been little! Marget, I'll say good night, my dear. Out of my life goes fear and loneliness!"

Brother Robinson likewise, with Zinia, rose to say good night. "I'll see you in the morning," said Richard. "I want to talk to you about the school."

That night Curtin, also, increased his sense of life, life that included those that were said to be dead. There had been no repetition of the hour when, lying in the room where now slept Robert and Frances Dane, he had touched with an inward sense that brother who had fallen from the aeroplane, who had been jostled out of the body, but who lived! Surely the life was not quite that of the old life, though surely built from that; certainly Curtin might not fully understand until he, too, slipped the body. Yet there was life and living. He had not experienced that hour again, and he had tried doubting if he had ever experienced it. But doubt did not prove to be a going proposition. Memory smiled it down. Yet the experience had not been repeated, or rather what had come had diffused itself in the wide awakening of these Sweet Rocket weeks. Nor did its distinctive _klang_ return to-night. There was not the same white keenness. That which beamed about him now was more like that which Marget had spoken of on the summerhouse steps. Not one now, but many of his dead; not the human only, but the flower and the tree, the bird and the beast, the scene, the water, land and sky. "The old and sweet is here, but chosen, redeemed, gathered up, understood, become immortal! And we have had it all the time. It has been here all the time! Just as we had electricity and did not know it."

He fell asleep, rocked by the waves of a sunny sea of love and home and kindred.

XIX

Major Linden spent two days at Sweet Rocket, chiefly sitting upon the porch in the sunshine or walking about the place, sometimes in company, sometimes alone, but never, Curtin noticed, with an old man's look of loneliness, though he thought that at times before this Major Hereward would have shown that loneliness. But now there was vigor in him, vigor and interest and life. "If they are here, living for me as I for them, talking to me and I talking to them--it is the strangest thing what life does when it comes!" His laughter had a clear and happy ring. "I had thought of all kinds of solutions! And here it is, the needle threaded, while I was still looking for it in the haystack!" He stood beneath the oak he had planted almost sixty years ago. "Phil is here. Trying, wasn't it, Phil, when I said, 'Oh, fancy!' or, 'It's just Wilmot Hereward talking to himself!'"

When he met Linden on the porch he said: "Richard, if it's so with those folk whom we so promptly insisted hadn't any reality in them, isn't it so all over? When I'm pondering Bob who's in England, or when I'm thinking of nothing in particular and in he walks into mind and affection--"

"Yes. It is part of the same truth. It all rests on the oneness of Being. That is why you must in some wise grasp that Oneness first. A time will come where there will be no saying 'My brother Dick,' or 'Bob in England,' because they and Wilmot Hereward and all others will have advanced beyond all such divisions. But on the road there you will meet many a fair power!"

The old man went the next morning back to Oakwood in his battered car. He went alone and not alone, with a peaceful face.

In the afternoon Anna and Curtin, Drew and the two Danes, walked down the river, in among the partly forested, partly grassy hills that here closed the valley. Indian summer had now stolen over the land. The air hung smoky amethyst, and still as still! No motion was in the fallen leaves, the birds sailed stilly by, the stubble fields dreamed, the river sang low. Wood smoke clung in the nostril. Turning, coming homeward, the brick house and yellowed pillars stood pictured. They passed through the orchard and by a small cider mill. Zinia, on the back porch, poured for each out of an amber pitcher an amber glassful. "_Was-hael!_" said Drew, and lifted the glass. Curtin caught from memory the answering phrase, "_Drink-hael!_" A shaft of wonder, like a gleam of light, touched them all with strange fingers. Something trembled in the air. If it said aught it said, "So Earth begins to _live_ Poetry!" Drew set down the cup with a sharp, clear sound. "Life, everlasting life!" he said. "I see it now! We have always lived!"

Again evening in the old parlor, the fire and music, Tam lying beside Linden, Marget seated by Anna Darcy. Robert Dane spoke. "This finding ourselves in all and all in us, this lifting the all into a mighty I, this is it behind the slowly accelerating movements of the ages, behind all efforts for freedom, for knowledge, for interchange and intercourse, swifter and swifter, subtler and subtler intercourse--this is it?"

"Yes. Behind a hundred shapes of dawn."

"Effort does not cease?"

"No. But effort, too, is finer and far more powerful. You act now from within upon the within."

"To touch through and through that we are one! Hercules's labor isn't in it!"

"Yet it is done and to be done. Find me if you can an individual to-day who has not some dim perception of it, or who is not in some wise acting toward it! Even the most unpromising--look and you will see! It is so tremendous, that finding, it runs through every fiber. We can cut out no pattern, but we move from light to light, from love to love!"

In her room that night, when she had put out the lamp, Anna Darcy, lying in bed, watched the firelight on wall and ceiling. A cricket chirped, she could hear the river. Her visit to Sweet Rocket was ending. "Only it will never end; it is immortal within me!"

She saw how all life interlocked, how shock to one was taken up by the whole, how joy to one thrilled through all. "What we call space is Being; what we call time is our own Story, our colored, toned lastingness! Give and take, forever and forever, forever and forever! Find lovely things to give, and from the other side of us take lovely things, lovelier and lovelier! Know thyself--know thyself--know Thyself. 'If ye do it unto one, the least of these, ye do it unto Me.' 'And all we made One.'"

The walls of the room disappeared. Anna Darcy, a slight, worn, teaching woman, sixty years old, vanished or altered. There was wide life, land and sea, deep life that did not talk in births and deaths, lofty life that said, "Better than this wave even, shall you know!"

It was Strength, it was Peace, it was Wisdom and Balm.

Across the hall Robert Dane lay thinking. In his youth he had the passion of a Shelley for a regenerate world. Older, the vision dulled, and yet he worked on doggedly, heroically, one with thousands of others breaking and making a road for the feet of Coming Man. He worked heroically, never sparing himself, a devoted life. Sometimes the gleam shone fair before him, oftener mists made it faint, sometimes he lost it. Then it shone again. He worked on. To-night, lying here at Sweet Rocket, his youth came back, but higher, fuller, wiser! He saw what might be done, what was doing. He saw the interrelated roads and the travelers upon them, the hosts of travelers. A vision came to him in the night. His body lay very still, but he himself saw clearly a great thing.

There was a City that was country also, and sea and land and sky, that was a world, harmonious, great, not a dead thing, not unintellectual, but living, living with a vast fervor and beauty and interest and knowledge, throwing out even, it might be, silver lines toward a world yet more light, more fervent, more living! But it was there, all that he could now image of body and spirit, mind and soul's desire:

He saw like a pale film another city that was pale and sorrowful to this. And he saw that city, as it were, send out itself, by rivers and seas and roads, thousands and thousands of paths, upon a journey to the other. There was hardly a point--truly he thought there was not any point--that did not travel. So many living beings, so many ships or rafts, caravans or solitary travelers to that Desired Haven! All going, some ahead, some behind, but all going. The pale and sorrowful city was moving into that other, and brightening as it moved. That other was drawing it, steadily, steadily! He felt it like a loadstone; he felt it like a mother calling home.

The vision passed, but there was left Assurance. He lay still in the starry night. The mind kept up an underhumming with words like "reintegration," "superconsciousness," but the spirit dealt only with the bliss of a great coming to itself. He slept at last, and his sleep was dreamless and profoundly renewing.

XX

"It is the flowering land, it is the music land. You go to it through every moment and incident and encounter of the day. You read, and it is behind the words. You think, and it smiles through. It is the Higher Us that resolves the discords and reaps the fields. Experience it once, and it is miracle and wonder; experience it twice, and you say, 'Columbus was not the only discoverer!' Experience it thrice, and you work for it day and night! You yourself, drawing yourself out of the old man and the old house. Read 'The Chambered Nautilus.'"

"It is religion--"

"It always has been Religion."

"And the gloom and storm of our day?"

"It is _not_ gloom, it is _not_ storm. It is the pains of growth. Feel the epic and voyage that it is!... Every proper and general noun in all dictionaries now and to come is my name, as it is yours. Every verb is my doing, as it is yours. The use of language, use and _dis_-use, is mine as it is yours--"

They were walking in the orchard beneath the apple trees, whose leaves were slow to fall. There had been, this morning, a heavy frost. The garden flowers were going, the creeper over Mimy's house had shed its scarlet leaves, but held its dark-blue berries. The heavens hung a blue crystal. The air had the cool of mountain water.

It was the day when Anna Darcy must leave Sweet Rocket. After dinner Daniel and the phaeton and Marget would take her to Alder to the north-going train. Now, with Marget, she went the round of the place, saying good-by. They had been to Mimy's, and had talked to Mancy at the barn. "Come again!" said Mancy. "But you ain't really going, you know! Sweet Rocket will hold you, and you'll hold Sweet Rocket."

They came by the kitchen. Mimy was singing:

"Swing low, sweet chariot, Coming for to carry me home--"

"You gwine back inter the troubled world?" said Mimy. "They say hit's awful! But, Lord! there ain't any bars ter trouble! I've seen a lot."

They walked up the river to the overseer's house, where they were made welcome by Mary Carter and small Roger, and by old Mr. Morrowcombe, who was staying over from Sunday, which was yesterday. He said, much as Mancy had said: "I'm sorry you are going! But thar! You ain't going in the old, harsh ways."

Marget, sitting beside him on the step of the porch, rested her arm upon his knee. Her brown, slender hand touched his great horny one. "Grandfather Morrowcombe!" she said. He answered her: "I see you as a nine-year-old, Marget, and I see you as a woman in Sweet Rocket Valley, and I see you as something that stands above child and woman. It isn't any more big than it is subtle-fine. It's puzzling to find words. But when I look at you and think of you I seem to hear the air stirring over the whole world. All kinds of things that I had forgotten, and all kinds of things that I have read...."

She and Anna sat for five minutes under the sycamore by the water. Returning then to Sweet Rocket, they walked in the garden that was making ready for winter. As it happened, Mrs. Cliff came this day down mountain to borrow some sugar. She sat on the steps of the back porch, in the violet light of November. "Howdy!" she said to Miss Darcy. "I'm glad you stayed on. When I come here I want to stay on, too. But thar! I take the memory of it up to my home. You wouldn't think how often thar I'm here, too!"

To-day she had a braided rug to sell, and Marget bought it. Mrs. Cliff's long, wrinkled hand put the money in her pocket. "Times isn't betterin' any, Miss Marget."

Marget laughed. "Oh, the poor old times!"

It startled Anna Darcy, too, so joyous and care-free and lilting was the voice. Mrs. Cliff stared at her. The mountain woman's face was not what one would call a cheerful one. Whoever was behind it was caught in a network of fine, anxious lines. Now these held for a perceptible moment, then faded as though the twine were mist. That one immortally youthful and insouciant looked forth as it had looked from Marget. Sun came out over meadow, plain, and hill, and Mrs. Cliff laughed. "I reckon you're right, Miss Marget! You generally are. I reckon we've seen so much that we can afford to take it tranquil--which ain't to say that we're either do-less or keerless!"

She spoke to Anna. "You remember my tellin' you about that feeling I had? I 'ain't had it full again. But I've caught glimpses of it, maybe in the day, maybe in the night. I know the minute when anything like it comes my way. When you've had a feeling like that all your life's set to feeling it again."

But Marget had taken it joyously.

When Mrs. Cliff had said good-by and gone mountainward the two, crossing the pleasant porch, entered the house. They walked from room to room, Anna's consciousness gathering each. "Any time you may feel me here!"

"We shall feel you here all the time."

They stood in the study, against the broad mantelshelf. "At first, when I thought of this room, I thought, 'Richard Linden's study.' But it is of and for and to both of you."

"Ah yes! To both."

She seemed to give forth light. Anna thought, "Is it only the sun shining on her?"

Later, in her own room, all packing done, dressed for her journey, Anna went and sat beside the window as she had sat the first evening at Sweet Rocket. She still heard Mimy singing, she still saw the garden, though it was dreaming now of spring. "I have been here only a month, but in it I have had years and years."

The quiet room filled with a sunny stillness, an eternal assurance. Again, as on that first evening, the mountains were here and the wind of the sea was here. Love and wisdom and power were here.

The boy Jim brought Daniel and the phaeton to the door below. Marget came for her, and they went down, and through the hall to the porch, to find there Linden and Curtin and Robert and Frances and Drew, and Zinia and Mimy, and Mancy and Tam.

Across the river, at the edge of the wood, Marget checked Daniel so that Anna might look back and see the house again, the house and the trees and the hills, and the holding arms of the mountains. "But you are to come again," said Marget. "Never part, and come again!"

"Yes, oh yes!"

The wheels turned and went on upon the Alder road. They entered the forest, old forest, great trees that sloughed their leaves again and again and again, through centuries past number, sloughed their leaves, sloughed their old bodies, made soil, and stood upon it and builded higher. Behind and in and through every stem and leaf rose the subjective forest, and behind and in and through the whole the ideal, the spiritual forest, the divine forest. Around and onward went the wheels on the leafy road. Anna sat beside Marget. The two spoke little, having now no great need of words. The light came down between bare branches. Far and near branch and blue air made a marvel of lacework. Against this pines and hemlocks stood like pyramids and pillars. Song and twitter of a month ago was not now. "The birds go south--the birds go south!" said Marget. "But there are enough left for winter company. There is a bluebird on yonder bough!"

Round went the wheels, making hardly a sound. The forest hung still, so still. For one moment, to Anna Darcy, it all went away. It was _maya_, illusion, the forest, Indian summer, this day of our Lord, the phaeton and Daniel, Sweet Rocket and Alder and New York, Marget Land and Anna Darcy. What was left was fullness of Being. Did it choose to analyze itself it might be into Power, Wisdom, and Bliss. The revealing flash went as it came, ere one could say, It lightens! _Maya_ again, Marget Land and Anna Darcy, Daniel and the phaeton, the forest, Sweet Rocket and Alder and the train to be met. But each time the sheath thinned and there was left stronger light.

The train came, the friends embraced. Anna Darcy looked from window at Marget and then at Alder, the fields and hills and rivers and mountains. The train roared through a tunnel, and when it emerged the scenery was changed. There were fields and mountains, but not these fields and mountains. "And yet they run into those. There is no impassable wall nor aching gulf. There are the finest gradations--"

Marget and Daniel and the phaeton went homeward along the Alder road.

XXI

November rains wrapped Sweet Rocket. November winds rocked and bent the trees. The world was gray, or iron-gray, with rust-hued streakings. Indoors they built larger fires.

It was five days after Anna's departure. Unless the storm held him Curtin was going on the morrow. In January his profession would take him abroad, to the nearer East. He could not tell when he would be returning.

"But Sweet Rocket goes with me!"

"Just. As all the East and you flow here."

"What kind of a general world are we coming into, Linden? What kind of a political, social, economic world? I believe that, as to much of it, Robert and Frances are far seeing. In the large, those changes are upon us, and in the large they are for the better. They are built into the road we are going. I agree, I welcome! But I would see more completely if I could."

Linden, in the cane chair by the study window, seemed to pay attention to the storm. At last he spoke. "I cannot see in detail. I think there will be a great simplification. Power out of a thousand tortuous channels mingling, running broad and deep! There are signs on every side. The old banks crumble. The great sea lifts other continents."

"I see everywhere how we are seeking."

"Yes. The seeker finds, the finder seeks on, seeks farther. The great ages are ever the seekers."

"You would say it is a great age?"

"Yes. A very great one. Who is not in some way aware of it? This friction of opinion on the top is but the wildness of the outermost leaves as the strong wind blows."

"And wherever I go I shall find the seeking and the greatness?"

"The world is One," said Linden.