Restwell made much of Ahasuerus and me. General Warringer and Aunt
Harriet had acquiesced in my going with Maxwell, but not before, as
in duty bound, they had set forth a row of objections. Aunt
Harriet's resolved into the propositions, that I might be
killed--that so I could not marry and carry on the family fortunes;
that, while there might result some distinction from being an
explorer (a successful one), she had noticed that men who went into
wild places for any length of time carried it around with them ever
afterward and lost touch with the society into which they were born.
"We met an Arctic man once at Old Point. Well, when it came to the
amenities he was nothing but a polar bear walking upright!"
I said that if I came back like a rhinoceros or crocodile she must
have me shot.
She looked at me a little wistfully. "You know, Michael, you're the
only bit of Dugald and Cary we've got. More than that, you seem
somehow to hold and bring back father.... You've got a faculty,
somehow, of enwrapping and carrying with you a lot of things--a lot
of people, even." She sighed. "I'm not that kind myself, but I know
that there are all-around folk."
I kissed her and said that we were in the same boat. I knew that
there must be all-around folk--but I was only a little of that
myself--nothing like, nothing like, the all-around that I could
image. We sat on the summer-house step, and I found that we could
talk, in some ways, as my mother and I had used to talk ... no! as my
mother and I talked.
General Warringer, likewise, was concerned about my future. "This
life's a bitter race, Michael. If you begin to step aside to pick
flowers, down you go--smothered under! I've seen a lot of men--men
with brains--scheduled just so to be poor and unknown all the rest of
their lives. If you had chosen to stay you could have had Maxwell's
place when he went. As Landon grew you could have left engineering,
become assistant superintendent--superintendent--what not. You've
got brains and a steady-going energy--not flashy. You might have
gone straight on up to the top. You've got pull here, too, remember.
There's no helping you in Africa. Your savings, too. I had it in
mind to speak to you about that. As you earned and saved I could
invest for you in a stock that'll presently be paying--I don't know
what it won't be paying! And if, after a time, you wanted to
speculate, I should see to it that you got the inside word. This
country's traveling, double-quick, toward the biggest kind of
expansion! You might become a rich man--rich and useful--the most
valuable kind of citizen. But if you break with the run now it's
going to be hard to get back. As I said before, this world's a
breathless 'Keep your place, or I'll take it!'"
I said that I knew that it was a serious step, but that, as far as
engineering went, I felt that I could always find employment. I had
no quarrel with engineering as a profession. But I did not feel
myself fitted for the further course he had outlined. It might be a
mistake, my going with Maxwell, but I had felt a strong inward
urging. I thought that I should come back, and that the experience
would not be loss.... I said that I was grateful to him, and to many
at Landon.
"That's all right. I gather that you gave very good work in
return.... Well, if you won't, you won't, Michael! ... Royal is
going to be a rich man--rich and powerful."
"If I had been Holbein or Rembrandt I should have liked to paint
Royal."
Royal was at home at the moment. But he was going to New York, into
a big broking company in Wall Street. In appearance he was so
different from his father, and yet they subtly paired. The son stood
intellectually higher by a head. They sat, as it were, above and
below the salt--but at the same board, in the same castle hall. One
must give respect to the castle, it was so vast and powerful. London
Tower or Carcassonne, a thousandfold.
Dorothea was very friendly.... We went out together one morning upon
the river. It had become fairy spring weather, bloom and song and
first verdure. We ran under the sweeping willows, by banks of
violets and bluebells.
"I should like to see Africa and Asia and all--the old buildings and
the old lands. Oh, Michael, you're lucky!"
"Why don't you travel? You could."
"Some day maybe I will ... but I'll take myself along."
"Why don't you sort out yourself and choose the best traveling-dress?"
"Oh, I'm lazy--except when people get in my way. What do you do when
people get in your way?"
"They're _in_ the way because they're _out_ of the way. Get them in
order inside you. Penetrate them--understand them--be at one with
them. Then the whole ship moves with the helmsman's hand. You and
they are one, you know." I laughed at the face she made.
"Gibberish, isn't it? And nine times out of ten I fail to practise
my own magic.... All the same, don't poison them, Dorothea! If you
do you'll feel the pangs."
"I like to poison them--starve them."
"Stop it--or you'll feel the pangs!"
She caught at the willows under which we were passing. "Oh, I am not
so bad as I make myself out! ... Sometimes--often--I feel kind and
good." The boat went a few strokes farther. "Stop rowing," she
said. "Let's rest here a bit. Go close to the bank, by the
violets." I obeyed. She stretched her arms, then, leaning forward,
looked at me. "You meet most persons, Michael. Now I want to see if
you meet me!"
"Fire away!"
"Do you ever feel wicked?"
"Often."
"Just how? Can you feel yourself murderer, thief, and all the rest
of it?"
"Yes."
"Well, to get off the plane of actually poisoning people or jerking
the bread out of their mouths.... When the world looks lovely, not
hateful--and you want all the jewelry in the window ... but are too
sleepy to go after it ... and so you only lust for it, envy it. Do
you know that, too?"
"Yes. At times I should like to roll in gold-dust and violets."
"Yes!"
"A great elephant to ride upon--caparisoned--an easy, swaying,
powerful gait. No obstacles--all the crowd at once worshiping and
getting out of the way--"
"Yes!"
"Idle Lakes--and Mirth to row me--and Bowers of Acrasy--"
"H-mm?"
"_The Faery Queen_. The second book. It's a perfectly true tale."
"What else? Your elephant figure I do most certainly
understand--though I understand the others likewise."
"I'd weary you with all the rest. At the bottom of the bag....
Something big and dark--wind and wave--wishing just to roll over and
destroy. The utterest explosive--wishing to rend sun, moon, and
stars. Split them into little pieces. Blow them into dust in the
wind. And without a bit of better plan, without any plan--any
ultimate idea. Blank Nothing--impossible to obtain! But go toward
it, and so save oneself trouble. Decline to make the God."
She stared; then, "I see..."
"It's the bottom of the bag. But notice, will you, that still, blank
and mad as it is, it assumes cohesion. It's to have force to do all
that.... So, after all, it will have to take trouble."
"Yes, I see that."
"Better take the full cup of finer effort! Better make of yourself a
world that won't want to blow its brains out!"
She sighed. "Get me a bunch of violets and let us go home." I
picked her her violets, stepped back into the boat, put them in her
lap, and retook the oars. She said, "You could have been an evil
soul."
"There's plenty of evil yet. But the soul wants to change it to
good, Dorothea."
"But it understands it still."
"Yes, it understands it still."
We went on beneath the willows. "Did you never read _The Faery
Queen_? Well, read it all, but especially the second book." We
traveled silently upon the clear river. After a while she would have
talked of Miriam. But I did not want to talk of Miriam, who was Una,
who was Alma, who was Belphœbe, who was Britomart to me. So at
first we spoke of just the weather and then of Restwell plans, and at
last she deliberately fell silent, and when I saw that it was
deliberate I followed her lead, rowing without speaking, in a moving
dream with the long oar-stroke. She sat with her eyes upon the
violets in her hand. We made landing and I helped her out and we
went together up the bank and toward the house. But under the wood
where the wild plum was blooming she stood still.
"Michael ... we're cousins."
I nodded.
"That ought to mean warm hearts toward each other."
"Agreed."
She was very close to me. She put her hand upon my breast. "Like
me, Michael ... like me!" I felt her breath, her cheek touched mine.
"Like me--as I like you." She kissed me and I kissed her. But then
I felt the stroke of the crowned man. As best I might I got back
from the edge of the precipice. I drew myself away from her hands
and her face.
"Dorothea, Dorothea, Dorothea! leave that! That's not innocent,
because it's not sincere. You're stooping low with your
mind--tempting deliberately! And I'm the leopard--the slave--the
worm yet.... Leave it! Let's at least stand upright!"
She drew a long breath. "Well... I wondered--"
"Stop wondering! It's all there, in my blood as it is in yours. I
could, as you could. Almost half of me plays the siren to just more
than half that's just wise enough to use every thong it can find to
keep it to the mast--"
"Well, you will please to understand that it was the mind--just
wanting to see--"
"I understand. Now I want to tell you.... I think that we roved
together a lot in the past, you and I.... Suppose you, also, try to
stop that lorelei work of taking oneself in one's own net. Every
fish you take--lovers, pride, domination, cruelty, indolence,
self-love, and all the rest of it--pulls you deeper yet into the
ancient sea. I know, for not so long ago and not so far away I have
been there--am there quite sufficiently still! Throw the net away,
stop the old singing, and see if you can't hear a lark overhead!"
"You're preaching!"
"No, I'm not. I'm calling your attention to some facts in nature."
She began to walk again. "I don't see that our old, long past was so
very wrong."
"I don't in the least say that. I won't say a word against the
ancient sea. When we were in it, if we were sincere, it was all that
we could do. It had its own powers, beauties, and truths. But the
winged thing mustn't return to the finned thing."
She looked at me over the violets that she had pinned at her throat.
"After Grandfather Forth's death I heard a man call him a mystic....
I suppose that's you, too, Michael?"
But the word didn't well describe how I felt as to the out-of-doors
around our houses of ancient habit. She began to talk of things away
from this hour. We climbed the hill and crossed the May grass to the
porch.
At no other time while I was at Restwell did we recall the one to the
other this morning. She went her way and I went mine. But I felt
her sultry beauty and the ancient sea call. I piled images against
it, and drew at last strength from that dimension that fronts the
east. And yet I knew, and that without shame, that life of old sense
through which certainly, in a million, million shapes, I had gone.
It streamed and weltered, fought and gloried, thrilled through its
coils of murky splendor, survived and somehow surpassed itself, and
rose. Dorothea was me in that eon and I was Dorothea. Miriam and I
and Dorothea had all been together. If two were out, were partly
out, another would follow.
The days went by at Restwell. Daddy Guinea was dead, but Mammy, Aunt
Esther, Mandy's Jim, and others still lived there. Ahasuerus made
himself happy. Restwell was oiled, smoothly running, with money as
never had I remembered it. It was not that the Warringers were
hugely wealthy; they were not. Royal would pass into that category,
but that time was not yet. But they had means beside which my
grandfather's and my mother's old struggles seemed piteous enough.
Aunt Sarah had not oldened. Her pale, smooth skin kept its firmness,
her hair its brown luster, her eyes their not young nor old, still,
immortal look. I sat with her in her room, always so clean, hushed,
unlittered, or on the upper porch without her windows where in summer
she kept her many plants that would bloom in winter. And three times
we were together in the graveyard.
"I understand better than I did," I said, "what you meant when you
said that they are within us."
"You'll grow to understand it better yet.... It's a vast world,
Michael, that 'within us'!"
"I am fast coming to see that."
"So vast that all things are there."
"I begin to see it."
"I have not the energy strongly to move and make move within it. It
goes as a kind of still dream. The faintest dawn is on the waters
and they lie still beneath it. But I do not grieve any longer, nor
am I anxious. It is a gain when women do not grieve, nor are
anxious."
The days swam on. I went to Whitechurch. I climbed the academy hill
and listened to Doctor Young in his study. He reminded me of some
castle keep, narrow and darkened, but firm, built with a fierce
honesty of purpose, with good stone. A life he fought was rising
around his hold--outer walls were crumbling now under strange shafts
and rays--but still stood the keep with fierce constancy. I asked
him about Gamaliel. His face twitched. "I have not seen him for
three years. I hear that he has put himself through some sort of
scientific school. I suppose that he will go over, body and soul, to
science." The timbre of the fortress voice carried, "Oh, thou deep
traitor to me--thou, my son, who grew from me!" I felt the
drawbridge go up....
The days and nights went by. In middle May I said good-by to
Restwell; as it proved, for three years.