Three days and I was in Virginia. The train ran through October
lands to October hills and mountains. I loved them, loved Virginia,
loved the Indian-summer day. The South was mine--as was New England,
the West and the Middle West--as was America to the south, and the
northern Dominion, and the Indies. And Europe was mine, and Africa,
Asia, and all the islands of the seas. And the submerged continents
and the continents to be. Owned without harm as all may own all....
The train rushed on. That emotion that is above cry or laughter and
that thought that is above words held me....
Here was the county town, here were greetings. At the last I had
come a day or two earlier than was thought for. None from home was
at the station. I walked to Flowerfield.
There lay a hilltop on the way where, walking or riding or driving,
or on the returning wings of thought, every lover of beauty made
pause and feasted. Beside the way rested a wide boulder--how often
and how often had we who were walkers rested there with it! I rested
there to-day.
A farm-wagon went by and the man in it and I called greeting. A
negro carrying a bag of meal came by and we greeted; three boys and a
dog followed and we greeted. Then came a surrey and women driving
and we greeted--then an old colored woman hobbling along with a stick
and we greeted. Then for a space the road ran bare; just the October
wind blowing red and gold leaves across and along. Around flowed the
widest landscape.
I saw. I saw my country, earth, times, desires and passions and
determinations, the bound spirit and the spirit heaving against its
bonds, and the spirit partly free, and high above the bound I felt
the spirit free! One spirit--as we say "one man and his freedoms and
unfreedoms."
The wind blew down the leaves. A great ray of sun traveled like a
search-light. Again negroes were passing, this time a number
together, and the one ahead sang, "Roll, Jordan Roll!" We greeted.
I rose from the boulder and went on to Flowerfield.
Kate and Dugald were making a canal and tow-path down by the
streamlet under the willows. I heard their caroling talk and went
that way. They flung themselves upon me....
We sat under the willows and talked of her whom they called
"mother"--who was profoundly mother, as she was also child--mother
and child and lover and self of all! They were so young--they felt
her everywhere. We talked--then we finished and smoothed the
tow-path and planted witch-hazel twigs for fairy trees to shade the
elf drawers of an elf boat. Then we washed our hands in the stream
and went up to the house.
Oh, Flowerfield!
John and Amy, Aunt Kate and Uncle John, Catherine, Lewis--dear lands
of being! The house sang its old ballad, the splendid trees burned
like the phenix, seeing winter, divining the recurrent spring....
When a week had passed I went for a week to Restwell.
Nor Dorothea nor Carter nor Royal were there. I had all kindness
from Aunt Harriet and General Warringer. Aunt Sarah and I walked or
sat, talked or were silent together.
Her hair was now gray, but her eyes held their still glow, her face
was unwrinkled, her figure kept its grace, her step lightness. We
went here, we went there, about the old place; we sat by the river or
under the orchard trees. But oftenest we went to the graveyard.
Still she brought the flowers there. We felt the ancient sweet
presences, and other days and days came now into the garland. She
met herself as a young woman there. Over the wall I heard Ahasuerus
calling, and he and I, boys, rampaged in the sloping, fairy wood.
Or, back this side the wall, I moved where my mother moved.... Under
the apple-tree, in the far corner, the red apples lay on the
ground.... Oh, miracle, marvel--magical life!
My aunt Sarah spoke: "Ten years or so ago, I entered a new world.
Perhaps imagination and memory and intuition and mind and emotion and
judgment were always on the road.... Perhaps we come, each of us,
like Christian, to a boundary-line, and there the burden drops and we
walk on, new man, new woman! At any rate, I walk on, and now each
morning I say, 'What exquisite, sweet surprise shall I know to-day?'
Behind all outer meanings are inner meanings, and they come first,
come last--are Alpha and Omega into which all things go, out of which
all things come!"
The days slipped by at Restwell. I walked to Whitechurch. Hilltop
Academy had another principal, Mr. Smith, the history teacher,
teaching where had taught Doctor Young. I went to see Mr. Gilbert.
The great tree shadowed the pharmacy. One descended a step as into
the cave of a good anchorite. The little bell rang.
The hermit was now an old man. "Oh yes, I shall bury this!" he said.
"But _I_ shall simply live on. Immortality is desirable. I take it
that the school-books and the newspapers haven't yet the last word in
physics and mathematics."
I went to see the rector of St. Matthew's. Mr. Millwood was in his
study, but presently we stepped into the garden and paced the path by
white and pink and purple asters. He spoke of Miriam.
I said: "Death is a plane of consciousness. By degrees the 'living'
and the 'dead' are finding and making a plane in which to meet. When
the consciousness has grown great wings--"
"Yes?"
"Then there is no 'death.'"
"Consciousness--planes and states--degrees of awareness! I hate,"
said Mr. Millwood, with vigor, "all the new-fangled lingo!"
I laughed. I agreed that language was yet Bœotian.
But the sunshine was not Bo[eo]tian--nor the colors of the garden.
The three-dimensional language was not Bœotian.... Or was it,
too, Bœotian to what should be, would be?
We walked the brick path....
That evening at Restwell I went to Daddy Guinea's cabin. It stood
vacant, the door open, behind it cavernous dark, before it red sumach
and farewell-summer. I sat upon the door-step and all my childhood
came about me.
I had learned to walk in the past as simply as one turns from the
thronged street to walk in the park. I walked there now. Fire
burned on the cabin hearth and there Daddy Guinea and I baked sweet
potatoes and he told me about the battle seen from Lone Tree Hill.
But I asked him questions such as I had not asked then, and I saw in
his answers what I had not seen then--and yet was it play,
recreation! The past is the vast playground where things are learned
in play. There is motion there as everywhere.
The past ran into the now, the now rose from the past. Spread in all
directions the tremendous shape of the present! Flux and throb and
impact, shuddering thrill and thunder--mine of choices....
The future lifted me.... Those who live in the future live!
Chaplets of stars appeared. The night wind breathed. "Tu-whoo!
Tu-whoo!" said an owl in the wood. The cricket world chirped. The
soil, the plant world, entered in fragrance.... Oh, beauty and might
and wisdom! AUM, saith the Hindu. ALL--ALL.
We are Brahma, we are Vishnu, we are Shiva--Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost.
I looked at my little life, and I looked at my larger life, and I saw
that the one was to melt into the other.
The larger was to be the simple, continuing, every-day life--as the
little life had been. The momentary was to become the day long....
I felt movement about me--presences--Presence. I could not bring all
into radiance--I could not step wholly, bodily, into that super-world
that I divined--outer islands, I divined, of an inner world so great,
so bright--! Ignorance held me, lethargy, weakness, unwisdom,
unlove. I saw through a glass darkly, but all my being was bent
toward one day seeing clearly. We pass into it as, long ago, we
passed through the brute into the human. All the world shall go up
with a shout into God--shall find itself in its own heights.
I left the cabin and went down to the river and heard the sea talking
in it, to it. I touched the sea that had put it forth and was taking
it again. It was no distance, or I had overpassed distance. All
experience had been, was, and would be mine ... and thine ... ours
... the ultimate, the un-selfed I.
In a week I went from Restwell back to Flowerfield.
Indian summer pervaded the land. In the spring violets cover the
ground, in the late, late autumn they fill the air.
John and I walked the old road. "Show me, Michael, some of the
things you see!"
"I see how good, how strong, how dear you are, John, John!"
"But you've stepped over a stream that still runs before me. I can
see that. You call to me from the other side."
"You will come. You feel yourself moving.... 'It's dogged does it.'
'Dogged' finds the direction--'dogged' pursues it. 'Dogged' is your
true knight errant, his adventure found--"
"But the mood," he said, "ceases to be one of doggedness."
"You are right. It becomes a burning glory."
We walked in silence. He drew a quick breath. "I saw just then,
time, space, and causation."
"You are crossing the stream! This is a world beyond the old. We
passed into it because we were ready to pass into it. But we are
babes here, half-blind new-comers, stammerers, uncertain feelers
toward bright truths. That will change. We shall grow."
"The 'I' sense--where does that go?"
"It passes into 'We'--and that passes into God."
We walked on, and Flowerfield and the County and the State and the
Country and the World were vividly fair....
The next day was a day of rain, the day after one of blowing wind,
but the third day broke in glory. I went that morning to Wake-robin
Hill. I passed the lesser wood where in spring the flowers abounded.
I climbed to the crown and lay under hemlocks. Still, still, was I
hunting Reality, the thing which Is ... thing? ... the Person Who Is!
Miriam and I sought together. She was with me on Wake-robin Hill.
We sought--and, as ever, seeking, we found. We found wonder, high
peace, work to be done, adventure mystic, beckoning, vistas of travel!
To hear the voice of understanding, and to live the unselfish life--
THE END