IV

In the afternoon the three and Tam went for a walk. They crossed the

river by a footbridge and walked a mile by waterside. This brought them

to valley end. The stream slipped on between close-standing hills, but

the strollers turned aside into a glade from which the greater forest

had been cut. Young trees and tall old trees were set with some

spareness. All wore robes like princes; all glowed in a dream of spring

behind winter. The ground had gray moss and green moss, and all manner

of minute and charming growths. The sun so came into this glade that the

wild grape found and took advantage. It leaned its wine-hued, shaggy

stem against trunks; it climbed and overran, and made bridges from tree

to tree. Its festoons shone aloft, its broad leaves and blue clusters

dreamed against autumn sky. The air breathed dry and fine. Sunshine lay

on ground in shafts and plaques of gold.

Richard Linden used a staff. Marget kept near him and Tam just ahead.

Walking so, you would not think he was a blind man. Indeed, he seemed to

have a sixth sense, he moved so easily. The three walked without much

speech. The day was the sumptuous speaker; these woods, this feather

air, the admirable poise of the year before its journey from hearth

fire, the plain chant of the crickets, the trill of the bird.

In a roll over his shoulder Linden carried a wide and thick plaid.

Presently Marget said: "Let us rest before we turn back. Miss Darcy

isn't the tramp that we are!" whereupon they pitched camp for half an

hour, spreading the plaid beneath a tree. Richard Linden, resting

against a chance bowlder, locked his hands behind his head and lifted

his face to the high, free sky. Marget took off her wide hat and lay

down beside Miss Darcy, who sat on a stone. Tam had the dry grass and

moss and the fringe of the plaid.

Marget spoke. "We are under a young hickory, Richard. It is all gold.

There is a dogwood close by, and its leaves are red, and it is very full

of berries. Wild grape has started by the dogwood and crossed to the

hickory. It is far and near and up and down. The leaves are half green

and half yellow, and there are a thousand bunches of grapes."

"I see!" he said; "and I hear a woodpecker."

"It's yonder on a white oak. It's a flicker. There isn't a cloud in the

sky, and far, far up, small as a dragon fly, is a buzzard sailing.

There's a cedar waxwing in the dogwood stripping berries. There is

another--a third! We frightened them away, but they are coming back.

They're after the grapes. There will be fifty in a moment--"

They kept still and watched, Marget's hand on Tam. Slender, graceful,

tawny, crested birds came in a flock. They entered the hickory and the

dogwood. With quick movements of head and body they stripped the grapes

and the scarlet dogwood berries. They perched and removed, and perched

again. They kept up a low talk among themselves and a perpetual flutter

of wings. It was as though a wind were in the trees, so continuous was

the sound. Blue grapes, dogwood berries, dropped upon the ground. For

ten minutes the flock fluttered and fed, while with intent, pleased

faces the human beings watched or listened. Then Tam became aware of a

rabbit down the glade and started up. Away flew the cedar waxwings.

"Oh, wasn't it lovely?"

They sat still. Richard Linden, resting against the rock, kept his face

raised to blue sky. "Their life!" he said. "As we enter upon their

life--"

Tam came back, the rabbit having vanished. "Lie still, Tam, lie still!

Get into your life-to-be for a little, and be quiet shepherd on a hill

instead of shepherd's dog!"

"Their life--"

The visitor to Sweet Rocket sat still, with her eyes upon the gold

fretwork of the hickory. She was thinking of the birds. It was very

sunny, very still in the glade. Her companions also rested silent. They

seemed to be in reverie, to be going where they would in their inner

worlds.

Miss Darcy followed the waxwings in their flight. She saw the flock that

had been here, and other flocks, stripping wild grape and dogwood and

cedar berries. They were far and near, in many a woodland glade. In

thousands they twined and turned, they talked in the clan, their wings

made a windy sound. And the woodpeckers! Hammer and hammer, through the

forests of the world! And the thrush that she had heard this morning,

and the humming bird in the garden--and the crows that had cawed from a

hillside, the hawk and the owl.... Suddenly she saw in some space an

eagle rise to its nest upon a crag edge. From the one she saw others.

Eagles in all the lands. For one instant she caught a far glimpse of the

Idea, the absolute eagle. There was the rush of a loftier sense. Then

she sank from that, but she saw eagles in all the lands. She saw the

great hawks and the condors. Green waves were beneath her; with sea

birds she skimmed them in the first light, and the cries of her kind

were about her. On the ice floes walked the penguins, the albatross

winnowed solitude. With heron and flamingo and crane she knew shore and

marsh. The white swan and the black swan oared their way through still

waters. In their right circle moved the peacock and the pheasant, the

lyre bird, the bower bird, and the bird of paradise. The nightingale

sang in deep woods, and in southern thickets of yellow jessamine sang

the mocking bird. The lark mounted into the air, the cuckoo called from

the hedge, the wren built under the eaves. In the gray dawn, from a

thousand farms and hamlets, crowed the cocks. Over all the earth clucked

the hen, peeped the downy chick. The swallows crossed a saffron sky and

the whippoorwill cried in the night, and in the morning the quails said

"Bob White!" Migrating hordes, like scuds of clouds, drove before

favorable winds, north, south! She was plunged in the life of birds,

where they waded between deep water and solid shore, where they lived in

a world of green, where they flew aloft and afar, over land, over

sea--all their plumage, shapes, and magnitudes. She seemed to hear their

cheepings, cries and songs, to hear them and touch them, their

sleekness, lightness, threaded beauty! Over all the earth spread the

passionate wooing, the daylong song. Here were the nests, the

multitudes, and the eggs, green and blue and white and dark. The nests

and eggs became transfigured. The straw of the nests burned lines of

white fire, the cup was diamond light, the shell of the egg no more than

a window, and through it was seen the bird-past, and the bird desire and

will and power. Out of the egg the young--she heard the nightingales in

the woods, the lark in the sky!

"See the love and beauty and power and daring! See the thought and

feeling pressing on--see them trooping into fuller being--see them men

and women, their tribes and nations! When we have gone far, far on, see

their human earth!"

It was Linden, she thought, who said that. She came back with a great

throb of her heart to the earth beneath a golden hickory, to the October

sun, in a little Virginian valley. Yet the two reclining there seemed

still in a brown study, gone away. She thought: "I am come into a

strange country! Are they knowing, feeling all that life more intensely

than I, for all that they lie there so quietly, thinking, one would say,

of to-morrow's work, of a book they are reading, or of the cedar

waxwings?... It is all in the range of perception, could I run like

light all over the earth! There are those birds and their life. I only

saw what _is_!"

But she felt that while she had had a wave of it those two had a whole

breadth of ocean. She felt that they were expert, adept. She felt again

the breath of wonder. It was at once wonder and homelikeness.

"Glad--glad--glad that I came! My gray road turns!"

Richard Linden dropped his hands from behind his head and passed them

over his eyes. Marget rose to her knees. There was deep light in her

face. She lifted then let fall her arms. "Oh, the _beauty_ when life is

seen as a landscape, heard as a symphony, smelled as a garden, tasted as

nectar, dwelt in as a house!" She rose to her feet. "The sun is gone

from the grass. It is dawn in Tibet. Come, Tam, let us be going home!"

They folded the plaid and left the hickory and the dogwood. The glade

was turning violet, but the hilltops showed golden and the mountains

stood in light. A rich scent breathed from the earth, while the air

carried a spear from the north. Leaving the wood, they took again the

path by the river, that sang toward them, that held pools of light.

Walking so, Marget fell to talking of Anna Darcy's life, the manner of

it, her steadfast work from year to year, and all her kindnesses, and

all that she had given. At first Miss Darcy tried to stop her, but then

she could not try any longer, the appreciation was so sweet. Her life

had been difficult, isolated for all the stir around her, subject to

sorrows, a little withered and gray. She felt the exquisite caress of

their interest. It was more than that to her; it was recognition.

How would it be if all were truly interested in all? If there were

general recognition?

As she walked, the valley and the hills, the river and warm, dusky air,

the collie, the man and woman with her, herself, seemed to shift and

quiver into one. Walls vanished. There happened rest, understanding,

imperviousness to harm, blood warmth, and new and strange aspiration.

It was impossible for her to hold the moment. She seemed to herself to

sink again to the rigid and small shape of Anna Darcy, like an Egyptian

figure graved on stone, a plane figure. But she did not wholly fit back

into the figure. She felt that above it was fullness and youth and song,

and that they were hers as well as another's.

V

Again, the next morning, she found neither of her hosts. "We breakfast

early and work early," Marget had said. Again Zinia served her alone,

again she walked in the flower garden, again she went farther afield.

The day was brilliantly, vividly clear, white clouds in the sky, and

between, great seas of cobalt. She went at once to the river path, but

turned this morning up the stream. The day hung joyous, the high and

moving clouds, the light and shadow had magnificence. She felt very

well; she really looked five years younger. Before her, beyond a spur of

orchard, she made out the roof of a building. When she came nearer she

felt an assurance that this was the overseer's house. "Where Marget was

born," she thought; "where she lived with her father and mother and

brothers."

Presently she stood still to regard the place.

The house was a small one, two-storied, frame, painted white with green

blinds. It had a small porch with a window to either side. At the back

she made out a wider porch, and there were outbuildings. The whole was

buried among locust trees and old shrubs, that when she came nearer she

recognized for lilac and althea and syringa. Door and windows stood

open. At first she thought she would turn from the river to the house,

but then she said, "No, not till she herself brings me here some day."

But the place was plain before her where she stood. When she had moved a

few paces she looked full to the door, between locust trees and bushes.

She was now beside a giant sycamore, very old, all copper colored as to

leaf, with dappled white and brown arms. Built around the bole was a

wooden bench, old and weather-worn. "She played here when she was a

child. They have all set here beneath this tree. She comes here now, I

fancy, often."

She took her seat. No one came in or out of the house door a stone's

throw away. The place was sunny and deserted. There came, as it were, a

veil over it. She shut her eyes the better to look at child life here

with father and mother and Will and Edgar. The old overseer, who had

fought in the war for the old order, but who, when it came crash! had

built in the new; and the mother, Elizabeth Land, overworked and

uncomplaining; and the boys with their desires and broodings and

hopes--she felt them all.

Sitting with her eyes shut, she passed into feeling them very strongly.

The place turned to be of thirty, forty years ago. She moved with the

overseer as he went to his work and came from it. With Marget Land's

mother she was cooking, sewing, cleaning. She was with the three

children, the boys older than the girl, at tasks and in play. Swim in

the river, swing under the locust tree, go for berries, for persimmons,

chinquapins, walnuts, for grapes and haws, go for the cow, work in the

garden patch, shell the peas, shuck the corn, look for eggs, pick the

currants and gooseberries, split the kindling, gather the chips, wash

the dishes, clean the lamps, sit by the fire and study reading, writing,

and arithmetic--she was deep in it, deep in a slow, steady current of

participation. It did not seem to curve, but now it was her own

childhood, her parents and brothers and sisters, an old town house and a

leafy town square--life, life, so varied and so the same! Deep, deep

wash of deep waves, and so pleasant, so sweet, all the pang and ill

lost! A past that was winnowed, understood, forgiven, appreciated, loved

by mind and heart of Farther On, and that was present, gone nowhere,

here, in finer space and finer time, a vast country capable of being

visited! Going into it was to find the deathless taste of eternity. It

was not dark; you could fill it with golden light. The forms there were

not immovable, not dead. As you understood, they lived and were

yourself. As you remembered, you saw that you were remembering, that you

were re-collecting from far and near, your Self.

Anna Darcy sat very still. "I had to wait till I was fifty-eight years

old to see that."

As on yesterday it had grown out of a commonplace of imagination and

memory. Memory and imagination had, by degrees, entered _their_ deeper

selves.

Again, as on yesterday, she could not hold it. Increased energy,

increased perception, what the ancients called the Genius, and the

mystic called illumination, or voice of God, and the moderns higher

vibration, superconsciousness--whatever it was, and perhaps the name did

not much matter, she had touched it and then lost it. But she knew that

it had been touched, and that it was desirable to know it or its like

again.

She was a member of the church, a praying woman. She bent her forehead

upon her hands: "O God, let thy kingdom come! As it comes near us, send

thy breezes!"

Presently, rising, she went on up the stream. It was not wide; it just

came into the category of river, headwater, she knew, of a greater

river. October painted it with russets and golds and reds. Midcurrent

showed the ineffable blue of the sky, or when clouds drove by the

zenith, the clouds. She walked on until before her she saw the eastern

gate of the vale. The hills closed in, leaving a bit of grassy meadow on

either side the stream. This narrowed. The hills grew loftier,

insensibly became mountains. She was in a mountain pass, gray cliff to

the right, hemlocks overhanging the water that was broken now by

bowlders, débris of an ancient rock. The path was cool and dark and

washed by the scent of the conifers. Only here and there the climbing

sun sent splashing through an intensity of light that showed every

fallen needle, every cone or twig or leaf upon the path. Not far before

her the path turned and went up over the mountain. She thought, "That

will be the way to Mrs. Cliff's."

She came upon a fisherman. He sat among the roots of a hemlock, and was

engaged in reeling in his line. He was a man neither old nor young, with

a long, easy frame, and a short, graying beard. His dress was that of a

fisherman who goes forth from the city to fish--but not for the first

nor the second nor the third time. Nothing that he had on was new, but

all was well cut.

"Good morning!" he said.

"Good morning!"

He worked on at his reel. "Each time that I do this I say that it is the

last time."

"Why?"

"I grow too damned able--I beg your pardon!--to put myself in the fish's

place."

"Have you caught any?"

"This morning? Not a ghost of one! Yet they say this is a good stream! I

think that I warn them off the hook. 'Monsieur Black Bass, or Signor

Trout, as it may be, my desire not to take you is gaining, I feel, upon

my desire to take you! Your own desire naturally aiding the first, I

grow to feel that we make a strong combination!'"

He laughed, putting up his rod. Then his mustaches went down and his

face became serious enough, "So much mangling! I've had my fill."

"How did you come? Over the mountain?"

"Yes. I am camping with a dozen New York and Washington fellows on

another little river over there. The others fish that stream. I'm like

Mrs. Elton. I adore exploring! I slept last night in a mountain

cabin--Cliff's. Can you tell me how far I am from Sweet Rocket farm?"

"Less than a mile."

"No! I didn't think from what the mountain folk said that it was so

near. I knew before I came that he was somewhere in these parts."

"Do you know Mr. Linden?"

"I was his classmate at the university. Then, fifteen years ago, I met

him in Southern Russia. We had a couple of weeks together, and then I

must hurry on to Constantinople, where I was due. He went into the

Caucasus. I lost sight of him. It was two years later that I heard of

that accident which blinded him, and I've heard since only second-and

third-hand things. The other day in the club a man told me that he was

living where his people had lived, down here in Virginia. I meant to go

to see him, but I meant to write first."

"I am a visitor at Sweet Rocket. But I am sure that Mr. Linden would

wish you to come on to the house. Had you not better do so?"

"Why, yes, then, I think that I shall." He stood up from the hemlock

roots. "You are very good. My name is Curtin--Martin Curtin."

She gave her own. He took up fisherman's paraphernalia and a light coat.

They moved out of ravine into meadow strip; before them lay the jewel

valley. Mr. Curtin drew a deep breath.

"And he hasn't eyes to look at it!"

Anna Darcy found herself answering with certitude. "He sees it and a

thousand places beside."

They walked on, Mr. Curtin gazing at river, hills, and mountains, and

quiet valley floor. "I have known of his doing some splendid things in

life--simple and splendid--the kind that steals into folk, and they do

likewise!"

"Yes, I should think that."

"What is that house?"

"In old times it is the overseer's house. Now the young farmer who helps

him lives there."

"'In old times it _is_'--that's an unusual phrase."

"I mean that to me, for reasons, it stays that way and _is_."

"I agree! When you turn to a thing it _is_. Turn with decision enough,

and your overseer would come out to meet you. That's a sycamore for you!

Do you ever feel the Indians by these streams? If you can see your

overseer you can see your Indians, too."