"Well, go along!" said Mimy, gloomily. "Julia'll be glad to get the
pieces."
They left the kitchen behind them.
"And I want to go to heaven to hear Jordan roll!"
Marget's low, warm laughter sounded again. "Her house is like a pin, and
she's so proud of it, and she wouldn't for anything miss having you see
it! The same little rhyme is said to every guest we have. And '_read!_'
Mimy's so proud to see Zinia sit at a table and read! Jim can read, too,
but he doesn't like to. But Zinia is fond of books."
Mimy's house rose beside the orchard, a pretty cottage with a dooryard
filled with cockscomb and larkspur and marigold. At the gate grew a bush
of myrrh, and the porch had over it a gourd vine. Just So sat in the
middle of the path, playing with red and blue blocks. At the sound of
voices Susan appeared, a clear-brown, neat, and active woman. "Just So,
don't you clutter up the path like that! Come this-a-way, Miss Marget!"
She took them across the porch, where the gourd vine made so pleasant a
pattern, into a little parlor, bright as a pin. They sat and talked, and
then Susan said that she would bring Julia, and, leaving the room,
reappeared, pushing a wheeled chair. In this sat Julia, who was almost a
middle-aged woman, and had a slender, pleasing face, and was only a
little lame in her mind.
Marget emptied the basket. "Oh, my!" said Julia, and again, "Oh, my!"
With eager fingers she spread the bits of silk and velvet and satin and
striped or flowered ribbon. "Flower-garden pieces! It will be a
flower-garden quilt. I'll make a quilt like they have in heaven!"
"Shoo! Julia!" exclaimed Susan. "They don't have quilts in heaven. It
ain't cold there!"
Julia's face took on an imploring, almost a frightened look. She turned
to Marget. "If they don't have quilts I won't have anything to do!"
With all that she knew of Marget Land, Miss Darcy could but wonder at
the luminous sweetness, the depth and the play with which Marget, seated
by Julia, dealt with the latter's fears. All the bright pieces were
spread over the knees of both. "In heaven you'll put rose and blue
together, and this violet and green. And look how these flowered pieces
go! Your quilts are for warmth and beauty, Julia, aren't they? Shut your
eyes and see warmth and beauty, warmth and beauty!" She put her hand
over the lame woman's hand. The latter's plaintive look changed, her
eyes brightened, and she nodded her head. "Yes! To keep us warm; and
they are lovely, like the flowers! Warm like the sun is!"
"Yes. Warmth and beauty--warmth and beauty! So in heaven you're to keep
on with warmth and beauty. And you'll learn, too, how well wisdom goes
with them. Their quilts aren't just like these quilts, but you won't
care for that. You'll be putting together and giving beautiful, bright
things!"
Julia caressed a length of flowered ribbon. "That's what I think.
They're warm and beautiful, warm and beautiful! And every one I give a
quilt to says, 'I'm so glad I've got one!'"
"When you put that piece in, think 'warm and beautiful' for Mrs. Gray.
She gave it to you. And Miss Lucy Allen gave the beautiful blue piece."
When they had quitted the porch with the gourd vine, and the dooryard,
and the gate by the myrrh bush, and were under the orchard trees, Marget
said: "She's been making quilts for twenty years. Perhaps two a year,
and into each one goes I do not know what dim thinking and feeling,
warmth and beauty, for such and such a one!"
It was Miss Darcy's habit to rest a little in her own room after dinner.
In the midafternoon, coming downstairs, she found the door of Linden's
study open. Linden turned his head, hearing her step. "Come in! Here are
Marget and Curtin."
It was the first time she had entered this room. Her eyes took it in as
she crossed the threshold, and found it a simple, grave place, as simple
and grave and charged with its own aroma and spirit as a pine wood. It
spread a large room, with plenty of space for pacing up and down. The
bookcases, the desk, the chairs, an old, long cane and wood sofa were
for use. The plain walls held a few prints. In one of the deep windows
stood a large globe.
Curtin put Miss Darcy a chair. "I've just come in," he said. There had
grown between them, beginning the morning upon which she found him
fishing, or not fishing, in the gorge that closed the valley, a quiet
liking and friendship, with a sense, perhaps, of standing even in the
inner world. "Linden was saying--"
Marget sat before the desk not far from the fireplace, in which burned a
light flame. She had been writing, and Linden dictating from his big
cane chair by the long window. She had turned from the desk and he had
moved his chair to where he sat, half in firelight, half in tawny
sunlight. To Anna Darcy's sense the room had strongly that luminousness
which in some sort she found in the whole of Sweet Rocket, in valleys,
hills, house, and folk. The whole made a sun-filled cluster that, acting
as a cluster, redoubled so all effects. But undoubtedly Linden and
Marget were the center of the cluster.
"I am glad you have come in," said Curtin. "Linden was speaking of
their life here--"
"I told you, you remember, driving through the woods, of our outer
life," Marget said. "Sitting here before the fire we had begun to talk
of that far larger life within the outer."
Linden spoke. "Martin asked me, and I was telling him as clearly as I
could. It is not wholly clear, you must not think, to Marget and me, our
progression and our life. 'Man is a bridge,' says Nietzsche. A living
bridge that crosses from himself to himself. Always the provisional, the
halfway, gone afar even while we say, 'Here am I!' How to name a thing
that travels so fast! The life of Marget and me changes and grows, as
does yours and yours. The history of one--the history of all. There is
at once divine difference, divine sameness. No hand and no word will
hold our life!"
"I don't know anyone like you," said Curtin.
"No. But you will presently begin to know more and more who differ from
us and yet who belong in the order--the order of those who are aware
that present man is a bridge and who begin consciously to act, feel, and
know in a larger existence."
"And that is still inward?"
"The world still calls it inward. To those in that existence inward and
outward, past, present, and future, come into one. The old words, then,
are but retained words of convenience. As to the ultimate mind Martin
and Richard, Marget, Anna, are but words of convenience, names for
strands of experience. All are comprehended, combined, surpassed."
The sun lighted his hair, his bronzed face, his quiet eyes, the sight of
which he seemed so little to miss. After a moment's pause he spoke on:
"To-day many and many are aware of the richness of destiny. Some more
so, some less so, but aware! Faculties that in a host are but germinal
build in and for others realities. The momentary, superficial present,
not being the true present, there _are_, not 'there have been' since the
dawn of history, many such men and women. Very many; a host. There are
many to-day; to-morrow there will be more. If you regard with intentness
you may see the new Humanity forming."
"What of those who neither dream, nor divine, nor wish, who come on so
slow?"
"Their not divining nor dreaming nor wishing is more apparent than real.
All come on. The slowest, who thinks he has no direction, is drawn
unconscious until the day when he discovers the compass."
"Will any never cross?"
"I don't think so."
"And when the last human being has crossed?"
"Then will the others come on into humanity--they that we call the
animals. And those behind them will lift to where they were. But our
wave goes on into the spiritual world that is the world of subtler
matter, vaster energy, understanding at last, love at last, beauty at
last. Well, Marget and I are conscious travelers thitherward, as are you
and you."
"Ah, you are ahead of me!"
"And of me!"
"In some ways we may be ahead. And in others you may have store of
energy and experience that sets you ahead. That matters not in the
least. Whitman said that when he said:
"By my side or back of me, Eve following,
Or in front, and I following her, just the same.
Like him, too:
"Content with the present and content with the past,
yet lassoing the past and the present with the future!"