"Roger Carter has a good saddle mare. He will be glad, I know, to let
you have her."
Drew, mounted as he came, Curtin on Dixie, set out before noon for Rock
Mountain. The cliffy crest that gave it its name peered above the
southern hills and ridges facing Sweet Rocket. Crossing the river the
two kept for some little distance to the Alder road, then at a pine tree
left it for a just discernible track. "This is where we changed, Randall
and I, the other day. Until we saw the river we thought that we were
going to Alder, but we were going to Sweet Rocket instead."
The trees closing in behind them, they were plunged into forest. There
was now no green save the green of occasional pine or hemlock. All was
gold or red or russet. Moreover, the earlier trees to turn were fast
flinging their mantles upon the earth. The sky met less obstruction, the
sunlight spread a royal carpet. The air equaled exhilaration. As Curtin
rode he thought that he faintly remembered all the forests of the world.
"Is it infectious? Is it because in some sort Drew remembers, or is it
because I have been--and surely I _have_ been--in all the forests of the
world? Like him, I remember best the temperate and the northern forests,
because in time they are the nearer."
For a while they rode in silence. There was only the sound of their own
breathing and movement, and the very inner voice of the forest, low
speech of branches that brushed them, break of twigs, flutter of wings,
tap of woodpeckers, whisk of squirrel, and once, a little way off, the
heavy whir of a pheasant. At last Drew broke the silence. "My mother
died when I was fifteen years old, and my father when I was twenty. I
remember my mother's mother and my father's mother and father. I know a
good deal about their life after I was born and their life before I was
born. I have a fair notion of my grandparents' parents, and I know
something of the way of life of the generation behind that one. I have
been told and I have read. Of course there are presently ancestors of
whom I have been told nothing, and behind these countless others. Of
course I know that people often imaginatively share the experience of
parents and kindred. They say: 'It must have been so and so with my
mother and my father--or with my grandparents--or my ancestors
generally. They had these experiences and they must have felt and done
this way. It seems almost as if I were there!' I think when you say that
you are beginning. But it's grown to be more than that with me. After
all, what are you but your parents, your grandparents, your
great-grandparents, and so on? Your experience under your immediate name
and your experience under your old names--their names. And alike, what
are they but you? Share and share, comprehend and comprehend, include
and include! I tell you that I am aware of the pyramid behind this
cleaving point that is talking to you. I _remember_."
"Do you mean that you remember actually thinking, feeling, doing what
men say your ancestors did?"
"I don't get it clear. It's all wrought into some kind of unity. I don't
remember clearly sharp, isolated experiences--except that one time I
told you about, and that was clear and sharp repetition. But I remember,
all the same. I don't feel any wall between my father and myself,
between my mother and myself, my grandparents and myself. You don't know
how curiously I seem to share their life! Sometimes, lying still at
night, I simply, naturally, am Edward Drew as well as Philip Drew. I
look out of the Edward Drew window--or out of the Andrew or Robert or
Margaret or Janet window--and then I turn and look out of the Philip
Drew window. I had a great-grandfather who was a sailor. I can't tell
you what feel of the deck beneath my feet, what a sense of sea by day
and by night, I have at times!... But then, of course, in the far back I
must join many sailors.... I _am_ those folk. That's my own life they
led. I lead their life. Wherever they are, they lead mine!"
He fell silent, and Curtin, too, rode silent. They were now above the
valley, their road climbing. Overpassing a great hill they came to a
threadlike, green vale, and crossing this climbed Bear Mountain, behind
which rose the great head of Rock. When they reached a gushing mountain
spring they dismounted, and, seated on moss and leaves under a tall
mountain linden, all palely gold, ate the bread and cheese and damson
tart and drank the cider that Sweet Rocket had put in the bag they
carried. Their feast ended, they rested on the springy, fragrant earth.
Drew began again. "Remembrance! If I had a hundred per cent better
brain--and I suppose one day the brain of all of us will be a hundred, a
thousand per cent, ahead of what it is now--I am convinced that I could
remember not only down the stalk of myself, but out into the branches
right and left. The tree conscious from leaf to root, from root to
leaf! The whole tree conscious, aware up and down and to and fro--and,
as somewhere all the forest joins on, the forest conscious and aware up
and down of its history. Then the forest runs into all the forests high
and low. The everlasting Forest and all its adventures!" He looked as
though he rode in that forest. "Out of it comes the Tree that sheds the
forests! And never once need we lose consciousness in finding that Tree!
That's what Mr. Linden said to me. He said: 'You're the Ash Yggdrasil.
You're all things and all people. You share them and they share you.
You're to extend, extend, your sense of that. The One is to come down
and lay hold upon you--and still you shall find it home and yourself!'"
On they rode over Bear Mountain, and at last up Rock. Five hundred feet
below the top lay a green depression named Hall's Gap. Here a half-dozen
cabins made Hall's Town. The people now owned Rock Mountain, its rich
forests and rushing waters. A road was in the making and that and other
department plans brought to Hall's Gap preliminary groups, the present
group being a surveying, engineering, and reporting one, with Malcolm
Smith for head. Under him he had Cooper and Morris, Randall and Drew,
with axmen and spademen hired from the mountain. The cabins in the Gap
lodged them all.
Curtin and Drew reached this place before sunset. The men were coming
in, dogs barked, the smell of coffee and bacon hung in the air. Randall
welcomed them, and presently Malcolm Smith appeared and shook hands.
They had supper in Hall's big double cabin, with Hall and Mrs. Hall and
half a dozen flaxen-haired young Halls, but after supper they went to a
neighboring cabin, for the time being their own. Pine knots blazed on
the hearth. Malcolm Smith and Cooper and Morris, Randall and Drew and
Martin Curtin stretched tired limbs and smoked and talked. Morris and
Cooper presently played checkers. Malcolm Smith read the newspaper, but
after a little put it down and talked. He talked of aviation, and
wireless, and of Einstein's notion of space, and of atomic energy. "I've
an idea that ideas, ideation generally, imagery, perhaps memory, are
simply that energy functioning! We imagine, and that energy has
constructed a form in ether. We use it blindly, weakly, unintelligently.
But if--"
"I see."
"But if we used it enormously more strongly--and wisely--we'd be
creators all night! It's getting very important to know what we do want
to create. If we don't look out, presently we may find that our
imaginations have life! We've got to choose, I suppose, what kind of
life we'll give; silly or monstrous life, or intelligent, kindly,
strong, beautiful life!"
Curtin enjoyed the evening on Rock. Flame and odor of burning pine, and
the pleasantly grotesque shadows on the cabin walls, made for rich
fancies. In one of the easy silences the men grouped in this brown and
flame-hued place seemed to him genii, gathered here before they drove
their roads over mountains or harnessed their plunging water steeds. He
thought: "We are genii! How wonderful it is to be what we are--and shall
be!"
Men at Hall's went to bed before ten. Curtin found in a small cabin a
hard couch and honest sleep. He slept without turning till five of the
morning, when he waked with a great sense of refreshment. "Where I have
been I don't know, but it was where vigor flows!" The stars shone in at
his window. He lay still for a few minutes, then rose. The air was not
too chill. He found when he was dressed that he was warm enough. Opening
the cabin door he went out, moving softly so as not to waken Drew and
Randall. The morning star hung in the east, and near it the moon in her
last quarter. The cold, first hyacinth of dawn streaked the sky. Drew
had pointed out the path to the top of the mountain. Curtin, finding it,
climbed it alone. Half an hour brought him to the summit. When he
reached it the earth was bathed in the cool and violet first light. He
found a great projecting rock, shaped like a chair, and took his seat
here. The planet, from gold, was become silver, and the moon hung like
a dream canoe. Here or there mist hid the vast expanse below, but for
the most part earth lay clear. The outthrust rock that was his seat gave
him two-thirds of the circle.
Stillness with depth and power possessed Curtin. He looked out, and
down, and over. Range on range, with narrow vales between, rolled the
mountains. In the strengthening light the autumn hue of them gave desert
tints; then he picked out clearings, and white points that were hamlets
and farmhouses. He turned eyes to where would be Sweet Rocket, though he
could not see that valley. It was dawn. Richard Linden would be up.
Perhaps, guessing that Curtin might watch dawn brighten from this rock,
he might be here in mind and spirit.
Even as he thought this, the presence of Linden not there but here, or
both here and there, came to Curtin in a wave. He felt company in
solitude, doubled life. And not, as he presently perceived, Linden only.
Linden meant thousands of others, as thousands of others meant Linden.
Thousands and thousands.... That was himself ... thousands and
thousands.
He looked north and east and west; by rising and moving he looked south.
The horizon rim lay very far. Using knowledge, he let it farther drop
away, drop away. Underneath him was the bulk of the earth. Use power and
make it as crystal, penetrable as water or air! Overhead and all around
was air, thinning afar into ether. He saw his globe in space and time. A
ten-minute road of light ran between it and the sun. He sat very still,
but within he moved into the land of contemplation. Here much time came
into no-time, so subtle swift was motion. He entered into touch with
much for which he had not yet found name or names. He might say, there
is deep water and rich land. He might say, the world is other than we
thought it. There are Americas ripe for discovery, and there are farther
and future Americas forming.
By degrees might lessened. Muscle could not yet hold, nor sense be
aware. He came nearer surface. Yet still there was vision. Phosphor was
paling, the moon a dim curve of pearl, and all the spread of earth in
stronger light. Curtin gazed, and the eyes of the mind outran the eyes
of the flesh. Not just Virginia, but all the forty-eight states. Not
just the forty-eight, but all America, Canada, and Mexico, and the
islands and the republics of the South. He looked to the Atlantic and
saw on the farther side Europe and Africa, and on to the east Asia and
the Pacific. He saw the continents and the nations. It was not so much
that he saw their earth, their body, though he saw that, too. But he saw
them, touched them, heard them, as persons. The most of them had lately
been at fierce war, fibers of each dissenting, but the bulk warring.
Exhausted from war, haggard and torn, yet still they made gestures with
broken weapons. He saw them in the throes of economic and political
change, of change from knowledge to knowledge, and of religious change.
He saw traits and actions, deep, deep; yesterdays at the point of
to-day, and all the morrows being built of yesterdays and to-days. He
saw as it were stain and chaff and guilt, and through all these
white-running Fire and Life and Upspringing. They were Persons, but a
greater Person held them. Light broke. He saw the earth and the world
and the heavens as Person. Upon him broke in deluge the vaster Selfhood.
The sun rose over Rock Mountain, the long ranges and the vales. The air
had the exquisite fresh energy of Hope. Curtin moved down the path to
the cabins. All his being seemed lit and harmonized. "It is what the old
saints called conversion. My times fall into the hand of the One that I
Am!"
The rosy light shone on Hall's below him as it shone on Sweet Rocket and
Alder and the Virginia farms and villages and towns, and the farms and
villages and towns of every state, and of all the Americas, and of the
earth. Fragrant smoke rose from the chimneys. He heard the cheerful
voices. A great love of the neighbor pervaded Curtin's consciousness,
and with it entered the neighbor. His consciousness and the neighbor's
consciousness became to a degree one.