Malcolm Smith, talking with Curtin in the cool twilight, before Hall's,
had no word against Drew's departure for Sweet Rocket. "He's a valuable,
likable fellow! There's a curious sense when you are with him of depth
or background that he doesn't understand himself. Violin wood! He says
that this friend of yours has something to teach that he wants to learn.
That's all right! I can generally tell when a man's real destiny is
ruling him. I've got that feeling now about Drew. He needs to buy in a
certain city and he's going there. If we're here next year--and there's
a lot to do on Rock Mountain--I'll be glad to take him on again."
Bedtime came. Again Curtin slept profoundly, restfully, waked early, and
climbed again to crest of mountain to see again the sun rise over so
great expanse. He sat in the stone chair and before him hung the morning
star and the senescent moon. Below them was spread violet and jonquil
and one strange sea of blue.
Again he felt the Spiritual Sun. He thought: "This is what they have
perceived at Sweet Rocket. They have not waited for death. They live
now, and forever, and know it. This body will go from them, but they are
building or remembering--I do not know which, and perhaps it is both--a
life that will not go from them. And I also, also, though I am a babe
yet--"
Sitting in the hollow of stone at the top of the upraised wave of earth
he watched the sunrise from Rock Mountain.... He conceived that what was
true of him was true of others, had been true age after age, was true
now over this round earth of others. He thought: "There has always been
a fellowship. The eidelweiss does not guess the roses and the
heliotrope, nor the violet and the meadow rue. But at last the garden of
the earth guesses! It becomes the living garden. The living garden
becomes the living man. Naught is right, naught is reasonable, until you
get it from the whole."
The sun rose, the earth turned ruddy. Curtin went down the path to
Hall's, breakfasting there with the men who worked with head and hands.
This morning he and Drew would start for Sweet Rocket. Drew's slender
luggage was going down mountain to Norwood, whence the train would take
it to Alder. Every one liked Drew, even Cooper who laughed at him. "Good
luck, old farmer! Ride over and see us sometime!"
The two rode down Rock and crossed a vale, like a green and gold ribbon,
and went up Bear Mountain, where the oaks were all deep colored, and
down Bear and over forested hills and on by the trail that struck into
the Alder road. They went rather silently, but in a deep, contented
companionship. Once Drew spoke. "He said, 'A good present is one in
which the past betters its condition.'" When he said "he" there was
meant Richard Linden. After this there was silence again, both having
struck some road within, where is the network composed of all the roads
of the world.
They approached Sweet Rocket. The forest fell away. Before them shone
the river, the wheat and orchard land, and the ruddy house with its
pillars of mellowed white, and the hills that inclosed. Through part of
the day clouds had been driving across the sky. Now they were sinking
before the southwest wind, leaving the blue arch. They were variformed,
castles and towers, bridges, alps, cities, ships, mythical beasts,
giants. Light embraced them in a spray of colors. Crossing to it, for
one instant, Curtin saw Sweet Rocket transfigured. All that was strong
and fair became a hundredfold stronger, fairer. All that deterred or
roughened or overweighted or twisted or weakened vanished in warmth and
light. A sheath, or husk, or burr fell away. Interior power rousing
itself, he saw the place in its seraph aspect, eternal in the heavens.
Drew seemed to share the perception. He said, abruptly, "There is
splendor!"
They felt splendor; then it closed, like light withdrawn, warmth
screened away. There stood Sweet Rocket in its earthly estate. That is,
they thought it its old earthly estate. But by that much it had become
endowed and was not the old earthly estate. They had checked their
horses. Curtin said, "So it was always in poetry!"
The younger man had a curious gesture. "We gather all the household gear
into the long ship, and put forth!"
But Curtin thought, "In the Bible Noah gathers all the lifeseed into the
Ark and rides the waters into a new world."
They crossed the river and went up the little glistening beach and by
the cedars to the house. Sweet Rocket welcomed them home, the white folk
and the colored folk and Tam. They found the household increased by two.
Linden said, "These are my cousins, Robert and Frances Dane, who come
for a little while each year to Sweet Rocket."
They were a married pair, a little above forty, perhaps, the mark of the
city upon them. They had quick and nervous bodies, thin, lined faces,
eyes well apart, burning deep and very steady, lips tending to
compression. They seemed tired--about them breathed something of
soldiers after a long day's march through hostile elements. This was
bivouac, this was rest! At first they were too tired, there was almost
resentment. "O God, _how_ can you be still and ageless?" This changed,
little by little, at Sweet Rocket. The overtension disappeared. They
were left taut, collected, wary--workers worthy of praise in a dangerous
world.
At the supper table that evening Curtin made out more and more of their
life. They had come yesterday, a little before their set time, and Anna
Darcy had the start of him in acquaintanceship. Intellectual radicals
certainly, members of some group in action, probably of more groups than
one, jack of all agitations and master of one. He could hear them
speaking, in halls, and under open sky, and he could see the face of the
throng to which they spoke. They would be speaking of Soviet Russia, of
Guild Socialism, of Employer and Employed and the Course of Labor that
did never yet run smooth. There were causes, not so apparently economic,
for which also they would work. He heard them speaking for the Suffrage
Amendment and likewise for the release of Conscientious Objectors. They
belonged here, they belonged there. The one, he was later told, was
Associate Editor of a Journal that was making the step from liberalism
of the left to communism of the right. The woman was an admirable
violinist. He knew that they lived on little and gave much of that
little away. They lived where it was possible to live in one big room
and three small rooms. They had a son who was doing well at a school
they liked in the country. To look at them was to see how hard they
worked, and to look into their eyes was to see the beacon that set them
and kept them at work. They also had vision of Oneness.
Though in talking Linden and Marget used in a much less marked degree
the terminology used by the newcomers, it seemed to present no
difficulties to them. They seemed to understand these guests, as they
understood those others who had come to Sweet Rocket this October, to
understand and to travel with them. Curtin thought: "They sympathize. It
does not occur to them to say, 'Do something else, take another road!'"
He thought: "That is their strength. They utterly share."
Frances Dane had brought her violin to Sweet Rocket. Yesterday it had
been laid in the parlor. Now, after supper, sitting by the fire in the
old room, the violin spoke. It told of the player's passion for the
world, of the man who wrote that music's passion for the world, of the
passion for the world of all makers of violins, and of the trees whose
wood was used, of the passion for the world that is progression and
revolution, of the passion for the world that is the slower rate that is
called withstanding progression and revolution, of the passion for the
world that is music, of the passion for the world yesterday, to-day, and
forever, of the passion for the world that every heart of us knows!