Three days after this Curtin and Anna Darcy, who often walked together,
having gone to the pass of hemlock, cliff and tumbling water, turned in
the broken sunlight and shadow back to Sweet Rocket. The maples of the
upper slopes had cast almost all their leaves, but the oaks stood yet in
carmine. Yesterday had fallen light rain. Earth lay moist, and soil and
leaf and fern and moss sent out a haunting odor. The sun stood in
Scorpio. The drama of the year was on the homeward road. It saw ahead
the Archer and the Goat and the Water Bearer, the Fishes of the great
deep, and the Ram that, springing forth, should take once more the road,
the old road, the new road, the old-and-new road!
Now Curtin and Anna Darcy spoke, and now they were silent. It was a
blessed feature of this valley that none need be talkative in order to
convey, "I am at home with you."
Her visit was approaching its end. That was what people would say.
"Physical presence and metaphysical presence!" said Curtin, answering
her thought. "Physical and above-physical--and the generations to come
will find the inclusive word."
"Oh, I shall be here still--or 'here' will be with me in the city--or it
will be both. At any rate, no desolate parting!"
They passed from under hemlock and gray rock to beech trees and a
dappled path. The small river calmed itself and began to flow through
cultivated land. Gentian and farewell-summer made a purple fringe for
the way.
"In old romances one walked into an inn or house by the road--always
saying, 'It is by the road that goes on as it went before, and I
presently again with it!' But never again as it was before, and never
again I as before! For just there befalls the adventure that sets one
climbing to a new road."
Sweet Rocket vale opened before them. Each time they looked it grew
fairer, and that, they had begun to see, was because it was not
separated from anything.
Said Anna Darcy, presently: "Do you know Morris's _Earthly Paradise_? Do
you remember the Story of Rhodope? I used to know almost all of it by
heart. When Rhodope is born the countryman, her father, dreams, and he
seems to himself to be standing with the mother, watching
"... a little blossom fair to see."