"The day seemed changed to cloudiness and rain,
And the sweet flower, whereof they were so fain,
Was grown a goodly sapling, and they gazed
Wondering thereat, but loved it nothing less.
But as they looked, a bright flame round it blazed,
And hid it for a space, and weariness
The souls of both the good folk did oppress,
And on the earth they lay down side by side,
And unto them it was as they had died.
"Yet did they know that o'er them hung the tree
Grown mighty, thick-leaved, on each bough did hang
Crown, sword or ship, or temple fair to see;
And therewithal a great wind through it sang,
And trumpet blast there was; and armor rang
Amid that leafy world, and now and then
Strange songs were sung in tongues of outland men.
"It is something like that that I feel for any place--and perhaps now it
will be so for this and every place! It was such a blossom and now it is
such a tree. All hangs therein, peoples and nations, things past and
things to come! When I go away I shall find it so in any place."
"That is what you will do--and I also. Everywhere that Tree, that Man,
that God!"
The vale widened at the overseer's house. The sycamore by the river
stretched in the sun its great arms of white and brown, and these and
the blue vault made a pattern. A dozen turkeys crossed the path in a
stately, slow-stepping procession. Mary Carter was singing in the house,
and little Roger singing after her. As they approached the tree and the
bench around it other voices reached them; then one voice reading
aloud. They saw the two Danes seated there--Frances, reading a letter.
"So I _did_ travel with you and Mr. Dane. It was so wonderful--it is all
around me now! I don't clearly remember little, sharp bits of it, but I
remember the whole. It has shown me a lot of things. I don't any longer
mind living. It's funny, but father, too--"
Frances looked up as Curtin and Anna stepped under the tree. Bright
tears stood in her eyes. She shook them away and smiled at the two.
"It's a letter from the crippled boy I told you about--"
The four walked back to Sweet Rocket House. "Robert and I have but a
week longer. But this place tempers the wind of the whole year. It drops
honey into winter days."
Curtin asked Robert Dane, "Forth from here you go on with the work you
are doing?"
"Of course. That is a department of this. But I wish to work without
bitterness or violence."
The day shone about them. Rain of the night had brought into late autumn
a sense of spring. Spring and autumn seemed to touch across shortened
winter. The air held a divine, sweet freshness. They were aware of new
life, and all objects of perception tossed back vigor and luster.
"The world renews--the world renews!" sang the river.
A little later Robert and Frances Dane at their window saw, coming up
from the river, a somewhat worn automobile. Stopping before the porch
the driver and owner descended and mounted the steps. "There's an old
type!" said Robert. "Tall and thin, black clothes and soft hat, low
collar and string tie, white hair, mustache and imperial--look, Frances,
it's a picture! Once it was the horse, and he swung himself down--then
the carriage, and at the door he helped out the ladies. Now it's the
car. To-morrow he will descend from the airship--just like that!"
She looked over his shoulder. "It's old Major Hereward from Oakwood. He
was here four years ago, that time I came alone. He's all the past! But
that car's symbolic, too. He's all the past beginning to say, 'For all
my fighting I begin to find myself, with all I care for, here in the
present--perhaps also in the future!' He's beginning to think that it
may be so with the airship. There with all that he really, really cares
for! 'I always said that they couldn't get along without me, and now I
begin to see that neither can I get along without them!'"
Major Hereward appeared at the dinner table. It seemed that he, too, was
a cousin of Linden's, on the other side from the Danes. His place was
Oakwood, twenty miles away. Old Major Linden and he had been boyhood
friends. He breathed knowledge of Sweet Rocket in ancient days. His
manner to Marget was delightful, though perhaps he still held in
comparison, in a "this--that," Sweet Rocket House and the overseer's
house. His manner to all was delightful--like old wine.
Robert Dane pondered that, and also Frances's words of the morning. Like
others, he could speak as though the past, the present, and the future
were islands with nothingness between. But truly he knew it was not so,
and he assumed that much self-knowledge in those to whom he spoke. Now
he had it, in a flash of vision, how the old wine and wheat, how the old
strength of man and woman, did go on. All within the whole flashed and
changed. But the whole held all. The tangential itself only went so far,
then returned, and was met and welcomed. _The prodigal son._ He saw that
contrary winds were not so contrary after all. "In the whole, and in the
whole only, I am not contrary to him nor he to me. In the end one sail
and one wind--and the sail due to arrive and the wind favorable."
That afternoon Major Hereward walked over the place; with him, Linden
and Curtin. "I came to talk to you about something, Richard. But we'll
leave it till night. I can always pull things together better
then--after the day. Here's the oak Phil Linden and I planted the day we
heard of First Manassas! He was eighteen and I was sixteen. The next
year we both went in."
They stood beneath the tree. Said Curtin, "Much water has gone over the
wheel since then!"
Major Hereward nodded. "Much! But Phil Linden and I seem to stand here
together. Not just of the mind we were, but together! _And many a foe
grew to be a friend._"
The bright day declined. The sun set in a coral sea, a crescent moon
appeared, earth grew an amethyst, the stars came out. Brush was being
burned and wood smoke clung in the air, and there was the multitudinous
chirping, chirping in grass and bush of late autumn. It was almost
November, and they built larger fires. The old parlor gleamed.
"It's a dear room, a dear, dear room!" said Major Hereward. "I don't
believe any here can love these portraits as I do. Richard may look at
them often, but--" He broke off. "I forgot that he is blind! I'm always
forgetting it! Well, he may see the reality of them."
Richard entered, and a moment later Marget. "It's a night of the gods!
How the fire leaps!"
They sat around it, Anna Darcy and Curtin and Drew and the two Danes and
Major Hereward, Linden and Marget. Anna Darcy was saying: "I went down
to Mimy's before supper. The preacher is there for the night--Brother
Robinson."
Linden answered her. "Yes. He will be here presently. He always comes
to us for an hour or so. He's a fine fellow."
Rising, he fetched Frances's violin. "What deep and dear pleasure you
give, Frances!"
She played old music and new, into which the old glided, until there
seemed neither old nor new, but a content very vast and rich. The wing
of the music lifted them; music and flame blended. They sat in reverie,
and the wealth of the world flowed, circularly flowed.
Without, in the night, a lantern passed the windows. "There is Brother
Robinson," said Marget. Richard went out--they heard his voice in the
hall--then he returned with the negro preacher and Zinia. He said, "Mr.
Robinson--friends, all of us!" The circle widened. The preacher sat down
between Linden and Robert Dane, and Zinia sat between Marget and
Frances. "Play a little longer, Frances!"
The music blended with the flame, the wealth of the world flowed,
flowed, circularly flowed. The Rev. William Robinson sat, a gaunt, dark
figure, in long-preserved broadcloth, with a rugged, deep brown face.
When he spoke his voice had unction--like the voices of most of his
people--unction, but not too much of it. By sheer indomitableness he had
gained a fair education, and he was a good man and a wise one. In her
blue dress Zinia sat beside Marget Land. She kept silence, but her poise
was like her poise in the dining room and pantry, or on the porch when
Miss Darcy had taken her breakfasts there. The latter always thought of
her standing beside the pillar, or in the clean, airy pantry, by the jar
of flowers and the open _Pilgrim's Progress_, always heard her rich
voice, saying, "I like that girl Mercy!"
It seemed that Robert Dane had met Brother Robinson before this at Sweet
Rocket. When the violin was put by the two talked together a little, as
folk might talk who liked each other. Curtin, from his corner, watched
with interest Sweet Rocket in Virginia. A voice from somewhere went
through his head: _Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision
nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ is
all and in all_. He looked at Major Hereward, and the old man, who had
stiffened at the "Mr. Robinson" and the seating in the circle about the
fire, seemed now to rest at ease, in a brown study, as one who regards
the expanse of things.
Miss Darcy spoke. "At Mimy's this afternoon you had begun to tell me of
the building of your church and schoolhouse down the river. Then they
called me and I had to go--"
"Tell them now, brother," said Linden.
Brother Robinson told, and what he told had humor and pathos and
heroism. There passed, as upon a screen, the littles gathered that were
much to spare, quaint efforts at money raising, labor at twilight and
dawn given by laboring men, the women's extra work and their festivals.
Brother Robinson was a born raconteur. Into the sheaf of his homely
narrative fell vast swaths of human effort and aspiration. "And Brother
Linden helped us, and old Mr. Morrowcombe gave us five dollars."
A voice came from the corner of the hearth, from Major Hereward: "I'd
like to help you, too, Brother Robinson! Put me down for ten dollars."
They left the material building of the schoolhouse and the church. Said
Brother Robinson: "I've got something else I want to tell you. I've had
an Experience, and it's taken the heart out of my bosom and crumbled it
between its fingers and put in a new one! I came to Sweet Rocket to tell
it to you, Mr. Linden. But I don't see anyone here that I'd be afraid to
tell it to."
"There isn't any such," said Linden. "Tell it!"