"I was going to preach," said Brother Robinson, "at Piny Hill Church,
that's twelve miles from Old Lock, where I live. I started out Saturday
afternoon to walk, counting on a lift or two on the road, and I got
them. I was going to sleep at Will Jones's, who works at the mill on
Piny Creek. The first lift I got was from a wagon full of hay going to
Cherry Farm. That was two miles. Then I walked three miles. Then a Ford
came along and said, 'Hey, Brother Robinson, are you going as far as
Llewellyn?' I said that I was, and farther, and the Ford took me to
Llewellyn. That didn't leave but four miles to do, and that was nothing.
So I was a-walking, and the leaves hung red and yellow, and the evening
was powerful sweet! I went through the woods by the Thessaly place. I
was thinking as I was walking. And then, just like that, Mr. Linden,
thinking with words stopped! My old body stopped, too. I just lowered it
under a cedar tree and left it there.
"But I myself went higher and wider. I was everywhere and all over! I
was in and through everything! They were just shapes in me. It was like
being air, or like that inside air you told me about, called ether. You
told me about that, but when you told it I hadn't experienced, and so it
was just words. Now I have experienced. Everything was right here and
now, or there and then, it didn't matter a mite which!
"The first thing I felt was just infinite cleanness and coolness. It was
me and it was not me. If it was me it was something vast in me that had
got the upper hand. There was a me, a self, like a tired, dirty child.
To that me the other was God. But God turning out to be me, too. I had
preached about God for thirty years, but I never really tasted or
touched God till that day. It was cool and whole and pure, and bigger
than the sky. And it forgave all my sins, or it saw clean through them.
It saw a long way and all at once.... The tired and dirty me was
everybody else, too. It was me and it was everybody, and we were healed
by our God, and that was us, too, us, and more than we had ever dreamed
of in that us! It healed with its might, and the lower part understood
and went up.... I can't give you a description. It was awe and joy. The
little body of William Robinson couldn't have held it, but something
bigger than that held it. And then, just as light changes on the
mountains here--when you are on top of Rock Mountain maybe, and see
everything below you--and it's all there, but it's got another tone and
you feel it in a different way--just so that cool awe and greatness
changed a little. It was joy still, but now it was friendly and natural.
It was the whole earth looking like a garden, and all mine, all me, and
in that me was all I had ever thought was you or him or her, and all
that I had ever said was it. The bird and the beast were there, the
trees and the grass and the air. And it was lovely; it was just love,
and beauty!" He brushed his hand across his eyes. "I can't tell you
about that beauty. And we weren't dead; all was living. If you'll think
of the very best moment you ever had, when you were deepest friends with
yourself and found that it took in everybody, it might be something like
that a million times over. It was innocent and wise. And all the times
that I'd ever thought I was happy were just plain misery beside it! I
couldn't hold it, any more than a young robin can hold the flight he
will hold after a while. I reckon we're all fledglings! Back I flopped
toward William Robinson. Here was old Virginia, and the woods and the
road and the hills and the mountains, and Old Lock, and Piny Hill
Church. But just before I settled in I got for just a minute this very
country and our daily life in the light and the glow and the music and
the wonder! All that was fair kept in and strengthened, and all that was
unfair just melted out! I knew then that though we talk about it we
haven't begun to love our country. It went, too, into the world. 'For
God so loved the world.' ... Well, that vanished, too. I was back. I was
just the colored preacher, William Robinson. I was back, but I could
remember! I've touched what it's like to be God."
He ceased speaking, and sat bent toward the fire. A little of that
luminousness of which he had told seemed to show through his flesh, a
dark translucence. He said, under his breath, "'Little children, love
one another!'" and rested silent, in communion with the flame.
"'For all we are members one of another.' Feeling that," said Linden,
"is to feel as One. Then the One no longer counts as separate his
members. He says I AM."
Stillness held in the old room. The fire gave it crimson and amber life
and warmth. The canvases on the walls, the pictured men and women,
seemed self-luminous. Major Hereward spoke abruptly: "Where are the
dead? Where are my brother Dick, my son Walter, my mother and father?"
"They are here. Re-member yourself and you shall find them."
"Where is heaven?"
"It is here, the moment you begin to perceive it."
"You mean that you perceive the dead, Richard?"
"Yes. Do not you?"
The old man stared. He drew a long breath. "Never before did I think
that I did!"
Robert Dane spoke. "You mean that as the Great Consciousness expands it
becomes aware of itself there, too? That that realm becomes open?"
"Yes. Discovery there is within the grasp of our age. It is not so far
away as many might think! As Power comes through. The 'dead' and the
'living' do meet. They have met all the time. The general recognition
and use of the fact is to be strengthened, developed."
"It is not the only recognition and use of Oneness impending!"
"By no means! No. In every field there is ripening corn. How should it
not be so?"
Major Hereward's voice came in again. "'The spiritual sense of the
dead.' I've heard that phrase. I didn't know what it meant. Do you mean
that when I seem to myself to move about in company with Dick, when
things come into my mind that he knew about or that we did together,
when I seem, as I go on, to understand his character better and better,
and to see life as he did, when he seems here with me or when we are
just happy together in old places--that it's _true_? And Walter and my
mother and father and Helen and others--oh, scores of others--they enter
my mind and heart just as though they came in at a door! Do you mean
that when I think of them suddenly and strongly, feel them as it were,
that _they_ are doing part of it, that there _is_ intercourse? Good
Lord! I thought it was only myself!"
"I mean that," said Linden. "It will grow to be more than that. A
higher, fuller thing than that."
The old man rose. Face and voice showed emotion. "I've got what I came
for. God bless you, Richard, and God bless you, too, Brother Robinson!
Oh, we've been little! Marget, I'll say good night, my dear. Out of my
life goes fear and loneliness!"
Brother Robinson likewise, with Zinia, rose to say good night. "I'll see
you in the morning," said Richard. "I want to talk to you about the
school."
That night Curtin, also, increased his sense of life, life that included
those that were said to be dead. There had been no repetition of the
hour when, lying in the room where now slept Robert and Frances Dane, he
had touched with an inward sense that brother who had fallen from the
aeroplane, who had been jostled out of the body, but who lived! Surely
the life was not quite that of the old life, though surely built from
that; certainly Curtin might not fully understand until he, too, slipped
the body. Yet there was life and living. He had not experienced that
hour again, and he had tried doubting if he had ever experienced it. But
doubt did not prove to be a going proposition. Memory smiled it down.
Yet the experience had not been repeated, or rather what had come had
diffused itself in the wide awakening of these Sweet Rocket weeks. Nor
did its distinctive _klang_ return to-night. There was not the same
white keenness. That which beamed about him now was more like that which
Marget had spoken of on the summerhouse steps. Not one now, but many of
his dead; not the human only, but the flower and the tree, the bird and
the beast, the scene, the water, land and sky. "The old and sweet is
here, but chosen, redeemed, gathered up, understood, become immortal!
And we have had it all the time. It has been here all the time! Just as
we had electricity and did not know it."
He fell asleep, rocked by the waves of a sunny sea of love and home and
kindred.