Major Linden spent two days at Sweet Rocket, chiefly sitting upon the
porch in the sunshine or walking about the place, sometimes in company,
sometimes alone, but never, Curtin noticed, with an old man's look of
loneliness, though he thought that at times before this Major Hereward
would have shown that loneliness. But now there was vigor in him, vigor
and interest and life. "If they are here, living for me as I for them,
talking to me and I talking to them--it is the strangest thing what life
does when it comes!" His laughter had a clear and happy ring. "I had
thought of all kinds of solutions! And here it is, the needle threaded,
while I was still looking for it in the haystack!" He stood beneath the
oak he had planted almost sixty years ago. "Phil is here. Trying, wasn't
it, Phil, when I said, 'Oh, fancy!' or, 'It's just Wilmot Hereward
talking to himself!'"
When he met Linden on the porch he said: "Richard, if it's so with those
folk whom we so promptly insisted hadn't any reality in them, isn't it
so all over? When I'm pondering Bob who's in England, or when I'm
thinking of nothing in particular and in he walks into mind and
affection--"
"Yes. It is part of the same truth. It all rests on the oneness of
Being. That is why you must in some wise grasp that Oneness first. A
time will come where there will be no saying 'My brother Dick,' or 'Bob
in England,' because they and Wilmot Hereward and all others will have
advanced beyond all such divisions. But on the road there you will meet
many a fair power!"
The old man went the next morning back to Oakwood in his battered car.
He went alone and not alone, with a peaceful face.
In the afternoon Anna and Curtin, Drew and the two Danes, walked down
the river, in among the partly forested, partly grassy hills that here
closed the valley. Indian summer had now stolen over the land. The air
hung smoky amethyst, and still as still! No motion was in the fallen
leaves, the birds sailed stilly by, the stubble fields dreamed, the
river sang low. Wood smoke clung in the nostril. Turning, coming
homeward, the brick house and yellowed pillars stood pictured. They
passed through the orchard and by a small cider mill. Zinia, on the back
porch, poured for each out of an amber pitcher an amber glassful.
"_Was-hael!_" said Drew, and lifted the glass. Curtin caught from memory
the answering phrase, "_Drink-hael!_" A shaft of wonder, like a gleam
of light, touched them all with strange fingers. Something trembled in
the air. If it said aught it said, "So Earth begins to _live_ Poetry!"
Drew set down the cup with a sharp, clear sound. "Life, everlasting
life!" he said. "I see it now! We have always lived!"
Again evening in the old parlor, the fire and music, Tam lying beside
Linden, Marget seated by Anna Darcy. Robert Dane spoke. "This finding
ourselves in all and all in us, this lifting the all into a mighty I,
this is it behind the slowly accelerating movements of the ages, behind
all efforts for freedom, for knowledge, for interchange and intercourse,
swifter and swifter, subtler and subtler intercourse--this is it?"
"Yes. Behind a hundred shapes of dawn."
"Effort does not cease?"
"No. But effort, too, is finer and far more powerful. You act now from
within upon the within."
"To touch through and through that we are one! Hercules's labor isn't in
it!"
"Yet it is done and to be done. Find me if you can an individual to-day
who has not some dim perception of it, or who is not in some wise acting
toward it! Even the most unpromising--look and you will see! It is so
tremendous, that finding, it runs through every fiber. We can cut out no
pattern, but we move from light to light, from love to love!"
In her room that night, when she had put out the lamp, Anna Darcy,
lying in bed, watched the firelight on wall and ceiling. A cricket
chirped, she could hear the river. Her visit to Sweet Rocket was ending.
"Only it will never end; it is immortal within me!"
She saw how all life interlocked, how shock to one was taken up by the
whole, how joy to one thrilled through all. "What we call space is
Being; what we call time is our own Story, our colored, toned
lastingness! Give and take, forever and forever, forever and forever!
Find lovely things to give, and from the other side of us take lovely
things, lovelier and lovelier! Know thyself--know thyself--know Thyself.
'If ye do it unto one, the least of these, ye do it unto Me.' 'And all
we made One.'"
The walls of the room disappeared. Anna Darcy, a slight, worn, teaching
woman, sixty years old, vanished or altered. There was wide life, land
and sea, deep life that did not talk in births and deaths, lofty life
that said, "Better than this wave even, shall you know!"
It was Strength, it was Peace, it was Wisdom and Balm.
Across the hall Robert Dane lay thinking. In his youth he had the
passion of a Shelley for a regenerate world. Older, the vision dulled,
and yet he worked on doggedly, heroically, one with thousands of others
breaking and making a road for the feet of Coming Man. He worked
heroically, never sparing himself, a devoted life. Sometimes the gleam
shone fair before him, oftener mists made it faint, sometimes he lost
it. Then it shone again. He worked on. To-night, lying here at Sweet
Rocket, his youth came back, but higher, fuller, wiser! He saw what
might be done, what was doing. He saw the interrelated roads and the
travelers upon them, the hosts of travelers. A vision came to him in the
night. His body lay very still, but he himself saw clearly a great
thing.
There was a City that was country also, and sea and land and sky, that
was a world, harmonious, great, not a dead thing, not unintellectual,
but living, living with a vast fervor and beauty and interest and
knowledge, throwing out even, it might be, silver lines toward a world
yet more light, more fervent, more living! But it was there, all that he
could now image of body and spirit, mind and soul's desire:
He saw like a pale film another city that was pale and sorrowful to
this. And he saw that city, as it were, send out itself, by rivers and
seas and roads, thousands and thousands of paths, upon a journey to the
other. There was hardly a point--truly he thought there was not any
point--that did not travel. So many living beings, so many ships or
rafts, caravans or solitary travelers to that Desired Haven! All going,
some ahead, some behind, but all going. The pale and sorrowful city was
moving into that other, and brightening as it moved. That other was
drawing it, steadily, steadily! He felt it like a loadstone; he felt it
like a mother calling home.
The vision passed, but there was left Assurance. He lay still in the
starry night. The mind kept up an underhumming with words like
"reintegration," "superconsciousness," but the spirit dealt only with
the bliss of a great coming to itself. He slept at last, and his sleep
was dreamless and profoundly renewing.