It startled Anna Darcy, too, so joyous and care-free and lilting was
the voice. Mrs. Cliff stared at her. The mountain woman's face was not
what one would call a cheerful one. Whoever was behind it was caught in
a network of fine, anxious lines. Now these held for a perceptible
moment, then faded as though the twine were mist. That one immortally
youthful and insouciant looked forth as it had looked from Marget. Sun
came out over meadow, plain, and hill, and Mrs. Cliff laughed. "I reckon
you're right, Miss Marget! You generally are. I reckon we've seen so
much that we can afford to take it tranquil--which ain't to say that
we're either do-less or keerless!"
She spoke to Anna. "You remember my tellin' you about that feeling I
had? I 'ain't had it full again. But I've caught glimpses of it, maybe
in the day, maybe in the night. I know the minute when anything like it
comes my way. When you've had a feeling like that all your life's set to
feeling it again."
But Marget had taken it joyously.
When Mrs. Cliff had said good-by and gone mountainward the two, crossing
the pleasant porch, entered the house. They walked from room to room,
Anna's consciousness gathering each. "Any time you may feel me here!"
"We shall feel you here all the time."
They stood in the study, against the broad mantelshelf. "At first, when
I thought of this room, I thought, 'Richard Linden's study.' But it is
of and for and to both of you."
"Ah yes! To both."
She seemed to give forth light. Anna thought, "Is it only the sun
shining on her?"
Later, in her own room, all packing done, dressed for her journey, Anna
went and sat beside the window as she had sat the first evening at Sweet
Rocket. She still heard Mimy singing, she still saw the garden, though
it was dreaming now of spring. "I have been here only a month, but in it
I have had years and years."
The quiet room filled with a sunny stillness, an eternal assurance.
Again, as on that first evening, the mountains were here and the wind of
the sea was here. Love and wisdom and power were here.
The boy Jim brought Daniel and the phaeton to the door below. Marget
came for her, and they went down, and through the hall to the porch, to
find there Linden and Curtin and Robert and Frances and Drew, and Zinia
and Mimy, and Mancy and Tam.
Across the river, at the edge of the wood, Marget checked Daniel so that
Anna might look back and see the house again, the house and the trees
and the hills, and the holding arms of the mountains. "But you are to
come again," said Marget. "Never part, and come again!"
"Yes, oh yes!"
The wheels turned and went on upon the Alder road. They entered the
forest, old forest, great trees that sloughed their leaves again and
again and again, through centuries past number, sloughed their leaves,
sloughed their old bodies, made soil, and stood upon it and builded
higher. Behind and in and through every stem and leaf rose the
subjective forest, and behind and in and through the whole the ideal,
the spiritual forest, the divine forest. Around and onward went the
wheels on the leafy road. Anna sat beside Marget. The two spoke little,
having now no great need of words. The light came down between bare
branches. Far and near branch and blue air made a marvel of lacework.
Against this pines and hemlocks stood like pyramids and pillars. Song
and twitter of a month ago was not now. "The birds go south--the birds
go south!" said Marget. "But there are enough left for winter company.
There is a bluebird on yonder bough!"
Round went the wheels, making hardly a sound. The forest hung still, so
still. For one moment, to Anna Darcy, it all went away. It was _maya_,
illusion, the forest, Indian summer, this day of our Lord, the phaeton
and Daniel, Sweet Rocket and Alder and New York, Marget Land and Anna
Darcy. What was left was fullness of Being. Did it choose to analyze
itself it might be into Power, Wisdom, and Bliss. The revealing flash
went as it came, ere one could say, It lightens! _Maya_ again, Marget
Land and Anna Darcy, Daniel and the phaeton, the forest, Sweet Rocket
and Alder and the train to be met. But each time the sheath thinned and
there was left stronger light.
The train came, the friends embraced. Anna Darcy looked from window at
Marget and then at Alder, the fields and hills and rivers and mountains.
The train roared through a tunnel, and when it emerged the scenery was
changed. There were fields and mountains, but not these fields and
mountains. "And yet they run into those. There is no impassable wall nor
aching gulf. There are the finest gradations--"
Marget and Daniel and the phaeton went homeward along the Alder road.