November rains wrapped Sweet Rocket. November winds rocked and bent the
trees. The world was gray, or iron-gray, with rust-hued streakings.
Indoors they built larger fires.
It was five days after Anna's departure. Unless the storm held him
Curtin was going on the morrow. In January his profession would take him
abroad, to the nearer East. He could not tell when he would be
returning.
"But Sweet Rocket goes with me!"
"Just. As all the East and you flow here."
"What kind of a general world are we coming into, Linden? What kind of a
political, social, economic world? I believe that, as to much of it,
Robert and Frances are far seeing. In the large, those changes are upon
us, and in the large they are for the better. They are built into the
road we are going. I agree, I welcome! But I would see more completely
if I could."
Linden, in the cane chair by the study window, seemed to pay attention
to the storm. At last he spoke. "I cannot see in detail. I think there
will be a great simplification. Power out of a thousand tortuous
channels mingling, running broad and deep! There are signs on every
side. The old banks crumble. The great sea lifts other continents."
"I see everywhere how we are seeking."
"Yes. The seeker finds, the finder seeks on, seeks farther. The great
ages are ever the seekers."
"You would say it is a great age?"
"Yes. A very great one. Who is not in some way aware of it? This
friction of opinion on the top is but the wildness of the outermost
leaves as the strong wind blows."
"And wherever I go I shall find the seeking and the greatness?"
"The world is One," said Linden.
The storm continued. Sweet Rocket had early supper. Zinia and Mimy, with
raincoats and a huge umbrella, went by the swaying, chanting orchard to
their own fireside, to Sarah and Julia and Jim and Just So. The Danes
and Curtin and Drew, Linden and Marget, sat or moved about in the old
Sweet Rocket parlor. They might watch the storm from the windows, or
they might sit by the fire. The great wind blew through Sweet Rocket
Valley. They heard the stream rushing, and the trees had a voice, as
though they had taken foot out of ground and were now a herd. The rain
was driven against the panes, and the wind hurled dead leaves with the
rain. Wall and roof and glass shut out the physical rain, but the
psychical man cognized it far and near, rain since the world began. And
the fire also, and the warm room, and they in company listening to the
storm. The momentary outlines shifted. There fell a sense of having done
this times and times and times, a sense of hut and cave, so often, so
long, in so many lands, that there was a feel of eternity about it. Rain
and the cave and the fire, and the inner man still busied with his
destiny! There was something that awed in the perception that ran from
one to another, that held them in a swift, shimmering band. "How
old--how old! How long have we done this?"
The rhythm of the storm, the rhythm of the room, the rhythm of the fire,
passed into a vast, still sense of ordered movement. "Of old, and now,
and to-morrow--everywhere and all time--until we return above time and
place, and division is healed."
They felt a lightness, a detachment. The spirit soared with the mind and
made it look.
"There is the natural man and there is the spiritual man. That last
finds himself in all selves, and all selves in him. There is the
spiritual man, and there is the divine man who works with power. Both
are words of inclusion. It is to leave the old small I for the spiritual
I, and it is to transcend the last and enter that which is above. Then
is left the shrunken pond for the ocean! Only we say it upside down. It
is the ocean that overflows and drinks up the pond."
"When God enters life there will still be said I?"
"Otherwise, still pond and ocean, still separation! Who shall lose his
life here shall find it. But never sink to thinking that it is what in
the past we have meant when we said I! When God enters how shall he not
say I? But it is the ocean now that speaks! The pond is gone."
They sat still, and the fire played and leaped.
Through the night the rain beat and the wind blew, but at dawn it
cleared. There was wreckage about the world, but life laughed and took
her wreckage and built with it anew. Valley, hills, and mountains
gleamed like precious stones. Navies of clouds rode for a while, then
melted into the deep azure. The upper sea hung so calm and clear that
down through it to the earth bottom ran light that seemed intenser than
the light of every day.
Curtin said good-by, and went. Marget and Linden drove him to Alder.
The river ran swollen, the road lay deep in leaves, few leaves now on
the trees. The trees stood still in vast ranks. They seemed to be
holding something, to be turning it over in mind. There flashed across
Curtin, "Who lifts, all lifts."
"Yes!" said Marget, beside him, as though he had spoken.
It was what he carried with him from this valley.
Linden and Marget drove home through the wood. "How still it is! Barring
foot and wheel on the wet leaves you would say there was no stir. We are
passing pine trees. How fragrant!"
"A bluebird is watching us from a maple. Now here is the great beech. It
holds its leaves, though they are brown and curled upon themselves like
cocoons. The ground underneath is clean and brown. A grapevine goes over
and up with those young trees. There are yet bunches of grapes and they
hang so still! There are brown loops for swings for all the forest
children, whether they be Indians or dryads and fauns."
"I see them," said Linden, "all the graceful, tawny forest children!"
"Here is the oak glade with the grass yet green far down it, to where
hangs the purple curtain. The outstanding great roots glisten, and the
moss holds the water drops. You see a long way. Yonder is tree trunk and
stone, light and shadow, that looks like a hermit's cell. It is an alley
for the whole Middle Ages to come riding down--for a paladin to come
riding down, the Red Cross Knight, or Guyon, or Galahad, or Parsifal--or
it might be Robin Hood in Lincoln green!"
"I see."
"Here are green brier and red dogwood berries, and witch-hazel with
dull gold fingers. Can you hear the water?"
"Yes. Three silver threads of it, like a lute!"
"The day is a castle and a church, the day is a city and a star! Now we
pass the great rock and the two hemlocks, like cathedral spires. Here
are the little oaks, and there is a guess of crimson about them yet. The
birch and the hickory and the tall oaks, and the tops are far and fine
and melt into the sky--"
They came down to the river, and crossed. "The light washes the pillars,
the cedars are little earth clouds. The arch of the sky has none, it
springs clear blue. Music of home!"
"Yes. Music of home!"
After supper, with Robert and Frances and Drew they watched the fire.
"Anna sends the city to us, and Curtin sends the rush of the train and
the flying scenery. As we send this place and this mood and this thought
to the city and the train!"
The violin bow drew across the strings. Frances played, and love and
release filled the ancient room. The world entered into harmony.
The next day rose gray pearl. Linden and Drew went with the woodcutters.
Marget sat at her typewriter in the study. Robert and Frances took a
long walk. Three days, and they, too, must go cityward. Now they walked
by the Alder road, and at the great pine took the Rock Mountain trail.
The pearly light filled the forest like a water. All sound lay subdued.
When a stone rolled underfoot it was not loudly; when a branch broke it
was with a slow, deliberate, musing voice. When they saw a wild thing,
the wild thing had no motion of flight, but pottered stilly on upon its
business of the time. "We are far away! We have crossed to another land.
It is as though we died, and this is the quiet ground where we take our
reckoning before we find another busy world. Oh, a busy world in each of
us, and a quiet land!"
They rested upon a bowlder half sunken in brown leaves. "There is a
touch of eternity about this day.... Yet in five days how busy a world
for you and me!"
"Yet I love that as I love this. How happy that we are so rich!"
They sat still on the gray bowlder in the gray wood in the pearl-gray
air. Minutes passed. A bird flew across the path, a gray squirrel ran up
an oak. "Something is coming down the trail."
The something proved to be a man on horseback. The intervening boughs,
branches, twigs, made him to be seen like a horseman behind a great
window filled with small, leaded panes. He came close, and, seeing them,
drew rein. "Good day!"
"Good day!"
"From Sweet Rocket?"
"Yes, from Sweet Rocket."
"Do I speak to Mr. Linden? My name is Smith--Malcolm Smith from the
Reserve on Rock Mountain."
Robert gave their names. Mr. Smith said: "Have you ever seen a stiller
day? It is one of the still days that set you on new action. I thought I
would ride over. I want to see Drew, and there is something else--"
After a minute or two he addressed himself again to the path. "I'll go
on, as I have only this afternoon and to-night. I must get back to camp
to-morrow." He made no doubt, it might be noticed, of the hospitality of
Sweet Rocket. "I shall see you again?"
"Yes. We shall turn presently."
They watched him along the trail until, as the figure had entered, so it
vanished from the leaded window. They sat awhile longer in the
gray-pearl world, and then they rose and followed the horseman down to
Sweet Rocket.