Day rose in sapphire, tranquil, pure, still and sunny, white smoke going
straight up from morning fires. Malcolm Smith, mounting his horse,
turned again to his mountain. Sweet Rocket bade him good-by, but Linden
and Marget said, "All who come together in this consciousness part no
more!"
"I believe that."
He rode away, and in the afternoon was back with his work. But the inner
eye might view, between mountain and Sweet Rocket, a shimmering,
ethereal highway, a nerve, as it were, thrown from space to space,
joining and making one.
Robert and Frances and Marget, on this last day of the Danes' visit,
walked to the hill with the solitary tree atop. The sapphire day
continued, quiet and sunny, the air being of an extreme fineness charged
with light. Far and near the mountains made a cup of amethyst. Fields
and hillsides at hand were a lighted umber. They saw long rows of
stacked corn, and in the meadows hayricks. Beyond the orchard they made
out the steep roof of the great barn. There were corn and wheat for the
mill, there were stored apples. In the wood below them they heard the
woodman's ax.
"I can see," said Robert Dane, "I can see that Humanity is mastering its
own organism. I see that it is lifting toward Unitary Consciousness.
Here, now, in this present year as in past years, each year now with
greater momentum. Reaction and recoil, of course--but back again, and
farther! Everywhere shows the swift inter-approach. All over, all
through, America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and the islands of
the sea. The revolutions of our day are woven of it. We are leaving
separation and partialness, fortress and dungeon."
"Yes. All our 'movements' rush into the one. All our vortices approach
with a fearful joy the Great Vortex. The Correlation will be
established, the Summation made. We go to join and strengthen the
Ancient Heavens. The Ancient of Days draws and redeems and fuses and
Ones another layer of his being. Faster and faster our age begins to see
what is happening. The language men use to describe it does not so much
matter. The poet names it Life, Beauty, and Joy; the scientific man says
Knowledge and Use; the philosopher says Energy and Substance in
conscious union; the Hindu says the _SELF_; our peoples say God.... All
one."
They came to the hilltop and stood to look about them. "There is such
joy!" went on Marget. "Pain and pleasure outgrown, now blooms the joy!
'Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.' The
being found and the finding. One after another lays hand upon that
world, clings, braces himself, draws himself up and over and finds the
manna lying around him. Joy, wisdom and power! and the taste of them but
begun. Possession still to be possessed--forever and forever!"
They sat beneath the tree and all around sprang the valley and the
mountains and Virginia and the world. "Alive--deathlessly alive! The
valley and the mountains, Virginia and the world!"
Frances spoke. "I know a woman who speaks in the terms of the East. Is
it the Principle of Sensibility--the Buddhic plane?"
"Yes. Atma is yet to arrive. What we see is the light before his face.
When he fully comes that is the Day of the Lord. What all work has been
toward, all toil, all hoping. As Atma rises in us--as Christ rises in
us--comes newer and richer life, fuller and fuller, inner powers and
principalities, thrones and dominions, and their objective garments. But
when WE ARE THE LORD--I know not! There is Light there that is as
darkness to us yet."
The exquisite valley heightened its values throughout, became richer.
The mountains around hung in the eye like the Delectable Mountains.
"If one grows, all things and all places grow with that one?"
"Inevitably so! The wealth is for all."
"The new consciousness that we feel is a pale film to what will be?"
"Yes. A borderland, the islands fringing the New World. But such as it
is it wipes out the old, blind, scattered, little consciousnesses. To
what shall be felt and shall be known it is the one leaf of green, it is
the olive leaf that the dove brings. But before us are enormous growth,
strange and fair adventure, work, joy, love--"
Through the air they felt the ether, through the sunlight they felt the
Great Sun. Light and warmth came to them from the Sun behind the sun. It
touched, it passed, but each time it came they strengthened.
That night by the fire they sat in silence that was full and rich and
understanding. "To-morrow night, here at Sweet Rocket, just Richard and
Marget and Drew--and all the rest of us!"
The next day dawned, and still it was Indian summer. Robert and Frances
went from place to place, as had gone Curtin and Anna Darcy, saying
farewell. "We wish and hope to bring our bodies here again next year.
But if that is not done, still, still, still we shall have Sweet
Rocket!"
"You have access now to all places and times and peoples. You are
through the gate, you two! All your good dreams now will come true. If
not in this way then in that. Every dream that does no injury to the
Whole."
Richard and Marget, Daniel and the phaeton, took them to Alder. The
still forest was clothed to-day in purple. For much of the way silence
held within the phaeton as without. But it was the silence that Anna
Darcy had early noted. It was rhythmic, it was thronged, it was fused
and made into the richest solitude.
"But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound or foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home."
Now and then they spoke. Once Robert said, abruptly, "And all the effort
of the world is to stand and grow in grace?"
"Just. All the effort. Everywhere! Whether it be stone or plant or
animal or man or over-man. And where the Emerging Character is so mighty
none is to despise his brother's path or rate of speed. Once it was his
own. Everything has been and is our own. Work! but who hates or despises
halts and weakens the effort."
"But work!"
"Yes, steadily. In all realms. 'What thy hand findeth to do, do with thy
might.' What thy judgment findeth to do. The other name of Lubber Land
was Good Enough."
They came to Alder with its churches and sere gardens lying in violet
light. Here was the little station--in a few moments they heard the
train.
"Good-by!"
"Good-by!"
Frances and Robert looked through the car window. The platform had men,
women, and children upon it. Two or three arriving travelers found
friends to meet them; there were the workers about the station and the
loafers, with country folk and village folk brought by some business,
and in the throng Richard Linden and Marget Land. Just the usual village
station. Then all of it sprang into light, into music, into
significance, into importance. The train moved. There was a cry of
"Good-by! Come again!" All seemed to enter into it, to cry it out.
The houses went by, the village street, the hills, the river, and all,
all, and this train upon which they found themselves had color and music
and significance and importance.
"The I that says of every living thing, 'It is I,' says it and means it
and understands it and proceeds to live from it, says it of the total
objective, and so takes the objective up into the Subject--that I is
over the verge of the old into the New--"
The hills went by, the river gleamed.
Marget and Richard traveled homeward through the purple forest. To-day
they hardly used the outer voice. The blind man sat with a smile upon
his lips as though he saw, with such a face as could only have come from
much seeing. The woman, too, sat still, the body relaxed, the spirit
gleaming in the soul. Daniel drew them through the forest; nor did
Daniel, either, lack some sense of growth, dim belief in a higher world,
dim will to reach it. Below Daniel the forest felt that, and below the
forest the rock. The utter stream of pilgrims--