"All a man could," said the boy. "I'm going back now."
* * * * *
Dreve was middle-aged, clean-shaven, deep-eyed. Time had been driven
to truce in his case. His face showed many battles, but when he spoke,
a kind of new day dawned and you looked into the face of a boy. I
remained with him three days. We talked of the new magic in the
training of children. We talked of the New Age and the great song of
joy and peace that would break across the world when troops turned home.
Dreve had _something_. He seemed to breathe something out of the air
that other men's lungs aren't trained for. He seemed to have _within_
everything necessary for a human being, including vision and humour and
a firm grasp of the world. He was at peace about God and the world;
at peace also about death. Slowly it dawned upon me that this man had
walked arm in arm with life to the last abyss, and that life had been
forced to confess that she had nothing worse to offer, whereupon the
two had become fast friends.
When a man can sit tight and lose everything he formerly wanted in the
sense of world possessions; when he has winnowed the last shams out
of the things called _fame_ and _convention_ and _society_; when he
has lost the woman who means all the world to him, and still loves her
memory and her soul better than the living presence of any other woman;
when he has come to realise that death contains everything he wants,
yet is content to wait for it--the idea of hell becomes a boyish thing
to be put away, and Lucifer returns to his old place as a Son of the
Morning.
We stood together in the noon sun. Dreve did not even wear a hat.
"I came here in great shadow and could not bear the light," he said.
"But one day I found my heart lifting a little as the sun came out.
Then I found that it was really true--that sunlight helped me. The more
I thought about it, the more I needed it; the more I loved it, the more
its particular excellence for me unfolded. Take anything to the light,
and it ceases to be formidable. Sickness is a confession. The time
is at hand when schools will teach that. Sickness is a confession of
ignorance which is a lack of light. If one is weak he cannot stand the
light. Transplanted things must be protected from the light. St. Paul
on the road to Damascus did not have enough inner light to endure the
great flash from without. Light works upon evil like quicklime--that's
why sunlight hurts the sick ones. It is also hostile to the utterly
stupid idea of what clothing is for--clothing that thwarts and
strangles every circulatory process of the flesh. There's nothing the
matter with sunlight----"
The sun had not only redeemed the physical shadows of Dreve's life, but
symbolised the spiritual light which had come to him with the calm and
power of the greater noon-day. He did not speak in exact statements of
the one who was gone, but that romance, too, was like light about his
head. I thought of the wonderful thing that Beatrice said which helped
to heal the forlorn heart of her great lover:
"I will make you forever, with me, a citizen of that Rome whereof
Christ is a Roman----"
And I thought of the Blessed Damosel leaning over the barrier of
heaven with sweet and immortal messages for him who waited below in
the very core of earth's agony. In passing, the great lovewomen bridge
the Unseen for their lovers, who in their turn give to the world the
mighty documents of the human heart. In passing, this woman had become
everything to Dreve, so that I, a stranger, felt that he was not alone
but twice-powered. All his life was a prayer to her. He brought to her
spirit now the greatest gift that man can bring to his mate--the love
of the world through her heart.
We had walked down to the ocean. Many young people were bathing in the
surf or playing on the strand. It was the presence of Dreve perhaps,
but I confess that human beings never before looked so wonderful to
me--a fearlessness and candour and beauty about the moving groups that
was like a vision of the future. All smallness of self was smoothed
away in the grand harmony of sun and sand and sea.
"It's a kind of challenge to a war-stricken world, isn't it?" he asked
quietly. "Aren't they splendid together--the big boys and girls of
California?... Don't misunderstand me. I know the world. I'm not lost
in dreams. I know well the darkness of the world. But there are great
ones among the boys and girls playing together here. All are on the
road, but the great ones of the Reconstruction are already here in the
world--playing.
"Great ones play," he repeated. "First we are labourers, then artisans,
then artists, then workers--at last we learn to play. That means that
we dare to be ourselves, wherein lies our real value to others--when we
dare to become as little children.... Hear them laugh.... You wouldn't
think this was the saddest little planet in the universe.... Look at
that tall young pair of sunburnt giants! She's a Diana, conquesting
again. Look at the wonder in his eyes! Perhaps it is just dawning upon
him that the man who walks with this girl must walk to God.
"... Oh, yes, I know," he added laughingly, "there is flippancy and a
touch of the uncouth here and there--but we have all played clumsily at
first."
I continually marvelled at Dreve's remarkable health. His stride up the
mountain-side was actually buoyant.
"Did you ever feel that you could live as long as you pleased?" he
asked.
"No."
"I think one does not learn this until after one has wanted to die.
One must live above the body and not in it--in order to make it serve
indefinitely--quite the same as you would climb above a street to watch
a parade go by."
I put that thought away for contemplation, knowing that it belonged to
a certain mystery of Dreve's regeneration.
"You know," he added, "one has to get very tired to want to die. Those
young people down on the shore--they want to live. They are not tired.
They want to cross all the rivers. They mean to miss nothing down here.
They can't see through it all. It challenges them. But the time comes
when everything on earth seems to betray. Then you have to turn to the
Unseen for the big gamble. The world is learning it rapidly to-day.
Look----"
We had reached his hill-cabin.
He turned from the sea to the valley. Night was falling. There was a
big moss-rose plant that smelled like a harvest apple, and filled all
the slope with sweet dry fragrance. There was a constancy about it,
and the great sun-shot hill was blessed with the light and creativeness
of the long day. It was like the song of finished labour from a
peasant's heart.... One forgot the world, the war, forgot that the holy
heart of humanity was in intolerable travail.... The valley that Dreve
now pointed to was like an English pastorale. It had the look of age
and long sweet establishment in the dusk. My friend was quick to catch
the thought in my mind.
"... It is like England," he said. "There was a development of
detail in English country-life as nowhere else. I think of cherries
and cattle, of strawberries with clotted cream, of sheep-dogs and
sheep-tended downs and lawns, of authoritative cookery, natural service
and Elizabethan inns.... Everything was regular and comfortable. One
forgot to-morrow and yesterday in England before the war. I heard a
dog-trainer, speaking of a pup, say, 'He's a fine indiwidual, but his
breeding isn't exactly reglar.' ... With a rush it came to me that
nothing in the world is regular now. England isn't a soothing pastorale
any more--everything changed, demoralised--but only for the present."
The dusk was stealing down from the far ridges. Our eyes were lost
in the California valley which seemed to be growing deeper in the
thickness of night. Almost as Dreve spoke, I expected to hear vesper
bells from some Kentish village. His low voice finished the picture:
"Country roads and sheep upon the lawns, vine-finished stone-work,
doves in the towers and under the eaves, evening bells and honest
goods.... I think of the ships going forth from England, boys from
the inland countries answering the call of the sea and finding their
fore-and-afters and men-of-war in Plymouth or Bristol.... You know
it is the things that make the romance of a country that endure? All
these will come again. All the good and perfect things of the spirit
of old England will come again.... Our hearts burn within to think of
the yearning in the world for a peaceful valley like this.... Think, if
I could take your hand now and watch the sun go down upon a peaceful
world ... hear the cattle coming home and sheep in the perfumed mist of
evening ... doves under the eaves and the sleepy voices of children....
I think Europe would fall to screaming and tears, and then lose its
madness for strife--if the big picture of our valley at evening were
placed before the battle-lines as we see it now."
Dreve stared a moment longer. I fancied I saw a bone-white line under
the tan, running from chin to jaw.
"A woman was leaving her lover," he added. "It had to be so. Each knew
that. Just as she was going, the woman said, 'I forget--I forget why I
have to go away.' ... It would be that way with the soldiers, if they
could look down upon their own valleys and farms. They would forget war
and hurry down, saying, 'I'm coming!'"
* * * * *
I wanted to get closer to Dreve's secret of peace and power. I wanted
to tell it. Apparently Dreve wanted me to. Now, there's a price to pay
for these big things, but many are willing to pay the price if the way
is clear. Dreve had suffered all he could; then something had turned
within him, and he found himself in Day again instead of Death.
"It must be told differently," he began. "For instance, if I should
tell you that the way is to love your neighbour as yourself, you
wouldn't have anything. Whitman said, 'Happiness is the efflux of
soul,' which is exactly true, but it didn't help me until I had
experience. Happiness is the loss of the sense of self. You can see
that clearly. All pleasure-seeking is to forget self. We loosen
something inside that sets us free for a moment, and we say we've had a
good time.
"There are great powers within. The greater the man, the more he uses
this fact. We thought of steam as a finished power until the big
straight-line force of electricity was released. We can't explain it,
but we have touched certain of the laws which it obeys. The materialist
is inclined, as ever, to say that electricity is the last force to be
uncorked on the planet, just as he said that the kerosene lamp was the
last word in illumination. The occultist declares that there are still
higher and hotter forces, touching Light itself, and indulging in the
laughter of curves and decoration where the cold monster electricity
moves only in straight lines.
"Men have died to tell the story that happiness is radiation, not
reflection--that we have it all inside, if we could only turn it
loose--that all pain and fear and anger and self-illusion disappear the
instant we enter the larger dimension of life, exactly as the moon goes
out of sight in the presence of the incandescent sun.
"I was emptied of all that life meant in the world--but something new
flooded in. I saw that all was not lost, but that all was greater than
I could dream; that all was waiting for fuller and finer expression.
I saw that what I could do for you, or for any man or woman or child,
brought me a living force of the love I was dying for. It became clear
that I needed only to clear away the choking evil of self, in order to
feel that I was a part of the tender and mighty Plan,--to touch the
rhythm of the Source, from which all songs and heroisms and martyrdoms
come.
"It has all been said again and again. There comes a moment usually
after much pain when the human mind realises that it is invincible when
working with the Plan; that it may even merge with a kind of Divine
Potency yet retain itself; that it can actually perform its actions
with the help of that mighty fluid energy in which the stars are swung
and the avatars are born.
"A cold monster indeed is this electricity compared to the odic force,
the dynamo of which is the human will. But the magic of it all lies in
the reverse of the whole system of use. This force destroys when used
for self, but constructs when it is turned outward. Here we touch the
law again that happiness is in radiation--in the loss of the sense of
self--in incandescence--"
Dreve smiled at me with sudden revealing charm. "I would say that it
was all in loving one's neighbour," he added, "except that it has been
said so much.... It is true. You seemed to know it to-day on the shore.
You seemed to see the great ones passing there. If the world could only
know the joy of seeing the sons of God in the eyes of passing men!"
* * * * *
Night had come. We sat at the doorway of his cabin, a waver of
firelight within, stars clearing above the misty sea.
"It's all play when one gets into the Plan--all pain while one resists
the Plan," Dreve added slowly. "I used to think that I had a strong
will; that I had good will-force, as men go. It was the will of an
invalid child. If men could only know the force that is theirs to use
when they enter the Stream! One is asked to give up old habits and ways
and propensities--but only because they are harmful and impeding. All
which really belongs is merely obscured for the time. It returns to you
with fresh loveliness and power. One does not give up three-space to
understand four-space. The truth is he must rise above the former to
see it all.
"It isn't you and I who matter," he said abruptly, after a pause.
"These things are for all. I know what comes afterward--to a man or to
a nation--when driven to the last ditch of pain. A new dimension of
power comes. That's what happens. That's what the New Age is all about.
That's what the war means. We shall learn our new chastity. We shall
emerge as a race into a more serene and splendid consciousness.... The
price--the dead.... I could tell you something about that. One must
have prayed for death to know about that. Don't think of that now--only
take it from me, or from your own soul, that the big Plan is all
right--that _They_ haven't made any mistakes yet--that the loved one is
only away for a time--busy--quite right--about the Father's business.
Another time for that.
"I can't forget them down on the Shore," Dreve finished. "That was
play. It was all a laugh down there. The big forces and the big people
are always a part of laughter. The laugh will take you to the throne.
The Gods laugh.... There's a laugh that ends pain. There's a laugh that
challenges power. There is the laugh of the aroused lover in the world.
We shall hear the laugh of the world itself, when the big revelation
breaks upon us all that the Plan is good--that the Plan is for joy."
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