And his dreams were of children. Their faces passed before him. Now they
were young again in the house. They were eating their suppers, three small
girls, chattering like magpies. From her end of the table their mother
smiled quietly across at him. "Come children," she was saying, "that will
do for a little while." But Roger said, "Oh, let them talk."... Then he saw
new-comers. Bruce came in with Edith, and George and young Elizabeth, and
Allan came with Deborah who had a baby in her arms, and Laura stood beside
them. Here were his three daughters, grown, but still in some uncanny way
they looked to him like children still; and behind them he detected figures
long forgotten, of boys and girls whom he had known far back in his own
childhood. John, too, had come into the house. Strangely now the walls were
gone, had lifted, and a clamorous throng, laughing, shouting, pummeling,
hedged him in on every hand--Deborah's big family!
Soon the uproar wearied him, and Roger tried to shut them out, to bring
back again the walls to his house. And sometimes he succeeded, and he was
left for a while in peace with Judith and his three small girls. But
despite his efforts to keep them there, new faces kept intruding. Swiftly
his small family grew, split into other families, and these were merged
with other figures pressing in from every side. Again he felt the presence
of countless families all around, dividing, reuniting, with ceaseless
changes and fresh life--a never ending multitude. Here they were singing
and dancing, and Laura gaily waved to him. At another place were only men,
and they were struggling savagely to clutch things from each other's
hands. A sea of scowling visages, angry shouts, fists clinched in air. And
he thought he saw Bruce for an instant. Behind them lay wide valleys
obscured by heavy clouds of smoke, and he could hear the roar of guns. But
they vanished suddenly, and he saw women mourning now, and Edith with her
children turned to him her anxious eyes. He tried to reach and help her,
but already she had gone. And behind her came huge bending forms, men
heaving at great burdens, jaws set in scowls of fierce revolt. And John was
there on his crutches, and near him was a figure bound into a chair of
steel, with terror in the straining limbs, while in desperation Deborah
tried to wrench him free. Abruptly Roger turned away.
And in a twinkling all was gone, the tumult and the clamor, and he was in a
silent place high up on a mountain side. It was dusk. A herd of cattle
passed, and George came close behind them. And around him Roger saw,
emerging from the semi-dark, faces turning like his own to the summits of
the mountains and the billowy splendors there. It grew so dark he could see
no more. There fell a deep silence, not a sound but the occasional chirp of
a bird or the faint whirr of an insect. Even the glow on the peaks was
gone. Darkness, only darkness.
"Surely this is death," he thought. After that he was alone. And presently
from far away he heard the booming of a bell, deep and slow, sepulchral, as
it measured off his life. Another silence followed, and this time it was
more profound; and with a breathless awe he knew that all the people who
had ever lived on earth were before him in the void to which he himself was
drifting: people of all nations, of countless generations reaching back and
back and back to the beginnings of mankind: the mightiest family of all,
that had stumbled up through the ages, had slaved and starved and dreamed
and died, had blindly hated, blindly killed, had raised up gods and idols
and yearned for everlasting life, had laughed and played and danced along,
had loved and mated, given birth, had endlessly renewed itself and handed
on its heritage, had striven hungrily to learn, had groped its way in
darkness, and after all its struggles had come now barely to the dawn. And
then a voice within him cried,
"What is humanity but a child? In the name of the dead I salute the
unborn!"
Slowly a glow appeared in his dream, and once again the scene had changed.
The light was coming from long rows of houses rising tall and steep out of
a teeming city street. And from these lighted houses children now came
pouring forth. They filled the street from wall to wall with a torrent of
warm vivid hues, they joined in mad tempestuous games, they shouted and
they danced with glee, they whirled each other 'round and 'round. The very
air seemed quivering. Then was heard the crash of a band, and he saw them
marching into school. In and in and in they pressed, till the school seemed
fairly bursting. Out they came by another way, and went off marching down
the street with the big flag waving at their head. He followed and saw the
street divide into narrower streets and bye-ways, into roads and country
lanes. And all were filled with children. In endless multitudes they
came--marching, marching, spreading, spreading, like wide bobbing fields of
flowers rolling out across the land, toward a great round flashing sun
above a distant rim of hills.
The sun rose strangely dazzling. It filled the heavens with blinding light.
He felt himself drawn up and up--while from somewhere far behind he heard
the cry of Deborah's child. A clear sweet thrill of happiness came. And
after that--we do not know.
For he had left his family.
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