Chapter XV

I went on to Flowerfield. The singing house still sang. I tasted its richness and simpleness. It was so big and uncluttered, so largely, wealthily itself. Uncle John and Aunt Kate were the nearest now to father and mother. Catherine and Lewis had a bright, flashing quality, skimming about like birds. They went after their own devices. Old loved John showed preoccupied this summer. Winds that blew him toward Green view, nine miles away, where lived Amy Page, were good winds, great, balmy trade-winds. Other winds left him inattentive. He was at Greenview, or on the road to Greenview, or on the road from Greenview.

Miriam and I went together. That was old times keeping on. But now there had fallen down from heaven a full, strange, added bliss.

We came out of the old school-room door and crossed to the tulip-tree where hung the swing, long-roped, wide-seated. It was my third morning at Flowerfield. In this part of the place we thought of Madam Black. Looking over our shoulder, we might almost see her in the school-room door. We came under the tulip-tree and looked up into the green and towering cone where branches made many a section, and then we sat in the swing. "When we used to swing--up, up--out and away! Do you remember once when we and the swing and all seemed to be flying? There was such a thrill!"

"Yes, yes ... Thrill.... A big, blossoming feeling, everything dawning!" She closed her eyes and kept them shut for half a minute. Opening them, she turned full to me. "Michael! I told father and mother that I wanted to tell you myself. I am going to Baltimore next month. I am going to be a nurse."

"To be a nurse--"

"Yes. A trained nurse. You know more and more women are doing that. One can make it a kind of big work--if one chooses! It's all in the choosing.... I don't feel urged toward teaching school. I'm not a writer. I've tried, and it isn't very good. I haven't been to college, and there aren't many things open to women.... Nursing is certainly half of doctoring--of doctoring and healing. Even if I had been to college I should still like to doctor and heal. There's a real star shining along that lane of clouds. So I am going, Michael!"

I was getting up all my luggage and following her. "Why?"

"Why? ... I want to work and earn. I want to learn more and other things. I want to be, I want to do--fuller and fuller. I want to take--I want to give. I want better to know how to take and to give."

I said: "You work here; you help no end. You're joy to Uncle John and Aunt Kate. Uncle John can carry all."

"Yes, yes!" said Miriam. "But I am going out--I am going out of the nest, Michael. Wings mustn't always stay in nests. Father and mother agree. They understand.... I don't know that I think about it. I feel about it. At first, somewhere, sometime, I must have thought about it. But now I feel.... So I am going, Michael!"

She told the details of her plan. She watched me as she talked. I was thinking only. "We cannot marry before we are twenty-six. Will this come in that's way?" I had to find out. Catherine and Lewis came skimming around the corner of the house. I was rather glad. Just here, before the house, was not the place in which to find out.

I said, "Will you come this afternoon to Wakerobin Hill?"

"Yes.... I'll be ready at four."

We moved under the great hemlocks on the purple, somber side of Wake-robin Hill. "Somber" is not the word; it was coolly, darkly lifted, pillared and ample, a true natural temple. Blue space waked, far up, beyond the tracery of the roof. An organ wind rose and fell, but not in storms of sound. There was incense. One felt in the place gathered means, gathered ends. Purpose lifted from the throng of small desires. Cause stood whole in effect.

Miriam and I went to our most loved hemlock and sat down upon the dim, purple carpet. For some time we rested without words. The place took us as it always took us. The fret and foam, eddies and bubbles, the debris gathered and carried, still moved, outside, on the surface of the current. But here were to be felt the purified strength and depth, the eternal dimensions, the immortal impetus. Quiet so far from quietism, stillness so far from death, intension so far from inaction....

We sat upon the earth. We had not spoken for a considerable time. Our inner being flowed together, with a deeper sense of a deeper pulse. Came a momentary vision again of that mighty machine we had watched at the Centennial Exhibition. So doubled and redoubled, so strong, so eased....

Power and love and knowledge! Two rays fused into one beam, and the resultant richly conscious--

"Sat we two, one another's best....
Our souls--which to advance their state
Were gone out--hung betwixt her and me."

Miriam understood and I understood. When at last we said, "I love you"--and I know not which said it first--it was but the deep music playing on this stair, also, which had long been playing everywhere else.... I do not know when Miriam and I first met and loved. I do not think there is any "when" or "first" about it.

We moved nearer together, we put our arms about each other, we kissed.... We sat hand in hand, and the organ wind was like the lifting, falling, forming, dissolving, reforming of earths and eons ... and ever wiser, more beautiful!

One red sunset shaft came into the hemlock wood by Wake-robin Hill. We stirred--we must go back to Flowerfield.

Somewhere, going, we laid the specter of separation because she would have knowledge, and use it, of nursing and healing. The specter was a rather weak-jointed, grotesque elemental. We were not so easy to separate as that came to!

We felt bliss--we saw our milestone on the way to All--All--All! First, the integration that names itself the conscious individual. Second, the integration that says, "We love together--we two are one!" Third ... is it family, clan, nation, world ... is it an integration called Christ, on the way to God?

Miriam and I were happy--most happy. But still we saw the star--some star that drew. Love must go there, love must broaden its beam. We must carry our love on--carry on...

We felt how it transfigured, how the rivers heard the ocean.

Early in September I parted from Flowerfield and all there, going to Restwell again for a week, and thence out of Virginia, south and west by some hundreds of miles, to Landon, where coal and iron were being mined, where eventually steel would be made. I went to a position carrying, for a young man, a fair beginning salary. Behind me was General Warringer with his large interests. I should be given opportunity. "For the rest, you'll have to do it yourself," said my uncle. "You can make or you can mar, you know!" He sighed. I covered with mine his hand, lying before him on the table. "You've been good to me, Uncle Carter--"

Ahasuerus went with me to Landon. He said that he did not want to stay any longer at Restwell. Miss Harriet and the general were mighty good folk--but he didn't like it without the colonel and Miss Cary. Of course, if Miss Sarah wanted him--but she didn't seem to need any one.... He thought that he could get a job down there where Mr. Michael was going. He'd like, he told me, to drive a big wagon. He stood six feet and strong, an even, beautiful brown, with an open, not at all unintelligent face. He was older by some years than I, but we had been in each other's landscape for a long, long time. We had played together and we had worked together. I was fond of him, and he was fond of me. He had neither wife nor child. He wanted to go where I went, and at last it was so agreed. He could read and write, and he had that practical knowledge of basic economic processes which many a college man might envy. He was genial, as his people are, happy in himself. Travelers, he must go in one car and I in another. That was custom, presently was to become law. He must obey it, I must obey it. There were plenty of other customs--for instance, he must give me the "Mr.," but I never gave it to him--plenty of customs, not a few laws. I suppose that some day the colors of the spectrum will recognize that somewhere they really are together, and that there is little use in playing ostrich.

I had said good-by to Flowerfield. Now I said good-by to Restwell. The boat that was upon the river saw that it was sharply turning. Willows, hills, would come between it and the known, familiar reaches. There would be new scenery. I said good-by. Ahasuerus and I traveled west and traveled south.