Chapter XX

Restwell made much of Ahasuerus and me. General Warringer and Aunt Harriet had acquiesced in my going with Maxwell, but not before, as in duty bound, they had set forth a row of objections. Aunt Harriet's resolved into the propositions, that I might be killed--that so I could not marry and carry on the family fortunes; that, while there might result some distinction from being an explorer (a successful one), she had noticed that men who went into wild places for any length of time carried it around with them ever afterward and lost touch with the society into which they were born. "We met an Arctic man once at Old Point. Well, when it came to the amenities he was nothing but a polar bear walking upright!"

I said that if I came back like a rhinoceros or crocodile she must have me shot.

She looked at me a little wistfully. "You know, Michael, you're the only bit of Dugald and Cary we've got. More than that, you seem somehow to hold and bring back father.... You've got a faculty, somehow, of enwrapping and carrying with you a lot of things--a lot of people, even." She sighed. "I'm not that kind myself, but I know that there are all-around folk."

I kissed her and said that we were in the same boat. I knew that there must be all-around folk--but I was only a little of that myself--nothing like, nothing like, the all-around that I could image. We sat on the summer-house step, and I found that we could talk, in some ways, as my mother and I had used to talk ... no! as my mother and I talked.

General Warringer, likewise, was concerned about my future. "This life's a bitter race, Michael. If you begin to step aside to pick flowers, down you go--smothered under! I've seen a lot of men--men with brains--scheduled just so to be poor and unknown all the rest of their lives. If you had chosen to stay you could have had Maxwell's place when he went. As Landon grew you could have left engineering, become assistant superintendent--superintendent--what not. You've got brains and a steady-going energy--not flashy. You might have gone straight on up to the top. You've got pull here, too, remember. There's no helping you in Africa. Your savings, too. I had it in mind to speak to you about that. As you earned and saved I could invest for you in a stock that'll presently be paying--I don't know what it won't be paying! And if, after a time, you wanted to speculate, I should see to it that you got the inside word. This country's traveling, double-quick, toward the biggest kind of expansion! You might become a rich man--rich and useful--the most valuable kind of citizen. But if you break with the run now it's going to be hard to get back. As I said before, this world's a breathless 'Keep your place, or I'll take it!'"

I said that I knew that it was a serious step, but that, as far as engineering went, I felt that I could always find employment. I had no quarrel with engineering as a profession. But I did not feel myself fitted for the further course he had outlined. It might be a mistake, my going with Maxwell, but I had felt a strong inward urging. I thought that I should come back, and that the experience would not be loss.... I said that I was grateful to him, and to many at Landon.

"That's all right. I gather that you gave very good work in return.... Well, if you won't, you won't, Michael! ... Royal is going to be a rich man--rich and powerful."

"If I had been Holbein or Rembrandt I should have liked to paint Royal."

Royal was at home at the moment. But he was going to New York, into a big broking company in Wall Street. In appearance he was so different from his father, and yet they subtly paired. The son stood intellectually higher by a head. They sat, as it were, above and below the salt--but at the same board, in the same castle hall. One must give respect to the castle, it was so vast and powerful. London Tower or Carcassonne, a thousandfold.

Dorothea was very friendly.... We went out together one morning upon the river. It had become fairy spring weather, bloom and song and first verdure. We ran under the sweeping willows, by banks of violets and bluebells.

"I should like to see Africa and Asia and all--the old buildings and the old lands. Oh, Michael, you're lucky!"

"Why don't you travel? You could."

"Some day maybe I will ... but I'll take myself along."

"Why don't you sort out yourself and choose the best traveling-dress?"

"Oh, I'm lazy--except when people get in my way. What do you do when people get in your way?"

"They're _in_ the way because they're _out_ of the way. Get them in order inside you. Penetrate them--understand them--be at one with them. Then the whole ship moves with the helmsman's hand. You and they are one, you know." I laughed at the face she made. "Gibberish, isn't it? And nine times out of ten I fail to practise my own magic.... All the same, don't poison them, Dorothea! If you do you'll feel the pangs."

"I like to poison them--starve them."

"Stop it--or you'll feel the pangs!"

She caught at the willows under which we were passing. "Oh, I am not so bad as I make myself out! ... Sometimes--often--I feel kind and good." The boat went a few strokes farther. "Stop rowing," she said. "Let's rest here a bit. Go close to the bank, by the violets." I obeyed. She stretched her arms, then, leaning forward, looked at me. "You meet most persons, Michael. Now I want to see if you meet me!"

"Fire away!"

"Do you ever feel wicked?"

"Often."

"Just how? Can you feel yourself murderer, thief, and all the rest of it?"

"Yes."

"Well, to get off the plane of actually poisoning people or jerking the bread out of their mouths.... When the world looks lovely, not hateful--and you want all the jewelry in the window ... but are too sleepy to go after it ... and so you only lust for it, envy it. Do you know that, too?"

"Yes. At times I should like to roll in gold-dust and violets."

"Yes!"

"A great elephant to ride upon--caparisoned--an easy, swaying, powerful gait. No obstacles--all the crowd at once worshiping and getting out of the way--"

"Yes!"

"Idle Lakes--and Mirth to row me--and Bowers of Acrasy--"

"H-mm?"

"_The Faery Queen_. The second book. It's a perfectly true tale."

"What else? Your elephant figure I do most certainly understand--though I understand the others likewise."

"I'd weary you with all the rest. At the bottom of the bag.... Something big and dark--wind and wave--wishing just to roll over and destroy. The utterest explosive--wishing to rend sun, moon, and stars. Split them into little pieces. Blow them into dust in the wind. And without a bit of better plan, without any plan--any ultimate idea. Blank Nothing--impossible to obtain! But go toward it, and so save oneself trouble. Decline to make the God."

She stared; then, "I see..."

"It's the bottom of the bag. But notice, will you, that still, blank and mad as it is, it assumes cohesion. It's to have force to do all that.... So, after all, it will have to take trouble."

"Yes, I see that."

"Better take the full cup of finer effort! Better make of yourself a world that won't want to blow its brains out!"

She sighed. "Get me a bunch of violets and let us go home." I picked her her violets, stepped back into the boat, put them in her lap, and retook the oars. She said, "You could have been an evil soul."

"There's plenty of evil yet. But the soul wants to change it to good, Dorothea."

"But it understands it still."

"Yes, it understands it still."

We went on beneath the willows. "Did you never read _The Faery Queen_? Well, read it all, but especially the second book." We traveled silently upon the clear river. After a while she would have talked of Miriam. But I did not want to talk of Miriam, who was Una, who was Alma, who was Belphœbe, who was Britomart to me. So at first we spoke of just the weather and then of Restwell plans, and at last she deliberately fell silent, and when I saw that it was deliberate I followed her lead, rowing without speaking, in a moving dream with the long oar-stroke. She sat with her eyes upon the violets in her hand. We made landing and I helped her out and we went together up the bank and toward the house. But under the wood where the wild plum was blooming she stood still.

"Michael ... we're cousins."

I nodded.

"That ought to mean warm hearts toward each other."

"Agreed."

She was very close to me. She put her hand upon my breast. "Like me, Michael ... like me!" I felt her breath, her cheek touched mine. "Like me--as I like you." She kissed me and I kissed her. But then I felt the stroke of the crowned man. As best I might I got back from the edge of the precipice. I drew myself away from her hands and her face.

"Dorothea, Dorothea, Dorothea! leave that! That's not innocent, because it's not sincere. You're stooping low with your mind--tempting deliberately! And I'm the leopard--the slave--the worm yet.... Leave it! Let's at least stand upright!"

She drew a long breath. "Well... I wondered--"

"Stop wondering! It's all there, in my blood as it is in yours. I could, as you could. Almost half of me plays the siren to just more than half that's just wise enough to use every thong it can find to keep it to the mast--"

"Well, you will please to understand that it was the mind--just wanting to see--"

"I understand. Now I want to tell you.... I think that we roved together a lot in the past, you and I.... Suppose you, also, try to stop that lorelei work of taking oneself in one's own net. Every fish you take--lovers, pride, domination, cruelty, indolence, self-love, and all the rest of it--pulls you deeper yet into the ancient sea. I know, for not so long ago and not so far away I have been there--am there quite sufficiently still! Throw the net away, stop the old singing, and see if you can't hear a lark overhead!"

"You're preaching!"

"No, I'm not. I'm calling your attention to some facts in nature."

She began to walk again. "I don't see that our old, long past was so very wrong."

"I don't in the least say that. I won't say a word against the ancient sea. When we were in it, if we were sincere, it was all that we could do. It had its own powers, beauties, and truths. But the winged thing mustn't return to the finned thing."

She looked at me over the violets that she had pinned at her throat. "After Grandfather Forth's death I heard a man call him a mystic.... I suppose that's you, too, Michael?"

But the word didn't well describe how I felt as to the out-of-doors around our houses of ancient habit. She began to talk of things away from this hour. We climbed the hill and crossed the May grass to the porch.

At no other time while I was at Restwell did we recall the one to the other this morning. She went her way and I went mine. But I felt her sultry beauty and the ancient sea call. I piled images against it, and drew at last strength from that dimension that fronts the east. And yet I knew, and that without shame, that life of old sense through which certainly, in a million, million shapes, I had gone. It streamed and weltered, fought and gloried, thrilled through its coils of murky splendor, survived and somehow surpassed itself, and rose. Dorothea was me in that eon and I was Dorothea. Miriam and I and Dorothea had all been together. If two were out, were partly out, another would follow.

The days went by at Restwell. Daddy Guinea was dead, but Mammy, Aunt Esther, Mandy's Jim, and others still lived there. Ahasuerus made himself happy. Restwell was oiled, smoothly running, with money as never had I remembered it. It was not that the Warringers were hugely wealthy; they were not. Royal would pass into that category, but that time was not yet. But they had means beside which my grandfather's and my mother's old struggles seemed piteous enough.

Aunt Sarah had not oldened. Her pale, smooth skin kept its firmness, her hair its brown luster, her eyes their not young nor old, still, immortal look. I sat with her in her room, always so clean, hushed, unlittered, or on the upper porch without her windows where in summer she kept her many plants that would bloom in winter. And three times we were together in the graveyard.

"I understand better than I did," I said, "what you meant when you said that they are within us."

"You'll grow to understand it better yet.... It's a vast world, Michael, that 'within us'!"

"I am fast coming to see that."

"So vast that all things are there."

"I begin to see it."

"I have not the energy strongly to move and make move within it. It goes as a kind of still dream. The faintest dawn is on the waters and they lie still beneath it. But I do not grieve any longer, nor am I anxious. It is a gain when women do not grieve, nor are anxious."

The days swam on. I went to Whitechurch. I climbed the academy hill and listened to Doctor Young in his study. He reminded me of some castle keep, narrow and darkened, but firm, built with a fierce honesty of purpose, with good stone. A life he fought was rising around his hold--outer walls were crumbling now under strange shafts and rays--but still stood the keep with fierce constancy. I asked him about Gamaliel. His face twitched. "I have not seen him for three years. I hear that he has put himself through some sort of scientific school. I suppose that he will go over, body and soul, to science." The timbre of the fortress voice carried, "Oh, thou deep traitor to me--thou, my son, who grew from me!" I felt the drawbridge go up....

The days and nights went by. In middle May I said good-by to Restwell; as it proved, for three years.