Chapter XXXIV

A year after that moment of illumination we found ourselves upon a ship bound for England. We had sailed for months of travel. There were errands. An international body, of which Miriam was an officer, met that summer in Geneva, and she was to speak for certain measures dear to her mind and heart. In London was to be found a group of men whom I wished to see. There, too, was being played "Mr. X," and Llewellyn, writing of it and its reception by a London ready for "strange poetry," urged me to come over and stay awhile with him, "for I am going to die some time, and we may not meet in these old dresses that we have liked. You see I expect meeting--indeed, to say it all, I don't wait for death to practise meeting--but yet, my friend, I want to see you in the old ways, too! I likewise want to see _Miriam_."

We went. After England, after the Continent, we were going to meet Maxwell, in Egypt.

The sea was smooth, the hour dusk, on the horizon line a pale gold and green light, cool and pure, in the sky the strongest stars. Miriam and I walked, then came to our deck-chairs and lay there, in sheer, exquisite rest, in the envelop of sea and sky. Other passengers had gone below; only a few figures paced the deck or reclined, moveless, in the wide silence. We sat still.... Suddenly, definitely, with all distinctness, I saw Maxwell. He was in a boat upon a river. He made landing, stepped out and, turning, spoke to the rowers. I saw green-clad hills, palm-trees, the roof of a temple. There was with him an Englishman in uniform, and also a stout, dark-skinned, turbaned individual. The three went up a flight of river steps. Night came over it, it was gone. Here were the sea and the horizon light and the stars. Miriam turned a little in her chair and spoke softly. "What did you see?"

I told her. "He is somewhere in India."

"Curved light," she said. "What is the date? Can you tell if at all he saw you?"

"I think that he did. For just one moment as he reached the top of the steps."

We rested in our chairs in silence. The sky came down, dark blue, to the sea, the stars thickened. Darkness that was light, brine and tune of the sea, kiss of the wind, held us.... Something more than these, for now we entered with our faint, nebulous power of perception, into a consciousness confused, multitudinous, but real. Inchoately, faintly, we perceived our own life. Vision and voice, touch, presence, peoples, tribes and nations, groups, individuals, flowed in us. We held them as the sea holds its own, as the heaven holds the stars. The active principle knew that it surrounded, contained, pervaded, preserved, transcended the ideas that it created. These ideas were three-dimensional, colored, real; they were the sensible and intelligible world.

We lay, oceans whispering each to each, lost or found, with all number in one. The perceptions played. So fathomless, so wealthy was the feeling, so wealthy, so deep! The broad face of the earth was there, Asia and Europe and America were there, history, and names great and small, yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow. Vast events hung in that inner space; they contained, as clouds contain the water that had been and will be again in drops, myriads of small events. We tasted faiths and cultures, wildernesses, cities, movements of the spirit continuing from of old. Salt of the sea, tone of the wind, we upheld desire, love. We had the knowledge of the heart, we embraced the law of kindness. Within us long, long human love glowed and chanted. We were all lovers, we were all parents. We were all children. We experienced family love, village, and tribal love, nation love, world love. We knew comrade love, and we knew also kneeling reverence for the Wholeness all unattained. We knew sublimity, we knew awe.... We knew the flash of difference, the outward passing sparks, the falling stars. Yet were they in the whole, and on the mission of the whole! Difference and Likeness, for so was attained the essential rich variety, the sweet taste of novelty, the wild grapes of romance.... Faces came and went.... Summations and essences made the honey of the Ancient of Days.

The ship's musicians began to play--overture of "Die Meistersinger." Miriam and I rose and walked the deck one or twice, then went within to the lights and voices of the saloon.

That night, in our state-room, as she put out the light and stood before the opened window, and all the zest and fragrance of the sea made entry, she said: "How rich is every man and woman and child in the world! Golconda and California and Kimberley hang on the bough above their head!"

"We shall not get the fruit until we grow tall enough."

"Yes. But we are growing taller every moment. Not a dwarf but shall some day reach it!--oh, my darling world!"

We sailed across the sea. We had acquaintances on this ship and we made others. By now, in our degree, she and I had that earth-fame which brought folk to glance as we passed. "That is Miriam Forth--That is Michael Forth." One evening an entertainment had been arranged for some seamen's fund. A star of opera sang three songs. A mountain-climber related an adventure in the Himalayas, a dancer danced, a famous violinist played a sweet, uncanny, ancient melody. Miriam spoke, ten minutes, her theme, "To-morrow." She was the mountain-climber, the dancer, the violinist, and herself, herself! She spoke to-night with extraordinary power.... I, listening, was aware of Madam Black. That great personality and Miriam and I made union. Behind the speaker, behind the listener, in a clear, vibrating darkness, pulsed all Russia, all Europe, America.

A day after this, the sea running free, the sky like an archipelago, many cloud islands, great and small, with deep straits of blue air between, a man came up to us where we rested against the rail and watched the foam-mosaic at the side of the ship. We had noted him before; we knew that he was Ransome, the traveler. He greeted us and we him; we did not need to give names to and fro. After a little we moved to our chairs, placed where we might watch the sea. He found one for himself and sat before us, dark and thin, with a fine eagle face. It seemed that he read and liked the dramas of Michael Forth. We passed to talk of his wanderings. He knew all the zones and man in varieties of mind and passion--

With many an arm and maw and face and eye.

Presently--I do not remember the connection--he was speaking of Lourdes and more ancient pilgrimage goals, Compostella, and where not, of faith and shrines of miracle, and legendary doings in the Middle Ages and all other ages, in Europe and all other continents. He brushed Arabia, Persia, and India, and talked of Yogins and Sufis; then, with the calm, wide curve of a broad-pinioned bird, he was in London, where, last year, he had gone with ---- and ----, Psychical Researchers, to see ----, who came near to the powers of Stainton Moses. "Yes. He did some quite wonderful things! Why under the sun shouldn't an exceptional person now and then? We allow every other machine to improve. Why shouldn't the human machine--why shouldn't it begin to respond to wider ends?" "Between the first ship, with its oar or rag of a sail, and this liner, differences in power! The nature of development--desire--will--mind--did the one. Why isn't it doing the other? I hold that it is doing it--and that there isn't any unnaturalness!"

He regarded blue sea and blue sky. "Old wits continually bettered and new wits continually inaugurated and more and more fully adopted. The sum growing larger all the time, finer, too, as it works itself over and over, keener, more lustrous.... What else is there than just the-to-be-expected? ... I do not think to be of the substance of a throned idiot--nor a throned villain, either!"

The sea ran around the world. The fluid air was not here nor there, it flowed afar and near.... I sat upon the deck of the _Zeus_ and listened to Ransome the traveler--but also I was away from this--all around and all through.... Flowing mind that was also Ransome's mind, as it was Miriam's mind, and others and others and others in incalculable numbers--the host of mind.... Strong was the rapture! Thought there had great voice--god voice. It sank away, but its shadow, its echo, lingering, clothed itself, in words from an ancient dialogue between man and Man--between the individual and the Generic Consciousness.

"_Then the son of Pandu beheld the whole world with all its differences gathered together in the body of that God of gods._"

The strong music rolled away. Ransome was still speaking: "So, little by little, do we acquire powers. Genus Homo pulls himself together! Mother Nature learns finer magic!"

Miriam sang under her breath:

"Magic--magic!
Out of the cave,
Out of the lead!
Touch the gold,
Spread the wings--
Magician!"

"Magic? What is it?" spoke Ransome. "Unconscious truth? ... What is it that is emerging--faster and faster--butterfly out of chrysalis? Every fifth person you meet to-day has an inkling of it! It is in the air. What should you call it? Another sense? A superior field of consciousness? Specie-thought? Self-recognition? The Real?"

"Somewhat of all that, perhaps! Each fraction of understanding as it is reached takes its fractional name.... Thousands of marvelous half-way houses.... In the end a Person that endures--conceives, acts, and enjoys."

The _Zeus_ sailed on--jade-colored seas and turquoise sky and a healthful, singing wind.

We came to the Irish coast. Out of those about us watching the bare, the wild, the emerald beauty, rose a girl's voice. "I wish we had time for Killarney!"

One instant after the word fell, then Miriam sharply turned her head and drew me with her gray eyes. Our inner senses sprang each to each, leaped together far down.... We were in Killarney.

The peat burned on the hearth, the smoke made itself tasted. The boy was dying, having received a sword-thrust in the battle. The girl sat upon the earth floor beside the low bed. The hands of the two touched on the covering of frieze; she sat staring, seeing union and separation.... He felt the hurt of the sword; things went in a mist, armies in a mist, the wings of sorrow. The grandmother sat gathered together in the corner of the hearth. Now she was silent and now she keened. The sound was bitter. The door opened and men and women came in. There was a burly priest carrying soul-comfort. Behind him walked a soldier, and it was all long ago, back perhaps as far as Elizabeth's time. The grandmother never left the corner where the peat smoke curled about her, for all that the Host was coming in. The grandmother was heathen, wild, believing a god in the lake and the mountain. Who would work for her now, and the times so horribly ill? ... Boy and girl, grandmother, priest, the English soldier, the mistier, fainter others, we, Miriam-Michael, we leaning there against the rail of the _Zeus_, we were them all--we were Killarney. The thing was there with a great pang and vividness--then it was not.... We sighed, we came back to the _Zeus_.... There was a link made with a night long ago at York and with the monk Eadwine listening to the chanting in the church. The infinite sea of the memory of this earth! Moments entered consciousness so, they are restored so--and whence they came there are decillions of others!

What are words? ...

The Irish shore faded, the _Zeus_ came to Liverpool. Ransome traveled with us in the railway carriage to London. We gazed and gazed again upon the country through which we drew.

England's green and pleasant land--

So fair it was! So far fairer it might become, would become. After a time, when the eye was somewhat sated, Ransome began again to talk of Psychical Research. We had had companions in the carriage, but they had dismounted at some town. For a while we were alone. He wished to introduce us in London to three or four men and women whom he named. We agreed, and we came to owe to Ransome more than one valued connection, besides his own rich mind. At last he took out a pocket book and from it a paper which he unfolded. "That's a scheme of powers that the late Frederick Myers drew up. It belongs in his book that is to be published. A friend showed it to me, and I asked leave to copy it."

I took it from him and Miriam and I read together Myers's _Synopsis of Vital Faculty_.

_First Series.--Phenomena Supraliminally Controlled, or Occurring in Ordinary Life..._

_Second Series.--Phenomena Subliminally Controlled..._

_Third Series.--Phenomena Claimed as Spiritually Controlled..._

We read it with attention, acquiescence. "That's a good compendium. We should say Spirit or Self, where he says 'spirits'--"

The country went by, so verduous, so sweet! All the towns, villages, solitary houses--"It is all in us, in us all," said Miriam. "Bone of bone and flesh of flesh and blood of blood and spirit of spirit. Oh! world our mother--world our child--world our self!"