Chapter XXXV

Llewellyn had aged. His beard was almost white. He talked of an old house crumbling to pieces. "I see some lines that the new will follow. Partly like the old, partly not.... Michael, do you remember that evening on the mountain-top above Africa, where we lit our fire, and the air was something finer than air, and we felt, all of us, friends forever? I remember what a strange beauty--vibrant, shining--you had that night!"

"You had it, too--all had it! We saw each upon the other the radiance that we all gave."

"Well, it was there! Well, we are friends forever, meeting and meeting and meeting again.... Pilgrims, adventurers, explorers, poets--all the race of romance."

We sat in the London house which he shared with Sir Charles. Sir Charles was in India--Maxwell, too. "I go there also, pretty often," said Llewellyn. "On the wings of--Poetry! That is, without wings.... He who flies without wings.... The one who is there anyhow without flying is the poet we call God. There and here!" He turned to Miriam. "Don't you sing? I should say that you did."

She sang for him, sitting there in the rich dusk, sang without instrument, thrillingly, exquisitely.

The notes died. We sat quietly till the lights were brought. "I look forward to million-folded wisdom," said Llewellyn, abruptly. "The most vital, the vastest experience!"

"It _is_."

"Yes ... Michael, I have always waked at dawn. It has always been my season. The bloom of the vineyard, the wind over the palms is then ... More and more I get wonder, pleased surprise, a sense of Olympian food."

"The right bread and wine."

"Just! You two, I am glad that you came."

John Sydney was in Australia. But I met again Carthew Roberts, and I was happy to find Pantagruel.... Miriam and I went together to the house yet lived in by the Mannheims. The brother was in the city, at his place of business, where, said Llewellyn, he prospered. Mannheim's sister also was away, but would return presently. Would we wait? We waited, and talked with the plaintive, fearful cousin. Her easy tears came yet for Mannheim, but chiefly for herself. She said that the world was a selfish, cruel place, distressing to God! The house was clean, these three people loved and clung together, but the cousin and, I knew, the brother heard foghorns day and night, dreaded collisions, suffered shadowy shipwreck all the time.

Mannheim's sister came in. A thousand thousand fingers of thought and feeling had modeled her strong Jewish face. She greeted us, and we talked of Mannheim. After a while she took us to the small room where yet were kept his books and specimens. We stood beside his old, large, shabby desk. Above hung a small painting, a good one, by an unknown artist--Moses leading the people forth.

Mannheim's sister spoke: "My brother and my cousin in the other room think he's dead. The most that they can do is to see him in some little outward way, as he looked or sat or spoke some day when, they say, he was 'living.'"

Upon the desk stood an old hour-glass. Her large, dark eyes regarded it. "They think, 'His life was an hour-glass, and the sand is run.' I know that it is no such thing. He is all hours, and his movement does not stop."

That night, waking after sound sleep, I very clearly saw Mannheim. The sense was that we had met in the dreamless state, that I had made swift, preoccupied return through the dream-belt, bringing him with me so wholly that, simply and swiftly, the objective senses opening, the presence of him was transferred from the subjective, held, and he stood in the room clad in the old familiar seeming. Was this just the process or was it not, I powerfully felt Mannheim, and for an instant he stood visibly before me, like a light-filled figure from a stained-glass window. He moved, was gone.

I lay with a clear brain, not thinking in words, but receiving impacts, understanding them as they came. The process, the motion, was always one of expansion, bringing with it a sense of clear order and tranquillity. Then followed a specific light and warmth, then with a deep sense of pleased surprise the intellect took count of the moment's content. The content was oftenest a wide, fresh ordering of much data, a sense of things coming from sequence into scope, a mastery of the octave and the rhythm. Mastery of the old octave and the old rhythm--by no means mastery of the new. On the one hand, the moments were syntheses; on the other hand, but the barest elements. They were "bright shoots of everlastingness." Miriam and I and many another divined the kingdom of everlastingness, and that we should walk there. But we could not walk there yet--not boldly and bodily, through all our moments.

But every moment that we caught from the new order _neared_ us there; and through us, as through all others who sailed for that America, neared the whole world. We, with all those others, who were no "others," after all, were spiritual ancestors.

Lying there in the London bedroom, at the turn of the night, Michael Forth saw how simply the dead are alive, saw how, presently, the plane of communication widens until we know that, until we touch again. Touch the absent in time as we shall touch the absent in space.

I slept again and waked to the divine morning freshness blessing the city. Miriam set apart the door between our rooms. "I went home last night and saw Kate and Dugald and mother and father and all."

In London we saw much, met many folk. England was not yet through with bitter war. The Russo-Japanese cloud gathered. We heard talk, excited or depressed, as the case might be; we noted hate in many dilutions. Miriam and I sat silent here.... We had parted with war. It had not been always thus with us--by no means always thus--but it was so now.

London tasted to us; massively, dearly, was us. We touched artists, players, writers, and men and women workers toward upward alteration in many a social form. There were men of science with whom, through Gamaliel, we came into relation. Ransome gave us a fourth group. All interested us; all were doing their work where they found themselves. And in and through and over all hung the sense of traveling. One by one, we waked to find ourselves on a far journey.

Now and again we went to the churches. Here, too, as in America, there seemed to us change. Miriam said, "They seem to be throwing away and they are coming closer."

She and I sat one day in Westminster Abbey. The organ had ceased, the clergy were gone, the folk had dispersed. The light rayed down upon us through the rose window. The great place of the great dead held so for a little, then it rocked and split and vanished and there stood a Living Man....

Death? Outgrow death.

But do not think that death will teach you to outgrow death. It has to be done by the living.

To save one mother alive ... Christ, that is Power and Wisdom and Love flowing, rising, in each and all....

Miriam and I went out into the soft sunshine of London town. She and I with many another walking the earth to-day and yesterday and to-morrow would grow into that Image, so profoundly general, so profoundly individual! We should grow into it as, in Judea, one named Jesus had grown into it. All, unconsciously and then consciously, would grow there. Christ and the comprehension of Christ growing by multiplication, accretion, fusion, intuition....

In and through and over London town, holding London town and all the towns, a sense of rock, a sense of power, a sense of warmth, a sense of light, a sense of Personality, a sense of Risen Life--

"There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body.

"It is sown in corruption, it is raised in Incorruption."

Miriam and Michael Forth went down to Thames-side and found a bench and sat there. They turned each to the other; their eyes shone each into the other's. They saw immortal, reciprocal love, filling time and space and supporting these.

The light came down on the river. The river grew luminous. The great town spoke and said: "Oh, great indeed shall I become; oh, wise indeed; oh, fair indeed!" We sat there long, tasting truth that was relative, but nearer kin to the real than our old relativities. We thought of the old, and we smiled at each other as we smiled at Kate and Dugald's play.

The colored river flowed on. We leaned upon the parapet of Westminster Bridge and watched it flow. The clock behind us struck the hour--we walked home to Llewellyn's house.

The London days went by. We bade these English selves farewell and, Llewellyn with us, crossed to France, that, too, had its great flavor, magic, multitudinous, one!