Chapter XXXVII

The "I" posited itself in a realm somewhat nearer to the All. It tented there. Miriam was there, profoundly, deeply, truly, really there.

O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?

I saw man--that I was, that I had come through--as one turns and sees a flower, a bird!

I was out, and about me was a cloud. I could not yet well distinguish where I was--I was a babe there. But under me now was the old kingdom I had come through. A part of me lived there yet, a vast part--but a vaster part was out.

The "I" that yet functioned in that kingdom was upon a ship on the Mediterranean, on the Ægean--but the "I" that was above knew many a ship, on many a sea, in many an age! Walking the sea, walking the land....

I came to Greece, to Athens, and found there Maxwell.

The heat burned, strong deserts seemed to spring about us--deserts loved, wide, and clean, the superfluous stripped away. A flash, a beam in the whole, returned that day in Landon when he stood, sinewy, tanned, beside his shelves of ores and we first grew acquainted ... or thought then that we first grew acquainted. Other beams fell from those African days. Ten years and more had passed since we had met in the body like this. Each had traveled far. But where we were now, as where then we had been, we found ourselves acquainted, and acquaintable, able to take the same stride, to work together, liking each other well in those great, quiet, desert spaces filled with dry light.

... But that first night in Athens it was Miriam with me, Miriam and my mother and Madam Black and the man with the book of verse.

I say "the first," but "firstness" applies only to that projection of me named Michael Forth, and to those named projections of the others. There was not any firstness in the case of I myself--of we ourselves. We had seen Athens built. As Athens lasted, so lasted our presence there.

Maxwell and I went up and down in Hellas. We saw the old sights again, the temples, hills, and seas.

There was a place where we sat among blocks of man-wrought stone, by the pillars of a little, roofless fane. Honey-hued, the shafts rose behind us; around grew a scant, parched herbage, before us poised the still blue sea, and the profound sky held a cloud like Argo and a cloud like the Golden Fleece.

We had been talking of Africa, of Mannheim, Ferraro, and Sir Charles, but finally we fell silent and sat so for some time, the moving sapphire filling the world. Maxwell broke the stillness. "Early in April an errand took me up the Jamuna. Just as I landed from a small boat at a certain place, suddenly--like that!--distinctly, vividly, consciously, I was at sea, upon a steamer called the _Zeus_, with you and with Miriam. She was no more strange to me than were you. Effectively, we were all one! I was there simply because you were there."

"Yes. You were climbing an old river-stair with a temple above. You stood still when you felt the ship about you. You had with you an English officer and a Hindu."

"Thorncliffe and Sastriar."

"We were effectively one. I was there simply because you were there!"

He drew a long breath. "Well! Follow a clue like that, and one might come out of the labyrinth.... I feel like Franklin with his key and his kite--and overhead all that was to come to be meant by 'electric!' ... Michael, where are we going?"

"Into beyond-man. What we call heaven and God."

"All of us?"

"Surely! Some particles are ahead, some in the rear. It is true that some are almighty slow! There are plenty of stragglers. But they won't always straggle. All are going--Self-drawn. And with each day the momentum increases."

"I think it does. But look at the present world!" he said.

We were lying by the temple, above the sea. That which happened was that forthwith we looked. We looked at ourself as Man. And we were the Hottentot in the Bush, and we were what seers there have been and are. We were our neighbors whom we loved, and we were our neighbors with whom we were at war. We cheated ourself, sold ourself and redeemed ourself. We slew ourself, and we rose from battle-fields, grew bodies again, and slew ourself again. We put out our own lights, and then with long pain relumed them. With pangs and pangs again we gave birth to ourself, and all the while feverishly we dug graves for ourself that we had birthed. We said, "You die--ha, ha! You go under--ha, ha!" and we died and went under, and still we stayed not there. We were a welter, a brew in a caldron, a chaos--

Maxwell's voice came as from out a darkness. "So at times I see it--"

"I see also.... There is truth in it, but it is too short range. Look now!"

Out of chaos was coming cosmos. Men were becoming Man--christs becoming Christ--gods becoming God. Perpetually we learned. We lost ignorance, but did not lose wisdom; lost discord, but did not lose harmony; lost hatred, but did not lose love; lost weakness, but did not lose might. Despite all dull, distracted, hypnotized clutching at the one it fell from us. The other stayed. And that which went was of time, and that which stayed was timeless.

We returned to the self by the temple.

"Bitter-sweet--sad and bright!" he said. "I pin by courage."

"Courage and good-will.... Love is power."

We sat silent, sat so for long. Gradually our minds again united. The intellect grew larger, keener, the feeling at once vivid and extended. Thought, emotion, sensation were toward lands and peoples. We felt them, felt Greece and England and America, felt France, Germany, Spain, Italy, felt China and Japan and India, and all the others--felt them as complexes in the One Man--as we felt the sexes in the One--as we felt in the One the children, the young, renewing points, and the prime, and the fading before transformation that they call age. There was a mighty integration--and we felt the upstanding god.

We sank back, always still we sank back. We could not hold the chord, keep the form! Disintegration--but continually the muscles grew stronger to draw all together again!

Maxwell sighed and moved. "Nomads, Bedouins, wandering in the desert and lifting eyes to the city of God."

"It is there--the truer self! We dwelt there a moment."

"A moment of a moment."

"It was an earnest. When we can dwell there an hour, how much, O Miriam, shall we know and be!"

"Vast, lifted, simple--"

"Blissful, intimate.... All the beautiful old words, all myths have meant it.... Gather the members of Osiris.... Feel as a tree and find it as simple, one, natural, as feeling as a leaf. Feel as the Ash Yggdrasil."

Again one day we sailed to an island and sat among rocks where some sweet-scented low shrub sent out an odor combining exquisitely with that of the sea. "I suppose," said Maxwell, "that there is everywhere emerging a higher range of faculties. The type of consciousness changes, advances. I meet of late years all kinds of explorers, each with a different tale to tell, but all telling of the new continent.... What we begin to be able to do falls under so many heads. The past now--all our history! It is profoundly with me in a kind of brooding regard."

"You may walk in the past--observe it--and alter it as a garden."

"You say 'alter.' I believe that too. The past can be altered."

"Yes. You have abundant power of motion in it."

A bird passed us, high in air. A wind came, bending the grass. "You know that I loved," he said, "a woman who is dead. It is growing that she and I walk hand in hand."

"That old blank wall is crumbling so that you can see the sun through it. Who that is dead has vanished? We shall gather all the living and we shall gather all the dead!"

He sat with his eyes upon the burning blue of that Greek sky. For me, I was in that country, but also Miriam and I climbed Wake-robin Hill. "Another thing develops in me," said Maxwell. "I begin to integrate waking life and sleeping."

"Yes. It is to be done. All manner of integrations...."

We mounted a long slope of brown light. Atop, we stood under a pine-tree, we looked afar. "Do you think that you ever began to live?"

"I do not. I never began and I shall never end."

"Oh, the mystery--!"

"Is it so mysterious? Standing there, you say 'I.' Standing here, I say 'I.' It is the same word. I take it that the quest, the searched-for treasure, the Grail of all the ages, is for every 'I' to find 'I' wherever it is, and that is everywhere. All 'I' is I. I AM THAT I AM. Each one is to find that all the 'I's' go into One Word. The first and only Word--the Word of God.... God, self-conscious, saying 'I.'"

"I see," he said. We faced each other, eyes meeting. "'_I_,'" he said. "I say it of what I have called 'you.'"

I answered. "_I_. I say it of what I have called 'you.'"

Going Athens-ward that day, all Greece sprang whole again. Not one age of it, but all ages of it, and the nimbus around its head that was the future.... All earth sprang whole and had its nimbus.

Maxwell and I journeyed for a month. Each liking, each understanding has its own fragrance, characteristic tone, strength. Maxwell and I joined fast in strong intellectual spaces, and in common care for a clean, taut, athletic physical, and in a heart that loved wild and careless beauty.

At the end of this time I must go home to Virginia, to Flowerfield. He, who had been engineering in the East, was now on his way to England, where a new project awaited him. We traveled together to Italy and northward to Genoa where I could get my boat. Arriving in Rome, we spent there a week.

All countries were now homes--all cities my cities--all peoples myself.... Over and over again the integrating energy slackened, weakened--there was instantaneous descent just to Michael Forth. Over and over again! But there were times when the deep past and the wide present seemed to stand in one form in some tremendous light and warmth that were the future.... And all the myriad shades, degrees, varieties, so rich each one, of experience!

Once here, walking at night, I was suddenly at one with an alchemist who had lived I know not when.

Another time I knew that I, and Miriam with me, and, I thought, my mother, had been martyred here in Rome nearly two thousand years ago.... I looked from a cross, and I saw over a space of sand, lifted and pierced in the same way, Gamaliel.

The monk Eadwine connected here....

Countless multitudes of lives that are our moments, phases! ... Stand in One Life and see from the center thy universe! "Michael Forth" was now to me one of the moments, the phases.

Maxwell and I left Rome and came to Genoa, where I was to take ship. Our inn had been a palace; we sat that night, with candles burning, in a room so large that the verges were lost in shadow. We sat silent. In at window came the ringing of a distant bell, sweet and slow. We were going to part on the morrow, who liked each other well.

To my perception time changed, space changed. Many more causes were simultaneously seen; many more effects. Miriam and I did not part, and Maxwell and I did not part. The larger life is here and now. Heaven is here and now.

He said: "There came then a wave of truth. From what land do they blow, these things? ... At any rate, you and I do not part."

The next evening the sea ran in vast blues and purples about the ship. The Italian shore was sinking; the mind's eye saw Africa and Spain and the Strait, the Atlantic and America.... There held me an emotion delicate and powerful, fragrant as the wild grape, all melody and color and zest, and above it walked unhidden intelligence. And Miriam and I met in the whole.