Chapter XXXVIII

In New York, Conrad, who lived in the next street, came to see me almost at once. We walked up and down in the study that was a long, high-ceilinged room. He looked about him. "I don't think she has gone," he said.

"No. She's not gone."

We walked up and down, Miriam with us. "You were already profoundly one," he said.

The city roared without the windows, the great city. Now it was Blake's tiger, tiger burning bright, and now Blake's lion with ruby eyes and mane of gold, now half man and half brute--centaur--and now whole man, and now half man, half god.

In very ancient times what long effort--prolonged, broken--to stand upright, to use the hand, the tongue! And now, upon the huge, next stair, difficult, too--!

We talked of Conrad's especial work. He also had grown in these years, was stiller, more patient, massive, than he had been.

Around him beat difficulties of a disturbed hive, clouds of stinging bees. He could say, "I sting, I fret and hamper myself"--and work on toward better things. He, with all of us, was on the way to knowledge and the master reconciliation. The long road--oh, the long, long road!--oh, the only road worth traveling! He was like and not like the old Conrad of the university, or the Conrad even of ten years ago. He worked hard, with vision and with temperance, building not with gusty strokes, but to last. The gain in him was that there used to be the gusty strokes. The emotion of the Whole, the fusing passion, held him now so closely that he grew steadfast.

His old paper _The Compass_ continued, and he was starting a journal named _The Evolutionist_. I said that Evolutionist-Involutionist was the better, if longer word--unless, serving a turn already made, he was ready plainly to say Involutionist.

"It is too revolutionary a title--yet! As I see the formula, it goes: X--Evolution--Pause--Turn--Involution--X."

"X is the equilibrium, the identity, the Eternal Person."

"I suppose that is so." He put his hands behind his head and leaned back, his eyes upon the rows of books. "None does anything else but build at, build into the Greater Person.... 'All men are different,' said yesterday. 'All men are equal,' says a part of to-day. 'All men are identical,' will say to-morrow.... Each man and woman, consciously or unconsciously, lover and servant of that great Art that makes us One! All are pilgrims, seekers, workers in that studio.... But one reaches Bewlah Land, while another is still at Hill Difficulty."

His hands came down upon the table. I put mine over them. "All right, brother--"

We talked late. When he went away Cygnus was over the house-tops. As I fell to sleep a great star shone in the inner world--and it had mind and feeling and power and beauty!

I had found that Gamaliel was away from the city. But the day after Conrad he came. It was a day of autumnal beating rain and a wind that cried in the chimney and at the window. Martin had built me a fire in the study. There was work to do before I could go to Flowerfield. I had worked almost all the day, but in the rainy, late afternoon came Gamaliel.

I had always loved him and I did so now and should do so to-morrow and all the days after. Maxwell was comrade of manhood. Gamaliel was that, too, but comrade besides of boyhood. This afternoon it was boyhood that came all around us. And he knew what it was to suffer and to struggle, and far ages of that of my own had been in this room to-day. He knew--he was--Whitechurch and Baltimore, Restwell, Flowerfield. We could walk together in the still, the living, land of the past. How far we could walk together we had never plumbed, but we knew that it was very far--it was very far--and in the present and in the future as well as the past. I understood the world Gamaliel, and he the world Michael. There was free trade between us. The two capitals were homes each to the other; the two banners had a common, splendid over-banner. There was variousness, for richness, for refreshment. But in and through and with the variousness ran the common passion for the All. That Beatrix--that Mary--tore none apart, made none jealous....

Gamaliel and I cohered, interpenetrated, tasted each other and liked the taste. We sat beside the fire, with the rain streaming, beating, against the pane. "I came from Whitechurch last night. My father is dead."

"I did not know that! Tell me--"

"It was a short illness. He had changed in this last year, Michael. Walls were beginning to come down.... I did not mean to leave him, nor to be left by him.... He lay, clear-headed and still, at the last. His small, bare room and he lying there, straight and gray.... I watched--and the stillest kind of night outside--and picture after picture coming up. Do you remember the night we saw 'Midsummer Night's Dream'? That came up. How hardly I thought that night of all fathers! Old Ægeus who would kill his daughter if she went not his way--and my father who would hold me with both hands to be still the same.... I watched, and at last the cocks crew. He turned his head and opened his eyes. He said, 'Gamaliel, if you conquer--'

"I answered that I didn't want to conquer. Not now. Not unless in some way we both conquered ... by loving--by knowing.

"Do you know, Michael, what happened? I held his hand.... And we were one!... All his memories were mine.... I felt his hand gather my hand. He said, 'Gamaliel--but that is my name, too!' ... It was as though a hand passed over his face and wiped out severity and put there knowledge. 'Life,' he said. 'Life everlasting!' And he drew my hand up to his heart ... and under it the heart stopped. _But then I felt it beat in me_."

"Just so."

He rose and walked the room, then came back to the hearth. The fire reddened all the place, and his tall form and lined and intellectual face. As the flame played it seemed to do away with all rigidity in that appearance. It seemed to change, to become, dissolve, re-become--and now it carried with it this environment and now that. I thought I saw great Proteus who could change from form to form, from face to face, because all were his.... Gamaliel spoke, "And we shall revive our dead."

We sat together through the closing day. Now we talked and now we sat in a silence of understanding, rest in company. He supped with me, and we came back to the study and built up the fire and talked of work, his work, and mine, and Miriam's.

So stormy was the night that he agreed to stay with me. It was eleven when a cab stopped before the house and we heard Mrs. Lobb's key in the door. "She still plays?"

"She has a small part in 'Out and Away.'"

"Just as Wythe, the engraver, still engraves where he can get work--and both would be sadder, very wistful, if they thought they could not die in this house! They can?"

"Yes. Kate and Dugald and I shall live here, too, in the winter. And Mary and Martin and Norah and Dacia. _And Miriam_."

Mrs. Lobb tapped at the study door. It was her habit, coming in so, when she saw that the room was yet lighted. I opened the door for her. She entered, wrapped in her long, warm cloak, and with the rouge yet faintly on her cheeks.

When she had greeted Gamaliel, whom she liked, she sighed with pleasure over the fire. "The theater was cold--and all the winds of heaven are in the streets! But I played my old Madame part well--ah, well!" She sat and warmed herself by the fire, and she, too, looked magic, many in one, to-night. "The passion for the ideal!" she said. "One only finds the real by that! Ideal passion. I did well, and I felt as young as I shall be when I die.... For we go toward youth, I am perfectly sure of that!"

Warmed, she said good-night, and left us. There was magic about her and about everything to-night--or not magic, but a true and powerful light.

Gamaliel and I sat still until the wood should burn away. Pictures wrapped us....

The next day came to see me Royal Warringer. His secretary telephoned, asking if I were at home. He came in a high, clear, sunny day, the storm gone by, the streets glistening, the air free and thrilling. I met him down-stairs, in the parlor that with love and care Miriam and I had made right. But he said at once: "Haven't you a study? Let us go there."

In the study, when he had swept it with his eye, he went at once to the small painting of her that Y---- had made and given us. He said, "She was more lovely, Michael, than I thought."

We stood before the painting. It showed her very simply, sitting in a flush of marvelously painted dawn. "It is sunset light?" he said. "No. I see. It is dawn light."

"Yes. Dawn light."

We sat down, and he began to talk of Restwell.

How may any part of spirit change and not all change? As I moved he moved--as I heard the oceans he heard them--or as he heard the oceans I heard them--it matters not which. He had great power and subtlety.... I found in him what I had not found before--what I had not been strong enough to find before--I found in him, in remote, half-tended gardens, small flowers of love. We opened one toward the other....

He stayed the better part of an hour and then went who, like all persons else, yet stayed. An aspect of him went, but aspects remained.... Something powerful over us was correcting the one of us by the other--gathering from each the desirable, the useful, regarding the leaden portion of each, lifting the leaden portion of each toward the crucible.... We were coming together up higher.

Michael, Royal, Miriam, and Dorothea--