Chapter XXXIX

Three days and I was in Virginia. The train ran through October lands to October hills and mountains. I loved them, loved Virginia, loved the Indian-summer day. The South was mine--as was New England, the West and the Middle West--as was America to the south, and the northern Dominion, and the Indies. And Europe was mine, and Africa, Asia, and all the islands of the seas. And the submerged continents and the continents to be. Owned without harm as all may own all....

The train rushed on. That emotion that is above cry or laughter and that thought that is above words held me....

Here was the county town, here were greetings. At the last I had come a day or two earlier than was thought for. None from home was at the station. I walked to Flowerfield.

There lay a hilltop on the way where, walking or riding or driving, or on the returning wings of thought, every lover of beauty made pause and feasted. Beside the way rested a wide boulder--how often and how often had we who were walkers rested there with it! I rested there to-day.

A farm-wagon went by and the man in it and I called greeting. A negro carrying a bag of meal came by and we greeted; three boys and a dog followed and we greeted. Then came a surrey and women driving and we greeted--then an old colored woman hobbling along with a stick and we greeted. Then for a space the road ran bare; just the October wind blowing red and gold leaves across and along. Around flowed the widest landscape.

I saw. I saw my country, earth, times, desires and passions and determinations, the bound spirit and the spirit heaving against its bonds, and the spirit partly free, and high above the bound I felt the spirit free! One spirit--as we say "one man and his freedoms and unfreedoms."

The wind blew down the leaves. A great ray of sun traveled like a search-light. Again negroes were passing, this time a number together, and the one ahead sang, "Roll, Jordan Roll!" We greeted. I rose from the boulder and went on to Flowerfield.

Kate and Dugald were making a canal and tow-path down by the streamlet under the willows. I heard their caroling talk and went that way. They flung themselves upon me....

We sat under the willows and talked of her whom they called "mother"--who was profoundly mother, as she was also child--mother and child and lover and self of all! They were so young--they felt her everywhere. We talked--then we finished and smoothed the tow-path and planted witch-hazel twigs for fairy trees to shade the elf drawers of an elf boat. Then we washed our hands in the stream and went up to the house.

Oh, Flowerfield!

John and Amy, Aunt Kate and Uncle John, Catherine, Lewis--dear lands of being! The house sang its old ballad, the splendid trees burned like the phenix, seeing winter, divining the recurrent spring....

When a week had passed I went for a week to Restwell.

Nor Dorothea nor Carter nor Royal were there. I had all kindness from Aunt Harriet and General Warringer. Aunt Sarah and I walked or sat, talked or were silent together.

Her hair was now gray, but her eyes held their still glow, her face was unwrinkled, her figure kept its grace, her step lightness. We went here, we went there, about the old place; we sat by the river or under the orchard trees. But oftenest we went to the graveyard. Still she brought the flowers there. We felt the ancient sweet presences, and other days and days came now into the garland. She met herself as a young woman there. Over the wall I heard Ahasuerus calling, and he and I, boys, rampaged in the sloping, fairy wood. Or, back this side the wall, I moved where my mother moved.... Under the apple-tree, in the far corner, the red apples lay on the ground.... Oh, miracle, marvel--magical life!

My aunt Sarah spoke: "Ten years or so ago, I entered a new world. Perhaps imagination and memory and intuition and mind and emotion and judgment were always on the road.... Perhaps we come, each of us, like Christian, to a boundary-line, and there the burden drops and we walk on, new man, new woman! At any rate, I walk on, and now each morning I say, 'What exquisite, sweet surprise shall I know to-day?' Behind all outer meanings are inner meanings, and they come first, come last--are Alpha and Omega into which all things go, out of which all things come!"

The days slipped by at Restwell. I walked to Whitechurch. Hilltop Academy had another principal, Mr. Smith, the history teacher, teaching where had taught Doctor Young. I went to see Mr. Gilbert. The great tree shadowed the pharmacy. One descended a step as into the cave of a good anchorite. The little bell rang.

The hermit was now an old man. "Oh yes, I shall bury this!" he said. "But _I_ shall simply live on. Immortality is desirable. I take it that the school-books and the newspapers haven't yet the last word in physics and mathematics."

I went to see the rector of St. Matthew's. Mr. Millwood was in his study, but presently we stepped into the garden and paced the path by white and pink and purple asters. He spoke of Miriam.

I said: "Death is a plane of consciousness. By degrees the 'living' and the 'dead' are finding and making a plane in which to meet. When the consciousness has grown great wings--"

"Yes?"

"Then there is no 'death.'"

"Consciousness--planes and states--degrees of awareness! I hate," said Mr. Millwood, with vigor, "all the new-fangled lingo!"

I laughed. I agreed that language was yet Bœotian.

But the sunshine was not Bo[eo]tian--nor the colors of the garden. The three-dimensional language was not Bœotian.... Or was it, too, Bœotian to what should be, would be?

We walked the brick path....

That evening at Restwell I went to Daddy Guinea's cabin. It stood vacant, the door open, behind it cavernous dark, before it red sumach and farewell-summer. I sat upon the door-step and all my childhood came about me.

I had learned to walk in the past as simply as one turns from the thronged street to walk in the park. I walked there now. Fire burned on the cabin hearth and there Daddy Guinea and I baked sweet potatoes and he told me about the battle seen from Lone Tree Hill. But I asked him questions such as I had not asked then, and I saw in his answers what I had not seen then--and yet was it play, recreation! The past is the vast playground where things are learned in play. There is motion there as everywhere.

The past ran into the now, the now rose from the past. Spread in all directions the tremendous shape of the present! Flux and throb and impact, shuddering thrill and thunder--mine of choices....

The future lifted me.... Those who live in the future live!

Chaplets of stars appeared. The night wind breathed. "Tu-whoo! Tu-whoo!" said an owl in the wood. The cricket world chirped. The soil, the plant world, entered in fragrance.... Oh, beauty and might and wisdom! AUM, saith the Hindu. ALL--ALL.

We are Brahma, we are Vishnu, we are Shiva--Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

I looked at my little life, and I looked at my larger life, and I saw that the one was to melt into the other.

The larger was to be the simple, continuing, every-day life--as the little life had been. The momentary was to become the day long.... I felt movement about me--presences--Presence. I could not bring all into radiance--I could not step wholly, bodily, into that super-world that I divined--outer islands, I divined, of an inner world so great, so bright--! Ignorance held me, lethargy, weakness, unwisdom, unlove. I saw through a glass darkly, but all my being was bent toward one day seeing clearly. We pass into it as, long ago, we passed through the brute into the human. All the world shall go up with a shout into God--shall find itself in its own heights.

I left the cabin and went down to the river and heard the sea talking in it, to it. I touched the sea that had put it forth and was taking it again. It was no distance, or I had overpassed distance. All experience had been, was, and would be mine ... and thine ... ours ... the ultimate, the un-selfed I.

In a week I went from Restwell back to Flowerfield.

Indian summer pervaded the land. In the spring violets cover the ground, in the late, late autumn they fill the air.

John and I walked the old road. "Show me, Michael, some of the things you see!"

"I see how good, how strong, how dear you are, John, John!"

"But you've stepped over a stream that still runs before me. I can see that. You call to me from the other side."

"You will come. You feel yourself moving.... 'It's dogged does it.' 'Dogged' finds the direction--'dogged' pursues it. 'Dogged' is your true knight errant, his adventure found--"

"But the mood," he said, "ceases to be one of doggedness."

"You are right. It becomes a burning glory."

We walked in silence. He drew a quick breath. "I saw just then, time, space, and causation."

"You are crossing the stream! This is a world beyond the old. We passed into it because we were ready to pass into it. But we are babes here, half-blind new-comers, stammerers, uncertain feelers toward bright truths. That will change. We shall grow."

"The 'I' sense--where does that go?"

"It passes into 'We'--and that passes into God."

We walked on, and Flowerfield and the County and the State and the Country and the World were vividly fair....

The next day was a day of rain, the day after one of blowing wind, but the third day broke in glory. I went that morning to Wake-robin Hill. I passed the lesser wood where in spring the flowers abounded. I climbed to the crown and lay under hemlocks. Still, still, was I hunting Reality, the thing which Is ... thing? ... the Person Who Is!

Miriam and I sought together. She was with me on Wake-robin Hill.

We sought--and, as ever, seeking, we found. We found wonder, high peace, work to be done, adventure mystic, beckoning, vistas of travel!

To hear the voice of understanding, and to live the unselfish life--

THE END