Mary Johnston

“ Mind sits at the knee of Great Mind and learns its alphabet. And all the thousands that were and are and will be are one Astronomer, and it is I, still working to know!" She ceased to speak, and sat wrapped in the golden light.
Said Robert Dane: "We follow where you step. You make us follow you."
"I do not make you. You walk with me because you can walk. We walk. It is your Self as it is mine."
"We move and we feel, then, where you are. You live there more fully and keenly than we, but we can breathe and feel and see. Go on! We would have your life, as you have ours." ”

“ XV
"Energy in larger units, affinities gathering strength and flowing together with power!" said Curtin. "Everyone has seen it and felt it in some wise. When it is blamable, unguided, 'mob spirit'! When it is praised, 'esprit de corps, mass heroism, mass enthusiasm, conflagration of genius, voice of the people, unity of spirit,' what not! Most folk have a glimpse of the fact that there is an ocean of desire, emotion, will, as well as rivers and rivulets."
Marget came and sat with them on the steps of the little summer-house in the flower garden. ”

“ The ground underneath is clean and brown. A grapevine goes over and up with those young trees. There are yet bunches of grapes and they hang so still! There are brown loops for swings for all the forest children, whether they be Indians or dryads and fauns."
"I see them," said Linden, "all the graceful, tawny forest children!"
"Here is the oak glade with the grass yet green far down it, to where hangs the purple curtain. The outstanding great roots glisten, and the moss holds the water drops. You see a long way. Yonder is tree trunk and stone, light and shadow, that looks like a hermit's cell. ”

“ Mind and goodness, and spirit that is power, and a body that you love to look at! They're the kind of folk that ought to be. Yes, sir, I was thinking when you came along of Marget sitting there, a little thing, and saying, 'Now tell me about the children of Israel'—or 'about Bethlehem,' as it might be."
With distinctness Curtin felt that which the old man also seemed to feel, for he turned his head, lowering it and his eyes a little, and smiling. The movement was precisely that of turning and smiling into a child's eyes. Again through Curtin poured that thrill of a freshness of knowledge. ”

“ I remember Marget, a bare-legged, big-eyed little thing. She's sat by me often on this bench and made me tell her stories. Now it seems a long time ago, and now it seems yesterday!"
His voice sank again into the October sunshiny stillness. His lips closed, but Curtin felt him speaking on in thought and consciousness. It came to him, in another of those revelational flashings: "That is the ultra-violet of speech, the high, subtle, inaudible, continual speech! When we begin to catch it, when we begin to hear thought—" He felt again the shock of going together, of rivers pouring into ocean. ”

“ Julia!" exclaimed Susan. "They don't have quilts in heaven. It ain't cold there!"
Julia's face took on an imploring, almost a frightened look. She turned to Marget. "If they don't have quilts I won't have anything to do!"
With all that she knew of Marget Land, Miss Darcy could but wonder at the luminous sweetness, the depth and the play with which Marget, seated by Julia, dealt with the latter's fears. All the bright pieces were spread over the knees of both. "In heaven you'll put rose and blue together, and this violet and green. ”

“ The life of Marget and me changes and grows, as does yours and yours. The history of one—the history of all. There is at once divine difference, divine sameness. No hand and no word will hold our life!"
"I don't know anyone like you," said Curtin.
"No. But you will presently begin to know more and more who differ from us and yet who belong in the order—the order of those who are aware that present man is a bridge and who begin consciously to act, feel, and know in a larger existence." ”

“ In the gray dawn, from a thousand farms and hamlets, crowed the cocks. Over all the earth clucked the hen, peeped the downy chick. The swallows crossed a saffron sky and the whippoorwill cried in the night, and in the morning the quails said "Bob White!" Migrating hordes, like scuds of clouds, drove before favorable winds, north, south! She was plunged in the life of birds, where they waded between deep water and solid shore, where they lived in a world of green, where they flew aloft and afar, over land, over sea—all their plumage, shapes, and magnitudes. ”

“ Richard Linden dropped his hands from behind his head and passed them over his eyes. Marget rose to her knees. There was deep light in her face. She lifted then let fall her arms. [Pg 38] "Oh, the beauty when life is seen as a landscape, heard as a symphony, smelled as a garden, tasted as nectar, dwelt in as a house!" She rose to her feet. "The sun is gone from the grass. It is dawn in Tibet. Come, Tam, let us be going home!"
They folded the plaid and left the hickory and the dogwood. The glade was turning violet, but the hilltops showed golden and the mountains stood in light. ”

“ When it was over Drew went with Linden into his study. The three others lingered a little in the pleasant, wide hall. The day was again right October; amber and garnet and sapphire; balm with nothing of lethargy.
Said Curtin, "When we come and come, what do you do at last?"
Marget laughed. "Oh, you come and go! You never really go, you know! But you have to take your bodies here and there over earth. But once come, we keep you and you keep us!"
"You know people all over the earth?" ”

“ Tam had the dry grass and moss and the fringe of the plaid.
Marget spoke. "We are under a young hickory, Richard. It is all gold. There is a dogwood close by, and its leaves are red, and it is very full of berries. Wild grape has started by the dogwood and crossed to the hickory. It is far and near and up and down. The leaves are half green and half yellow, and there are a thousand bunches of grapes."
"I see!" he said; "and I hear a woodpecker."
"It's yonder on a white oak. It's a flicker. There isn't a cloud in the sky, and far, far up, small as a dragon fly, is a buzzard sailing. ”

“ Drew set down the cup with a sharp, clear sound. "Life, everlasting life!" he said. "I see it now! We have always lived!"
Again evening in the old parlor, the fire and music, Tam lying beside Linden, Marget seated by Anna Darcy. Robert Dane spoke. "This finding ourselves in all and all in us, this lifting the all into a mighty I, this is it behind the slowly accelerating movements of the ages, behind all efforts for freedom, for knowledge, for interchange and intercourse, swifter and swifter, subtler and subtler intercourse—this is it?" ”

“ XIV
"It is something like this," said Linden. "We are One Being with its mighty potencies. All that comes in comes to us, all that goes forth goes from us. The points that take, ponder, sort, combine, alter to better liking; the mighty poles, the mighty afferent and efferent that flow from pole to pole, all that is movement, that is gravitation, that is cohesion, that is justice, that is harmony, that is love, are Ours. We go as we have gone through time, from and toward—the from that is also toward, the toward that is also from. ”

“ So it is, I hold, with the New America, the New World now lighting the horizon. It resounds and flames thus to this one, and thus to the other one. But it resounds and flames. The Great Symphony takes in all the music. Feel it as you can, know it as you can! In proportion as you draw the breath of the All, comparisons become odious. You have access as I have access. Enter by the door of your inner nature!"
"A new man is born?"
"Yes. Everywhere. Including and transcending men. Men fading into Man, men left behind. Man moving toward his full Consciousness. ”

“ Anna Darcy heard a low sigh of relief and burden lifted. It came, she thought, from Frances Dane, who sat near her upon the grass. But it might have come from more than Frances, from all.
Stillness and silence deepened. There grew a cathedral sense, a desert, an ocean sense. Into that entered a wealth of light and strength. A vast wave of freedom, an access of life, lifted them. They had life and they had it more abundantly. They seemed to themselves to flash together, and of them all was made a god. For an instant there held an intense vision of this valley and of Sweet Rocket transfigured. ”

“ When we have gone far, far on, see their human earth!"
It was Linden, she thought, who said that. She came back with a great throb of her heart to the earth beneath a golden hickory, to the October sun, in a little Virginian valley. Yet the two reclining there seemed still in a brown study, gone away. She thought: "I am come into a strange country! Are they knowing, feeling all that life more intensely than I, for all that they lie there so quietly, thinking, one would say, of to-morrow's work, of a book they are reading, or of the cedar waxwings?... ”

“ Marget's voice went on. "Now one has made a telescope. Our theories change; we stand on dead theories and study on. Thousands of us [Pg 133] studying, thousands building knowledge, learning vision! We gaze, we watch, we turn to desks and write and figure, we reason, we divine, we better our instruments, we gather results and make fortunate guesses, we hearken to intuition. We stand on a mossy stone in space and study the Promised Land, the universe that is ours, the ever perpetuating, the ever bettering! Time widens. ”

“ To what shall be felt and shall be known it is the one leaf of green, it is the olive leaf that the dove brings. But before us are enormous growth, strange and fair adventure, work, joy, love—"
Through the air they felt the ether, through the sunlight they felt the Great Sun. Light and warmth came to them from the Sun behind the sun. It touched, it passed, but each time it came they strengthened.
That night by the fire they sat in silence that was full and rich and understanding. "To-morrow night, here at Sweet Rocket, just Richard and Marget and Drew—and all the rest of us!" ”

“ Far and near branch and blue air made a marvel of lacework. Against this pines and hemlocks stood like pyramids and pillars. Song and twitter of a month ago was not now. "The birds go south—the birds go south!" said Marget. "But there are enough left for winter company. There is a bluebird on yonder bough!"
Round went the wheels, making hardly a sound. The forest hung still, so still. For one moment, to Anna Darcy, it all went away. It was maya, illusion, the forest, Indian summer, this day of our Lord, the phaeton and Daniel, Sweet Rocket and Alder and New York, Marget Land and Anna Darcy. ”

“ He said, under his breath, "'Little children, love one another!'" and rested silent, in communion with the flame.
"'For all we are members one of another.' Feeling that," said Linden, "is to feel as One. Then the One no longer counts as separate his members. He says I AM."
Stillness held in the old room. The fire gave it crimson and amber life and warmth. The canvases on the walls, the pictured men and women, seemed self-luminous. Major Hereward spoke abruptly: "Where are the dead? Where are my brother Dick, my son Walter, my mother and father?" ”

“ It was Indian summer before the Indian summer time. "A new consciousness?" said Frances Dane, walking with Curtin. "A farther-on consciousness? It is in the air to-day!"
"Yes."
"Wise men saying, 'We have seen His star in the east—' Oh, that's a figure!"
"There is some Reality, or thousands of us would not be hearkening, as we are hearkening.... A new man, a new creature.... It's a consummation devoutly to be desired!"
The heaped corn stood around, the orange globes made constellations on the earth. They were now well up the slope, at their feet Sweet Rocket and the little sliding river. ”

“ Zinia and Mimy and Mancy walked early to their church, two miles down the river. Marget and Miss Darcy, Linden and Curtin, went to Alder in the phaeton, drawn by Daniel and Bess. It was as sunny and still a day as might be found in any autumn land, and most beauteous was that forest through which they drove. Anna Darcy was glad to see it again. It rested forever in her mind, a true magic approach. Marget drove, Curtin sitting beside her, Miss Darcy and Richard Linden behind them. ”

“ Marget returned to the dining room to talk with Zinia. Anna Darcy went up to her chamber for her rest, and Curtin took his book to the porch.
The books at Sweet Rocket. He fell to pondering them. There were, perhaps, five thousand, not in one room, but up and down. Many were old, and many neither old nor new, and many new. They seemed to touch all subjects.
Curtin, pondering, going deeper and deeper, fell into some border country of Reality. With swiftness, with electric shock, he touched, not thousands of leaves of paper printed over, but conscious, intelligent, and powerful life. ”

“ Blue grapes, dogwood berries, dropped upon the ground. For ten minutes the flock fluttered and fed, while with intent, pleased faces the human beings watched or listened. Then Tam became aware of a rabbit down the glade and started up. Away flew the cedar waxwings.
"Oh, wasn't it lovely?"
They sat still. Richard Linden, resting against the rock, kept his face raised to blue sky. "Their life!" he said. "As we enter upon their life—"
Tam came back, the rabbit having vanished. "Lie still, Tam, lie still! ”

“ But the inner eye might view, between mountain and Sweet Rocket, a shimmering, ethereal highway, a nerve, as it were, thrown from space to space, joining and making one.
Robert and Frances and Marget, on this last day of the Danes' visit, walked to the hill with the solitary tree atop. The sapphire day continued, quiet and sunny, the air being of an extreme fineness charged with light. Far and near the mountains made a cup of amethyst. Fields and hillsides at hand were a lighted umber. They saw long rows of stacked corn, and in the meadows hayricks. ”

“ Yet the experience had not been repeated, or rather what had come had diffused itself in the wide awakening of these Sweet Rocket weeks. Nor did its distinctive klang return to-night. There was not the same white keenness. That which beamed about him now was more like that which Marget had spoken of on the summerhouse steps. Not one now, but many of his dead; not the human only, but the flower and the tree, the bird and the beast, the scene, the water, land and sky. "The old and sweet is here, but chosen, redeemed, gathered up, understood, become immortal! And we have had it all the time. ”

“ Major Linden spent two days at Sweet Rocket, chiefly sitting upon the porch in the sunshine or walking about the place, sometimes in company, sometimes alone, but never, Curtin noticed, with an old man's look of loneliness, though he thought that at times before this Major Hereward would have shown that loneliness. But now there was vigor in him, vigor and interest and life. "If they are here, living for me as I for them, talking to me and I talking to them—it is the strangest thing what life does when it comes!" ”

“ Your quilts are for warmth and beauty, Julia, aren't they? Shut your eyes and see warmth and beauty, warmth and beauty!" She put her hand over the lame woman's hand. The latter's plaintive look changed, her eyes brightened, and she nodded her head. "Yes! To keep us warm; [Pg 81] and they are lovely, like the flowers! Warm like the sun is!"
"Yes. Warmth and beauty—warmth and beauty! So in heaven you're to keep on with warmth and beauty. And you'll learn, too, how well wisdom goes with them. Their quilts aren't just like these quilts, but you won't care for that. ”

“ My times fall into the hand of the One that I Am!"
The rosy light shone on Hall's below him as it shone on Sweet Rocket and Alder and the Virginia farms and villages and towns, and the farms and villages and towns of every state, and of all the Americas, and of the earth. Fragrant smoke rose from the chimneys. He heard the cheerful voices. A great love of the neighbor pervaded Curtin's consciousness, and with it entered the neighbor. His consciousness and the neighbor's consciousness became to a degree one. ”

“ Curtin shook his head. "You have powers that are not mine."
"If we have them, they will be yours. Marget and I think that we have, as it were, a blueprint. But not yet do we walk in the full and great temple! We do faintly and weakly what one day we shall do with all vigor. And many things that we do not yet dream we shall do! And you also, you and Anna. When you begin to feel continuity, when no matter where you move you take possession of yourself—"
[Pg 86]
He rose from his chair, and, standing before them, put a hand upon Curtin's shoulder and a hand upon Anna Darcy's. ”

“ The sense of well-being flowed in every realm. The perception included environment. Remembered, recalled persons meant remembered, recalled houses, towns, country, forest and river, fields and gardens, a thousand, thousand places! Where were they all? They were all over the earth—light and golden—loved places and the right people in them! There was nothing rigid—even the places understood one another. Curtin felt a profound happiness. This one body, lying at Sweet Rocket, was not wholly forgot nor relinquished. ”