Again, the next morning, she found neither of her hosts. "We breakfast early and work early," Marget had said. Again Zinia served her alone, again she walked in the flower garden, again she went farther afield. The day was brilliantly, vividly clear, white clouds in the sky, and between, great seas of cobalt. She went at once to the river path, but turned this morning up the stream. The day hung joyous, the high and moving clouds, the light and shadow had magnificence. She felt very well; she really looked five years younger. Before her, beyond a spur of orchard, she made out the roof of a building. When she came nearer she felt an assurance that this was the overseer's house. "Where Marget was born," she thought; "where she lived with her father and mother and brothers."

Presently she stood still to regard the place.

The house was a small one, two-storied, frame, painted white with green blinds. It had a small porch with a window to either side. At the back she made out a wider porch, and there were outbuildings. The whole was buried among locust trees and old shrubs, that when she came nearer she recognized for lilac and althea and syringa. Door and windows stood open. At first she thought she would turn from the river to the house, but then she said, "No, not till she herself brings me here some day." But the place was plain before her where she stood. When she had moved a few paces she looked full to the door, between locust trees and bushes. She was now beside a giant sycamore, very old, all copper colored as to leaf, with dappled white and brown arms. Built around the bole was a wooden bench, old and weather-worn. "She played here when she was a child. They have all set here beneath this tree. She comes here now, I fancy, often."

She took her seat. No one came in or out of the house door a stone's throw away. The place was sunny and deserted. There came, as it were, a veil over it. She shut her eyes the better to look at child life here with father and mother and Will and Edgar. The old overseer, who had fought in the war for the old order, but who, when it came crash! had built in the new; and the mother, Elizabeth Land, overworked and uncomplaining; and the boys with their desires and broodings and hopes—she felt them all.

Sitting with her eyes shut, she passed into feeling them very strongly. The place turned to be of thirty, forty years ago. She moved with the overseer as he went to his work and came from it. With Marget Land's mother she was cooking, sewing, cleaning. She was with the three children, the boys older than the girl, at tasks and in play. Swim in the river, swing under the locust tree, go for berries, for persimmons, chinquapins, walnuts, for grapes and haws, go for the cow, work in the garden patch, shell the peas, shuck the corn, look for eggs, pick the currants and gooseberries, split the kindling, gather the chips, wash the dishes, clean the lamps, sit by the fire and study reading, writing, and arithmetic—she was deep in it, deep in a slow, steady current of participation. It did not seem to curve, but now it was her own childhood, her parents and brothers and sisters, an old town house and a leafy town square—life, life, so varied and so the same! Deep, deep wash of deep waves, and so pleasant, so sweet, all the pang and ill lost! A past that was winnowed, understood, forgiven, appreciated, loved by mind and heart of Farther On, and that was present, gone nowhere, here, in finer space and finer time, a vast country capable of being visited! Going into it was to find the deathless taste of eternity. It was not dark; you could fill it with golden light. The forms there were not immovable, not dead. As you understood, they lived and were yourself. As you remembered, you saw that you were remembering, that you were re-collecting from far and near, your Self.

Anna Darcy sat very still. "I had to wait till I was fifty-eight years old to see that."

As on yesterday it had grown out of a commonplace of imagination and memory. Memory and imagination had, by degrees, entered their deeper selves.

Again, as on yesterday, she could not hold it. Increased energy, increased perception, what the ancients called the Genius, and the mystic called illumination, or voice of God, and the moderns higher vibration, superconsciousness—whatever it was, and perhaps the name did not much matter, she had touched it and then lost it. But she knew that it had been touched, and that it was desirable to know it or its like again.

She was a member of the church, a praying woman. She bent her forehead upon her hands: "O God, let thy kingdom come! As it comes near us, send thy breezes!"

Presently, rising, she went on up the stream. It was not wide; it just came into the category of river, headwater, she knew, of a greater river. October painted it with russets and golds and reds. Midcurrent showed the ineffable blue of the sky, or when clouds drove by the zenith, the clouds. She walked on until before her she saw the eastern gate of the vale. The hills closed in, leaving a bit of grassy meadow on either side the stream. This narrowed. The hills grew loftier, insensibly became mountains. She was in a mountain pass, gray cliff to the right, hemlocks overhanging the water that was broken now by bowlders, dÉbris of an ancient rock. The path was cool and dark and washed by the scent of the conifers. Only here and there the climbing sun sent splashing through an intensity of light that showed every fallen needle, every cone or twig or leaf upon the path. Not far before her the path turned and went up over the mountain. She thought, "That will be the way to Mrs. Cliff's."

She came upon a fisherman. He sat among the roots of a hemlock, and was engaged in reeling in his line. He was a man neither old nor young, with a long, easy frame, and a short, graying beard. His dress was that of a fisherman who goes forth from the city to fish—but not for the first nor the second nor the third time. Nothing that he had on was new, but all was well cut.

"Good morning!" he said.

"Good morning!"

He worked on at his reel. "Each time that I do this I say that it is the last time."

"Why?"

"I grow too damned able—I beg your pardon!—to put myself in the fish's place."

"Have you caught any?"

"This morning? Not a ghost of one! Yet they say this is a good stream! I think that I warn them off the hook. 'Monsieur Black Bass, or Signor Trout, as it may be, my desire not to take you is gaining, I feel, upon my desire to take you! Your own desire naturally aiding the first, I grow to feel that we make a strong combination!'"

He laughed, putting up his rod. Then his mustaches went down and his face became serious enough, "So much mangling! I've had my fill."

"How did you come? Over the mountain?"

"Yes. I am camping with a dozen New York and Washington fellows on another little river over there. The others fish that stream. I'm like Mrs. Elton. I adore exploring! I slept last night in a mountain cabin—Cliff's. Can you tell me how far I am from Sweet Rocket farm?"

"Less than a mile."

"No! I didn't think from what the mountain folk said that it was so near. I knew before I came that he was somewhere in these parts."

"Do you know Mr. Linden?"

"I was his classmate at the university. Then, fifteen years ago, I met him in Southern Russia. We had a couple of weeks together, and then I must hurry on to Constantinople, where I was due. He went into the Caucasus. I lost sight of him. It was two years later that I heard of that accident which blinded him, and I've heard since only second-and third-hand things. The other day in the club a man told me that he was living where his people had lived, down here in Virginia. I meant to go to see him, but I meant to write first."

"I am a visitor at Sweet Rocket. But I am sure that Mr. Linden would wish you to come on to the house. Had you not better do so?"

"Why, yes, then, I think that I shall." He stood up from the hemlock roots. "You are very good. My name is Curtin—Martin Curtin."

She gave her own. He took up fisherman's paraphernalia and a light coat. They moved out of ravine into meadow strip; before them lay the jewel valley. Mr. Curtin drew a deep breath.

"And he hasn't eyes to look at it!"

Anna Darcy found herself answering with certitude. "He sees it and a thousand places beside."

They walked on, Mr. Curtin gazing at river, hills, and mountains, and quiet valley floor. "I have known of his doing some splendid things in life—simple and splendid—the kind that steals into folk, and they do likewise!"

"Yes, I should think that."

"What is that house?"

"In old times it is the overseer's house. Now the young farmer who helps him lives there."

"'In old times it is'—that's an unusual phrase."

"I mean that to me, for reasons, it stays that way and is."

"I agree! When you turn to a thing it is. Turn with decision enough, and your overseer would come out to meet you. That's a sycamore for you! Do you ever feel the Indians by these streams? If you can see your overseer you can see your Indians, too."

They walked on. "Is that the house?"

"Yes."

"It's a simple place, too—but I like it. Houses, now! I make a specialty of keeping them in duration."

Anna Darcy thought, "A week ago I wouldn't have understood that."

The house where she was born, the house facing, across a row of box and a finely wrought iron paling, the old, leafy city square, walked bodily into her. She was through it, up and down, like the air. It seemed to her that there wasn't anything she didn't know about it, and it all came together into an inner aroma, taste and tone, dry, warm, pungent and likable, idiosyncratic, its very own. It had been a loss, a grief, when the city had taken and torn down that house. And all the time it was waiting for her, in a deep reality, to walk in and take possession!

She thought: "What is happening? I shall never be lonely again!"

Mr. Curtin looked from side to side of Sweet Rocket valley. "It's like a beaker of Venetian glass! You'd say there was a magic drink in it.... But how clean and drenched with sun is this air!"

"Yes!"

"He never married? Archer said he thought not."

"No, he didn't marry."

"He's rather the kind that marries the world."

"Yes, I think so. We turn here to the house. Have you the time?"

"It's almost noon."

"He will be home, then. He works upon the farm as though he had eyes."

They left the pebbly beach and went by the cedars up to the house. Tam came to meet them, and Linden rose from the bench upon the porch.

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