Mysticism -- Fiction; Supernatural -- Fiction; Virginia -- Fiction
"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. She wore a great check apron, denoting housekeeping
and helping Zinia. She sat down beside them. "What have you been doing,
Marget?"
"Once a week Zinia and I have a general straightening day. Then my
mother and I have been visiting together."
"Truly, truly, Marget?"
"Truly. But in a little wider order, my dear, a little wider order! The
order above this order--into which this will melt. Mother and father,
and Will and Edgar."
"Two of those are living and two are dead."
Marget smiled. "Ask Wordsworth!"
"I see," said Anna Darcy.
"Very well. Do more than that. _Touch!_"
With a trail of ivy in her hand she looked past the snapdragon and
marigold and larkspur, still blooming, so rich and mild had been this
autumn. "Then, as the rooms grew clean, I was with my mother in her
birthplace, two hundred miles from here. We were there as adults,
moving, loving, understanding with a grown mind, but there in her
childhood and girlhood as well, loving to contemplate all the past that
was us two! Mine as hers, hers as mine. Mind and feeling ran and caught
up with her brothers and sisters, her parents and friends. Her parents
remembered their parents and those remembered theirs. Home rose after
home, garden after garden, loved place after loved place." Her eyes were
upon Drew, whose eyes were upon her. "Do you not see that you can, that
you will, recover it all? All that you have been, and you have been very
much; all that you are, and you are very much!"
Mimy's singing floated to them from the kitchen:
"There's a great camp meeting in the Promised Land,
Oh, pat yo' foot, chillun, don't you get weary!
There's a great camp meeting in the Promised Land."
"And then," said Marget, "I was in Rome with Richard. The sun shone, the
wind was in cypress and pine, the fountains made liquid sound. Father
Tiber glided, Saint Peter's stood. We went to the Sistine Chapel, and
then it was the Capitol within and without, and then the Appian Way and
all the Campagna--all Rome--not to-day alone, but _all_ Rome. And then
not Rome, but starlight nights from the decks of ships. And then--"
"This was actuality, while your hands swept and dusted the parlor
there?"
"My body was in its duty and happy there. Yes. Actuality, but of another
order, an order we are coming into. The order of intensified, guided,
_realized_ memory and imagination."
"And of reason?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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