Bedient turned upon the stair. He wanted no man-made room, but the night and the hills and the skies.... Bare of head he went forth.

THIRTY-FOURTH CHAPTER

THE SUPREME ADVENTURE

The night was full of sounds, sights, odors, textures--that he had never sensed before. He smelled the wild oranges from the hillsides, and the raw coffee that lay drying on the great cane mats before the native cabins. His limbs seemed lifted over the rocky ways; he loved the dim contours in the starlight, and the breath of the sea that came with the night-wind. The stars said, "Welcome," and the hills, "All is well."

Mother Earth was lying out in more than starlight--but not asleep. She was laughing, wise, sweet in eternal youth. Always she had been dear to him, this Flesh Mother. Her storms and terrors she had shown, but never harmed him. He loved her, sea and mountain and plain--_G.o.d-Mother_ and the Kashmir border--the highway ride with the l.u.s.trous lady and its sunshine--the path through the wood.... What a boy and girl they had been! How he had loved her--and the day--how he had suffered for it!

And now Bedient knelt upon the stones, uplifted his hands to the starlight, and cried in a low voice: "G.o.d bless Beth Truba, and help me to bless her at every turning of her life! G.o.d bless Beth Truba for the sensitizing sorrow she gave me, without which this hour could not have been revealed to me!"

... He seemed to be leaping from crest to crest in an ocean of happiness.... Some glorious magnetic Presence strode beside him. The night quivered with mighty energies--strange brightenings flashed before his eyes. He wanted nothing--but to give.... All was clear to him. Immortality was here and now: This life but a hut upon the headland of interminable continents, yet as much a part of immortality, as the life of the star-clothed Master who blinded Saul on the road to Damascus.

What a symphony--the flower, the star, the drop of rain, the rose, the child, the harvest, the voice of love, the soul of Woman,--all from the Luminary, G.o.d,--all His immortal symphony.

He was filled with light--as a still, clear harbor at high noon--gems and treasure-horns flashing in the depths. He _realized_ G.o.d. This was a ray of G.o.d that penetrated him--the spiritual essence "all science transcending."

With joy, a sentence he had once heard returned, "Prayer is not catching G.o.d's attention, but permitting him to hold ours!"... Faith and truth are one; Faith is the scaffolding in which the structure of Truth is builded; that which is Faith to us, is Truth to the angels....

As never before, he realized that wisdom comes from the inner light of man, and not from the comprehension of externals.... He knew now the meaning of ecstasy on the faces of the dying, and remembered with confusion and alarm that men of this day were afraid of Death!... How much more should they fear birth--birth, the ordeal of the soul--the putting on of flesh. Great souls put on flesh to hasten the way of their younger brothers to the Shining Tablelands. That is pure Spirit--to lift the weak and show the way to those dim of sight.

Integration of spirit--that is power, that is progress. Compared to this, a mere education of the mind is vain and dull--a h.o.a.rding of facts, as coins are h.o.a.rded; a gathering of vanities, as clothes and adornments are gathered together. His soul cried out within him: Teach the Spirit of G.o.d. "The soul who ascendeth to worship G.o.d is plain and true."... Teach the Spirit, break daily new ground of giving and devotion. Growth of Spirit--_that_ is blessedness! _That_ is the exalted end of all suffering in the flesh. The world is good; all is good. There is no evil, but the ignorant uses of self-consciousness.

Man has fallen into dark ways that belong to the awful ascent from the dim innocence of animals to the l.u.s.trous knowledge of G.o.d.

Treasure every loving impulse; the number of these is your day's achievement--thus the Voice went on. Love giving; let the throat tighten with emotion for others, and the hand go out to the stranger; love giving, but love more--him who receives. Preserve humility in your blessedness. There is nothing to fear, no darkness of destiny, nothing to fear for the growing and humble spirit. Death! It is but the breaking of a rusty scabbard to loose a flashing blade!

"Oh, that I were a hundred men--to die before all men--to die daily!"

he cried out. "But I shall live. I shall live with the poor. I shall feed them the bread of the body; and, if I may, the bread of life. I shall be brother to the poor, and they shall hear of their kingdoms....

Oh, G.o.d, help me to utter the glory of life, the sublimity of the human soul!"

And now he saw the terrible need of pity for those who wrap themselves in the softest furs, who feed upon the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of doves and drink the spirit of purple and golden grapes--those whom the world serves, and who are so arrogant in their regality. He must not forecast the falling of such, but pity them--and speak, if they would listen--for their need is often greater than that of the menials who cringe before their empty greatness, blinded by their kingly trappings. The world so often betrays them at the end, strips them to nakedness and leaves them to die--for they are the cripples, the sick, the blind in spirit....

Delicately he must attend the brutal and arrogant; not hate them, even when he perceives their devastation among the poor. Everywhere to give tokens of his health and power.

His love came back--as in lightning, his love came back! Not the love of one that he had known--that was good, inevitable, even the restless agony of it. Through the love of one, comes the love of many.... But this was love of the world! It surged over, through him--like the fire of the burning bush--that did not devour.... He had abstained from evil before, but held the taste for certain evils. _Now the taste was gone_--for every fleshly thing. Wanting nothing, he could love, indeed.

How strange and wonderful! All that he had thought before, and expressed in New York, had seemed his very own--the realizations of Andrew Bedient--but this night his every thought, almost, had a parallel, from one or another of the great ones who had gone this high way before.... He perceived that he had been old in self-consciousness, so, that, in a way, his New York utterances were stamped with his own individuality. In this greater consciousness he was a child; its glory was beyond words. He could only echo the attempts of those whose lips had faltered with ecstasy.

_If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things are pa.s.sed away; behold, they are become new._

Such was Paul's clear saying.... The difference between Andrew Bedient at this hour and the self he had been was great as that between the simple consciousness of the ox and the self-consciousness of man.

This was the borderland of Gautama's Nirvana; this the Living Water, Jesus offered to the woman at the well; this the Holy Ghost that appeared unto the Hebrew saints and prophets--Moses, Gideon, Samuel, Isaiah, Stephen; this the genius of Paul, the ecstasy of Plotinus, the paradise of Behmen, the heavenly light of St. John of the Cross; this, the Beatrice of Dante, the Gabriel of Mahomet, the Master Peter of Roger Bacon, the Seraphita of Balzac, the radiant companion of Whitman, and the _I_ of Edward Carpenter.

The light would have killed one who had not integrated spiritual light to reflect it. The light of the Illuminati is terrible to eyes filled with evil. This was the "smile of the Universe" that Dante saw.... He, Andrew Bedient, loved infinitely and was infinitely loved. The words of a hundred saints echoed in his consciousness--and out of them all came this command:

_Make men to know that this which has come to you, will come to them.

The few have gone before you, but the many have not ascended so far._

And now he saw the whole road of man, from the simple consciousness of animals, through human self-consciousness, to the cosmic consciousness of prophets--and beyond to Divinity. Always the refinement of matter, and the attraction of light--spiritual light. He saw the time when a self-conscious man was the best specimen of the human race. So for cosmic consciousness, the time would come; and as the centuries pa.s.sed, the earlier would it appear in the life of the evolved.

A clear expression of what had taken place within him now appeared--his own expression to make it clear for men. In the summit of self-consciousness, his mind was like a campfire in the night--a few objects in a circle of red firelight and shadow. The crown of cosmic consciousness now come, was _the dawn of full day upon the plain_.

Full day upon the plain--distances, contours, the great blooms of s.p.a.ce; a swarm of bees, a constellation of suns; the traffic of ants among the dropped twigs of the sand, the communion of angels beyond the veils of heaven; the budding of a primrose, the resurrection of a G.o.d--and all for men, when the daybreak and the shadows flee away.

He saw that this was the natal hour of the world's soul-life, and that it would come through the giving spirit of Woman. He saw great souls pressing close to every pure, strong, feminine spirit; the first fruits of the centuries hovering close to great women of the world, praying for bodies to toil with, eager to turn from their heaven to labor for men.... And this was the _shekinah_ of Andrew Bedient--the spirit of his message.

His blood ceased to flow; he heard the flight of angels; he was bathed in Brahmic splendor--until he could bear no more....

He awoke in the "ambrosia of dawn"; in that strange hush which lies upon the world before fall the floods of rosy red.... He arose, his feet stumbling with ecstasy. Light winged over the hills--and afar off, he saw the roofs of the _hacienda_ sharpen with day....

His face was like morning upon a cloud. The natives vanished before him; Falk and Leadley shrank back, wondering what manner of drink he had found in the night.

THIRTY-FIFTH CHAPTER

FATE KNOCKS AT THE DOOR

During the month that followed, Bedient wrote at length to all his friends in New York. Nightly he roamed the hills and rode his lands throughout the long forenoons. It was a season of sheer exaltation. The great house had become dear to him. His own fullness was enough. There was no loneliness--"loneliness, with our planet in the Milky Way?"...

He felt a sense of authority in what he wrote, altogether new, a more finished simplicity--the very white wine of clarity.

Then he placed great energies of planting upon the lands Jaffier had conferred upon Miss Mallory; and carried out plans for the increase of his own harvests. In fact, he was more interested than ever in this base of his future operations in New York. He realized the need of help--an ordering executive mind. His brain and body quickly adjusted to the great good which had descended upon him--work and praise, and love for all things. With these, his hours breathed.

One midnight in July, as he lay awake, an impulse came to play Beethoven's symphony--in the dark.... He arranged the four rolls to hand, turned off the lights again, and sat down before the orchestrelle. The opening bars, which the Master designated, "_So pocht das Schicksal an die Pforte_," lured his every power of concentration.

He was one with it, and movements of the dark swung with the flow of harmony. The silence startled him. It was hard to re-a.s.semble his faculties to change the rolls for the _'Andante_....

The three voices returned to his mind--man and woman and the luminous third Presence. That which had always been dim and formless before, now cleared--the place and the man. The room was large and had the character of a music studio, or one department of a large conservatory.

A grand piano, a stand for violin, pictures of the masters, and famous musical scenes on the wall--more, there was music in the air--intervals when the three figures seemed to listen. A violin was across the man's knee, a bow in his right hand.

The man was down, whipped. The world had been too much for him. The face was not evil, nor was it mighty. A tall young man--a figure knit with beauty and precision. It was the figure of a small man enlarged, rather than one of natural bulk. Bedient's recognition of the man was not material; some inner correspondence made him know.... He was sitting upon a rocker, too small and low for him. The long, perfect limbs stretched out would have appeared lax and drunken but for their grace of line. The bow-hand dropped limp, almost to the floor. The other moved the violin about, handled it lightly, familiarly, as one would play with a scarf. Fugitive humor flashed across the face, relieving the deep disquiet, but the laugh was an effort of one who was confronted by demolished fortunes. His whole look was that of a man who has been shown some structural smallness of his own, shown beyond doubt--his ranges of personal limitation, made clear and irrefutable.

He recognized his master in the woman opposite.... Yet powerful natural elements within him were bearing upon the hateful revelation. They sought to cover the puny nakedness, and make an hallucination of it all. He was not evolved enough to accept the truth with humility.

The woman was psychically torn. The agony of her face cannot be pictured, nor her martyrdom of sustaining courage. She could not see the third Presence, but it was there _for her_. It was above her, yet was called by her natural greatness. There was a line of luminous white under her eyes, that left the lower part of her face in shadow. The eyes were shining with that dissolving supernatural light, that comes with terrible spiritual hunger. Her dark hair had fallen in disarray.

In the first transcendent happiness she had conceived a child. The hideous disillusionment was now--months before the babe. And her struggle at this moment of her heart's death--was to keep the madness of sorrow from despoiling the child, that lay formative within--to preserve the child whole, and in her original greatness of ideal, in the midst of her own destroying, and against the defiling commonness that had just been revealed in the father....

She had crossed the last embankment of agony; her struggle was finished. She had conquered. The Presence had come to hold her mind true, in this pa.s.sage through chaos.... Her own death she would have welcomed, save that the babe must live. It had come to her as a daybreak from heaven. It must not be crushed and weighted with this tragedy of pure earth.... She held the blight from the child!

She _knew_ this. She arose and smiled. Into her soul had come a sense of the amplitude of time--a promise of adoration--a blessing upon her courage--a knowledge of her child's l.u.s.tre. The Angel had whispered it.

Blithe, lifting, loving, the message had come to her from the Presence.