I wanted to feel things; I was tired of being shod, and insulated, and deadened. I was just a young girl, then. I felt charged with the grandeur of God, as Hopkins put it, and I had to get out. I've seen a lot of God's grandeur, and a lot of His blessing, through a long life. It's been good, here in the real world.
"But it's no use chattering," she continued. "That doesn't really express or communicate anything. Nature has got a bigger and better voice than any of us, and the best thing to do is just to listen for it. I hope you'll stay with us awhile. The longer the better. We like to help people who've just escaped. But I still talk too much. Supper'll be ready pretty soon, and I have to go tend to it for a few minutes. Just you sit there and be calm: listen for the still voices."
He was glad to do so, and gladder still to see the men of the family returning from the fields. There were three of them, tall and strong, real human beings, healthy and alive, and little marked by unprofitable care. They had a faith, it seemed, a communion, a divine assurance, more or less fulfilled.
The older man, the father, welcomed him again, and they were soon seated at the supper table. He noticed that the men ate heartily, and had yet not an ounce of excess flesh. He rued his own bulk, and ate but sparingly, only out of politeness. But food had never tasted so good before.
The two sons were already approaching middle age, and were still unmarried. This occasioned their mother some concern. But, as she said, they didn't seem to care, and God or nature could take care of these things better than people could. There was no use straining.
"And there aren't so many young women around," she mused. "There aren't many people. Whatever love-making there may be, there's very little breeding. It's like the City, in that respect. It seems this just isn't a very good world these days, comparatively speaking, and people are being held back till it gets better. There seems to be a sort of a cloud over everything. I don't know. Anyway, we're contented. At least we have our minds and hearts, and our patience."
He stayed a week, a month: into the natural influences he vigorously and gratefully plunged. He helped with the farm work, and grew lean and hard, and mentally as well as physically strong. He stayed on, through the winter.
Then, with the spring, his own fertile ground began to burst and ache, and he was no longer satisfied. He was not nature itself, to endure unmoved the countless cycles of diversified sameness; he was rather a flower that faded with a season, a leaf that would soon fall. He was like a single wave of the vast ocean, and like that wave he must forever be moving on, questioning.