V
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.