Sweet Rocket

by Mary Johnston

The next day Drew returned to Rock Mountain to make his arrangements. "Why not ride with him?" Linden looked at Curtin. "There is a fair trail. You have an extraordinarily fine view from the top."

Drew urged it likewise. "But I haven't a horse."

"Roger Carter has a good saddle mare. He will be glad, I know, to let you have her."

Drew, mounted as he came, Curtin on Dixie, set out before noon for Rock Mountain. The cliffy crest that gave it its name peered above the southern hills and ridges facing Sweet Rocket. Crossing the river the two kept for some little distance to the Alder road, then at a pine tree left it for a just discernible track. "This is where we changed, Randall and I, the other day. Until we saw the river we thought that we were going to Alder, but we were going to Sweet Rocket instead."

The trees closing in behind them, they were plunged into forest. There was now no green save the green of occasional pine or hemlock. All was gold or red or russet. Moreover, the earlier trees to turn were fast flinging their mantles upon the earth. The sky met less obstruction, the sunlight spread a royal carpet. The air equaled exhilaration. As Curtin rode he thought that he faintly remembered all the forests of the world. "Is it infectious? Is it because in some sort Drew remembers, or is it because I have been—and surely I have been—in all the forests of the world? Like him, I remember best the temperate and the northern forests, because in time they are the nearer."

For a while they rode in silence. There was only the sound of their own breathing and movement, and the very inner voice of the forest, low speech of branches that brushed them, break of twigs, flutter of wings, tap of woodpeckers, whisk of squirrel, and once, a little way off, the heavy whir of a pheasant. At last Drew broke the silence. "My mother died when I was fifteen years old, and my father when I was twenty. I remember my mother's mother and my father's mother and father. I know a good deal about their life after I was born and their life before I was born. I have a fair notion of my grandparents' parents, and I know something of the way of life of the generation behind that one. I have been told and I have read. Of course there are presently ancestors of whom I have been told nothing, and behind these countless others. Of course I know that people often imaginatively share the experience of parents and kindred. They say: 'It must have been so and so with my mother and my father—or with my grandparents—or my ancestors generally. They had these experiences and they must have felt and done this way. It seems almost as if I were there!' I think when you say that you are beginning. But it's grown to be more than that with me. After all, what are you but your parents, your grandparents, your great-grandparents, and so on? Your experience under your immediate name and your experience under your old names—their names. And alike, what are they but you? Share and share, comprehend and comprehend, include and include! I tell you that I am aware of the pyramid behind this cleaving point that is talking to you. I remember."

"Do you mean that you remember actually thinking, feeling, doing what men say your ancestors did?"

"I don't get it clear. It's all wrought into some kind of unity. I don't remember clearly sharp, isolated experiences—except that one time I told you about, and that was clear and sharp repetition. But I remember, all the same. I don't feel any wall between my father and myself, between my mother and myself, my grandparents and myself. You don't know how curiously I seem to share their life! Sometimes, lying still at night, I simply, naturally, am Edward Drew as well as Philip Drew. I look out of the Edward Drew window—or out of the Andrew or Robert or Margaret or Janet window—and then I turn and look out of the Philip Drew window. I had a great-grandfather who was a sailor. I can't tell you what feel of the deck beneath my feet, what a sense of sea by day and by night, I have at times!... But then, of course, in the far back I must join many sailors.... I am those folk. That's my own life they led. I lead their life. Wherever they are, they lead mine!"

He fell silent, and Curtin, too, rode silent. They were now above the valley, their road climbing. Overpassing a great hill they came to a threadlike, green vale, and crossing this climbed Bear Mountain, behind which rose the great head of Rock. When they reached a gushing mountain spring they dismounted, and, seated on moss and leaves under a tall mountain linden, all palely gold, ate the bread and cheese and damson tart and drank the cider that Sweet Rocket had put in the bag they carried. Their feast ended, they rested on the springy, fragrant earth.

Drew began again. "Remembrance! If I had a hundred per cent better brain—and I suppose one day the brain of all of us will be a hundred, a thousand per cent, ahead of what it is now—I am convinced that I could remember not only down the stalk of myself, but out into the branches right and left. The tree conscious from leaf to root, from root to leaf! The whole tree conscious, aware up and down and to and fro—and, as somewhere all the forest joins on, the forest conscious and aware up and down of its history. Then the forest runs into all the forests high and low. The everlasting Forest and all its adventures!" He looked as though he rode in that forest. "Out of it comes the Tree that sheds the forests! And never once need we lose consciousness in finding that Tree! That's what Mr. Linden said to me. He said: 'You're the Ash Yggdrasil. You're all things and all people. You share them and they share you. You're to extend, extend, your sense of that. The One is to come down and lay hold upon you—and still you shall find it home and yourself!'"