Sweet Rocket

by Mary Johnston

The two rode down Rock and crossed a vale, like a green and gold ribbon, and went up Bear Mountain, where the oaks were all deep colored, and down Bear and over forested hills and on by the trail that struck into the Alder road. They went rather silently, but in a deep, contented companionship. Once Drew spoke. "He said, 'A good present is one in which the past betters its condition.'" When he said "he" there was meant Richard Linden. After this there was silence again, both having struck some road within, where is the network composed of all the roads of the world.

They approached Sweet Rocket. The forest fell away. Before them shone the river, the wheat and orchard land, and the ruddy house with its pillars of mellowed white, and the hills that inclosed. Through part of the day clouds had been driving across the sky. Now they were sinking before the southwest wind, leaving the blue arch. They were variformed, castles and towers, bridges, alps, cities, ships, mythical beasts, giants. Light embraced them in a spray of colors. Crossing to it, for one instant, Curtin saw Sweet Rocket transfigured. All that was strong and fair became a hundredfold stronger, fairer. All that deterred or roughened or overweighted or twisted or weakened vanished in warmth and light. A sheath, or husk, or burr fell away. Interior power rousing itself, he saw the place in its seraph aspect, eternal in the heavens. Drew seemed to share the perception. He said, abruptly, "There is splendor!"

They felt splendor; then it closed, like light withdrawn, warmth screened away. There stood Sweet Rocket in its earthly estate. That is, they thought it its old earthly estate. But by that much it had become endowed and was not the old earthly estate. They had checked their horses. Curtin said, "So it was always in poetry!"

The younger man had a curious gesture. "We gather all the household gear into the long ship, and put forth!"

But Curtin thought, "In the Bible Noah gathers all the lifeseed into the Ark and rides the waters into a new world."

They crossed the river and went up the little glistening beach and by the cedars to the house. Sweet Rocket welcomed them home, the white folk and the colored folk and Tam. They found the household increased by two.

Linden said, "These are my cousins, Robert and Frances Dane, who come for a little while each year to Sweet Rocket."

They were a married pair, a little above forty, perhaps, the mark of the city upon them. They had quick and nervous bodies, thin, lined faces, eyes well apart, burning deep and very steady, lips tending to compression. They seemed tired—about them breathed something of soldiers after a long day's march through hostile elements. This was bivouac, this was rest! At first they were too tired, there was almost resentment. "O God, how can you be still and ageless?" This changed, little by little, at Sweet Rocket. The overtension disappeared. They were left taut, collected, wary—workers worthy of praise in a dangerous world.

At the supper table that evening Curtin made out more and more of their life. They had come yesterday, a little before their set time, and Anna Darcy had the start of him in acquaintanceship. Intellectual radicals certainly, members of some group in action, probably of more groups than one, jack of all agitations and master of one. He could hear them speaking, in halls, and under open sky, and he could see the face of the throng to which they spoke. They would be speaking of Soviet Russia, of Guild Socialism, of Employer and Employed and the Course of Labor that did never yet run smooth. There were causes, not so apparently economic, for which also they would work. He heard them speaking for the Suffrage Amendment and likewise for the release of Conscientious Objectors. They belonged here, they belonged there. The one, he was later told, was Associate Editor of a Journal that was making the step from liberalism of the left to communism of the right. The woman was an admirable violinist. He knew that they lived on little and gave much of that little away. They lived where it was possible to live in one big room and three small rooms. They had a son who was doing well at a school they liked in the country. To look at them was to see how hard they worked, and to look into their eyes was to see the beacon that set them and kept them at work. They also had vision of Oneness.