When dreams come true

by Ritter Brown

The picture he saw was not the ideal one—the emancipated man of whom men of all times have dreamed and to whose advent some men are still looking forward. But the care-free life of the primitive man set him thinking—opened his eyes to certain truths which, until now, he had failed to observe. Longings for the unattainable began to stir within him and take hold of him in a manner entirely new. Hazy, fragmentary glimpses of hitherto undreamed possibilities began to shape themselves in his mind. The immensity and profundity of the universe and the mysterious growth of its hidden life held and enthralled him.

The last word, he felt, had not yet been spoken. There was something lacking in the so-called civilized man's economy—a lack which his philosophy failed to account for, but which was not observable among animals and primitive men. There, the economy of the infinite cosmic mechanism which binds and holds all manifestations of life in one harmonious whole was too apparent to even suggest the detachment of a single form of life from this whole, but with the civilized man it was different. He alone seemed to have detached himself from this harmonious whole—his life stood out as a thing separate and apart from it. There seemed to be no permanent place for him in the economy of nature.

But how had this estrangement taken place? Why was he, the intellectually developed man, incapable of living in harmony with the universal law of life when it was so easy for the primitive man to do so? It was evident that he had lost his way somewhere along the path of normal development. Everything pointed to this—its signs were apparent to all who wished to see. Nature voiced it on every hand, in the forests and plains and on the mountain tops, and during the silence of night as he lay on the ground gazing at the stars overhead.

The wind that sighed among the ruined temples of the ancient races and the mountains that looked down upon them seemed to speak to him in the ever recurring refrain: "Behold the works and glories of men—we are enduring! The same wind that sighs among them this day, sang to them when their walls and pillars stood erect. The same mountains that shadowed them in the past, will still stand guard over the valleys in the days to come when the works of the present and future generations of men have passed away forever!"

He knew that these questions had been asked during countless generations, and that men were still asking them to-day. He knew also that man's situation in the universe was taking on a new aspect, and yet it was strange that such thoughts should absorb him, a man of the world, of the fighting type, whose wide experience with men and things had hitherto convinced him that the world, though not perfect, was good—that present progress made for good, and the best western civilization had thus far attained was probably about all men of the future could look forward to so far as happiness was concerned. These views, however, were no longer tenable if our arts, philosophies and scientific attainments fail to civilize and refine us. Clearly, modern man's conception of ethical progress was as deficient in certain respects as that of the great historic civilizations. The secret of right living had not yet been discovered. History proved this, and unless the trend of modern materialistic tendencies was supplanted by something higher, the same fate that overtook the Ancients must inevitably overtake us.

But the date of their wedding had been set, and the time for their departure for Athens was drawing nearer. Santa Fé lay a day's ride from the railroad. Instead of performing the journey in a single ride, he decided to pass the night at the hacienda of a friend, Don Felix de Tovar, some twelve miles distant from the old Spanish town. Thither he would ride during the cool of the evening, completing the remainder of the journey the following day. Between Santa Fé and Don Felix's hacienda lay the Indian pueblo, La Jara, situated some distance off the main road. By following the trail that led past this village, José explained, they would reduce the distance to Don Felix's rancho by at least two or three miles.

The country through which they traveled was broken and rugged. Twilight had descended upon the land, and as the two, following the trail that skirted the foothills, rode to the crest of the mesa upon which the village was situated, they came suddenly upon a woman riding at full gallop. The soft, sandy formation of the soil was such that neither heard the approach of the other, and all three reined in their horses with a jerk; the woman throwing hers well back upon its haunches; a high-strung, black, wiry animal whose foam-flecked mouth and breast told that she had been riding hard.

How free and wild she looked! She was either a Spaniard or an Indian, and rode astride. A bunch of red berries adorned her heavy black hair which fell in masses about her shoulders, accentuating the curve of her throat and well-formed, clear-cut features just discernible in the waning light as she sat motionless and erect on her horse, gazing at him in silence and evidently as much surprised as he was by their sudden encounter. Then with a smile and a nod of the head by way of acknowledgment, she lifted her reins and spurred past him; disappearing in the gathering darkness on the trail below them. Her unexpected appearance and grace and type of beauty, so different from that of the woman who occupied his thoughts, thrilled him for the moment as he listened to the soft, muffled hoof-beats of her horse which grew fainter and fainter until all was silence, save for the sighing of the wind among the mesquit and manzanita bushes that grew about them. All trace of her was gone. She had vanished into the night as swiftly as she had come.

Then a strange thing happened. Something suddenly gripped his heart; that indefinable something after which he had been groping and which had been knocking so persistently at the portals of his inmost being, but which until now had eluded him. The sight of that strange woman had shown him that, to be beautiful is to be free and natural. That the world he knew and revered was purely an artificial world of man's invention, transitory and a thing apart from the universal life in the midst of which he had been placed and apart from which it was impossible for him to develop naturally. That nature is more perfect than all the artificialities of civilization and a more efficient environment for the normal development of man. That man's happiness and true relationship to the universe were attainable only through direct contact and communion with this life whose creations are the only great and lasting realities. Thus only was it possible for him to quicken and vitalize his powers to their fullest. That when creation finished its task, peace and harmony reigned in the midst of the terrestrial garden, rendering man's pursuit of happiness through diverse acts and infinite forms of diversion quite unnecessary.

He had discovered the wild man's secret—why the stars still sing to him as of yore—why the winds and the waters, the animals and the rocks and the trees still speak to him in harmonies long since forgotten by civilized man. A great and secret joy, such as he had never before experienced, filled his soul; uplifting, consuming and mastering him.... But what would Blanch Lennox say? She with whose inner life he felt in perfect accord? She who was his ideal, the inspiration of his eager youth and well-spring of his ambitions of later years? The woman who always met his problems with quick sympathy and comprehending interest? Could she understand him now, sympathize with his new views of life? He knew a battle royal would ensue between them, but felt confident of his power to convince her. He found, however, upon his return to Newport where she awaited him, that he had reckoned without his host. She attributed his enthusiasm and changed convictions to his ardent love of nature and the roving spirit that animated him, but could not be convinced that the world of society in which she moved and shone and for whose adulation she lived, was the lesser world. She refused to relinquish their present life so full of the things of this world, the only realities which she knew or recognized, for some vague uncertainty. Surely the wanderlust, the love of the primitive, had gotten into his blood!