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174 a

helpless as she was.

"That damn picture," said John. "It will hound us all the days of our lives." And in him began stirring experiences similar to hers.

His eyes were rapidly going down the column searching for his statement. It was not there. "They have not used the paper," he cried to Marian. He was too self-involved to notice that she said nothing. Something thudded in him. He had a sinking swirling snesation. Something flew out of him - and way down in him he knew how much he had been subconsciously counting on the statement's appearance. He felt he had been taken in again, fooled, tricked, betrayed. His feelings remembered the inexplicable hostility of those who had listened to the reading, the insolent tones, the gloating laughs, the power of negative to blot out and paralyze positive responses, the absolute lack of any living growing contact and relationship with the people of Caromb. And Caromb was the world. He saw it all in a flash. He felt shaken in the very base of him, with all of those deep tremors shaking him. He felt caught in the vortex again - and something swept over him, blinding him. But he focused his eyes and forced himself to read the entire article.

The caption was LOVE. The subcaption was the slurring phrase- **Just Lovers**. The item began, "In certain states of this country it is illegal to marry for love. In certain others this practice is still permitted." It was clear to John that **Ourpas** regarded these other states as being but little short of criminal.

John repeated out loud, "It is **illegal** to marry for love!" He could not believe his eyes. "Hell alive!" Were these, could these be the words printed there? "Do you see what I see?" he asked Marian. If so,

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could

the words be true? Was it possible that in some places love was taboo
to the extent that laws had been enacted against it?

His eyes were reading further, reading the words and the slurring
hostile tone in which it was told how, the previous summer, John
Andrews, disciple of the passionate life, had gathered together, under
the pretext of having a psychological experiment, a number of men
and women in a small secluded cottage and had taken them on a "pro-
longed swimming party". Out of this "experiment" had budded the
whom
romance between himself and the woman who was now his wife, both of,
believed in marrying for love.

"This is a personal attack," said John. "Damn them!" He was boiling. "They have not used my statement. No, and what they have written here is more personal and slurring and vulgar than anything that appeared in the tabloids. And this is a magazine, Marian. I don't understand them. I don't see why. And they had my actual written statement. The newspapers had only what Dunney gave them. I can't understand. I can't understand Gур pas any more than I can understand mis Roberts. what is it, anyway?"

Marian's reply came in a strange tone. "I can," she said flatly.
"Dunney did not send the statement to them."

He snapped her up. "Nonsense," he said. "Of course he did. What motive would he have had for keeping it? He was going to get paid for it, wasn't he? Besides, even if the statement did not reach them, this does not account for their antagonistic insolent tone. Why the personal feeling?"

Marian said nothing. He said nothing further at the time. He
started the car, slamming the shifts. He drove home, fast, reckless,
furiously. He was absorbed in his own upheaval. He was unmindful of

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her. She was iced. She sat rigidly away from him.

Damn everything, he was cursing inwardly. This son-of-a-bitching magazine, it has a nation-wide circulation. It will reach where the newspapers did not. It will drop fresh bombs in all of the places where the *xixxam* storm raged, in Paula, and the whole wild thing is likely to flare up again. Damn fool that I was and am to place any trust or hope in any printed sheet. Here I was believing that *Ourpas* would put a desirable period to the whole affair. It turns out to be the villain in the melodrama. It has started the damn thing again, and this time with the authority of a national magazine behind it. And as for us - it has smashed into our world which we were mending. Oh, Christ! Oh, damn!

At the garage entrance he brought the car to an abrupt halt. He turned and saw her rigidity. "What's the matter with you?" he snapped.

She looked wounded. She did not answer. He was quickly sorry for his tone. "I wasn't thinking," he said. "My anger isn't meant for you. I'm sorry. Let's not let this thing get us." Silently she gathered the bundles and went into the house.

All afternoon he tried to touch her, to release her, to make her speak. He talked about the article. He painted the picture as black as he could. He turned about and talked rationally, soberly, pointing what, on the one hand, it might do; showing, on the other, that its effects were limited and that, in truth, he may well have exaggerated the thing and read into it a hostility it did not really have. He asked what she thought. She said she wasn't thinking anything. He asked what she felt. She wasn't feeling anything. Knowing quite well that she was, he pressed her. She closed more tightly.

165-177

He spoke of other matters - their writing, people, anything which he thought might evoke her response. Her replied were brief, as if she grudged them.

He suggested several things for them to do. She was not interested.

Was she struggling to meet him? Was she allowing the thing to ice and torture her? He could not tell. Perhaps she was struggling desperately. Perhaps this was why she was so locked. But if she were struggling why could she not at least reach out a hand to him? Why was she sitting there, unapproachable, rigid? Why that expression in her eyes when she glanced at him? Why - unless she were locking herself against him as well as against the article, more against him than against it.

"Is it me?" he asked. "Have you something against me?"

"No," she replied.

But all at once he was certain she had. It jolted him. He was certain she was resenting him, turning against him, struggling not to turn against him. She was blaming him, blaming him for letting Dunney take the photographs, for everything, for her suffering, for involving and exposing her, struggling not to blame him. The struggle locked her.

"Let it out," he cried. "Say what you feel. Blame me, Hate me. I won't blame you. Many another woman would have done it long ago. But let it out. Speak and share things with me and let things circulate. Then I can help. Don't let that mechanism dominate you. You know what it is. You know how it works. Break through it now."

She would not. She could not. He was helpless to help her. The mask had set upon her face. That icy withdrawal, that cold tortured separateness gripped her as he had never seen it grip her before.

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178

His best efforts, they brought increased pain in her eyes and the
mist of pain, but no speech, no unlocking.

The air was weighted, oppressive, a heaviness like that in limbs
which sink in death. He could bear it no longer. He suggested a ride,
anything to get out of Gull House and give them a new sense of move-
ment. She did not want to go but he took her. He headed the car pass
the old earth-red mission onto the road leading to the region of the
Great Dadam, flashing by the bleached gaunt telephone poles, the
acres of thistly artichokes, the livid white bridge, the shrunken
river, the desolate giant hills, the coves of the bleak ocean...

 river, the desolate giant hills, the coves of the bleak ocean...
 Suddenly he felt an overmastering force juxta burst aflame in him.
 "Marian," he almost screamed, "I don't care what it is but say some-
 thing. Do you hear me?"

She shrank back. She was terrified. It was that intense darkness
out of him coming. His tone, she had heard it when a demon was raging.
"I can't," she gasped.

"You can," he shouted. "I don't care what it is. Tell me you hate
me. Tell me you want to be free of me. Tell me you regret having a
child. Tell me anything. I don't care how painful or terrible. But
tell me. Share it with me." And his whole frame quivered and his
muscles tensed as though he were ready to tear it from her.

"I can't," she chocked. Her eyes were glaring at him glazed with
wild pain.

He saw them. He was overwhelmed with pity and sorrow. He melted.
"Ah, my dear," he said, "I don't want to hurt you. You have been
hurt enough. Surely I would not add to it. But what am I, what are
we, to do?"

( insert page 178 )

The air was weighted, oppressive, a heaviness like that in limbs which sink in death. Her state, Marian's tormented locked-away state, far more than the article, was driving him to despair. Indeed to him now the article was important only as it was affecting her. It's affects in her were so terrible. "Ah, God," he cried in every atom of himself.

At length, he could bear it no longer.

"Then, speak if you can," she said, "and tell me anything, whatever - only tell it, and don't lie. What has been done to you, what are you going to do?"

"Oh, John, don't!" she cried. "She felt horror, starkest horror. She glanced out and saw the red,hot-tongue burning, the red, red rocks. She felt she was going to die, and she was. Unhesitatingly, horrible way..."

"The baby," she said, "is dead."

"What about it?"

"It was born to die. It was a love child."

In his face there was a look of pain. "In a few hours, and he would be free. Then, the other child, the one he loved, would be gone. And then, he would be free. But life would be a hell of a round of a love making. Then, he would be going to have it. And it is going to have it. And then, there would be a hell of a round of a love making. Then, there would be a hell of a round of a love making."

167 179

For a while he was silent. She was almost sobbing; but she was not. If only she could, if only he could make her break down and cry. This would be a melting, a pouring out. But that which made her iced and rigid made her eyes dry, dry with pain, wild with dry pain.

Suddenly again the force arose and whether he would or wouldn't he stormed at her, "Marian!"

She said nothing. She was paralyzed.

Fury flared up and mingled with the burning flame. "Marian, answer when I speak to you!"

His voice was like thunder, a bolt striking her.

"Oh, John, don't!" she cried. She felt horror, stark horror. She glanced out and saw the rock-reptile house, the livid gull dung rocks. She felt she was about to die in some unspeakably horrible way.

"Then, speak!" he shouted. "I've told you to say anything, anything - only say it. What are you holding back? What has been going on in you? What are you thinking about it? Say it!"

"The baby," she brought out.

"What about it?"

"I am ashamed to have it. It is a love baby."

In his very essence he heard those words, "It is a love baby", and her tone, the most tragic tone he had ever heard. Swiftly it bore him down, down into some vast current of agony and sorrow, and he heard the voices of all the women and all the men who had brought new life into the world. Swiftly he came up and strongly affirmed, "Yes it is. And we are going to have it. And it is going to grow up to be a love woman or a love man. There are laws against it? Nature is with us. Let there be - just so long as they do not touch

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us. All men and all women are with us. Let there be a world-full of stupid hating taboos. All men and all women want to throw them off. I speak for the race, the natural race, not for us as we have twisted and tortured ourselves. If they touch us I'll change them. They, these hateful laws, they are man-made, aren't they? Then man can unmake them - and I am that man."

Oh,

"But, John, the whole world is against us. What can you do? I want to jump in the sea. I feel I must kill myself or continue with you. But how can we?" For a flash she opened and looked up to him and he could see the desperate fight she was making.

feeling the best in him rising to meet her,

"No, dear," he said, "the whole world is not against us. In its deep essence the whole world is with us. I am speaking a truth more profound than my own understanding. Bound and shackled as most people are, we have had many signs of this. Don't, don't forget these signs. There is only one way you and I can be defeated - if we allow this thing to get into us and tear down all we've worked far and all we value. The twisted world can kill us. It can, I grant, kill the body. But we will not be defeated by physical death. Let them come and stone us and burn us and riddle our bodies. We will live - and for others we will live and continue living. To thousands of people we are symbols. You must not forget that. Only if we experience an inner death, a falling away from our standards and from ourselves and from each other, only then will we die."

Her face had turned ghastly. "But it has gotten in me," she said. Her voice was terror-stricken. It was as if she were witnessing her own death. "I can't help it. It has gotten in me. Everything I believe in is going to be destroyed, my love for you, my faith, all, everything. Too much has happened. I can't struggle any more."

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She sank back against the seat.

He felt a thud, the death-thud of an irrevocable denial. Within him a voice said, "God, it is true. It has. It has gotten in her. It has killed her. I have lost Marian." A vast sorrow overwhelmed him. Neither could he struggle. He too was sinking into the bleak effacing sea. His eyes were blinded. The whole world was blotted out - all, all save the sadness and the terror of her voice. driving.

But he had to see, he had to watch where they were going. They had come to the road-ending. The boards were still up. The sign warned against going further. He turned around.

Slowly into his mind, as the fragments of a wreck emerge upon the waters, came thoughts he had once expressed. "It is nothing. No, nothing. It is nothing that men unknown to us have done this to her, a human being, my wife, riddling her with tortures and terrors they would give their lives to protect their own wives from. No, this is nothing. It is nothing that I and everyman are caught in a vicious invisible machine which makes each do to the other what he would not have done to him. This is nothing. The machine is invisible. Most of the men, to any one man, are unseen. This is why it is done. An unholy separateness allows human beings to deal with human beings as if suffering beings are no more than words or stories or arithmetical figures. It is nothing that each man, by his own voluntary or unwitting acts perpetuates the scheme whose next turn of the wheel may catch and mangle him and his wife and children and all he loves and all he has devoted his life to achieve. No, nothing. Nothing, that is, to rocks and trees and sand and sea and livid rock-like bodies with dead souls."

The next thing he knew he heard himself speaking out loud. It

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was as if he were delivering a judgement. His tone was powerful, searing, bitter. "So this is what we have come to. The great commandments have been reversed. Now they read - Thou shall take the name of love in vain. Thou shall dishonor thy father and mother, thy husband, thy wife, thy children, all people, nature, and all life. Thou shall hate. Each word shall be a curse. Thou shall kill. Thou shall hate and kill all life as thou hatest and killst thyself. So the world has come to this. So I, John, who all my life have struggled to have, to give and receive life, I have come to this. So you, Marian... So we, so we have come. Our future is to exist, with our gaunt bretheren, in deserts where no growing things will offend our abhorence of all life."

She screamed, "John, stop! Stop, or I will jump out!"

He said no more.

Silently, ashen, like people burnt out, like masks with only the eyes alive, they sat in the car; and the little car as if knowing the way and running by itself carried the sad burden through the dusk and back to Gull House.

Mechanically he started the fire in the hearth. Mechanically she prepared supper. They could not look at each other. They ate. They hardly knew it. They got up, cleared and cleaned the dishes, and occupied their chairs before the fire. Neither spoke. Only once or twice did they glance up.

John heard the pounding of the waves. Marian shrank from the bleak deadness of Gull House. She got up and went into her room. He did not move. He heard her get into bed. He would not stir. Her light was turned out. He glared at the fire. Something was gnawing

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him, a hard sharp burning thing like an animal's tooth. It gnawed
and gnawed. Suddenly there was a snap. Something had broken. Some-
thing else, a surging force, freezing and searing, had broken loose.

He arose. He struck the glass door. He pushed it aside
and stepped out onto the stone porch. It was dark. A fine mist was
falling down - fog, or a low-hanging cloud. It was still - still,
save for the waves pounding on the beach. He listened. All at once
his eyes and then his face and his entire body flared. He stretched
out an arm with clenched fist. He shouted, "Devils, you! Dance!
Beat your drum! You devils, you!"

They heard him. Gleefully they swept in from the sombre hills
and gathered on the beach and swayed and chanted:

John, great John, come,
Come dance with us,
Come to our drum,
Drum, drum,
Ye, ye, yeeeee!
You are one of us,
You are one of us,
Come John, come,
Ye-i-o-u-um, ye-i-o-u-um!

"I'll come, you devils you," he cried. "I'll come. I'll dance.
I'll beat your drum! I'll kill you and myself and love! I'll come!"

And striking with his arms, swirling, wheeling, thrusting them,
and thrusting with his limbs he started on a wild leaping galloping
run to the beach, his eyes glaring, his face contorted.

172 184

He ran to where the sand was hard. He struck with his arms. He twisted his body. He stamped and kicked and fought and whirled. He whirled. He whirled his arms. He whirled his body. His limbs and body and arms fought and dodged and bent and straightened out and fought and whirled. He fought madly. He fought insolently.

One creature was pulling at his feet. Another clubbed his legs. Another smashed him on the back. He tasted salt. He tasted blood. He bared his teeth to bite them, to rip and tear them. He fought and whirled.

Suddenly he felt suffocated. Air, he needed air. They had him down. He opened his mouth. It was filled with cold briny blood. He gulped. His eyes flashed open. Liquid washed into them, a black stinging stuff. He felt weighted from above. He felt his body moving swiftly, twisting as it moved. With a jolt his senses came back to him. He was in the undertow! Some deep interior intelligence told him he was caught in it, being swept out and out.

Instantly he was in full possession of himself. He knew just what to do. His lungs were bursting. His heart was pounding furiously. It was pitch black and cold. But he was calm. Working with the current he moved himself in the direction he judged up. But he was caught and whirled.

After what seemed an interminable time his head suddenly bobbed above the surface. He gasped for air. He gulped water. He sank. He rose up. He managed to turn on his back before another wave rolled over him. He remained that way, floating, until his lungs were somewhat eased. Then, feeling his body almost too numb with cold to move, he began slowly swimming. His wet clothes dragged him. He swam with the current of the waves. He did not bother to look. He knew

173-185

he could not see the shore. It would be black too. All was black.
The sky was still covered by the cloud.

He was moving in. He had no doubt of that. But could he hold out?
And, if he did, would he land on the beach or hit the rocks? Even if
the beach he would have a terrific struggle getting out. It sapped
his energy to picture it. He swam.

Now he had a strangely detached view of himself - an atom-aggregate of
life exerting its utmost in a black hostile element to save that which
only a short while before he had been in a frenzy to kill. He even
smiled. The danger was not as important as that smile.

At one time he would swim slowly so as to save his strength for
the ordeal of struggling with the breakers and the undertow once he
neared the beach. How far out was he? How far out? At another, spurr-
ed by the thought that he might freeze stiff, he would swim vigorous-
ly, trudging for all he was worth.

Suddenly he heard, or thought he heard, a dull roaring sound.
"That's it," he said. "The beach or the rocks. If the rocks, goodby
John - and the only pity is that Marian will not know that his last
expression was a smile, his last gesture a struggle, his last feel-
ing, even in freezing body, a very deep and tender love for her. Oh
why did I let her go to bed without a kiss kiss goodnight."

A heavy wave hit him. His head went under. A counter-current swirled
him. Frantically he kicked up and free of it. With all his force he
kicked and swept himself forward. A breaker smashed down on him. His
knees grazed sand. With a jerk he put his feet down. The undertow
rushed the sand from beneath him. His knees gave way. He was falling
back. Another breaker smashed him forward. His face went down and
hit bottom. He clawed the sand with his fingers. He was slipping
out.

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A breaker hit him. His arms and limbs were striking wildly. Water got in his mouth. He choked. He was blinded. He stumbled. He gave one last desperate shove - again and again and then he knew nothing.

Later, how much later he did not know, he came to. Somehow he knew it was himself. No single sensation was familiar. Nothing was recognizable. Yet, it was himself. His body was something alien, strange. It was his, yet it wasn't. It was alive, yet, too, it seemed dead. But it was not dead. It was paining him. He moved an arm. It was stiff. The movement pained him. His lungs pained as he breathed. She wanted to sleep and forget.

Something aroused him, and before he knew it he was on his knees. His mouth tasted awful. His ribs pained him. He made himself stand up. Over the mound of earth he saw the stars. Just beyond that mound was his house, Marian. He must reach it. His legs gave way. He began crawling. He got as far as the loose sand and had to stop. He panted. Then with great effort he moved on, crawling, stopping, crawling.

All at once he felt more able. He crawled faster. He was on top of the mound. He saw dark Gull House shrouded. Marian had been in there, alone, most of the night. He reached it. He reached the stone porch. The door was still open. He listened. He heard no sounds. Marian had slept. She had not missed him. He took off his wet damp sandy clothes and hid them. He washed himself with the garden hose. She would never know it. He would keep it, the entire mad episode, buried forever deep within him. He limped towards his bed. He got in. He forced upon his body the demand that he awake at five o'clock. He slept.

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XVI

When he opened his eyes Marian was standing over him.

"Breakfast is ready," she said.

His hand made a quick movement over his face. Then it all flashed back to him. Then he was alert as to her. His body ached but his consciousness had never been so watchful and clear. He made himself smile. He gazed up at her intently.

Her glance was direct. She met his eyes squarely, without daze, without evasion; yet she conveyed not much to him. She seemed together - and, yes, she had a strange baffling dignity. She was like a queen standing over him, grave, enigmatic. What did it mean? Had she worked things out for herself? Certainly to some extent. Her entire cast was positive, self-possessed - and, yes, more in touch with him. Her skin was clear. There was color in her cheeks. Her eyes, though grave, were bright. Truly in this Marian of his some magic had worked, the magic of her struggle with herself.

"You look pale," she said.

He tapped the edge of the bed. "Sit down a minute."

He drew her to him and held her. The encircling press of his arms was so strong it almost crushed her. When he released her he asked, "What time is it?"

"After ten," she said.

"That late!" he exclaimed. "You have breakfast ready? You have been waiting for me?"

She smiled brokenly. Her lips quivered. Moisture sheened her eyes. "Yes," she replied, "I felt I ought not disturb you."

176 188

"I'll be ready in a jiffy," he laughed, springing up. A groan
and escape from him.

"What is the matter?" she asked quickly. Her expressions were
many but he could see alarm and concern. "Are you sick? Are you
hurt?"

He half limped towards the hearth. "And you've made a fire. Good!
No, I'm just a trifle stiff. A touch of rheumatism or arthritis, I
suppose. I get it now and then. It will leave me after I've stirred
about."

But it did not. He ate more than usual. He had three cups of
coffee. He smoked. He started to help her clear the dishes. He limped.

"John," she said eagerly, "I'll do it. I'll take a chair for you
out in the sun. You look haggard. You are hurt." She came over to
him and stood looking into his face with her grave troubled eyes.

"Not on your life," he laughed.

But she arranged two chairs on the porch. "I'll be right out,"
she said, "as soon as I have cleaned up. I think we both need a rest
today."

He sat into his. He felt drowsy. Soon he slept.

When she came out her movements awakened him. "Were you sleeping?
I'm sorry."

He smiled at her. She smiled at him. They said nothing further.
They reclined there in the open, under the bright day, in bond,
prisoners in beauty, held captive on the far side of the sombre
magnificent boundary of the edge of the world. Their silence, how-
ever, was not laden. It did not produce that sensation of suffocat-
ing dead-weight. There was circulation, not as full and as free
as it should have been, as it was when everything was right between

177 189

them; but, still, they were not entirely closed and shut and locked away.

Marian was as grave and queenly and enigmatic as she had been when he awoke to see her standing over him. But now he could sense what he had not sensed then - her conflict, struggle, brokenness, less agonized and less desperate than during the previous day but there nonetheless. Over and over again she was alternately succumbing to and fighting against the fear that the world would smash them, that she would sink, was sinking, was witnessing the death of all she prized most.

Yes, so she was. But he would not press her. He would not ask her to speak. He would not try - that is, not prematurely - to help her solve and reconcile and triumph. He would leave her free to work it out in her own time, in her own way, for herself. He was confident, absolutely confident that she could and would. Her general tone, her changed attitude towards him, everything about her as he had seen and sensed it since he opened his eyes, contributed to his certain belief.

But this was not all. Something had happened to him. The night before had been terrific. It had been a purgation. It had been an awakening. Between then and now he had come to realize two things. Oh, he had come or would soon come to realize many things. But these two were uppermost in his mind and they had to do with her.

She was closer and dearer to him than ever; yet, at the same time, and perhaps for the first time, he really knew she was an independent dependent being. She was herself. Her processes were her own, not his. They worked differently from his. They required different time-durations for the working of things out. He tended to resolve things quickly. He grappled with them and achieved, if at all, rapid

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spiritualizations. He demanded this of himself. It was all right to
demand this of himself. It was unfair and unwise to demand it of her -
which was just what unconsciously he had been doing up till now. He
would stop it. He would have patience. He would meet her, not with
force, but with forceful understanding and with a recognition of her
own individual being-needs. He would try to provide the tools and
the materials, but he would not egotistically - and futilely - try
to dictate the way and the time. She was in life no less than himself,
and life had a way with her no less than it had a way with him, and
for her and for him.

And what further did this mean? It meant that now, also for the
first time, he really had faith in her. All along, of course, he had
persuaded himself that he had faith in her. He had not. Why, all
along, he had tried so insistently and sometimes furiously to help
her was because he had doubted that she could help herself. No, not
at any time had he been entirely motivated by doubt; but it had been
a larger factor than he had realized or would have admitted. He who
had felt he had such strong faith not only in himself and herself but
in all life - he had doubted her, his wife, she who was the best
life he knew. He had feared that unless he helped her she would sink;
that unless he thought for her she would not understand; that unless
he affirmed for her she would deny. And here all along, whatever
her fears and pains and sufferings and imaginings, she had stood by
him, struggling and carrying on, as few woman, pressed and exposed
as she had been, would have been able to. She had stood by him. She
had stood by herself and by them together. She always would. This
was the main thing. This was the big thing. This was the essential
affirmation realized in acts. All else was trivial. And he had doubt-

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XVII

Marian resumed the writing of her novel. This surprised him.

Then he started work, and was surprised again.

Life is strange, he mused. Something comes along, a big thing, an earthquake, a small thing like a cold, a sore eyes, a quarrel - something is always at one. Life never leaves one alone. Well, it hits you. If it is an earthquake you seem smashed. If it is a quarrel you are upset. It would appear, at the time, that the whole tenor of your personal life has been radically altered by the impact. It may be the impact of the realization of something about yourself, like Marian's sudden awareness of the mechanism which makes her hide the positive and show only the reverse. "Nothing will ever be the same again," you say. "All things will be different." But not so - not even if you go through what we went through the other day. Marian felt she was destroyed. I felt the world had come to an end, that doom had irrevocably fallen upon us - and I have experienced the impact of some realizations myself. But not so - in any case, apparently not so. A few days later you find yourself resuming your old ways as if nothing had happened. You go on, always on and very much the same. The earthquake turns out to be less potent than our disposition to continue as we are - being and experiencing not in terms of the upheaval but according to the pattern established when we were originally projected onto the earth.

Yet there are such things as changes. There are such things as results. There seems to be no doubt; and it is certain, too, that a sufficient number of results, if they crystallize in us, can give rise to something new. Where and how do the news things fit into

181-193

the old? How is change related to the pattern? What happens not only
to some part of a person but to the entire person and his way of
experiencing when he experiences a transformation? It is possible for
the old person to be made new? Yes, of course. It has happened. It
is happening to some one somewhere perhaps right now. But what precisely is meant? What really happens? How can we speak of change when we
are so stubborn to remain the same? John is John. John goes through
certain things. Is not John still John? Yes, a changed John, if you
but
will be John just the same. A friend who had not seen me for ten
years would have no trouble recognizing me; and I would recognize
him. Perhaps this is the way of it. One's being remains the same.
All of the rest of one changes, grows, develops, or retrogrades; but
these changes, taking place in a different dimension, do not touch
and cannot alter the being-stamp.

In any case it is evident that Marian and I are at our old busi-
ness again. Well... You angels of the sky who are the friends of
men on earth, wish us power but first grant us intelligent consciousness.

Letters arrived, letters from their friends expressing indignation
and protest against the *Ourpas* item; and again expressing strong
positive feelings for them. These friends of theirs, they were being
hit and ringing true, all of them, amazingly. Most all of them asked the same questions. "What can be done? The people we meet, if
they bring the matter up, we can set them straight. But something
should be done on a large scale. We should not let such a thing
pass. We should not permit such a condition to exist. We should do
something. What? How?"

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Car save when reading or answering the letters they did not mention
this last and most shocking attention given them by the invisible
machine. She was still disinclined to speak; and he, as he had re-
solved so he was awaiting her time, allowing the effects of it in
her to be processed.

As for the world in general, so far as they knew it had not been
stirred. No anonymous mail came to them, no letters, either affirm-
ing or condemning, from unknown hands. This seemed very odd to John.
The flare which had aroused the world had hardly touched him; this
item, which had given him a stiff jolt, had, it seemed, left the
world unaffected.

One day Arthur, long lost Arthur, dropped in. They greeted him
warmly. Where had he disappeared to? Where had he been keeping him-
self? He had been in Caromb all the time, fishing, going about as
usual. He had, however, moved to other quarters, to one of those
stone houses down the coast on the highlands some miles south of
Caromb. And he had been working. Just the day before he had finished
a book for children illustrated with his drawings. He had brought it
with him, wanting John and Marian to give him their criticisms.

If he had seen the *Ourpas* article he did not mention it. Someday
soon he wanted to take John fishing. Soon too he wanted them to visit
him at his new place. They would like it, he said. John *as he in
smiling oddly*, repeated their wish to have Arthur for dinner.
*turn, repeated*

Frank Williams showed up. He was returning the manuscript. He
liked it. He thought it was a fine piece of work. He said he would
eagerly participate in such a group project as the book described,
but - nothing was happening along those lines now. He needed some-
thing to do now. He had decided to organize a communist club in

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Caromb.

He would try to make it an active thing. Yes, there would be talks and discussions and debates. Perhaps John would give a talk, not necessarily on a communistic topic, though his criticisms would be stimulating, but along the general theme of the need of *mutual* mobilizing the country's intelligence, redeeming the frozen assets, removing the handcuffs from the strong sane man. Perhaps John and Marian would like to join the club or in any case come to its meetings.

Yes, there would be talks; but the club's main project, for the start, would be to make a survey of working conditions in Portello and in other towns of the peninsula where there was a distinct working class. This would bring the club members in contact with workingmen, and vice versa, to their mutual benefit.

Williams was very much in earnest. All of his energies, hitherto restless and unplaced, were now focused. He had been completely won over to the proletarian movement and he was driving ahead to further it. He had found what he wanted to do. Only this, and things related to it, interested him.

Several days later a letter arrived from Katherine Blake. It surprised them. It seemed so long ago that they had asked her to visit them. Everything that had happened in those early days of Gull House seemed to have taken place ages ago in another world in another life. Well, now at last Katherine was free to come. She would, of course, have to bring with her her young child. Alice had just had her third birthday. If it were convenient for John and Marian, they would arrive on the afternoon train Wednesday. She wanted so much to see them.

John sent a telegram saying he would meet the train at Portello.

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He did meet it. Marian went with him. Katherine was so flushed with the excitement and happiness of seeing them that the terrific fatigue she felt was not evident. Alice was the same little buster, her cheeks clear and rosy, her eyes alert and bright and impish, her limbs and body vigorous, oh, so very strong and active - and she had grown. Katherine and Alice sat in the rumble seat.

Katherine was thrilled by Caromb. This was her first sight of it. The sea, the mountains, the pine trees, the quaintness, the vast magnificent sweep of it, all thrilled her. She could well understand why John and Marian were so attached to it. She would like to live in Caromb herself, always.

Gull House delighted her. She liked the redwood. She liked the way it was built. The large day-bright living-room, the garden, the view of the sea and the valley and the mountains. She liked their rooms on the second floor.

All afternoon she was thrilled and happy; and though it was evident to John and Marian - they were glad to have her & with them - that active little Alice was too much for her, they did not see her underlying state until they gathered about the fire after supper. Alice had been put to bed. Then Katherine began talking; and in spite of her efforts to hold back, the difficulties and troubles she had been going through during the past months came out.

She and Walter had separated. He insisted that he did not love her. She knew she still loved him. She would never love any other man. She was caught. There was absolutely nothing for her to do - nothing, that is, as regards her personal life, unless in time she could persuade Walter to come back to her. Meanwhile she would try

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to be a good mother to Alice. But a child needed a father. What would
come of it? Tears filled her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. She
tried to force them back. She said she was ashamed to break down like
this the first night of her visit. It was not pleasant for them. But
she simply could not help it. She had tried so hard to make things
right. The only desire she had, or had ever had in life, was to be a
real wife and a real mother. Her sphere was the home. How ironic it
was that she was being driven out and made to live as those for whom
the home was an unwanted thing.

She dried her eyes, glanced at them, and smiled. "That's why,"
she said, "that's why I'm so glad to be here with you, to see two
people who are married happily. I can't help but feel the contrast
now, but I'll get over it and then you'll see how glad I am. If you
two are happy, then others can be. I know I can. But I can't persuade
Walter. He says that everything is ended and there's nothing that
either he or I can do to change it."

John noticed how very tired she was. This thing, revolving and
revolving in her, was sapping all her energy, draining her, draining
her dangerously. Her body was thin and drooped. Her poor arms were
painful to look at. There were deep pockets under her eyes. She
looked old, so old and worn and broken that it was almost impossible
to believe she had not yet reached thrifty. It was tragic. He suggest-
ed early to bed for all of them.

"Poor Katherine," said Marian to him later, "I hope she sleeps
well. What can we do? I'll try to take Alice off her hands tomorrow.
She can sleep late. She can go to the beach. But it will all be so
temporary."

John nodded. "I'm worried," he said. "She was hysterical tonight.

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She has no reserve. She has been worn down to the bone, and she can't let go. It goes over and over, on and on. Isn't the human psyche a terrible thing? It seems so tragically impotent to cope with the problems it brings on itself. I'm afraid she's heading straight for a serious breakdown. We'll have to impress upon her the need for an absolute rest."

"Can't you do something?" she asked. "I've seen you help people out of worse conditions than she is in. Do something for her."

"I don't know," he said. "I depends so much upon whether the person really wants help."

"She wants it."

"Yes, but does she want it only in her own terms? Surely, everybody wants to be helped in the way they want to be helped. It is an alway's together matter when we raise the question - do they want to be helped in the way they should be helped? I don't know. We'll see. I think your idea of taking charge of Alice is a good one. It would be good if we could give her a holiday."

Later that night he was awakened by someone stirring. He glanced through the dark room towards the balcony and saw a light in Katherine's room. Soon she came out. Her form looked like one of the ghosts. Marian had pictured inhabiting those rooms behind the closed doors of the second floor. For a short while she stood there leaning against the railing, looking his way. Then she called him. Her voice was hollow, weak, and so miserable that he shot out of bed. "What is it?" he asked. "Come down, and I'll make a fire."

She apologized for disturbing him. She had not been able to sleep. Almost as soon as she had gotten in bed an attack of asthma had come on. She had fought it. She had sat up. She had been chilled through.

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Her teeth chattered. She could hardly breathe. She was wheezing and gasping. She would need a doctor. Did he know of one who would come and give her a hyperdermic injection?

He looked up the number of a doctor Miss Roberts had recommended. He got him and explained the need; and explained, too, how to reach Gull House. The doctor said he would come.

John made a fire. He scolded Katherine for not having called him long ago. It was three A.M. Marian was awakened by the voices. She got up and came out. Katherine in her kimona, huddled near the hearth, looked wretched, pitiable. She gasped for breath. Her thin arms and heavy head hung down.

The doctor arrived. He gave the injection. Katherine at once felt better. She said she believed she could sleep now. She apologized again for disturbing the household. Then all went to bed.

Caromb gave them a bright morning, a glorious morning, forward-gleaming, one of the most perfect John and Marian had seen. The sky wasazure. The sun was brilliant, and so was the green covering the dark earth and the gaunt giant bones. They opened the French windows and let the air blow in. Katherine revived. She felt rested, at least she said she did. She laughed and chatted and helped Marian in the kitchen. She would not be a passive guest.

Alice, a little dynamo, was a problem. She was into everything. Before breakfast was ready she had dragged all the chairs about to suit her taste. At the table she was a hungry imp. Later she followed Katherine and Marian into the kitchen and soon knew where everything was kept. Katherine tried to manage her. Alice would smile sweetly and laugh and say, "Alice must not." And she would not - for a minute. The next minute she would be at it again. Marian tried

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her hand. She wondered what she would do when she had a child of her
own. Finally John thought he had best take Alice for a walk. "That
child!" said Katherine, after they had gone, "I love her but she
has such energy. I'm no match for her. She knows it. There are some
things I simply can't do. No woman can. She needs a father."

John returned. The women were not about. He turned Alice loose.
She went outside and tore up the flowers. She brought buckets of
sand into the house. She discovered the bread-box. Marian and Kather-
ine, coming back from the beach, saw her chewing on a huge chunk
nearly as large as a loaf. When she spied them she ran with it into
the garden, as if inviting them to catch her and take it away. She
seemed confident that her energy and agility were too much for
fatigued adults.

After lunch the cleaning man was coming. The house would be upset.
John suggested a drive. He suggested going to Point Goros. Not yet
had they been there. Only now, at this late date, did he feel a
desire to follow Caston's advice. The sky was clouding over; never-
theless they went, Katherine and Alice again in the rumble seat.

Point Goros was the tip of an arm of land, a sort of peninsula,
owned by a man who had placed a toll gate at the entrance. The
receipts, they had been told, were used to keep up the grounds. Just
this side of the gate was a house, a large frame MANKIND structure
painted dull red with livid white trimmings. It was surrounded by a
white fence and thick dark green shrubbery. Squat pine trees stood
guard within the enclosure. It was a fitting approach to the place
which everyone agreed was the weirdest region of Caromb.

John brought the car to a halt at the gate. He looked around for
someone to pay the toll to. No person was in sight. He waited a

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minute and then blew the horn. No one appeared. There were cows slowly moving through the woods on the other side of the fence. He glanced towards the house. Marian looked. "As vacant as the valley," was his comment. "Isn't it queer?" she said. Both of them felt very queer. Around the side of the car he said to Katherine, "It doesn't look as if we are going to get in."

He got from the car and made towards the house, determined to rout someone, if there were someone. At the white fence gate he came to an abrupt halt. A huge wolfish looking dog was lying in there. The dog did not raise its head. It merely looked at John, its yellow eyes glaring, and growled, as if knowing that no further exertion was necessary. John retraced his steps. He got in the car and blew the horn again. Another car, also desiring entrance, drew up behind him. This car too used its horn. The din was enough to have routed the dead. Still no one appeared.

John was on the verge of opening the gate himself when from the house a sufficiently substantial and alert woman came out. She had not been sleeping. She had not dropped down from the clouds. Where had she been that only now she knew that people were outside? "You want to see the Point?" she asked. "Just that," said John. He paid the toll. She opened the gate.

On the road through the woods the car behind them somehow disappeared. At any rate it was not behind them or anywhere in sight when they stopped where the motor-road abruptly ended at several squat white posts. From here, evidently, one would have to make the rest of the distance by foot. Katherine felt it was too far for her to walk. Marian decided to stay with her. John took Alice by the hand and together they set out.

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From the start he felt he should walk cautiously, as if he were entering a land inhabited by matching unknown peering creatures. The path was bordered by high brush. He saw trees, and they were curious. Soon they were passing through a sort of forest. The trees, mostly pines, were the strangest he had ever seen, weird, stunted, wind-blown, with amazing wild shapes and of scaly grey hues. Some leaned forward. Some shot back - products of the unceasing sea winds like gales. Some looked like flying witches. Some hunched and crept. Some were jagged and broken, grotesque. Some were grusome, as if alive but fatally mutilated. Some were intact, squat, dark, powerful. All seemed in frenzied movement. Yet nothing moved. It was as though the legions of the air, under a potent curse, had been changed into trees with consciousness, and rooted in this inferno where they could strain and reach and rip and tear but never leave their rocky anchorages.

Down a slope the rocks and the sea could be seen.

From the far rocks came the barks of seals.

He felt like an unbroken investigator of a place of torture.

John and Alice walked on. Alice detached her hand and began running and skipping by herself. Sometimes she would dally, investigating something. John would have to wait. There was nothing about Point Goros which seemed forbidding or frightening to her.

At length they reached the furthermost projection of rocks. They were high up. John held Alice so that she could stand near the ledge and see. Below them the sea broke and swirled. Out, far far out the ocean reached to the other side of the world. Behind them, to one side, was the indentation of the coastline where Caromb was, and the beach and the undertow and the waters in which his ego had been drowned. With better eyes he might even have seen the roof of Gull House

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rising above the mound. Behind them, to the other side, the giant dark green mountains ranging down the coast to the region of the Great Dadam. And nearby, here and there, desperately clinging to sheer rocks, exposed to the rage of the sea as well as the wind, were trees more wild and tortured than any seen on the way out.

As they were leaving he sad① to Alice, "When you grow up to be a big girl you can tell people that with your friend John you saw Point Goros and the ocean reaching to the other side of the world."

She looked at him, smiled, and ran on ahead.

When they rejoined the others Marian asked, "How was it?"

"It is all that they say it is," he said. "Caston was right. And so is Jordon. He knows the weird tortured soul of this place." And then he described it and made them regret they had not gone with him whatever the effort.

The women had become chilled. He would take them up the valley, he said. He too felt a desire to push out into sunshine.

But there were clouds over the valley. He turned off at the road leading × mounting to the port of the gods. Even high up there it was clouded. The sun was dulled. The air was chill. The vast sweep of ranges and plateaus did not show off to good effect. The port was disappointing. He had hoped Katherine would be touched and lifted by it, by its magnificence, its peace, its sp①cious eternal existence. There seemed to be no way out, no respite, no escape, none for Katherine as there had been none for themselves.

They returned to Gull House. They felt driven back.

Again, with the passing of day, Katherine's fair state dissolved; with the coming of night, as if brushed by the black wing, her sufferings and \d4esperate fatigue came on. Again she talked of Walter and

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herself, forcing back the tears but shaking all over, almost groaning. Then, all at once, she stopped. She seemed to sink. Her slim body drooped. She put her arms around herself. She rocked. It was as if, with no one else to hold her, she was trying to hold and hug and rock herself. She was so exhausted that she did not have energy enough even to feel sharp pain and be aroused by it.

John and Marian were deeply touched. John talked to her. He spoke of ideas and attitudes which he hoped would help. They wished her a good sleep and good rest untroubled by an asthma attack.

"Poor dear," said Marian. "She is worse off than last night. What is going to do? If she could only forget Walter and herself more suited to her, she would be well again. She is still young. She has splendid qualities. But no man could love her in this condition, and she is defatting herself all the time. She is defeatist. I don't know how long I can stand it. She exhausts me too. She doesn't think of others. I don't suppose she can. She seems to have no sense that we have suffered. On the beach this morning she did mention the publicity once, but she hasn't been active this morning, and she doesn't think she has no feeling of what we've been through."

"No," said John, "she can't see us - or, rather, she can see us only as she needs to. She wants to see us happy. Let us give her full credit for that. She doesn't want to pull us down into a condition like her's. In her case, misery wants to company of happiness. She insists that we be happy. She can't bear the notion that we are or have ever been otherwise. It is not a case of selfishness. It is a case of desperation."

"I wish we could keep her here for a month," she said. "She told me some things about her childhood. Her life has been tragic. But what would we do with Alice? She is a beautiful child, but I simply

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can't manage her and Katherine told me she has had to turn her loose
because she did not have the energy to discipline her."

Later that night Katherine again awoke John. Another attack, worse
than the previous one, had come on. John called the doctor. The in-
jection gave relief; but Katherine, looking wretched and haggard, said
she guessed the Caromb climate did not agree with her and she felt
she ought to leave. She did not want to burden them further. She
could not afford a doctor's fee each night. Her holiday with them,
her vacation which she had looked forward to and had placed such great
hope in, it had turned out to be a painful failure for everyone.

It worked out that she left the following evening. She smiled
sadly as she lugged Alice onto the train. She waved. She was crying.
"Oh, dear," said Marian. She was sure she would have an attack on
the sleeper, with no one on hand to help her. John felt sure that
unless she got into bed the minute she reached home and stayed there
until thoroughly rested she would have a serious breakdown. Both
were very sorry.

Several days later they received word that what each had feared
had come to pass. Katherine had had a terrible attack on the train.
She had hardly reached her apartment when she collapsed. Now she
was in a hospital. Money was needed for her expenses. Walter had been
reached by telegram but the state of his finances was such that he
could not do much - which was exactly the state of theirs.

"Oh, dear," said Marian wretchedly, "and we tried so hard. Now she's in a hospital and hospitals are awful. She has struggled so hard. Nothing comes to her. Everything is snatched away. Poor She's only twenty-five, and already she is She caught her breath like one of those trees of Point Goros."

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XVIII

She awoke the next morning to find a vast aching weight upon her. She felt distraught and tortured. Into her mind kept coming the trees of Point Goros. She must have dreamed about them. Into her mind kept coming Katherine, herself. She identified with Katherine. She saw herself as one of the trees. She became frightened. Usually, whatever the experience of the previous day, she would awake feeling somewhat restored. Later in the day her troubles would assail her, but for the first hour she usually felt vital and fairly well. Now, this morning, even a fresh awakening was being denied her. She feared for herself; and fear mingled with the other emotions which distressed and depressed her.

At breakfast she was silent. John saw that something was wrong. He still felt, however, that he had best say nothing until she was ready to speak. He could not understand her mood. As he sensed happenings, they had been drawn together by Katherine and her condition. They had joined hands to try to help her. All during Katherine's visit Marian, for the first time since the *Ourpas* episode, had really opened and talked and circulated with him. Now, suddenly, she was closed again, masked, remote.

She was irritable. Trifles bothered her. She tried not to be and that made it worse. She found fault. She tried to check herself - and became bitterly critical. John bore with her.

She sat at her table and tried to write. Images of the trees and Katherine and herself rushed through her. She struggled against them. They whirled around like a mad obsession. "I can't work," she cried.

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"Don't try to," John advised. "Take the morning off. I'll put
a chair outside for you."

"I'm sorry," she said, giving him a broken sad smile. "I don't
feel well this morning. You are so kind. You were so good to Kather-
ine."

"Can I do anything else?" he asked.

She shook her head. He left her by herself on the porch in the
sun.

The sun meant nothing. She was not aware of it. The mountains,
the valley, the flower garden, the birds - nothing. The images raced
in her mind, absorbed her. Katherine, broken, in a hospital. Kath-
erine, who had married for love, who had borne a love child - des-
erted by her husband, tortured and destroyed by life, condemned to
an inferno of endless futile suffering. To him who hath, it shall be
given. To him who hath not, it shall be taken away even that which
he hath. Oh, it were better to kill oneself. It were better to live
as those lived who hated life. If you hated life then life could
not harm you. If you hated it and believed nothing and wanted nothing
and struggled for nothing it would not hound or persecute you. To
hate life was the way to be immune to its hate. To struggle for
nothing was the way to be immune to its destruction. Over and over
these thoughts went - and the feelings, they worked at her biting
in like acid until she felt charred and burnt like the body of a
suicide.

She saw herself bearing a love child. "No!" she cried. "I can't!
I won't! I will kill myself first!"

All at once, unexpectedly, she felt, "I love John." She felt it

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deeply, down to the very roots and base of her and through all her
body and all her being. "O, I love him. I can't see myself without
him. If we are together, I can't see without a child. I must live.
John must live. We love. We must love. We must have our baby. John,
I will! You are strong. Save me. O, love and help me and I will
struggle to help myself. I will."

Impulsively she ran into the house and said to him, "You are so
kind. You are so good, John." He reached up to kiss her but she
quickly withdrew.

Once back on the porch the other thoughts and emotions arose. She
was thrown into a desperate conflict. She was in torment.

A chill off-sea wind whipped around the sides of the house. The
sea pounded angrily. She sat there locked in a chair on the hard
stone porch. She would not go in. She felt she could not. If she
left the chair she did not know what she might do.

She envisioned herself as one of the driven struck trees of
Point Goros. One of the trees was Katherine. Another, strong and
dark but whipped and struck and tortured all the same, was John.
Others were their friends. All of their friends were there, all who
loved and had faith in life, cursed, anchored, borne upon by the
screaming gales of the world's hate and vengeance.

"O, pity me! O, help me! Somebody help me!"

Later, in a daze, she got up and made her way into the house.
John was at his table writing. She asked him what time it was. He
gave her a searching troubled glance. She was afraid he was going
to speak. Hastily she went into the kitchen and prepared lunch. It
was for him. She did not want any, anything. Would he excuse her?
She felt like lying down.

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In her room she tossed on the bed. She sat upright and stared
before her. She saw her face in the mirror and stifled a scream. The
thing suddenly swept from her control. The conflict possessed her.
The torture possessed her. The images obsessed her, swirling and
racing around and around. How long could she bear it?

"O, pity me! O, somebody help me!"

She felt beyond the reach of pity and help.

Once she heard John's voice asking if she didn't want to come in
and sit by the fire. It was foggy outside and chill in the house.
She might catch cold. He had built a roaring blaze of pitch-pine
logs especially for her.

"No," she answered.

Still later she saw his form at the door. "What?" she asked.

"I thought you might be sleeping. I've got to go into town, you know. I thought you might like to go with me. Put on your heavy coat. The ride will do you good."

"No," she answered. "You go - no, don't go! John, stay with me!"

"Are you sick?" he asked, quickly bending over her.

"No," she said. "I'm all right. You go. I'll be all right till
you return. Please go, John."

He kissed her. She responded barely. Her eyes closed. He was
tucking the blanket about her. She heard his voice, "I'll be back in
a jiffy." She heard the door close as he left. The garage doors
were opened. The car was started. It backed out and then she heard it
purring away down the road.

She sprang up. Her eyes were wild.

"I can't bear it," she cried. "I can struggle no more. I'll go

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insane. I'll kill myself. O, you who would not pity me. O, you who
would not help me. O, you who would not let me live as I must live
if I am to live. I hate you! I hate myself. I'll kill you and myself
and life and love! Come kill me!"

They heard her. A long time they had been waiting for this. Glee-
fully they swept through the fog from the sombre shrouded hills and
gathered on the beach and swayed and chanted:

Marian, sweet Marian, come,
Come dance with us,
Come to our drum,
Drum, drum,
Ye, ye, yeeeee!
You are one of us,
You are one of us,
Come Marian, come,
Ye-i-o-u-um, ye-i-o-u-um!

She dashed from the house and ran through the fog.

Her breath came fast. Her heart pounded. She had to stop. She
almost sank down. "John, John!" she cried. "I love you. I love our
baby. John, you are so good. O, save me!"

But again she started running towards the sea, towards the pounding
of the drum.

On the mound she sat and again cried for John. "I love you. O,
save me!"

The pounding in her heart, the pounding on the beach - she was
frenzied that they meet, these sounds, that her heart beat the beach,
that the waves pound her and drown her and relieve her agony and let

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her be one with the figures dancing to the drum, conjuring her near-
er and nearer them.

She struggled to her feet and plunged on. Down the mound she flew,
Her hair, loosened, was streaming. The loose sand slowed her. She
sank. Her hands clutched her breast and throat. She was choking,
gasping. The instant her voice could cry she cried for John.

Again she started on, but crawling, crawling towards the beach.
But all at once she lost her sense of direction. Where was the beach?
Where were the waves? Through the fog she could not see them. The
drum sounds seemed to be coming from every way. But she went on.

Each time she stopped she called for John.

He, having quickly finished the business in Caromb, was speeding
back towards Gull House. The fog, the picture of Marian in the house
alone, deeply disquieted him and urged him on. In one of the stores
he had chanced upon Miss Roberts. Not for ages had he seen her. And
she, with characteristic abruptness and candour had simply said to
 him, "How do you do? We haven't seen each other for a while. I
have been away. I am glad you are still here. I was a horrid old
woman to say those things that night. Come and see me soon."

John was eager to tell Marian this. It would help to make her
feel better. It would remove a bone from her throat. Ever since the
night of that reading when Miss Roberts had delivered herself of those
inexplicably hostile comments, giving them one of their most un-
pleasant experiences in Caromb, Marian had hated her - and had not
wanted to hate her because she had been so kind to them at first. He
hoped the news he now had to tell would be a step towards a recon-
ciliation, towards making feel better in general.
her

He found the door open. He was sure he had closed it. The fire was

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still burning brightly. He tip-toed into her room, expecting to find
her asleep. A chill shot through him. Electric currents jetted up
his spine. "Where in the name of heaven is she? Marian!" he shouted.
He ran towards the bathroom fearing she had taken sick in there. He
dashed out onto the porch and called. Then, prompted by something un-
known to him, he sped to the road and up the mound. He could see
nothing. He shouted her name.

He fancied he heard her calling him. Wildly he flew down the mound
and drove through the sand. "Marian! Marian!"

"John! O, John!" he heard.

He rushed in the direction he thought her voice came from. "Marian!"

There was nothing but fog - and the pounding of the waves, and the
fog, once grey, was now dusky and quite impenetrable.

"So, devils you!" he shouted. "You think you are going to get her!"

He ran again, wanting to reach the hard sand near the undertow. If
she got caught in that as he had, it was all over. But it was not
over yet. He had heard her voice. He did not know where he was runn-
ing. All sense of direction had left him. The drum beats came from
deeply into all ways. Nevertheless, hoping to run across her, he ran and called
and shouted.

He slowed down. He was almost winded.

Suddenly something bumped him and sank into his arms. "John," she
cried, barely retaining consciousness. "Dear, darling," he cried and
pressed her against him. He felt terrific strength. He lifted her and
began bearing her away.

All at once he felt a wave lap his feet. He drew back quickly. Even
with her in his arms he almost lept back, his heart pounding furious-
ly. "Not yet, you devils!" he shouted. "Not yet. No, not now. Not

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ever?" He fancied he heard satanic voices laughing as they floated away.

Broken by the sea,

He faced directly about and started off. Soon there was loose sand beneath his feet. It was more difficult going but he knew he was heading in the right direction. He felt elated. He felt triumphant, as though again he was winning, they, John and Marian, two in love, were winning a decisive victory over the livid legions of the earth and air.

He climbed what he knew to be the mound. Tenderly he placed her her on the earth to rest himself. He straightened up. He felt mighty. He extended an arm, fist clenched, and cried, "Victory for John and Marian!"

Then, swiftly, an altogether different feeling arose in him until it filled him completely. His triumphant expression *passed* changed. Slowly he lowered his arm. He lifted his head far back. He extended his arms and hands down beside him, palms out. "Thy will, not mine, be done," he said. "Thy power. Not my power. With thee all things are possible. With me... I thank thee, humbly I thank thee."

He lowered to his knees beside Marian.

And on the mountain south of the valley high above the fog the being-figures gathered to chorus out into the serene world:

John, Marian, two in love,
Have come, struggling, sinking,
Struggling, rising, lifting up
To the faith of faith,
To the love of love,

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XIX

They awoke in the morning, the coal bright-haze morning of clear
and misty things, the forward-gleaming morning. Their mood was
serene, tender, singing. They arose and opened the French windows.
Sunshine washed and warmed the earth. The pine trees were like
torches. They saw the valley curving in and the hills folding down,
far far away. They saw vast shoulders of earth, the giant mountains,
covered with primeval verdure sloping to the sea. The sea, bright blue
like the sky, lifted wave after wave, on-coming, to break on the
beach. Across the bay near a cove was a fringe of white where the
rocks made foam. Behind the rocks was an arm of land and beyond the
wind-blown arm, towering above it, were the stark high ranges brow-
ing the coast to the region south. They sensed great land and some-
thing vast and spiriting. With consciousness blended and translucent
they experienced morning Caromb.

"How very beautiful," said Marian. His arm was around her. She
leaned her head on his shoulder, holding him.

"You are beautiful," he said, and kissed her. "The stone blocking
the entrance of the cyclop's cave has been rolled back. Stark,
lyrical, and magnificent, oh, thou, purgatorial church of Caromb."

They dressed. He put on a bright colored jacket, her first gift
to him. She wore a golden dressing gown which matched her golden
hair and flowed with soft regality about her. Thaxday She prepared
breakfast. He made a fire. It was not really needed, the air was so
balmy, but he made it anyway, saying that the hearth deserved bright-
ness on this morning. The spacious day-bright living-room was very
bright.

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"Food is good," he said simply. They had been eating. Now they paused. She reached over and held his hand. All of her seemed coming flowing to him - Marian, demure, regal, molten, luminous. Only for a short while could he gaze into her eyes. If longer, *their* beauty would have overwhelmed him. He smiled and shook his head.

"What?" she asked. "Why do you look sad?"

"You know what they say," he replied. "Great beauty evokes great sorrow in all that *their* breaths - the sorrow of remembrance, the instant quickening of a memory of the splendid existence man once had but since has lost."

He threw back his head and laughed softly.

"What now?" she asked. She smiled.

"I don't know."

He continued laughing, laughing and shaking his head. Neither did she know, but *she*, too began softly laughing. They both laughed - and so strangely that tears came into their eyes.

They resumed eating. When she brought in his second cup of coffee she placed it on the table and then went behind him, playfully pinned his arms, and kissed his hair. He raised his head. She lowered her lips to his.

Later she filled the house with fresh gatherings of flowers.

John said he thought he would stretch out on the couch for a while. He felt like stretching. "Our first complete happiness in Caromb," he said. She drew up a chair beside him and they held hands. *(one)*

"It is delicious to rest," he said. His voice was low and clear. He sighed deeply.

She nodded, and sighed too.

"It is a new sensation," he went on. "For the first time in my

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life I feel I am profoundly resting, and rest is delicious. It really is. Perhaps never before have we really worked and undergone such stretching - and such pressure. I realize it now - ever since our arrival here, the pressure, the internal compression, physical and psychological, has been terrific. That which makes Caromb relentless has been upon us too, as if we were pine trees. It is released now - and now...

He sighed deeply again. He smiled into her eyes. She smiled into his. She was glowing.

He took deep breaths, profound breaths. His lungs and diaphragm expanded until it seemed that air, delicious air, were finding and penetrating each atom of his body. "Now I love to breathe," he said. "It is as though I am taking the first air of my life."

His body lay upon the couch, his entire happily relaxed dead-weight. Yet his body was not heavy. It was light. It was as if his substance were sinking into and blending with the substance of the couch, and both were lifting. To describe it he told her he had the same sensation as that experienced when he had seen a magician levitate a man. "And a bed is an amazing thing," he added.

And so for several days they rested, intimately, happily, experiencing a subdued and yet vivid and quite intense well-being. They sunned on the porch, both wearing bathing suits. Sometimes they slept. Sometimes they took strolls along the outer drive around the point and on in the direction of Jordon's place.

Often before they had seen others walking by their windows, striding slong the coast roads and along by-ways, obviously enjoying it. Only now were they discovering how delightful it was to walk in Caromb. The days were open and glorious. The evenings were hidden and

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219

mysterious. Even when the sky clouded over there was brisk adventure in it. A drizzle of rain in their faces - they strode along, John buttoning his jacket and thrusting his hands in his pockets, Marian with one hand holding the folds of her coat snugly over her, with the other holding his arm. Their blood coursed and tingled. Once they got soaking wet and had a fine time. There was always a fire in the hearth to greet their returns.

"Caromb is beautiful," Marian would say. "It is different now. I feel we are just seeing it. It is quite true that we haven't seen this much of it before. We were sort of locked in our house."

"Truly," he would answer, "it is beautiful. It is sombre, too. I still feel that. I don't think it is in me, only. It is out there also. Sombre - but with a difference - sombre beautiful Caromb. These will always be my words for it."

Sometimes as they were going along the sea front they would hear seals barking, and, on rounding a bend, they would see the sleek fellows, a group, a family of them, riding the waves near the shore but out a safe distance from the breakers; seals floating, their sleek dark heads pointing landward but alert for fish; xix seals slipping under water, flashing, sporting about - and the barks. "What a life they have," John would say, "those hearty, lusty, jovial fellows. And there is nothing to molest or prey upon them. They are kings - and all of them are jesters."

Often they would see men fishing from the rocks. Abalones were in season now. John thought he might try his hand, especially if Arthur should turn up with the equipment.

Now and again they passed other people walking. Not once did they run into anyone they knew. The outer world of Caromb, indeed the

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outer world in general, seemed to have completely withdrawn, leaving them inviolable in their happy personal existence. It was as if the world said, "You have had enough for a time. I will go off and Leave you. Do not bother about me. Do not even think of me, unless you wish. You will be provided for and kept secure. After a while I will drop in to see you again. For now - I am off - and you - forget me."

For over a week they came in contact with no one, not even over the phone, save those they traded with in town. Even when they went into town, even in the post office where the entire populace gathered for mail twice a day - no one they knew.

They needed no one, not even to fill Gull House. They - John filling himself, Marian filling herself, the two of them fulfilling each other - they filled it. "The unbelievable has happened!" he exclaimed one night. "We are inhabiting this hitherto stubbornly unyieldingly empty place! We won't mention that gabled roof nor the balcony nor the doors nor the entire second floor and those queer high angles. They are not ours. Let them take care of themselves. But we have claimed and given our atmosphere to all this," and he swept his arm, "to all this that is ours. This, my dear, is our place - at last. It is, truly, our home in Caromb."

Whereon, he said that as a sign of their possession he thought they ought to give it another name, their name for it. "Moreover," he added, "we will no longer be gulled in it, and I think we ought to signify that too." Marian put her mind to work. At length he said, "Let's call it simply Redwood. I like that best."

"So do I," she agreed.

So Gull House became Redwood.

When he ordered things he would say, "Please send that to J.

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XX

John felt zest, a new spring of life. His mind was so clear and active that it amazed him. Indeed everything in him, his entire person and being, felt and was cleared and cleansed.

"Purgatory," he said to her one afternoon as they sat on the porch steps gazing at the valley, the hills folding down and far away, and the giant mountains, green, with dark undertone.

"I feel that way," she answered. "Now I feel we are out of it."

"Well," he said reflectively, "it was a strange pattern, wasn't it?"

"Very strange," she agreed.

"I've been thinking about it," he continued, "and it has struck me as being the most clear-cut example of how fate works I've ever seen or heard of - the way in which factors are handled and grouped and designed in order to bring certain definite happenings to pass."

"Fate is character, isn't it?" she asked.

"Yes, I suppose so. One's fate is one's conditioning. The pattern of one's life springs out of one's conditioning. That's one way of looking at it. It seems to me, however, that fate includes both the person and the conditions of life he passes through. It is something more than his determination. It is also the determination of all the factors which impinge upon him. One's conditioning may cause and explain what he does. But it does not cause and explain the thousand and one things which, at definite times and places, step forward from the external world, and, as if choosing him, rain upon him and do things to him. The person together with his conditioning is one

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thing. Precedented and unprecedented external factors - these, taken
together, constitute a second thing. Fate is still a third thing. It
is that which controls the flowings, the relationships, and the
reciprocal effects of all the other factors including the person. I
don't suppose I'm stating it any too clearly. It is not yet clear to
me. I am speaking of something I've glimpsed, not of something I've
grasped and clearly understand. It has to do with the reality of
the movement of situations, of situations and events so intricate,
so complex, and, in truth, so vast, that as my thought tries to move
forward to comprehend it I find myself thinking in terms of nothing
less than the entire movement and the myriad inter-movements of nothing
less than the entire body of mankind."

He paused and smiled. She smiled too. "I don't understand," she
said, "but perhaps I will. Go on."

He took second breath and continued. "The key idea is comparatively
simple. It has to do with the fact that there is no such thing as an
isolated individual; with the reality that the simplest unit of life
is not an individual but a sufficiently complex situation in which
any given individual is inextricably related to other individuals.
For years I have been thinking in terms of the life-pattern of a
person. Now I am trying to think in terms of the life-pattern of
a situation, of a group, of the given person plus all who are related
to him and to whom he is related. The need to do this has somehow
arisen from my glimpsing of the way things worked out for us here
in Caromb.

"Go back to the beginning, for example. I had, as you will remember,
a strong urge not to stay in Caromb. I had a sense that something I

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did not want would happen to us in this place. I wanted to fly from
it; and, left to myself, that is, if I had been alone, I doubtless would
have flown. But you wanted to stay. You liked it. You did not want to
break up house and move on again. So we stayed. But even you would not
have wanted to stay if I had not been along. In brief, it took the
two of us to actualize the staying of either one and both of us. You
see that?"

It
She nodded. "That is interesting and strange."

"And Miss Roberts played a part," he continued. "If I had not
known of her, if I had not called her, if she had not been so kind -
again, we may not have stayed. The experience with that ghost-keeper
of that rooming-house might have driven us off. But, on the other hand,
if it had not been for that ghastly episode I might not have been
spurred to call Miss Roberts. In any case, Miss Roberts - and perhaps
the landlady too - were, together with us, one of the important units
of the situation moving us, moving itself, so that we took up resid-
ence here and became anchored.

"Gull House, just this house, played a part. We were led to it. In part, you did not want to take it. I persuaded you. If you had been by yourself you never would have taken it. Neither would I. It would have seemed too large for just one person. Well, it took the two of to take Gull House.

"Then see how it worked with Dunney and the publicity. Here our
roles were reversed, and you were the strongly resisting one. You
resisted Dunney as strongly as I resisted Caromb. I, on the contrary,
I let myself walk into it and I drew you in along with me. And Dunney
became an important unit of the situation moving us to have the ex-
periences we did have. Without him there would have been no publicity,

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and without the publicity - well, you know how different it would
have been. In the *situation*, then, Dunney, as necessary factor, was
as important as ourselves. It took the three of us, plus an exceed-
ingly complex set of factors including the Mala press and the general
condition of the whole country, to make possible and bring about the
publicity-experience. I could go on and make a diagram of our entire
experience here - the arrival and the effect of Katherine, other
people and other events - and it would all show that though we may
have seen and felt things as if we were the chief and only actors,
the truth is that it was a complex situation, of complex inter-
relationships and effects, which included us, but us together with
others as necessary and as important as ourselves.

"Thus, for example, though I might say, "I did it," or you might
say, "I did it," or both of us might say, "We did it. It happened to
us," these sayings would signify but partial truths and they might
easily be altogether false. Nor did Dunney do it. Nor did the Mala
press. Nor did it happen only mainly to Dunney or to our friends ~~KKK~~
or to Paula. No, the reality is that you, myself, Miss Roberts,
Dunney, the press, and factors of such a complex nature that we
cannot even name them - all, all of these, in a word, Life, life
did it - and it happened to life.

"What you and I did was to struggle with ourselves, each one with
himself and herself, to affirm and maintain the best and the most
valuable parts of ourselves. To some extent we helped each other to
struggle. All the rest, even the working out of the various processes
within ourselves, was done by life. We, by our effort, by our positive
attitude, by the stuff in us which has formed owing to previous
struggles and sufferings, we made possible <del>the</del> working out; but the

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actualizing of the working out was done by the nature of human beings, that is, by Nature or life as it exists and functions in us - and in all those others.

"To realize all this is to realize that there is such a thing as, not only a group-life, but a vast inextricably interwoven body of life, the life of mankind, the pattern of the life of mankind, of which any given individual life-pattern is a dependent, not an independent, flowing. I can't begin to tell you how much this realization means to me, or where it will lead. But this seems true - I have a new dimension of thought, perhaps a new state of being in which the false separatistic ego has been eliminated in favor an awakened sense of myself, and all selves, as particles of the human essence, as units of the human consciousness - and this, I suppose, is as near as I have ever approached to experiencing the universal brotherhood of man."

He paused and smiled. He lit a cigarette. He gazed at her. "Strange amazing forces have been at work," he said. He gazed at her, thanking, deeply thanking her for her share - opening and permitting himself to show his new feeling of dependence.

She felt it too, warmly, strongly. "I have the courage to feel and experience and express it," she thought wonderingly. To him she said, "I used to think the greatest courage was needed to be independent. Something has changed and awakened in me too. Now all at once I realize what my struggle has been. I was fighting, though married to you, to preserve my intact as I had always been. Years ago I had to fight, I suffered to win independence from the world round about me, from my family, from the usual dominant ways and values. I needed to, I had to. I still believe that the fight and my

215 227

aim were necessary and good - for that time, for myself in those
circumstances. Without them, I would not now be able to have *km* and to
value all we have and value. But I carried the fight over into my
life with you, and there it was not needed and it was misplaced. I
somehow knew it, but I could not let go. I felt that to let go would
mean my defeat. Every time you did something which threatened to break
down my independence - which, as I now see, was merely my separatistic
ego, my sense of self-sufficiency and self-importance, me, me, me -
I closed, drew back, and began feeling, falsely feeling, how happy
I had been when there were only mother and myself and I had my own
little room and everything was done to please me. I wanted to go
back to that life, matriarchal I suppose you would call it. I had my
own money. I could spend it as I wished. I could do as I wished."

"Then," said John smiling, leaning forward, "then there were times
when you resented me, when it was a personal thing between us?"

"Yes," she said. "I couldn't help it sometimes. Then I would
struggle not to feel it because I knew I loved you and wanted you
more than anything else in the world. And then I would feel that I
shouldn't have to struggle so. I'd feel, too, that you were demanding
of me things which should not be demanded of a woman. I'd see you as
a tyrant. I'd question your motives and tell myself that you were like
any other man who simply wanted power over a woman, over his wife. I'd
see it all taking place on the competitive level - with you stronger
than myself - with myself being defeated. And your superior strength,
which I really wanted you to have and if you hadn't had it I would
have despised you and punished you for nothing having, I'd hate. I'd
try to defeat you by closing myself, walling myself off. Only, I
didn't do it. It was done in me. I couldn't help myself. The publicity

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intensified everything and brought more problems until I felt I was losing all I valued most and I felt I could not stand it any longer. And then Katherine came and I identified with her. I saw all of us cursed and tortured in an inferno like the trees of Point Goros. But do you know when I began changing?"

"When?" he asked.

"First, that morning when you limped and I thought you were hurt. Something dimly opened in me and I was able to realize, just a little, that you had suffered too."

"Before that you hadn't realized it?"

"No, I was so locked in myself that I only felt my own suffering and pitied myself. I saw the publicity striking only me. I saw the world assailing only me. There were times when I hated this me and despised this me, but I couldn't do anything about it, and even the hate was also concerned with me. It was terrible. I saw you as strong. I even felt that you, who liked to battle life, were enjoying it - and sacrificing me for the joy of the battle. Of course I was struggling all the time and there were times when I'd feel I had conquered the thing. But when I saw you limp that morning... I seemed to sense, too, that you had changed, that something big had happened in you. Had it?" Her eyes gazed into him.

He smiled and nodded.

"What?" she asked.

He shook his head. "Just things in line with all we now know x has happened. Something like your experience on the beach - the final collision of a false John, the final collision and smash of a false John against a real universe."

They paused.

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John raised his head and said, "I sensed something new in you that morning when I awoke and saw you standing over me. You looked as if you had worked things out. You were so noble and stately, so totally different from the Marian of the day before, as I was different from the John of the day before. But even then you wouldn't speak with me. You could not come out."

"No," she said, "I could not, not then. When Katherine was here I realized it again. You were so good to her. Though I did identify myself with her defeat I also went out to her and to you. She drew me out to her. You drew me out to you and again I realized you had suffered and I felt very close to you."

"So I felt it," he said. "And that was all the more reason why I was so troubled and shocked suddenly to find you, a few days later, in the most tortured locked state I'd ever seen you in. What happened?"

"Oh, I pictured Katherine in the hospital and I could not get the picture out of my mind and then all the other things rushed on me until I felt I would either kill myself or go mad. All of the good feelings were blotted out, my feelings for you. No, that is not true. All of the good in me was also intensified. That was what taxed me so - the two things in such terrific combat. But it seemed that nothing could come of the good until after that horrible wonderful purgation on the beach. Only then could I meet you and show you and be what was best."

He nodded and mused, "Yes, values had to wait upon the destruction of the valueless. You could not meet me until the big thing had been resolved. They often say, you know, that it is just the other way around. Well, sometimes it is. Sometimes a personal reconciliation

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or fulfillment opens the way for the other. But in your case, in our cases, the larger matter, that which had to do with the fundamentals of life, our attitudes and processes as regards basic things, love, faith, fear, egotism, defeat, helplessness, and so on, had to come first. Then the other followed."

"It has been amazing," she said. "No one could have made me believe that in real life such wonderful things could have grown out of such apparently destructive experiences. It gives one a new sense of what is possible, doesn't it? Think of me fearing, when the publicity first broke upon us, think of me fearing the awful things the world could do to a person. Well, it can. But it can do amazing things too."

"We sink to rise," he said, "- which shows the difference between purgatory and inferno. Earth-conditions, and the conditions in oneself, in a word, life - life is inferno if we do not work out of it. Then we are tortured and we bear no fruit unchangeably. Life is purgatory if we do work out of it. Then we suffer and we bear the fruits of suffering. If we do not work out of it it is inferno. If we do work out of it it is purgatory - while the working out lasts. Katherine, for you, and Point Goros, are symbols of the former. Caromb, for us, is a symbol of the latter."

"What more is there for us here?" she asked.

He answered, "I don't quite know." He thought a while. "We were put through shock after shock, shot after shot, all aimed by an unerring marksman at our various basic weaknesses until we were stripp-ed and completely bared - and, also, until we were energized to over-come them, some of them to some extent. What more? Perhaps now we will be covered again, but with different material, a finer stuff. Let us hope. The following days will tell. The situation is still

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moving to complete itself and ourselves."

Caromb - and John and Marian still in it - on earth, the deep earth, the dark earth, blocks of elements, events, and dry fire. The body of earth speeds and the body of man is carried along - man, struck, tortured, striving, suffering, sinking, rising up, trying to exist and to make existence life.

Be with us always, earth,

Let us not fall below,

But hold our struggling feet

As they ache upon you.

"I'm so very glad," said Marian.

One day John happened to mention Frank Williams. "I wonder who he was. He was happening to him and how his club is going. I'd like us to come."

"Go and ask him," she said. "I'll tell you what, let's ask Frank and Alice and Howard!"

"Simply," he responded. "It has been a long time since we've seen Alice and Howard, really we've been shamefully off by ourselves. From the very first we liked the brain so much, we went to see them. They came to see us - and there it ended, wave for the wave. We've given them as they wanted by on their way to the beach.bury, let's also ourselves. We'll get a time reserve and I'll be back in a moment, and something special. I'll get out that wave..."

"You are invited to dinner at Redwood House tomorrow," he said over the phone.

Marian was waiting came, their guests arrived, "What's happening?"

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XXI

Both started work again. They worked well, vividly, intensely.

A letter came from Katherine saying she was out of the hospital and feeling very much better. The enforced rest had been just what she needed. Alice, having been placed in a private school where she was getting excellent care and supervision, was no longer a burden. Walter had not changed but she had. She had stopped torturing herself. She had definitely, within herself, released him. Fresh life was springing up, and new possibilities. She would write of them soon. Her future did not seem hopeless now.

One day John happened to mention Frank Williams. "I wonder what's been happening to him and how his club is going. I'd like to see him."

"So would I," she said. "I'll tell you what. Let's ask Frank and Hilda to dinner. We might have two more. Alice and Howard?"

"Surely," he responded. "It has been a long time since we've seen Alice and Howard. Really we've been shamefully off by ourselves. From the very first we liked the Trains among the best. We went to see them. They came to see us - and there it ended, save for the waves we've given them as they passed by on their way to the beach. Surely, let's stir ourselves. We'll get a fine roast beef and I'll cook it. You cook something special. I'll get out that wine..."

"You are invited to dinner at Redwood Friday evening," he said over the phone.

Friday evening came. Their guests arrived. "What's happened?"

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asked Williams, glancing at their jolly bouyant faces, and also at
the elaborately laid table. He smiled. "Is it Christmas? Is it some-
body's birthday? Have you been left a fortune? And when did this come
to be called Redwood? When you phoned us we were on the verge of
thinking you had left town without even telling us goodby. No one
has seen you. And here we find you celebrating."

"What has been happening to you?" asked John. "What about the
class? Howard, how would a cocktail strike you? You drink, don't you?"

"When I can and it is good," smiled Howard.

They drank cocktails. They ate roastbeef and drank wine. The
club was under way, Frank said. It had had two meetings. Over twenty
members. Announcements had been mailed to them.

"We received them," said John.

Marian asked Howard about his paintings. He had been working, he
said. "What we saw were so fine," said Marian, "that I want to find
buyers for them. I wish I knew of someone. I want all of them my-
self." Howard told of exhibit he was soon to have in Mala. He
did not expect to sell anything. "Those of the children,"
she went on, "I wish I could buy them. How are the real children?"
she asked Alice. Alice replied that they were as rosy and as trouble-
some as ever. She added, "They do things to me that if anyone else
did they would be put under arrest." There was a general laugh.

Hilda had read one of Marian's books. "It is splendid and vivid
and powerful," he said. "I have never read such vivid writing, and
the way you describe characters...well, if it is a good thing to
see oneself I wish you'd put me in a novel."

After dinner they drew chairs before the fire and drank and
talked and laughed. The subject of Gull House, now Redwood, came up.

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Marian described how they had felt in it at first, the creaks, the pops, the vacancy, the dread of night, how beautiful it was by day. John told and joked about the murderer-on-the-balcony episode. The others laughed, glanced around, and agreed that it was a sort of spooky place. Marian went on, "You know, I couldn't get it out of my head that people were living in those rooms on the second floor. They do look inhabited, don't they?" Everyone turned to gaze. Their expressions were queer. "Those doors," said Marian. Everyone nodded. "Yes," she said, "I feel it even now, though I'm not at all frightened. I sort of feel they are our roomers. I hear them switching on lights. Every time I have to go to the bath-room at night I expect to see one of them in there before me." She laughed.

"How did you stand it?" asked Hilda.

"I don't know," said Marian. "We did. Now we don't mind. We like it, even at night."

Williams told of other strange houses in Caromb. Alice recounted a hot encounter she had had with Mrs Stephens over communism. She and Howard belonged to the club. Caston and his wife were mentioned. Miss Roberts. Dunney and the local papers. At length it was noticed that, spooks or no spooks, and whatever the future of communism in Caromb, Howard had dozed off in his chair.

Several days later John suddenly left his typewriter, and, approaching her, asked, "Listen to this and tell how you like it." Marian thought it would be something in connection with his manuscript. He began humming. It was a song. It was music. It was music which had been moving to the surface ever since he had extricated himself from the undertow, especially since he and Marian had come together. Her face changed expression. "You like it?" he asked.

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"Oh, very much," she said.

"I think I'll stop writing," he announced. "I am going to COMPOSE. I feel as if I were all rhythm, pure rhythm, pure tone - nothing else. Words can't convey it. Not intellectual words, at any rate. For the first time in nine years I am going to compose. Nine years ago, you know, I was hailed as one of the 'promising' young composers. Since then, so far as they know, I've been silent. Well, we'll see. I think I'll phone and find if I can rent a piano. How would you like a piano in Redwood?"

"Very much," she said. "Do it. Do it now, and don't stop until -"

"I won't," he said. He ran to the phone.

So a piano came to Redwood. John composed. He was trying to catch and convey, not the feeling about a thing, but the thing itself, its stark pure essence. His music filled the room. The gabled roof and the high queer angles over the balcony were filled. Marian could not work. She did not mind. It was herself too that his music was expressing - the she(ren) substance, surging, revolving, sinking, ascending, of their experiences in Caromb.

It was powerful. It was soft. It was baffled. It was struggling. D BOOM sweeping to close them in. Love, and the death of love. Faith, and the death of faith. Strident egos, competitive, clashing. Men preying on men. Remoteness. Something sombre and terrifying. Gangster themes. The clacking of the press. The yapping of word-wolves. Songs of demons. Chants of saints. The struggle of life to grow. The terrific night. The battle of man with all that would destroy him. The victory. Humility, thankfulness. The rebirth of love. The rebirth of faith. The rolling back of the stone from the exit of the

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cyclop's cave. Reconciliation and ascension. And the great full chords
of a prayer at the end. Purgatory...inferno...the purgatorial church
of Caromb...

On and on John went. "I'll organize later," he said. "Now I must put
things down as they come to me."

One evening there was a rap on the door. John answered. His first
surprise was to see Arthur. Arthur had turned up again. His second
and greater surprise was to see Jura Marlow. Only a few hours ago she
had arrived in Caromb. She had located Arthur and asked him to pilot
her to see John and Marian first thing. John swept them in. Marian
came from her room. There was a happy meeting.

As with Arthur, they had known Jura in their world on the other
side far far beyond the valley. Indeed it had been through her that
they had met him. Through her, too, they had first heard of Caromb.
Jura felt that Caromb was one of the delightful spots on earth. She
had seen many of them and was in a position to judge. She travelled
a great deal - only, she did not travel as others did. She moved from
place to place with such apparent ease and grace that it was as if
she had a magic carpet. She was transported. Thus she had floated
into Caromb.

They took chairs by the fire. John got out wine to celebrate.

"Well," said Jura in her soft exquisite tone, "so here we are."
She smiled. She smiled happily. She was lovely, more lovely than when
they had last seen her. Some fine thing had happened. It was quite
evident. Her face was serene. Her dark eyes were luminous. She was
still delicate, but she seemed to have more strength, a deep quiet
strength and well-being.

She wanted to know how they liked Caromb. She had come to stay for

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several months. She would take a house, perhaps for the summer, perhaps for longer. In a week or so her husband would join her. Just now he was back east tending to business.

"Caromb," said John, "it is too great a thing to like or dislike. One must love or hate or fear it. It is sombre and beautiful. It is all you said it was, and more. It is a relentless place, Jura. Not one soft thing. Everything is stark and relentless and challenging. We've been swimming the relentless stream. And - would you believe it?" his eyes twinkled, "we have become besombered. We have been caroomed here - two besombered humans caroomed in Dadoom. Even Arthur deserted us. Thank God you have come."

Jura smiled. "That is why I love it," she said, "just because it is relentless and unpossessable. You either shrink to nothing or you expand to be as great as it is. You are fooling. You are not besombered, as you call it. I've never seen you and Marian look so well. You - you have changed," she paused to gaze at him. "I can't tell you what it is, not yet. I feel it. I feel it strongly. You are more like the John I knew years ago, more the poet, less the philosophical monk. I like it. It becomes you. And I don't know what you mean by caroomed but from the sound of it it must be distressing and I know neither of you are distressed."

"To be caroomed," he explained, laughing, "means to be cut off in a remote spot and have things happen to you of such a nature that when they have finished with you you have a deep need and a driving purpose to re-establish in a new way contacts with the great wide world."

They laughed. His gusto was infectious.

"Seriously," said Jura, "are you thinking of leaving soon?"

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Arthur too looked concerned. "I hope not. Now that Jura is here we can have some fine times together - that is, I hope we can." He glanced at Jura.

Marian turned to John. He answered, "We haven't decided yet. In fact, we haven't even discussed the matter. But I have a notion we'll be saying goodby to Caromb before so very long. On the other hand, I don't think anyone could really feel this place without feeling a pull to stay. It has its fascination, true enough. We've even looked at several places thinking we might buy."

"I wish you would," said Jura. "As soon as I get my house I want you to come to a house-warming dinner, just the four of us. We have much to talk about."

A few days later she phoned to invite them, giving directions for reaching the place.

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XXII

Jura's house was in the highlands, ~~situated~~ in a clearing on one of the dark green slopes which Browed the coast south of Caromb. To reach it they took the road to the Great Dadam and then branched off. On nearing it they were struck with surprise and wonder - this brilliant white formal dwelling suddenly showing up in the midst of untamed earth and foliage intensely green and dark, sombre and yet flaming. There was a high white wall with a gate. They entered the gate and found themselves in a sort of patio with gravelled walks, smooth green lawn, and a border of brightly colored flowers. Their garden at Redwood seemed wild, overrun, unkept, in comparison.

"Think of such a place being way in here," said Marian. "It is just like Jura to find it."

They knocked on the house door. Jura greeted them and showed them in.

The main room had high white walls and hand-hewn beams across the ceiling; soft deep chairs and lounges, a fireplace with brass fittings, ornaments of lacquer-work, tapestries, a grand piano, and a large gilded statue of the Buddha. Its west window gave a view of the sea, down, through tall pine trees.

Jura explained how she had obtained the house. It belonged to a musician. He had moved out to let her have it. This, as John had come to know, was often done in Caromb. It was one of the ways the permanent residents had of adding necessary sums to their dwindling incomes. Jura mentioned, by the way, that the musician wanted to drop in later to meet them. He had heard interesting things about the Andrews.

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They looked around. "How do you like it?" asked Jura.

Arthur smoked. He had seen the place before. There were not many houses in Caromb he had not seen.

"This hardly seems like Caromb," said John. "I miss the redwood, the creaks and cracks and pops - this is so solid and exotic - and I must say that for the moment I am glad to miss them. Nor do I seem quite like myself. Not for ages have we been in evening dress. Yet, on second thought, there is something strange about this house too. Despite all the exotic furnishings the country here comes in and dominates. One may see the Buddha but one feels Caromb, very much Caromb. How amazingly potent it is!"

Marian agreed with him. Then, chancing to glance through the tall window with the sea outlook, she suddenly recognized, off at a distance, the livid gull x dung rocks. She drew John with her. "Look," she whispered, "but I don't mind them now. I suppose Jura hasn't noticed them at all." She slipped an arm through his and they strolled back.

Now and again Jura left them to oversee events in the kitchen. This was the first meal to be prepared and served by her new cook and maid. She was hopeful but doubtful.

Something was in the air, a strangeness, a sparkle, something like anticipation. Marian especially was aware of it. It suggested that they all might just now be embarking on a voyage, a new adventure - these four people, old friends, but in each of whom, thus coming together in Caromb, there was a change so evident that they had to eye each other curiously and almost say aloud, "By god, I've never seen you before. That's new. I've never seen that. You are different, finely so. When did it happen? What brought it about? I know you and yet I find there are still many many things to see and know."

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Candles were lighted. The table was set near the tall window facing the patio. They took their places, Jura and Marian at the two ends, the men inbetween.

Jura talked, and as she talked they continued eyeing each other with wonderment. She told them of one of her first experiences with the house. She had been sitting by this window. She had seen a man in a policeman's uniform enter the gate and look around. Later she had asked the maid the meaning of his visit. The maid had explained that the man expected to be paid for patrolling the place. How much, Jura had asked. Two-fifty, the maid had said. What if I do not pay him? The place may be robbed. "So you see," Jura concluded, "there are rackets even here."

"Conditions are worse than I thought," she added, a shadow coming over her. "I mean business conditions in the large cities. I have had long letters from Burke. He says that men we know are losing all they have. They are sound business men, not speculators, not gamblers. Burke has been associated with them for years. Each day one of them drops out. It is very serious. Depression is one thing. The collapse of the very backbone of the system is quite another. Not long ago we met a man, one of the Rogers, who said he had lost a hundred and fifty million."

"Think of anyone having that much money," said Marian.

"Yes," said John, "that is what is happening to the big men. And the little men - Jura, not a single week has passed but what numbers of them have come to our out-of-the-way door asking for work. We have fed some of them. We have given a few money. But what is that? They smile sadly. They thank you. But the smile won't always be there. When it goes, something is going to happen in this country and it

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won't be pleasant."

"What has happened, John?" asked Jura. "How do you explain it?"

"It is the old story, I suppose. The world, believing it was pursuing the straight way up, now, suddenly, finds that it has been plunging down and is about to be destroyed by itself. It is the old story of the Frankenstein. We seem to have learned nothing from all the wreckages of civilizations previous to ours. Children acquire vices from their parents but painfully accumulated wisdom is not passed on. Each ship has to leave the same port without charts and sail to be wrecked on the same rocks."

"It is frightful," said Jura.

Later they grouped around the fire. Arthur preferred sitting on the floor. They talked and laughed. They circulated with the intimacy and freedom of a family group. Also, they continued gazing wonderingly at each other.

All at once Jura gave a happy laugh. "Let's do something," she suggested.

"What?" asked Arthur. "I'm ready."

"I don't know," said Jura, "just something. I'm in a mood for it. Why not the five of us when Burke returns do something that we would always remember?"

"Oh, fine," said Marian. "I'm in the mood."

And she was. She felt herself flowing with new-won movement out into a world made new. At the same time she had a picture of them, the four of them. They were in a cabin of a ship. The cabin was de-lightful. They were elegantly dressed in evening attire. Each one was enjoying it. The men smoked. The women talked. And all the while the ship, with a huge rent in its side, was sinking, sinking, all but

243 - 230

ready to take its final hissing plunge. But the image did not disturb her. The black wing, having brushed her, had passed on.

"All right," said John, "we will. But for what I have in mind there will have to be more than five, perhaps a dozen. We will assemble and embark on an adventure."

"What kind of an adventure?" asked Jura.

"Psychological," said John. "There is no other kind."

"But why a dozen?" asked Arthur. "Five would be plenty."

"Not for my idea," said John. "As the old saying has it, the more the merrier. We exist related to people whether we will or we won't. We can't escape having relationships with the vast network of the life of our times. It is simply a question whether we make them fruitful or they make us the reverse. I am proposing that we do they former, that we assemble some number of human beings like ourselves, people with similar qualities and values, form ourselves into a functioning body, and set forth on the only great adventure, that, namely, of productively experiencing all of the desirable possibilities of human life."

Marian joined forces with him.

"That sounds wonderful," said Jura.

Arthur resisted. Yes, he granted it would be a splendid thing if it could come about. But who were the other people to be? He had seen a fair number of the human kind in the course of his life but he had yet to find more than a very few he would want to work and live with.

"Ah, Arthur," said John, shaking his head, "so you vote to remain one of the country's frozen assets."

Later in the evening the matter of the publicity came up. John had wondered if it would. Jura said she had seen some of the press

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stories. She wanted to know how it had happened and how it had affected them.

John told the story briefly. "As for its effects," he said, "I do not yet know what the thing signifies for the world at large. Doubtless it was and is a symptom of the general wreckage we were speaking about. I do know this - the effects in us have been amazingly constructive. Not for anything would we have missed them. It was rough sailing for a while," and he turned to smile at Marian. "She is a good seaman," he said. "Yes, it stormed, both outside and inside of us. But - here we are."

"And you are very much here," Arthur affirmed. "I often wondered about you, but it was none of my business and so I didn't mention it."

"Thanks to all forces both high and low," said John, smiling. He changed his tone. "One point has just now come to me - the way we have dismembered life, strung it apart in a thousand pieces, and emphasized the pieces by exhibiting them. Take the matter which aroused them to take us for a ride. Take love, for example. From the way people regard and treat it you would think it was a disembodied entity, like a germ, which, on occasion, suddenly enters one's body and causes strange derangements and odd behavior. Or, on the other hand, they deify it - but in this case too they regard it as something separate from life. Of course it is not, not if it is in its normal condition. If two people love then love blends with the flowing of their lives and enters into each act of their relationship. True, now and again it does isolate itself, it is isolated and specialized, for special, pure, intense experiences. But on the

-232- 245

whole it is as much a part of one as one's breathing is. At least, so we have found it. And you?"

Jura nodded.

Arthur said, "No one knows what love is. I'm sure I do not. Each one has a different notion of it. As far as I am able to, I agree with what you say."

"And so," said John. "But our writers and our press and our preachers and our teachers and our movie directors will not have it so. They must tear it out - at least in words - and stress and advertize and exhibit it. This is why it is degrading and dying. It has been wrenched from its element and made into a thing to be preyed upon. This was the main and only danger, now that I look back upon it, that threatened us, the danger that our feeling for each other which had become well-placed in the general flowing of our lives would, owing to the effect of the publicity on us, be torn out and twisted into an inorganic thing."Well," he pauded, "there is this to be said for the situation - it has one fortunate aspect - that the majority of those who misused the word have, as Arthur said, not the faintest understanding of what the word really signifies. Their ignorance is our protection - and the protection, too, of the world's still more or less normal people. And life goes on."

Jura said, "If I could I would envy you, you and Marian. I always feel that those who are put through ordeals are fortunate, doubly fortunate if they come through them so splendidly. What are you doing now, both of you? Writing?"

"We were writing," said John.

Marian spoke. "John is composing. He is in music again. It is

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really wonderful. I've never heard anything like it."

"So that is it!" exclaimed Jura. "I told you. I knew something had happened. There is a piano. Won't you?"

"And so did I know," said Arthur. "We talked about it when we left your house the other night."

"And we talked," said John. "Something has happened to you, Jura, and to you, Arthur."

"We will take that up later," said Jura, smiling. "I want to hear what you have done. Must I ask again?"

"It is not finished," said John. "There is no structure yet, just fragments. But - of course. Surely I will."

He played. His reflective temper dropped away. Fire appeared. Soon he was absorbed, intense, dynamic. New things came to him. He jotted them down. "Sorry," he said, "but you have started me off."

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XXIII

Mrs Carter phoned. At last she phoned to apologize for not having called sooner, and to ask that they come to tea. All along she had wanted to see them again but her large x household and a sick child had prevented her. Wouldn't they come?

"What do you think of that?" said John. "Now the world begins coming to us."

"I've thought of her often," said Marian. "I'm glad."

They went.

She lived in a quaint redwood cottage on a corner a block north of Miss Roberts. Like all of the cottages it was unnumbered. Like all of them, too, it was surrounded by pine trees.

Inside they were surprised to find a gay buzzing party of ten or more young people none of whom they had met or even seen before. Caromb, a small village, was nevertheless large enough to house and, so far as they were concerned, hide, any number of folk, circles and circles. Mrs Carter introduced them.

The others evidently knew each other quite well. They spoke of personalities and events in Caromb and nearby places. They discussed the projects of the little theatre, made comments on the latest production. They included John and Marian in their fluent rapid conversation - as much as John and Marian could be included, they not having seen the last play, not even having been in the little theatre. They spoke of a benefit performance to be given that evening for a friend of theirs who was in the hospital. They were the young social set, much in the swing of the currents of Caromb, the teas, dinners, dances, parties. Yes, truly, there was a gay young

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248

circle in the sombre beautiful place.

Marian and Ethel Carter were together much of the time.

John liked the mother, Mrs Ware. He drew up a chair beside her and began talking. She cautioned him about overwork and advised that he rest for a while. "To rest," he said, "I'm afraid I'll have to leave Caromb."

"Do you find it stimulating here, a good place for creative work?" she asked.

"Quite," he said.

"So do I," she agreed. "I paint, you know. I go out every day. This is one of the reasons why we came here. For many years I've wanted to paint Caromb. I am doing the Jordon house now. I've done seascapes and landscapes and I don't know what."

John could believe it. She was alert and vital with twice the energy of either of her daughters.

Before they left, Ethel Carter took Marian into one of the rooms to see the children. They fell to talking about children and their care and doctors and maternity dresses and diet and exercises. "I'll tell you what," said Ethel, "I'll come to the Point tomorrow afternoon and we'll have a good walk - and talk - shall we?"

"I'd love to," said Marian.

The next day they went for their walk.

When Marian returned and she and John were alone she told him about all of it. Her voice was gay and lively. Her face was flushed, smiling. Ethel had recommended an excellent doctor. She had told her of certain exercises she ought to take. She had said she would look up the address of a store in Mala where Marian could buy all the things she needed.

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"But she asked me," Marian went on, "why I didn't make the dresses myself. I suppose I could. I hadn't thought of it. I've been waiting to buy them. I think I will. And I think I'll start making the baby clothes too." She paused, and a strangely luminous smile spread over her. "Ethel said she had several darling patterns at home. She will bring them to me."

"My, but you are full of it!" exclaimed John. "You like her, don't you?"

"Yes, very much."

"And you have - what shall we call it? - something like a new interest?" He glanced at her with a twinkling knowing look and laughed softly.

She ran to him and threw her arms about him and kissed him.

And so, from that time on, her new interest filled her days with happiness. She became absorbed in the making of the clothes, in bright picturings, in stirrings, in a new sense of living satisfaction and deep caring - in these, and in John and his music. Once she said to him, "I'm going to make a little cloak of satin. Whn't that be *xiao xiao* darling? What color would you like it to be?"

"A lovely yellow," he said promptly.

"Oh," she exclaimed, "that will be fine. And we'll line it with blue, a clear sky blue. Won't that be darling?"

"It will," he affirmed. "It will be royal."

They saw Ethel often, and her mother and sister.

One day Marian opened a letter. "It is from mother," she said. "She wants to know how much longer we will stay here. She wants us to come to Paula and be with her this summer."

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250

"Well," said John, "in another week our second month will be up.
How do you feel? Want to stay? Want to go?"

"How about you?"

"I feel we could live on here forever - and therefore we are free
to go, free to pod from the dark green shell of our Caromb. I guess
we had better go. Yes? If we motor back it will take us about eight
days. This will put us in Paula around the first of June. I don't
think we should arrive later. You will not be in as good a condition
to stand the strain of the trip. The last two or three months should
be tranquil and happy. We will be happy with mother in Paula. Yes,
we'll go."

At once he phoned the agent.

"Are you sorry?" she asked. "Are you glad?"

"Neither," he said, "yet I must say it will be a satisfaction to leave. Leaving will symbolize a definite ending and a definite new beginning - and the situation here will be in all ways rounded off."

They told their friends. Their friends were surprised. They had taken it for granted that John and Marian would at least stay through the summer. Some were sorry, Jura, Arthur, and Ethel especially.

Then things moved rapidly. They were caught in a whirl of activity
and of preparations for departure.

The word passed around that the Andrews were leaving. People whom
they had not seen, it seemed, for ages, dropped in. Mrs Jordon was
the first. She wore a plaid shawl. It flapped in the wind. She carr-
ied an walking stick. She was brisk and energetic as though she had
a thousand things to do - and was doing them. To them it was like
the sudden reappearance of a person known in another life in another

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world. They sat and talked amiably. They told her their period in
Caromb had been productive. They would surely come back someday
sometime.

Mr and Mrs Mason, people they had met several times, whom they had
liked, who had informally invited them to their house, one of the
stone houses on the sea front, whom they had casually asked to Gull
House - and nothing had come of it - they called to set a definite
time. John and Marian went and there re-met still others not seen
since the early days.

"Where have you been?" one person asked. "Surely not here in
Caromb."

"Yes," said John, "right here."

"And now you are leaving."

"I am afraid we are," he said.

"We are sorry," she said; and Mr and Mrs Mason wished them a good
trip and a return someday.

They called on Alice and Howard Train in Portello; and also on
Frank and Hilda Williams. Marian had wanted to take Jura to see
Howard's pictures but it hadn't worked out.

"What shall we do about Miss Roberts?" Marian asked. "We ought to
see her. We ought to show our appreciation of those first days. Yet
I feel it would be stiff and awkward. That's the trouble."

"We could write her," said John. "I'd like to send her a nice
present."

"Let's do," she agreed.

They chanced upon Dunney on the main street. He was still bouncing
and bubbling, enjoying the game. He laughed as told that his paper

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was making peppery comments on the communist club. "Frank Williams
is after me," he twinkled, "but I really think those fellows are on
the wrong track. The country is bad off. Everybody knows that. But
I don't think communism is the solution. I'm sorry you are going.
My wife and I hoped we could have an evening with you before you
left. Isn't it sudden?"

As they rode off John remarked how queer it was that not once had
they even caught a glimpse of Burrows. "Everyone else is turning
up," he said. "Burrows surely must have gone off to his cabin in
the Great Dadam. Well, I wish him luck. I could confirm a few more
things for him now."

They saw Arthur and Jura again.

Meanwhile, they had been packing. Redwood was dismantled, things
taken down, things scattered about. In each place where they lived
for any while they accumulated new belongings; and now, though they
had two large trunks, two packing boxes, four suit cases, and a car,
where to put everything was a problem.

John folded and put away the publicity clippings.

As they were driving into town they passed Harriet Caston in a
car. Looking back they saw her wave and stop. John stopped. She got
out and ran towards them.

"What is this I hear? You are not leaving?"

They nodded. "Tomorrow," said John.

"Oh, dear," she said. She talked rapidly, breathlessly. "I had
so hoped we would come to know each other. But you have been working
and I have hardly done another thing. I'm under contract to finish
my book by the end of the month. I don't know. But I want to see
you. We'll have to arrange it somehow. It seems a shame that we

["240-253", "have been so near..." To John she said, \"Frank Williams tells me\nyou have written a splendid thing. He read the manuscript, I believe.\nI'd like to read it. May I?\"", "\"Surely,\" said John, \"but how can you? We leave tomorrow.\"", "\"I'll come for it,\" she said. \"I read fast. Is it a long book?\nWell, I'll get something from it. This afternoon or tomorrow morning\nearly. Goodby.\" And off she ran.", "She came that afternoon. They sat in chairs on the stone porch\nfacing the lovely valley and the giant green sombre mountains. \"It\nis beautiful out here,\" she said. \"I would like, not to live, but to\nhave a studio on the Point away from people. Maybe I'll take this\nafter you leave.\" But mostly they talked of the problem of finding\nthe right kind of education for children.", "She had a young boy. The Caromb school was good, one of the best\nin the country. Problems arose nevertheless. If she turned the boy\nover to the school he would be well-instructed but stereotyped.\nIf she taught him he would develop individual views but he would\nclash with the other boys and with the teachers and might acquire an\nundesirable feeling that he was odd and different. What to do?", "\"That is it,\" said John. \"What to do? It is the one essential question which the whole world has agreed to ask. If we could only find and agree upon an essential answer.\"", "She promised to return the manuscript before they left the next\nday.", "Ethel Carter had asked them to supper. This, their last evening\nin sombre beautiful Caromb. While Marian and Mrs Ware kept house\nJohn drove the two sisters to a farmer's where Ethel bought her"]

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vegetables and fruits. On the way there John reminded himself that it was just this time of evening, dusk-time, when they, in two months before, had first entered Caromb. Dusk-time, ghost-hour, the time of the black wing and of covered consciousness. What water had flown under the bridge since then!

They drove through the dusky vacant narrow bumpy streets where the cottages, some lighted, huddled and peered out from the deep dusk of surrounding squat pine trees. He knew all the roads by now. He turned into the one which ran down hill pass the old earth-colored mission.

The valley, an indigo haze, and the looming dark mountains were in view, and the clear evening sky, lighter, luminous. Somehow it seemed he was seeing a scene, a vast scene, under water, submerged. The flat ground at the base of the hill was like the bottom of the sea. The trees and vegetation seemed wavy and streaming up like sea-growths. He was like a diver going down into deep fathoms.

Ethel told him how to reach the farmer's house. The farm was on the broad plain near the entrance of the valley, towered over and blocked in by hills and mountains. On the road to the house a fierce dog suddenly sprang at the car. Ethel said he was locked up by day but turned loose at night to guard the place. He was vicious. The farmer, slow and silent-moving, came out and called him off. John could see the form but not the face of the man. What kind of man could live and work in such a place, down on the sea bottom, with the heavy sea and all those giant mounds holding him down, blocking him in? Ethel asked what he had. He told her in a low muffled voice, the voice of one of the shadow-cultivators of the valley who worked the soil for food for unseen mouths. Through an indigo haze they

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bought what they needed and departed.

Marian had been fatigued by the day's packing; so soon after supper they said goodby to Mrs Ware and Muriel, promised to keep in touch with them, thanked them for all they had done, and started Home. They had asked Ethel to come to Redwood and have a last lunch with them.

John drove slowly to the Point through night-Caromb. Both were very aware of it, of all the vast dark land and sea out there. Both felt strange mingled *emotions* as *em* memories of things past arose to take a last view of the great black cave in which the original experience had happened. Neither spoke.

He dimly discerned the ranch house high in its sheltered spot in the mountain south of the valley, and, to either side of it, bright, the two blue-white lights twinkling like stars. She saw them too.

The end of the road. The sea pounded. Gull House, now Redwood, dark, dismal, vacant, deserted, stood there like a huddled sombre shell.

John got out the flashlight. They entered the house, switching on the lights. The large room was bare. There was no fire in the hearth. The gabled roof, the balcony, the queer high angles, the second floor, were gloomy and empty. Both felt a pang, as if something in them, cut, had snapped and come apart. Both knew that this house no longer belonged to them, that time had transferred their living-center to another place.

The wind blew up and hit the corners, setting off packs of creaks and cracks and pops. Huge light feet flew across the roof.

Night-Caromb tried its best to give them a farewell frightening; but it was of no use. They were familiar with it now, and, besides, they were tired and sleepy and the soft beds felt good.

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John was the first up. The morning was bright, bright and forward-gleaming. He made the fire. He got breakfast. They ate. He started work. There was still some last-day sorting and packing to be done.

The man came to clean the house.

The piano was called for.

The grocery boy clumped in. They had ordered things for lunch.

"Good morning," said John.

"The same to you," said the boy. "You ain't leaving, are you?"

"Yes," said John, "today."

"Too bad," said the boy. "People oughtn't come here or if they do they ought to stay."

"But why?" asked John. "Suppose one has finished."

"Never happens," said the boy. "I know more about things than that."

"Well, in any event, such seems to be the case with me. I am about to graduate. School is nearly out. And you know what happens towards the end of school? They give examinations, don't they? Well, I'm waiting to be examined by you."

"About what?" asked the boy, puzzling.

"Why, the weather, of course," said John. "Don't you remember I promised to learn all about it before I left? Well, I'm ready. Begin."

The boy grinned. Then solemnly he began, "What's it doing today?"

"Today the sun is shining," said John.

"Right. "I'll give you a hundred on that. What was it doing several days back?"

"You mean the day when there was fog?"

"Yes," said the boy.

"It was fogging."

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"One hundred! And what was it doing before that?"

"You mean the day it was raining?" asked John.

The boy grinned and nodded.

"It was raining that day."

"You pass," said the boy and they both laughed and the boy laughed so much that he forgot to say goodby.

The expressman came for the trunks and boxes. He was still solid and hefty of day-light earth. He was still talkative.

"Had a nice time?" he asked.

"We surely have," said John.

"So you liked Caromb? Some people do. Not for me. I think if I was you the pounding of that sea would have had me crazy."

"You forget the mound. The shots flew over our heads."

"That's true," he nodded. "Some people are lucky. Well, I'm glad you liked it. So long."

"I'm glad too," said John. "So long."

Ethel arrived with a friend who wanted to talk with John.

Harriet Caston appeared with the manuscript and a young woman whom Marian had known in her college days.

The six of them sat in chairs on the stone porch in the sunshine with the garden near them and off, off - the lovely valley and the great dark green slopes, the sombre magnificent boundary of the edge of the world.

"I wish I had read this book before," said Harriet. She was anim-
ate, eager. Her dark eyes flashed. "We could have worked something
out. I'm sure we could. Why don't you stay? We'll get a place near
here. I know of any number of people who would like to try it."

"I, for one," said Ethel, "I think it is a shame they are

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going. We are just beginning. Just now is the time when something is ripe to happen. I know of people too, many of them. Most everyone I know is waiting and searching for something real to do, for something that will really use them and let them really use themselves."

"Yes, waiting," said Marian, significantly.

"It has been a strange pattern," said John. "Everything - so far as our relations to the people here are concerned - happened in the beginning. Then there was a long gap - filled by a sufficient number of other things. And now, at the end, you, Harriet, you, Ethel, others... yes, but we have weighed anchor. The ship must sail. Perhaps another time. I hope so. Perhaps I'll have a place and invite you all to come."

They said goodbye to the Harriet and Marian's old acquaintance.

Ethel and her friend stayed for lunch.

The dishes were washed. Ethel helped to put the house in perfect order. Then, hugging and kissing Marian, she said goodbye.

John and Marian were alone, alone for the last time in day-bright Redwood with everything clean and finished and the wood, satiny and odorus, but no longer having anything to do with them, waiting for the next occupants, the next hail and pressure of human experiences.

Already the winds of earth and water had blown their atmosphere away.

Marian went into the garden, her wild garden, and picked a small flame-colored flower for the button-hole of his coat.

He locked the door. They got in the car. They paused to look at the lonely house standing there, at the sweep of the valley and hills folding down and far far away, at the sombre giant mountains, at

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sombre beautiful Caromb as seen from there, open, ominous, and
magnificent.

"We will miss it," said Marian.

"Yes we will," said John. "Oh, thou, Caromb, and thou, our drab
shingled shining purgatorial church in Caromb."

"Where we were married," she said. "Which time?" she asked, smiling, looking up to see if he knew.

"The fourth," he replied promptly, and smiled.

"You are bright this morning," she said laughingly.

"The grocery boy thought so too."

"Goodby."

He started the car. Soon they had left the Point and were passing
through the town where the cottages clustered, through the main
street pass the little stores shrouded by pines, up the long steep
hill, to the left and down the road where the forest closed them in.

"The stone barring the exist of the cyclop's cave has been rolled
back."

The car gathered speed. Caromb - they were free of it - it was
behind them.

"You are smiling," she said. "I haven't seen that expression on
your face for ages. Oh, John, are you so glad to leave?"

"The same to you," he said. "No, not glad. Satisfied."

He stepped on the exhilarator. She put her arm through his.

They sped down the broad road. The sky, all earth, was open. From
the slope they could see the brilliant blue waters of the bay of
Portello, the fishing craft, a large schooner, and, beyond, the
glittering sand cliffs on top of which were white houses with red
roofs.

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They passed through Portello and out onto the road leading to
the arterial highway, the road from the peninsula to a million
voices asking, crying, screaming in torment and suffering -

WHAT CAN BE DONE?

WHAT SHALL I DO?

A road over the earth, the deep earth, the dark earth, blocks of
elements, events, and dry fire. The body of earth speeds and the
body of man is carried along - man, sinking in earth-catastrophes,
rising in earth-triumphs, striving to exist and to make life
fruitful.

Be with us always, earth,
Let us not sink below,
But hold our struggling feet
As they ache upon you -
In Purgatory or Inferno.

Finis

The End