Messiah Read Free Page A

disillusion resulted, bitterly resolved in numerous cases by the assumption of some mystical dogma, preferably one so quaintly rich with history, so sweeping and unreasonable in its claims as to be thoroughly acceptable to the saddened romanticist who wanted, above all else, to feel, to know without reasoning. So in these portentous times, only the scientists were content as they constructed ever more fabulous machines with which to split the invisible kernels of life while the anti-scientifics leaped nervously from one absolute to another . . . now rushing to the old for grace, now to the new for salvation, no two of them really agreeing on anything except the need for agreement, for the last knowledge . . . and that, finally, was the prevailing note of the age; since reason had been declared insufficient, only a mystic could provide the answer, only he could mark the boundaries of life with a final authority, inscrutably revealed. It was so perfectly clear. All that was lacking was the man.

One

    1

    The garden was at its best that first week in the month of June. The peonies were more opulent than usual and I walked slowly through the green light on the terrace above the white river, enjoying the heavy odor of peonies and of new roses rambling in hedges.
    The Hudson was calm, no ripple revealed that slow tide which even here, miles to the north of the sea, rises brackishly at the moon's disposition. Across the river the Catskills, water-blue, emerged sharply from the summer's green as though the earth in one vivid thrust had attempted sky, fusing the two elements into yet another, richer blue . . . but the sky was only framed, not really touched, and the blue of hills was darker than the pale sky with its protean clouds all shaped by wind, like the stuff of auguries and human dreaming.
    The sky that day was like an idiot's mind, wild with odd clouds, but lovely too, guileless, natural, allusive.
    I did not want to go in to lunch, although there was no choice in the matter. I had arrived at one o'clock; I was expected at one-thirty. Meanwhile, avoiding the house until the last possible moment, I had taken a neighbor's privilege of strolling alone about the garden; the house behind me was gray and austere, granitic, more English than Hudson Valley. The grounds swept softly down toward the river nearly a mile away. A vista had been cleared from the central terrace, a little like the one at Versailles but more rustic, less royal. Dark green trees covered the hills to left and right of the sweep of lawn and meadow. No other house could be seen. Even the railroad between the terrace and the water was invisible, hidden by a bluff . . . only its sound and an occasional blur of smoke upon the blue marked that machine's essential passage.
    I breathed the air of early summer gladly, voluptuously. I lived my life in seasonal concert with this river and, after grim March and confusing sharp April, the knowledge that at last the leaves were foliaged and the days warm was quite enough to create in me a mood of euphoria, of marvelous serenity. I contemplated love affairs. I prepared to meet strangers. The summer and I would celebrate our triumph soon; but, until the proper moment, I was a spectator: the summer love as yet unknown to me, the last dark blooming of peonies amid the wreckage of white lilacs still some weeks away, held in the future with my love. I could only anticipate; I savored my disengagement in this garden.
    But then it was time to go in and I turned my back resolutely on the river and ascended the wide stone steps to the brick terrace which fronted the house on the river side, pausing only to break the stem of a white and pink peony, regretting immediately what I had done: brutally, I had wished to possess the summer, to fix the instant, to bear with me into the house a fragment of the day. It was wrong; and I stood for a moment at the French door holding the great peony in my hand, its odor like a dozen