Juliet: June 29 – Friends unable to tear themselves from ‘Abdu’l-Bahá

To me the most beautiful scene of all came later, when the Master returned to us after dark. About fifty or sixty people had lingered, unable to tear themselves from Him. The Master sat in a chair on the top step of the porch, some of us surrounding Him — dear guilty Lua with her poisoned feet [she had deliberately walked in poison ivy so she couldn’t go to California as requested earlier by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá], May, Silvia, Marjorie, and I and a young coloured man, Neval Thomas. Below us, all over the lawn, on each side of the path, sat the others, the light summer skirts of the women spread out on the grass, tapers in their hands (to keep off mosquitoes). In the dark, in their filmy dresses, they looked like great moths and the burning tips of the tapers they waved like fireflies darting about.

Then the Master spoke again to us. I was standing behind Him, close to Him, and before He began He turned and gave me a long, profound look. His talk of that night has been recorded. It was a resounding Call to us to arise from the tomb of self in this Day of the Great Resurrection and unite around Him to vivify the world.

Before He had finished He rose from His chair and started down the path still talking, passing between the dim figures on the grass with their lighted tapers, talking till He reached the road, where He turned and we could no longer see Him. Even then His words floated back to us — the liquid Persian, ‘Ali Quli Khan’s beautiful, quivering translation, like the sound of a violin string.

“Peace be with you,” this was the last we heard, “I will pray for you.”

Oh that Voice that came back out of His invisibility when He had passed beyond our sight. May I always remember, and hear the Voice.