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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Prisoner in Fairyland, by Algernon Blackwood
+#3 in our series by Algernon Blackwood
+
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+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
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+**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: A Prisoner in Fairyland
+
+Author: Algernon Blackwood
+
+Release Date: July, 2004 [EBook #6021]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on October 19, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PRISONER IN FAIRYLAND ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+A PRISONER IN FAIRYLAND
+
+(THE BOOK THAT 'UNCLE PAUL' WROTE)
+
+BY
+
+ALGERNON BLACKWOOD
+
+Author of 'Jimbo,' 'John Silence,'
+'The Centaur,' 'Education of Uncle Paul,' Etc.
+
+1913
+
+
+
+TO
+
+M. S.-K.
+
+'LITTLE MOUSE THAT, LOST IN WONDER,
+FLICKS ITS WHISKERS AT THE THUNDER!'
+
+
+
+
+"Les Pensees!
+O leurs essors fougueux, leurs flammes dispersees,
+Leur rouge acharnement ou leur accord vermeil!
+Comme la-haut les etoiles criblaient la nue,
+Elles se constellaient sur la plaine inconnue;
+Elles roulaient dans l'espace, telles des feux,
+Gravissaient la montagne, illuminaient la fleuve
+Et jetaient leur parure universelle et neuve
+De mer en mer, sur les pays silencieux."
+
+Le Monde, EMILE VERHAEREN
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+    Man is his own star; and the soul that can
+    Render an honest and a perfect man
+    Commands all light, all influence, all fate,
+    Nothing to him falls early, or too late.
+    Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
+
+    Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.
+                           BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.
+
+Minks--Herbert Montmorency--was now something more than secretary,
+even than private secretary: he was confidential-private-secretary,
+adviser, friend; and this, more because he was a safe receptacle for
+his employer's enthusiasms than because his advice or judgment had any
+exceptional value. So many men need an audience. Herbert Minks was a
+fine audience, attentive, delicately responsive, sympathetic,
+understanding, and above all--silent. He did not leak. Also, his
+applause was wise without being noisy. Another rare quality he
+possessed was that he was honest as the sun. To prevaricate, even by
+gesture, or by saying nothing, which is the commonest form of untruth,
+was impossible to his transparent nature. He might hedge, but he could
+never lie. And he was 'friend,' so far as this was possible between
+employer and employed, because a pleasant relationship of years'
+standing had established a bond of mutual respect under conditions of
+business intimacy which often tend to destroy it.
+
+Just now he was very important into the bargain, for he had a secret
+from his wife that he meant to divulge only at the proper moment. He
+had known it himself but a few hours. The leap from being secretary in
+one of Henry Rogers's companies to being that prominent gentleman's
+confidential private secretary was, of course, a very big one. He
+hugged it secretly at first alone. On the journey back from the City
+to the suburb where he lived, Minks made a sonnet on it. For his
+emotions invariably sought the safety valve of verse. It was a wiser
+safety valve for high spirits than horse-racing or betting on the
+football results, because he always stood to win, and never to lose.
+Occasionally he sold these bits of joy for half a guinea, his wife
+pasting the results neatly in a big press album from which he often
+read aloud on Sunday nights when the children were in bed. They were
+signed 'Montmorency Minks'; and bore evidence of occasional pencil
+corrections on the margin with a view to publication later in a
+volume. And sometimes there were little lyrical fragments too, in a
+wild, original metre, influenced by Shelley and yet entirely his own.
+These had special pages to themselves at the end of the big book. But
+usually he preferred the sonnet form; it was more sober, more
+dignified. And just now the bumping of the Tube train shaped his
+emotion into something that began with
+
+   Success that poisons many a baser mind
+   With thoughts of self, may lift--
+
+but stopped there because, when he changed into another train, the
+jerkier movement altered the rhythm into something more lyrical, and
+he got somewhat confused between the two and ended by losing both.
+
+He walked up the hill towards his tiny villa, hugging his secret and
+anticipating with endless detail how he would break it to his wife. He
+felt very proud and very happy. The half-mile trudge seemed like a few
+yards.
+
+He was a slim, rather insignificant figure of a man, neatly dressed,
+the City clerk stamped plainly over all his person. He envied his
+employer's burly six-foot stature, but comforted himself always with
+the thought that he possessed in its place a certain delicacy that was
+more becoming to a man of letters whom an adverse fate prevented from
+being a regular minor poet. There was that touch of melancholy in his
+fastidious appearance that suggested the atmosphere of frustrated
+dreams. Only the firmness of his character and judgment decreed
+against the luxury of longish hair; and he prided himself upon
+remembering that although a poet at heart, he was outwardly a City
+clerk and, as a strong man, must permit no foolish compromise.
+
+His face on the whole was pleasing, and rather soft, yet, owing to
+this warring of opposing inner forces, it was at the same time
+curiously deceptive. Out of that dreamy, vague expression shot, when
+least expected, the hard and practical judgment of the City--or vice
+versa. But the whole was gentle--admirable quality for an audience,
+since it invited confession and assured a gentle hearing. No harshness
+lay there. Herbert Minks might have been a fine, successful mother
+perhaps. The one drawback to the physiognomy was that the mild blue
+eyes were never quite united in their frank gaze. He squinted
+pleasantly, though his wife told him it was a fascinating cast rather
+than an actual squint. The chin, too, ran away a little from the
+mouth, and the lips were usually parted. There was, at any rate, this
+air of incompatibility of temperament between the features which, made
+all claim to good looks out of the question.
+
+That runaway chin, however, was again deceptive. It did, indeed run
+off, but the want of decision it gave to the countenance seemed
+contradicted by the prominent forehead and straight eyebrows, heavily
+marked. Minks knew his mind. If sometimes evasive rather than
+outspoken, he could on occasion be surprisingly firm. He saw life very
+clearly. He could certainly claim the good judgment stupid people
+sometimes have, due perhaps to their inability to see alternatives--
+just as some men's claim to greatness is born of an audacity due to
+their total lack of humour.
+
+Minks was one of those rare beings who may be counted on--a quality
+better than mere brains, being of the heart. And Henry Rogers
+understood him and read him like an open book. Preferring the steady
+devotion to the brilliance a high salary may buy, he had watched him
+for many years in every sort of circumstance. He had, by degrees, here
+and there, shown an interest in his life. He had chosen his private
+secretary well. With Herbert Minks at his side he might accomplish
+many things his heart was set upon. And while Minks bumped down in his
+third-class crowded carriage to Sydenham, hunting his evasive sonnet,
+Henry Rogers glided swiftly in a taxi-cab to his rooms in St. James's
+Street, hard on the trail of another dream that seemed, equally, to
+keep just beyond his actual reach.
+
+It would certainly seem that thought can travel across space between
+minds sympathetically in tune, for just as the secretary put his
+latch-key into his shiny blue door the idea flashed through him, 'I
+wonder what Mr. Rogers will do, now that he's got his leisure, with a
+fortune and--me!' And at the same moment Rogers, in his deep arm-chair
+before the fire, was saying to himself, 'I'm glad Minks has come to
+me; he's just the man I want for my big Scheme!' And then--'Pity he's
+such a lugubrious looking fellow, and wears those dreadful fancy
+waistcoats. But he's very open to suggestion. We can change all that.
+I must look after Minks a bit. He's rather sacrificed his career for
+me, I fancy. He's got high aims. Poor little Minks!'
+
+'I'll stand by him whatever happens,' was the thought the slamming of
+the blue door interrupted. 'To be secretary to such a man is already
+success.' And again he hugged his secret and himself.
+
+As already said, the new-fledged secretary was married and wrote
+poetry on the sly. He had four children. He would make an ideal
+helpmate, worshipping his employer with that rare quality of being
+interested in his ideas and aims beyond the mere earning of a salary;
+seeing, too, in that employer more than he, the latter, supposed. For,
+while he wrote verses on the sly, 'my chief,' as he now preferred to
+call him, lived poetry in his life.
+
+'He's got it, you know, my dear,' he announced to his wife, as he
+kissed her and arranged his tie in the gilt mirror over the plush
+mantelpiece in the 'parlour'; 'he's got the divine thing in him right
+enough; got it, too, as strong as hunger or any other natural
+instinct. It's almost functional with him, if I may say so'--which
+meant 'if you can understand me'--'only, he's deliberately smothered
+it all these years. He thinks it wouldn't go down with other business
+men. And he's been in business, you see, from the word go. He meant to
+make money, and he couldn't do both exactly. Just like myself---'
+
+Minks wandered on. His wife noticed the new enthusiasm in his manner,
+and was puzzled by it. Something was up, she divined.
+
+'Do you think he'll raise your salary again soon?' she asked
+practically, helping him draw off the paper cuffs that protected his
+shirt from ink stains, and throwing them in the fire. 'That seems to
+be the real point.'
+
+But Herbert evaded the immediate issue. It was so delightful to watch
+her and keep his secret a little longer.
+
+'And you _do_ deserve success, dear,' she added; 'you've been as
+faithful as a horse.' She came closer, and stroked his thick, light
+hair a moment.
+
+He turned quickly. Had he betrayed himself already? Had she read it
+from his eyes or manner?
+
+'That's nothing,' he answered lightly. 'Duty is duty.'
+
+'Of course, dear,' and she brought him his slippers. He would not let
+her put them on for him. It was not gallant to permit menial services
+to a woman.
+
+'Success,' he murmured, 'that poisons many a baser mind---' and then
+stopped short. 'I've got a new sonnet,' he told her quickly,
+determined to prolong his pleasure, 'got it in the train coming home.
+Wait a moment, and I'll give you the rest. It's a beauty, with real
+passion in it, only I want to keep it cold and splendid if I can.
+Don't interrupt a moment.' He put the slippers on the wrong feet and
+stared hard into the fire.
+
+Then Mrs. Minks knew for a certainty that something had happened. He
+had not even asked after the children.
+
+'Herbert,' she said, with a growing excitement, 'why are you so full
+of poetry to-night? And what's this about success and poison all of a
+sudden?' She knew he never drank. 'I believe Mr. Rogers has raised
+your salary, or done one of those fine things you always say he's
+going to do. Tell me, dear, please tell me.' There were new, unpaid
+bills in her pocket, and she almost felt tempted to show them. She
+poked the fire fussily.
+
+'Albinia,' he answered importantly, with an expression that brought
+the chin up closer to the lips, and made the eyebrows almost stern,
+'Mr. Rogers will do the right thing always--when the right time comes.
+As a matter of fact'--here he reverted to the former train of thought
+--'both he and I are misfits in a practical, sordid age. We should
+have been born in Greece---'
+
+'I simply love your poems, Herbert,' she interrupted gently, wondering
+how she managed to conceal her growing impatience so well, 'but
+there's not the money in them that there ought to be, and they don't
+pay for coals or for Ronald's flannels---'
+
+'Albinia,' he put in softly, 'they relieve the heart, and so make me a
+happier and a better man. But--I should say he would,' he added,
+answering her distant question about the salary.
+
+The secret was almost out. It hung on the edge of his lips. A moment
+longer he hugged it deliciously. He loved these little conversations
+with his wife. Never a shade of asperity entered into them. And this
+one in particular afforded him a peculiar delight.
+
+'Both of us are made for higher things than mere money-making,' he
+went on, lighting his calabash pipe and puffing the smoke carefully
+above her head from one corner of his mouth, 'and that's what first
+attracted us to each other, as I have often mentioned to you. But
+now'--his bursting heart breaking through all control--'that he has
+sold his interests to a company and retired into private life--er--my
+own existence should be easier and less exacting. I shall have less
+routine, be more my own master, and also, I trust, find time perhaps
+for---'
+
+'Then something _has_ happened!' cried Mrs. Minks, springing to her
+feet.
+
+'It has, my dear,' he answered with forced calmness, though his voice
+was near the trembling point.
+
+She stood in front of him, waiting. But he himself did not rise, nor
+show more feeling than he could help. His poems were full of scenes
+like this in which the men--strong, silent fellows--were fine and
+quiet. Yet his instinct was to act quite otherwise. One eye certainly
+betrayed it.
+
+'It has,' he repeated, full of delicious emotion.
+
+'Oh, but Herbert---!'
+
+'And I am no longer that impersonal factor in City life, mere
+secretary to the Board of a company---'
+
+'Oh, Bertie, dear!'
+
+'But private secretary to Mr. Henry Rogers--private and confidential
+secretary at---'
+
+'Bert, darling---!'
+
+'At 300 pounds a year, paid quarterly, with expenses extra,
+and long, regular holidays,' he concluded with admirable dignity and
+self-possession.
+
+There was a moment's silence.
+
+'You splendour!' She gave a little gasp of admiration that went
+straight to his heart, and set big fires alight there. 'Your reward
+has come at last! My hero!'
+
+This was as it should be. The beginning of an epic poem flashed with
+tumult through his blood. Yet outwardly he kept his admirable calm.
+
+'My dear, we must take success, like disaster, quietly.' He said it
+gently, as when he played with the children. It was mostly put on, of
+course, this false grandiloquence of the prig. His eyes already
+twinkled more than he could quite disguise.
+
+'Then we can manage the other school, perhaps, for Frank?' she cried,
+and was about to open various flood-gates when he stopped her with a
+look of proud happiness that broke down all barriers of further
+pretended secrecy.
+
+'Mr. Rogers,' was the low reply, 'has offered to do that for us--as a
+start.' The words were leisurely spoken between great puffs of smoke.
+'That's what I meant just now by saying that he lived poetry in his
+life, you see. Another time you will allow judgment to wait on
+knowledge---'
+
+'You dear old humbug,' she cried, cutting short the sentence that
+neither of them quite understood, 'I believe you've known this for
+weeks---'
+
+'Two hours ago exactly,' he corrected her, and would willingly have
+prolonged the scene indefinitely had not his practical better half
+prevented him. For she came over, dropped upon her knees beside his
+chair, and, putting both arms about his neck, she kissed his foolish
+sentences away with all the pride and tenderness that filled her to
+the brim. And it pleased Minks hugely. It made him feel, for the
+moment at any rate, that he was the hero, not Mr. Henry Rogers.
+
+But he did not show his emotion much. He did not even take his pipe
+out. It slipped down sideways into another corner of his wandering
+lips. And, while he returned the kiss with equal tenderness and
+pleasure, one mild blue eye looked down upon her soft brown hair, and
+the other glanced sideways, without a trace of meaning in it, at the
+oleograph of Napoleon on Elba that hung upon the wall. ...
+
+Soon afterwards the little Sydenham villa was barred and shuttered,
+the four children were sound asleep, Herbert and Albinia Minks both
+lost in the world of happy dreams that sometimes visit honest, simple
+folk whose consciences are clean and whose aims in life are
+commonplace but worthy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+When the creation was new and all the stars shone in their first
+splendour, the gods held their assembly in the sky and sang 'Oh, the
+picture of perfection! the joy unalloyed!'
+
+But one cried of a sudden--'It seems that somewhere there is a break
+in the chain of light and one of the stars has been lost.'
+
+The golden string of their harp snapped, their song stopped, and they
+cried in dismay--'Yes, that lost star was the best, she was the glory
+of all heavens!'
+
+From that day the search is unceasing for her, and the cry goes on
+from one to the other that in her the world has lost its one joy!
+
+Only in the deepest silence of night the stars smile and whisper among
+themselves--'Vain is this seeking! Unbroken perfection is over all!'
+
+RABINDRANATH TAGORE. (Prose translation by Author from his original
+Bengali.)
+
+It was April 30th and Henry Rogers sat in his rooms after breakfast,
+listening to the rumble of the traffic down St. James's Street, and
+found the morning dull. A pile of letters lay unopened upon the table,
+waiting the arrival of the discriminating Mr. Minks with his shorthand
+note-book and his mild blue eyes. It was half-past nine, and the
+secretary was due at ten o'clock.
+
+He smiled as he thought of this excellent fellow's first morning in
+the promoted capacity of private secretary. He would come in very
+softly, one eye looking more intelligent than the other; the air of
+the City clerk discarded, and in its place the bearing that belonged
+to new robes of office worn for the first time. He would bow, say
+'Good morning, Mr. Rogers,' glance round with one eye on his employer
+and another on a possible chair, seat himself with a sigh that meant
+'I have written a new poem in the night, and would love to read it to
+you if I dared,' then flatten out his oblong note-book and look up,
+expectant and receptive. Rogers would say 'Good morning, Mr. Minks.
+We've got a busy day before us. Now, let me see---' and would meet his
+glance with welcome. He would look quickly from one eye to the other-
+to this day he did not know which one was right to meet-and would
+wonder for the thousandth time how such an insignificant face could go
+with such an honest, capable mind. Then he smiled again as he
+remembered Frank, the little boy whose schooling he was paying for,
+and realised that Minks would bring a message of gratitude from Mrs.
+Minks, perhaps would hand him, with a gesture combining dignity and
+humbleness, a little note of thanks in a long narrow envelope of pale
+mauve, bearing a flourishing monogram on its back.
+
+And Rogers scowled a little as he thought of the air of gruffness he
+would assume while accepting it, saying as pleasantly as he could
+manage, 'Oh, Mr. Minks, that's nothing at all; I'm only too delighted
+to be of service to the lad.' For he abhorred the expression of
+emotion, and his delicate sense of tact would make pretence of helping
+the boy himself, rather than the struggling parents.
+
+Au fond he had a genuine admiration for Minks, and there was something
+lofty in the queer personality that he both envied and respected. It
+made him rely upon his judgment in certain ways he could not quite
+define. Minks seemed devoid of personal ambition in a sense that was
+not weakness. He was not insensible to the importance of money, nor
+neglectful of chances that enabled him to do well by his wife and
+family, but--he was after other things as well, if not chiefly. With a
+childlike sense of honesty he had once refused a position in a company
+that was not all it should have been, and the high pay thus rejected
+pointed to a scrupulous nicety of view that the City, of course,
+deemed foolishness. And Rogers, aware of this, had taken to him,
+seeking as it were to make this loss good to him in legitimate ways.
+Also the fellow belonged to leagues and armies and 'things,' quixotic
+some of them, that tried to lift humanity. That is, he gave of his
+spare time, as also of his spare money, to help. His Saturday
+evenings, sometimes a whole bank holiday, he devoted to the welfare of
+others, even though the devotion Rogers thought misdirected.
+
+For Minks hung upon the fringe of that very modern, new-fashioned, but
+almost freakish army that worships old, old ideals, yet insists upon
+new-fangled names for them. Christ, doubtless, was his model, but it
+must be a Christ properly and freshly labelled; his Christianity must
+somewhere include the prefix 'neo,' and the word 'scientific' must
+also be dragged in if possible before he was satisfied. Minks, indeed,
+took so long explaining to himself the wonderful title that he was
+sometimes in danger of forgetting the brilliant truths it so vulgarly
+concealed. Yet never quite concealed. He must be up-to-date, that was
+all. His attitude to the world scraped acquaintance with nobility
+somewhere. His gift was a rare one. Out of so little, he gave his
+mite, and gave it simply, unaware that he was doing anything unusual.
+
+This attitude of mind had made him valuable, even endeared him, to the
+successful business man, and in his secret heart Rogers had once or
+twice felt ashamed of himself. Minks, as it were, knew actual
+achievement because he was, forcedly, content with little, whereas he,
+Rogers, dreamed of so much, yet took twenty years to come within reach
+of what he dreamed. He was always waiting for the right moment to
+begin.
+
+His reflections were interrupted by the sunlight, which, pouring in a
+flood across the opposite roof, just then dropped a patch of soft
+April glory upon the black and yellow check of his carpet slippers.
+Rogers got up and, opening the window wider than before, put out his
+head. The sunshine caught him full in the face. He tasted the fresh
+morning air. Tinged with the sharp sweetness of the north it had a
+fragrance as of fields and gardens. Even St. James's Street could not
+smother its vitality and perfume. He drew it with delight into his
+lungs, making such a to-do about it that a passer-by looked up to see
+what was the matter, and noticing the hanging tassel of a flamboyant
+dressing-gown, at once modestly lowered his eyes again.
+
+But Henry Rogers did not see the passer-by in whose delicate mind a
+point of taste had thus vanquished curiosity, for his thoughts had
+flown far across the pale-blue sky, behind the cannon-ball clouds, up
+into that scented space and distance where summer was already winging
+her radiant way towards the earth. Visions of June obscured his sight,
+and something in the morning splendour brought back his youth and
+boyhood. He saw a new world spread about him--a world of sunlight,
+butterflies, and flowers, of smooth soft lawns and shaded gravel
+paths, and of children playing round a pond where rushes whispered in
+a wind of long ago. He saw hayfields, orchards, tea-things spread upon
+a bank of flowers underneath a hedge, and a collie dog leaping and
+tumbling shoulder high among the standing grass.... It was all
+curiously vivid, and with a sense of something about it unfading and
+delightfully eternal. It could never pass, for instance, whereas....
+
+'Ain't yer forgotten the nightcap?' sang out a shrill voice from
+below, as a boy with a basket on his arm went down the street. He drew
+back from the window, realising that he was a sight for all admirers.
+Tossing the end of his cigarette in the direction of the cheeky
+urchin, he settled himself again in the arm-chair before the glowing
+grate-fire.
+
+But the fresh world he had tasted came back with him. For Henry Rogers
+stood this fine spring morning upon the edge of a new life. A long
+chapter had just closed behind him. He was on the threshold of
+another. The time to begin had come. And the thrill of his freedom now
+at hand was very stimulating to his imagination. He was forty, and a
+rich man. Twenty years of incessant and intelligent labour had brought
+him worldly success. He admitted he had been lucky, where so many toil
+on and on till the gates of death stand up and block their way,
+fortunate if they have earned a competency through years where hope
+and disappointment wage their incessant weary battle. But he, for some
+reason known only to the silent Fates, had crested the difficult hill
+and now stood firm upon the top to see the sunrise, the dreadful gates
+not even yet in sight. At yesterday's Board meeting, Minks had handed
+him the papers for his signature; the patents had been transferred to
+the new company; the cheque had been paid over; and he was now a
+gentleman of leisure with a handsome fortune lying in his bank to
+await investment. He was a director in the parent, as well as the
+subsidiary companies, with fees that in themselves alone were more
+than sufficient for his simple needs.
+
+For all his tastes _were_ simple, and he had no expensive hobbies or
+desires; he preferred two rooms and a bath to any house that he had
+ever seen; pictures he liked best in galleries; horses he could hire
+without the trouble of owning; the few books worth reading would go
+into a couple of shelves; motors afflicted, even confused him--he was
+old-fashioned enough to love country and walk through it slowly on two
+vigorous legs; marriage had been put aside with a searing
+disappointment years ago, not forgotten, but accepted; and of travel
+he had enjoyed enough to realise now that its pleasures could be found
+reasonably near home and for very moderate expenditure indeed. And the
+very idea of servants was to him an affliction; he loathed their
+prying closeness to his intimate life and habits, destroying the
+privacy he loved. Confirmed old bachelor his friends might call him if
+they chose; he knew what he wanted. Now at last he had it. The
+ambition of his life was within reach.
+
+For, from boyhood up, a single big ambition had ever thundered through
+his being--the desire to be of use to others. To help his fellow-kind
+was to be his profession and career. It had burned and glowed in him
+ever since he could remember, and what first revealed it in him was
+the sight--common enough, alas--of a boy with one leg hobbling along
+on crutches down the village street. Some deep power in his youthful
+heart, akin to the wondrous sympathy of women, had been touched. Like
+a shock of fire it came home to him. He, too, might lose his dearest
+possession thus, and be unable to climb trees, jump ditches, risk his
+neck along the edge of the haystack or the roof. '_That might happen
+to me too!_' was the terrible thing he realised, and had burst into
+tears....
+
+Crutches at twelve! And the family hungry, as he later learned!
+Something in the world was wrong; he thought every one had enough to
+eat, at least, and only the old used crutches. 'The Poor was a sort of
+composite wretch, half criminal, who deserved to be dirty, suffering,
+punished; but this boy belonged to a family that worked and did its
+best. Something in the world-machinery had surely broken loose and
+caused violent disorder. For no one cared particularly. The
+''thorities,' he heard, looked after the Poor--''thorities in law,' as
+he used to call the mysterious Person he never actually saw, stern,
+but kindly in a grave impersonal way; and asked once if some relation-
+in-law or other, who was mentioned often but never seen, had,
+therefore, anything to do with the poor.
+
+Dropping into his heart from who knows what far, happy star, this
+passion had grown instead of faded: to give himself for others, to
+help afflicted folk, to make the world go round a little more easily.
+And he had never forgotten the deep thrill with which he heard his
+father tell him of some wealthy man who during his lifetime had given
+away a million pounds--anonymously. ... His own pocket-money just then
+was five shillings a week, and his expectations just exactly--nothing.
+
+But before his dreams could know accomplishment, he must have means.
+To be of use to anybody at all he must make himself effective. The
+process must be reversed, for no man could fight without weapons, and
+weapons were only to be had as the result of steady, concentrated
+effort--selfish effort. A man must fashion himself before he can be
+effective for others. Self-effacement, he learned, was rather a futile
+virtue after all.
+
+As the years passed he saw his chances. He cut short a promising
+University career and entered business. His talents lay that way, as
+his friends declared, and unquestionably he had a certain genius for
+invention; for, while scores of futile processes he first discovered
+remained mere clever solutions of interesting problems, he at length
+devised improvements in the greater industries, and, patenting them
+wisely, made his way to practical results.
+
+But the process had been a dangerous one, and during the long business
+experience the iron had entered his soul, and he had witnessed at
+close quarters the degrading influence of the lust of acquisition. The
+self-advertising humbug of most philanthropy had clouded something in
+him that he felt could never again grow clear and limpid as before,
+and a portion of his original zest had faded. For the City hardly
+encouraged it. One bit of gilt after another had been knocked off his
+brilliant dream, one jet of flame upon another quenched. The single
+eye that fills the body full of light was a thing so rare that its
+possession woke suspicion. Even of money generously given, so little
+reached its object; gaping pockets and grasping fingers everywhere
+lined the way of safe delivery. It sickened him. So few, moreover,
+were willing to give without acknowledgment in at least one morning
+paper. 'Bring back the receipt' was the first maxim even of the
+office-boys; and between the right hand and the left of every one were
+special 'private wires' that flashed the news as quickly as possible
+about the entire world.
+
+Yet, while inevitable disillusion had dulled his youthful dreams, its
+glory was never quite destroyed. It still glowed within. At times,
+indeed, it ran into flame, and knew something of its original
+splendour. Women, in particular, had helped to keep it alive, fanning
+its embers bravely. For many women, he found, dreamed his own dream,
+and dreamed it far more sweetly. They were closer to essential
+realities than men were. While men bothered with fuss and fury about
+empires, tariffs, street-cars, and marvellous engines for destroying
+one another, women, keeping close to the sources of life, knew, like
+children, more of its sweet, mysterious secrets--the things of value
+no one yet has ever put completely into words. He wondered, a little
+sadly, to see them battling now to scuffle with the men in managing
+the gross machinery, cleaning the pens and regulating ink-pots. Did
+they really think that by helping to decide whether rates should rise
+or fall, or how many buttons a factory-inspector should wear upon his
+uniform, they more nobly helped the world go round? Did they never
+pause to reflect who would fill the places they thus vacated? With
+something like melancholy he saw them stepping down from their thrones
+of high authority, for it seemed to him a prostitution of their sweet
+prerogatives that damaged the entire sex.
+
+'Old-fashioned bachelor, no doubt, I am,' he smiled quietly to
+himself, coming back to the first reflection whence his thoughts had
+travelled so far--the reflection, namely, that now at last he
+possessed the freedom he had longed and toiled for.
+
+And then he paused and looked about him, confronted with a difficulty.
+To him it seemed unusual, but really it was very common.
+
+For, having it, he knew not at first what use to make of it. This
+dawned upon him suddenly when the sunlight splashed his tawdry
+slippers with its gold. The movement to the open window was really
+instinctive beginning of a search, as though in the free, wonderful
+spaces out of doors he would find the thing he sought to do. Now,
+settled back in the deep arm-chair, he realised that he had not found
+it. The memories of childhood had flashed into him instead. He renewed
+the search before the dying fire, waiting for the sound of Minks'
+ascending footsteps on the stairs. ...
+
+And this revival of the childhood mood was curious, he felt, almost
+significant, for it was symbolical of so much that he had
+deliberately, yet with difficulty, suppressed and put aside. During
+these years of concentrated toil for money, his strong will had
+neglected of set purpose the call of a robust imagination. He had
+stifled poetry just as he had stifled play. Yet really that
+imagination had merely gone into other channels--scientific invention.
+It was a higher form, married at least with action that produced
+poetry in steel and stone instead of in verse. Invention has ever
+imagination and poetry at its heart.
+
+The acquirement of wealth demanded his entire strength, and all
+lighter considerations he had consistently refused to recognise, until
+he thought them dead. This sudden flaming mood rushed up and showed
+him otherwise. He reflected on it, but clumsily, as with a mind too
+long trained in the rigid values of stocks and shares, buying and
+selling, hard figures that knew not elasticity. This softer subject
+led him to no conclusion, leaving him stranded among misty woods and
+fields of flowers that had no outlet. He realised, however, clearly
+that this side of him was not atrophied as he thought. Its unused
+powers had merely been accumulating--underground.
+
+He got no further than that just now. He poked the fire and lit
+another cigarette. Then, glancing idly at the paper, his eye fell upon
+the list of births, and by merest chance picked out the name of
+Crayfield. Some nonentity had been 'safely delivered of a son' at
+Crayfield, the village where he had passed his youth and childhood. He
+saw the Manor House where he was born, the bars across the night-
+nursery windows, the cedars on the lawn, the haystacks just beyond the
+stables, and the fields where the rabbits sometimes fell asleep as
+they sat after enormous meals too stuffed to move. He saw the old
+gravel-pit that led, the gardener told him, to the centre of the
+earth. A whiff of perfume from the laurustinus in the drive came back,
+the scent of hay, and with it the sound of the mowing-machine going
+over the lawn. He saw the pony in loose flat leather shoes. The bees
+were humming in the lime trees. The rooks were cawing. A blackbird
+whistled from the shrubberies where he once passed an entire day in
+hiding, after emptying an ink-bottle down the German governess's
+dress. He heard the old family butler in his wheezy voice calling in
+vain for 'Mr. 'Enery' to come in. The tone was respectful, seductive
+as the man could make it, yet reproachful. He remembered throwing a
+little stone that caught him just where the Newgate fringe met the
+black collar of his coat, so that his cry of delight betrayed his
+hiding-place. The whacking that followed he remembered too, and how
+his brother emerged suddenly from behind the curtain with, 'Father,
+may I have it instead of Henry, please?' That spontaneous offer of
+sacrifice, of willingness to suffer for another, had remained in his
+mind for a long time as a fiery, incomprehensible picture.
+
+More dimly, then, somewhere in mist behind, he saw other figures
+moving--the Dustman and the Lamplighter, the Demon Chimneysweep in
+black, the Woman of the Haystack--outposts and sentries of a larger
+fascinating host that gathered waiting in the shadows just beyond. The
+creations of his boy's imagination swarmed up from their temporary
+graves, and made him smile and wonder. After twenty years of strenuous
+business life, how pale and thin they seemed. Yet at the same time how
+extraordinarily alive and active! He saw, too, the huge Net of Stars
+he once had made to catch them with from that night-nursery window,
+fastened by long golden nails made out of meteors to the tops of the
+cedars. ... There had been, too, a train--the Starlight Express. It
+almost seemed as if _they_ knew, too, that a new chapter had begun,
+and that they called him to come back and play again. ...
+
+Then, with a violent jump, his thoughts flew to other things, and he
+considered one by one the various philanthropic schemes he had
+cherished against the day when he could realise them. That day had
+come. But the schemes seemed one and all wild now, impracticable,
+already accomplished by others better than he could hope to accomplish
+them, and none of them fulfilling the first essential his practical
+mind demanded--knowing his money spent precisely as he wished. Dreams,
+long cherished, seemed to collapse one by one before him just when he
+at last came up with them. He thought of the woman who was to have
+helped him, now married to another who had money without working for
+it. He put the thought back firmly in its place. He knew now a greater
+love than that--the love for many. ...
+
+He was embarking upon other novel schemes when there was a ring at the
+bell, and the charwoman, who passed with him for servant, ushered in
+his private secretary, Mr. Minks. Quickly readjusting the machinery of
+his mind, Rogers came back to the present,
+
+'Good morning, Mr. Rogers. I trust I am punctual.'
+
+'Good morning, Minks; yes, on the stroke of ten. We've got a busy day.
+Let's see now. How are you, by the by?' he added, as an afterthought,
+catching first one eye, then the other, and looking finally between
+the two.
+
+'Very well, indeed, thank you, Mr. Rogers.' He was dressed in a black
+tail-coat, with a green tie neatly knotted into a spotless turn-down
+collar. He glanced round him for a chair, one hand already in his
+pocket for the note-book.
+
+'Good,' said Rogers, indicating where he might seat himself, and
+reaching for the heap of letters.
+
+The other sighed a little and began to look expectant and receptive.
+
+'If I might give you this first, please, Mr. Rogers,' he said,
+suddenly pretending to remember something in his breast-pocket and
+handing across the table, with a slight flush upon his cheeks, a long,
+narrow, mauve envelope with a flourishing address. 'It was a red-
+letter day for Mrs. Minks when I told her of your kindness. She wished
+to thank you in person, but--I thought a note--I knew,' he stammered,
+'you would prefer a letter. It is a tremendous help to both of us, if
+I may say so again.'
+
+'Yes, yes, quite so,' said Rogers, quickly; 'and I'm glad to be of
+service to the lad. You must let me know from time to time how he's
+getting on.'
+
+Minks subsided, flattening out his oblong notebook and examining the
+points of his pencil sharpened at both ends as though the fate of
+Empires depended on it. They attacked the pile of correspondence
+heartily, while the sun, watching them through the open window, danced
+gorgeously upon the walls and secretly put the fire out.
+
+In this way several hours passed, for besides letters to be dictated,
+there were careful instructions to be given about many things. Minks
+was kept very busy. He was now not merely shorthand clerk, and he had
+to be initiated into the inner history of various enterprises in which
+his chief was interested. All Mr. Rogers's London interests, indeed,
+were to be in his charge, and, obviously aware of this, he bore
+himself proudly with an air of importance that had no connection with
+a common office. To watch him, you would never have dreamed that
+Herbert Minks had ever contemplated City life, much less known ten
+years of drudgery in its least poetic stages. For him, too, as for his
+employer, anew chapter of existence had begun--'commenced' he would
+have phrased it--and, as confidential adviser to a man of fortune
+whose character he admired almost to the point of worship, he was now
+a person whose importance it was right the world should recognise. And
+he meant the world to take this attitude without delay. He dressed
+accordingly, knowing that of every ten people nine judge value from
+clothes, and hat, and boots--especially boots. His patent leather,
+buttoned boots were dazzling, with upper parts of soft grey leather.
+And his shiny 'topper' wore a band of black. Minks, so far as he knew,
+was not actually in mourning, but somebody for whom he ought to be in
+mourning might die any day, and meanwhile, he felt, the band conveyed
+distinction. It suited a man of letters. It also protected the hat.
+
+'Thank'ee,' said his chief as luncheon time drew near; 'and now, if
+you'll get those letters typed, you might leave 'em here for me on
+your way home to sign. That's all we have to-day, isn't it?'
+
+'You wanted, I think, to draft your Scheme for Disabled---' began the
+secretary, when the other cut him short.
+
+'Yes, yes, but that must wait. I haven't got it clear yet in my own
+mind. You might think it out a bit yourself, perhaps, meanwhile, and
+give me your ideas, eh? Look up what others have done in the same
+line, for instance, and tell me where they failed. What the weakness
+of their schemes was, you know--and--er--so forth.'
+
+A faint smile, that held the merest ghost of merriment, passed across
+the face of Minks, leaping, unobserved by his chief, from one eye to
+the other. There was pity and admiration in it; a hint of pathos
+visited those wayward lips. For the suggestion revealed the weakness
+the secretary had long ago divined--that the practical root of the
+matter did not really lie in him at all, and Henry Rogers forever
+dreamed of 'Schemes' he was utterly unable and unsuited to carry out.
+Improvements in a silk machine was one thing, but improvements in
+humanity was another. Like the poetry in his soul they could never
+know fulfilment. He had inspiration, but no constructive talent. For
+the thousandth time Minks wondered, glancing at his employer's face,
+how such calm and gentle features, such dreamy eyes and a Vandyke
+beard so neatly trimmed, could go with ambitions so lofty and so
+unusual. This sentence he had heard before, and was destined often to
+hear again, while achievement came no nearer.
+
+'I will do so at the first opportunity.' He put the oblong note-book
+carefully in his pocket, and stood by the table in an attitude of 'any
+further instructions, please?' while one eye wandered to the unopened
+letter that was signed 'Albinia Minks, with heartfelt gratitude.'
+
+'And, by the by, Minks,' said his master, turning as though a new idea
+had suddenly struck him and he had formed a hasty plan, 'you might
+kindly look up an afternoon train to Crayfield. Loop line from Charing
+Cross, you know. Somewhere about two o'clock or so. I have to--er--I
+think I'll run down that way after luncheon.'
+
+Whereupon, having done this last commission, and written it down upon
+a sheet of paper which he placed with care against the clock, beside
+the unopened letter, the session closed, and Minks, in his mourning
+hat and lavender gloves, walked up St. James's Street apparently
+_en route_ for the Ritz, but suddenly, as with careless
+unconsciousness, turning into an A.B.C. Depot for luncheon, well
+pleased with himself and with the world, but especially with his
+considerate employer.
+
+Ten minutes later Mr. Rogers followed him on his way to the club, and
+just when Minks was reflecting with pride of the well-turned phrases
+he had dictated to his wife for her letter of thanks, it passed across
+the mind of its recipient that he had forgotten to read it altogether.
+And, truth to tell, he never yet has read it; for, returning late that
+evening from his sentimental journey down to Crayfield, it stood no
+longer where he had left it beside the clock, and nothing occurred to
+remind him of its existence. Apart from its joint composers, no one
+can ever know its contents but the charwoman, who, noticing the
+feminine writing, took it back to Lambeth and pored over it with a
+candle for full half an hour, greatly disappointed. 'Things like
+that,' she grumbled to her husband, whose appearance suggested that he
+went for bigger game, 'ain't worth the trouble of taking at all,
+whichever way you looks at it.' And probably she was right.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+    And what if All of animated nature
+    Be but as Instruments diversely framed
+    That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweeps
+    One infinite and intellectual Breeze,
+    At once the Soul of each, and God of all?
+                  _The AEolian Harp_, S. T. COLERIDGE.
+
+In the train, even before St. John's was passed, a touch of inevitable
+reaction had set in, and Rogers asked himself why he was going. For a
+sentimental journey was hardly in his line, it seemed. But no
+satisfactory answer was forthcoming--none, at least, that a Board or a
+Shareholders' Meeting would have considered satisfactory.
+
+There was an answer in him somewhere, but he couldn't quite get down
+to it. The spring glory had enticed him back to childhood. The journey
+was symbolical of escape. That was the truth. But the part of him that
+knew it had lain so long in abeyance that only a whisper flitted
+across his mind as he sat looking out of the carriage window at the
+fields round Lee and Eltham. The landscape seemed hauntingly familiar,
+but what surprised him was the number of known faces that rose and
+smiled at him. A kind of dream confusion blurred his outer sight;
+
+At Bexley, as he hurried past, he caught dimly a glimpse of an old
+nurse whom he remembered trying to break into bits with a hop-pole he
+could barely lift; and, most singular thing, on the Sidcup platform, a
+group of noisy schoolboys, with smudged faces and ridiculously small
+caps stuck on the back of their heads, had scrambled viciously to get
+into his compartment. They carried brown canvas satchels full of
+crumpled books and papers, and though the names had mostly escaped
+him, he remembered every single face. There was Barlow--big, bony chap
+who stammered, bringing his words out with a kind of whistling sneeze.
+Barlow had given him his first thrashing for copying his stammer.
+There was young Watson, who funked at football and sneaked to a master
+about a midnight supper. He stole pocket-money, too, and was expelled.
+Then he caught a glimpse of another fellow with sly face and laughing
+eyes; the name had vanished, but he was the boy who put jalap in the
+music-master's coffee, and received a penny from five or six others
+who thus escaped a lesson. All waved their hands to him as the train
+hurried away, and the last thing he saw was the station lamp where he
+had lit the cigar that made three of them, himself included, deadly
+sick. Familiar woods and a little blue-eyed stream then hid the vision
+... and a moment later he was standing on the platform of his
+childhood's station, giving up his first-class ticket (secretly
+ashamed that it was not third) to a station-master-ticket-collector
+person who simply was not real at all.
+
+For he had no beard. He was small, too, and insignificant. The way he
+had dwindled, with the enormous station that used to be a mile or so
+in length, was severely disappointing. That STATION-MASTER with the
+beard ought to have lived for ever. His niche in the Temple of Fame
+was sure. One evening he had called in full uniform at the house and
+asked to see Master Henry Rogers, the boy who had got out 'WHILE-THE-
+TRAIN-WAS-STILL-IN-MOTION,' and had lectured him gravely with a face
+like death. Never again had he left a train 'whilestillinmotion,'
+though it was years before he discovered how his father had engineered
+that awful, salutary visit.
+
+He asked casually, in a voice that hardly seemed his own, about the
+service back to town, and received the answer with a kind of wonder.
+It was so respectful. The porters had not found him out yet; but the
+moment they did so, he would have to run. He did not run, however. He
+walked slowly down the Station Road, swinging the silver-knobbed cane
+the office clerks had given him when he left the City. Leisurely,
+without a touch of fear, he passed the Water Works, where the huge
+iron crank of the shaft rose and fell with ominous thunder against the
+sky. It had once been part of that awful hidden Engine which moved the
+world. To go near it was instant death, and he always crossed the road
+to avoid it; but this afternoon he went down the cinder pathway so
+close that he could touch it with his stick. It was incredible that so
+terrible a thing could dwindle in a few years to the dimensions of a
+motor piston. The crank that moved up and down like a bending,
+gigantic knee looked almost flimsy now. ...
+
+Then the village street came into view and he suddenly smelt the
+fields and gardens that topped the hill beyond. The world turned gold
+and amber, shining beneath a turquoise sky. There was a rush of
+flaming sunsets, one upon another, followed by great green moons, and
+hosts of stars that came twinkling across barred windows to his very
+bedside ... that grand old Net of Stars he made so cunningly. Cornhill
+and Lombard Street flashed back upon him for a second, then dived away
+and hid their faces for ever, as he passed the low grey wall beside
+the church where first he had seen the lame boy hobbling, and had
+realised that the whole world suffered.
+
+A moment he stood here, thinking. He heard the wind sighing in the yew
+trees beside the dark brown porch. Rooks were cawing among the elms
+across the churchyard, and pigeons wheeled and fluttered about the
+grey square tower. The wind, the tower, the weather-stained old porch
+--these had not changed. This sunshine and this turquoise sky were
+still the same.
+
+The village stopped at the churchyard--significant boundary. No single
+building ventured farther; the houses ran the other way instead,
+pouring down the steep hill in a cataract of bricks and roofs towards
+the station. The hill, once topped, and the churchyard left behind, he
+entered the world of fields and little copses. It was just like going
+through a gateway. It was a Gateway. The road sloped gently down for
+half-a-mile towards the pair of big iron gates that barred the drive
+up to the square grey house upon whose lawns he once had chased
+butterflies, but from whose upper windows he once had netted--stars.
+
+The spell came over him very strongly then as he went slowly down that
+road. The altered scale of distance confused him; the road had
+telescoped absurdly; the hayfields were so small. At the turn lay the
+pond with yellow duckweed and a bent iron railing that divided it to
+keep the cows from crossing. Formerly, of course, that railing had
+been put to prevent children drowning in its bottomless depths; all
+ponds had been bottomless then, and the weeds had spread to entice the
+children to a watery death. But now he could have jumped across it,
+weed and railing too, without a run, and he looked in vain for the
+shores that once had been so seductively far away. They were mere
+dirty, muddy edges.
+
+This general shrinkage in space was very curious. But a similar
+contraction, he realised, had taken place in time as well, for,
+looking back upon his forty years, they seemed such a little thing
+compared to the enormous stretch they offered when he had stood beside
+this very pond and looked ahead. He wondered vaguely which was the
+reality and which the dream. But his effort was not particularly
+successful, and he came to no conclusion. Those years of strenuous
+business life were like a few weeks, yet their golden results were in
+his pockets. Those years of childhood had condensed into a jumble of
+sunny hours, yet their golden harvest was equally in his heart. Time
+and space were mere bits of elastic that could stretch or shrink as
+thought directed, feeling chose. And now both thought and feeling
+chose emphatically. He stepped back swiftly. His mind seemed filled
+with stars and butterflies and childhood's figures of wonder.
+Childhood took him prisoner.
+
+It was curious at first, though, how the acquired nature made a
+struggle to assert itself, and the practical side of him, developed in
+the busy markets of the world, protested. It was automatic rather, and
+at best not very persistent; it soon died away. But, seeing the gravel
+everywhere, he wondered if there might not be valuable clay about,
+what labour cost, and what the nearest stations were for haulage; and,
+seeing the hop-poles, he caught himself speculating what wood they
+were made of, and what varnish would best prevent their buried points
+from going rotten in this particular soil. There was a surge of
+practical considerations, but quickly fading. The last one was stirred
+by the dust of a leisurely butcher's cart. He had visions of a paste
+for motor-roads, or something to lay dust ... but, before the dust had
+settled again through the sunshine about his feet, or the rumble of
+the cart died away into distance, the thought vanished like a
+nightmare in the dawn. It ran away over the switchback of the years,
+uphill to Midsummer, downhill to Christmas, jumping a ditch at Easter,
+and a hedge at that terrible thing known as ''Clipse of the Moon.' The
+leaves of the elm trees whispered overhead. He was moving through an
+avenue that led towards big iron gates beside a little porter's lodge.
+He saw the hollies, and smelt the laurustinus. There lay the triangle
+of uncut grass at the cross-roads, the long, grey, wooden palings
+built upon moss-grown bricks; and against the sky he just caught a
+glimpse of the feathery, velvet cedar crests, crests that once held
+nails of golden meteors for his Net of Stars.
+
+Determined to enjoy his cake and eat it at the same time as long as
+possible, he walked down the road a little distance, eyeing the lawns
+and windows of the house through narrow gaps between the boarding of
+the fence. He prolonged the pleasures of anticipation thus, and,
+besides, he wished to see if the place was occupied or empty. It
+looked unkempt rather, the gardens somewhat neglected, and yet there
+hung an air of occupancy about it all. He had heard the house had
+changed hands several times. But it was difficult to see clearly; the
+sunshine dazzled; the lilac and laburnum scattered sheets of colour
+through which the shadows wove themselves an obscuring veil, He kept
+seeing butterflies and chasing them with his sight.
+
+'Can you tell me if this house is occupied?' he asked abruptly of an
+old gentleman who coughed suddenly behind him.
+
+It was an explanation as well as a question, for the passer-by had
+surprised him in a remarkable attitude. He was standing on tiptoe upon
+the parapet of brick, pulling himself up above the fence by his hands,
+and his hat had fallen into the road.
+
+'The shrubberies are so dense I can't see through them,' he added,
+landing upon his feet with a jump, a little breathless. He felt rather
+foolish. He was glad the stranger was not Minks or one of his fellow
+directors. 'The fact is I lived here as a boy. I'm not a burglar.'
+
+But the old gentleman--a clergyman apparently--stood there smiling
+without a word as he handed him the fallen hat. He was staring rather
+intently into his eyes.
+
+'Ahem!' coughed Mr. Rogers, to fill an awkward gap. 'You're very kind,
+sir,' and he took the hat and brushed the dust off. Something brushed
+off his sight and memory at the same time.
+
+'Ahem' coughed the other, still staring. 'Please do not mention it---'
+adding after a second's pause, to the complete amazement of his
+listener, 'Mr. Rogers.'
+
+And then it dawned upon him. Something in the charming, peace-lit face
+was strangely familiar.
+
+'I say,' he exclaimed eagerly, 'this is a pleasure,' and then repeated
+with even greater emphasis, 'but this is a pleasure, indeed. Who ever
+would have thought it?' he added with delicious ambiguity. He seized
+the outstretched hand and shook it warmly--the hand of the old vicar
+who had once been his tutor too.
+
+'You've come back to your boyhood, then. Is that it? And to see the
+old place and--your old friends?' asked the other with his beautiful,
+kindly smile that even false quantities had never been able to spoil.
+'We've not forgotten you as you've forgotten us, you see,' he added;
+'and the place, though empty now for years, has not forgotten you
+either, I'll be bound.'
+
+They stood there in the sunshine on the dusty road talking of a
+hundred half-forgotten things, as the haze of memory lifted, and
+scenes and pictures, names and faces, details of fun and mischief
+rained upon him like flowers in a sudden wind of spring. The voice and
+face of his old tutor bridged the years like magic. Time had stood
+still here in this fair Kentish garden. The little man in black who
+came every Saturday morning with his dingy bag had forgotten to wind
+the clocks, perhaps. ...
+
+'But you will like to go inside and see it all for yourself--alone,'
+the Vicar said at length. 'My housekeeper has the keys. I'll send a
+boy with them to the lodge. It won't take five minutes. And then you
+must come up to the Vicarage for tea--or dinner if you're kept--and
+stay the night. My married daughter-you remember Joan and May, of
+course?--is with us just now; she'll be so very glad to see you. You
+know the way.'
+
+And he moved off down the country road, still vigorous at seventy,
+with his black straw hat and big square-toed boots, his shoulders
+hardly more bent than when his mischievous pupil had called every
+morning with Vergil and Todhunter underneath one arm, and in his heart
+a lust to hurry after sleepy rabbits in the field.
+
+'My married daughter--you remember May?'
+
+The blue-eyed girl of his boyhood passion flitted beside his
+disappearing figure. He remembered the last time he saw her--refusing
+to help her from a place of danger in the cedar branches--when he put
+his love into a single eloquent phrase: 'You silly ass!' then cast her
+adrift for ever because she said 'Thanks awfully,' and gave him a
+great wet kiss. But he thought a lot of her all the same, and the
+thoughts had continued until the uproar in the City drowned them.
+
+Thoughts crowded thick and fast.
+
+How vital thinking was after all! Nothing seemed able to kill its
+eternal pictures. The coincidence of meeting his old tutor again was
+like a story-book, though in reality likely enough; for his own face
+was not so greatly altered by the close brown beard perhaps; and the
+Vicar had grown smaller, that was all. Like everything else, he had
+shrunk, of course-like road and station-master and water-works. He had
+almost said, 'You, too, have shrunk'--but otherwise was the same old
+fluffy personality that no doubt still got sadly muddled in his
+sermons, gave out wrong hymns, and spent his entire worldly substance
+on his scattered parish. His voice was softer too. It rang in his ears
+still, as though there had been no break of over two decades. The hum
+of bees and scythes was in it just as when it came through the open
+study window while he construed the _Georgics_. ... But, most clearly
+of all, he heard two sentences--
+
+'You have come back to your boyhood,' and 'The empty place has not
+forgotten you, I'll be bound.' Both seemed significant. They hummed
+and murmured through his mind. That old net of starlight somehow
+caught them in its golden meshes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+     A Spirit gripped him by the hair and carried him far away,
+     Till he heard as the roar of a rain-fed ford the roar of the
+        Milky Way:
+     Till he heard the roar of the Milky Way die down and drone and
+        cease.
+                                 Tomlinson, R. KIPLING.
+
+The boy presently came up in a cloud of dust with the key, and ran off
+again with a shilling in his pocket, while Henry Rogers, budding
+philanthropist and re-awakening dreamer, went down the hill of
+memories at high speed that a doctor would have said was dangerous, a
+philosopher morbid, and the City decreed unanimously as waste of time.
+
+He went over the house from cellar to ceiling...
+
+And finally he passed through a back door in the scullery and came out
+upon the lawn. With a shock he realised that a long time had
+intervened. The dusk was falling. The rustle of its wings was already
+in the shrubberies. He had missed the tea hour altogether. And, as he
+walked there, so softly that he hardly disturbed the thrushes that
+busily tapped the dewy grass for supper, he knew suddenly that he was
+not alone, but that shadowy figures hid everywhere, watching, waiting,
+wondering like himself. They trooped after him, invisible and silent,
+as he went about the old familiar garden, finding nothing changed.
+They were so real that once he stopped beneath the lime trees, where
+afternoon tea was served in summer, and where the Long Walk began its
+haunted, shadowy existence--stood still a moment and called to them--
+
+'Is any one there? Come out and show yourselves....!'
+
+And though his voice fell dead among the foliage, winning echoes from
+spots whence no echoes possibly could come, and rushing back upon him
+like a boomerang, he got the curious impression that it had penetrated
+into certain corners of the shrubberies where it had been heard and
+understood. Answers did not come. They were no more audible than the
+tapping of the thrushes, or the little feet of darkness that ran
+towards him from the eastern sky. But they were there. The troop of
+Presences drew closer. They had been creeping on all fours. They now
+stood up. The entire garden was inhabited and alive.
+
+_'He has come back!'_
+
+It ran in a muted whisper like a hush of wind. The thrill of it passed
+across the lawn in the dusk. The dark tunnel of the Long Walk filled
+suddenly to the brim. The thrushes raised their heads, peeping
+sideways to listen, on their guard. Then the leaves opened a little
+and the troop ventured nearer. The doors and windows of the silent,
+staring house had also opened. From the high nursery windows
+especially, queer shapes of shadow flitted down to join the others.
+For the sun was far away behind the cedars now, and that Net of
+Starlight dropped downwards through the air. So carefully had he woven
+it years ago that hardly a mesh was torn....
+
+_'He has come back again...!'_ the whisper ran a second time, and he
+looked about him for a place where he could hide.
+
+But there was no place. Escape from the golden net was now
+impossible....
+
+Then suddenly, looming against the field that held the Gravel-Pit and
+the sleeping rabbits, he saw the outline of the Third Class Railway
+Carriage his father bought as a Christmas present, still standing on
+the stone supports that were borrowed from a haystack.
+
+That Railway Carriage had filled whole years with joy and wonder. They
+had called it the Starlight Express. It had four doors, real lamps in
+the roof, windows that opened and shut, and big round buffers. It
+started without warning. It went at full speed in a moment. It was
+never really still. The footboards were endless and very dangerous.
+
+He saw the carriage with its four compartments still standing there in
+the hay field. It looked mysterious, old, and enormous as ever. There
+it still stood as in his boyhood days, but stood neglected and unused.
+
+The memory of the thrilling journeys he had made in this Starlight
+Express completed his recapture, for he knew now who the troop of
+Presences all about him really were. The passengers, still waiting
+after twenty years' delay, thinking perhaps the train would never
+start again, were now impatient. They had caught their engine-driver
+again at last. Steam was up. Already the blackbirds whistled. And
+something utterly wild and reckless in him passionately broke its
+bonds with a flood of longings that no amount of years or 'Cities'
+could ever subdue again. He stepped out from the dozing lime trees and
+held his hat up like a flag.
+
+'Take your seats,' he cried as of old, 'for the Starlight Express.
+Take your seats! No luggage allowed! Animals free! Passengers with
+special tickets may drive the engine in their turn! First stop the
+Milky Way for hot refreshments! Take your seats, or stay at home for
+ever!'
+
+It was the old cry, still remembered accurately; and the response was
+immediate. The rush of travellers from the Long Walk nearly took him
+off his feet. From the house came streams of silent figures, families
+from the shrubberies, tourists from the laurels by the scullery
+windows, and throngs of breathless oddities from the kitchen-garden.
+The lawn was littered with discarded luggage; umbrellas dropped on
+flower-beds, where they instantly took root and grew; animals ran
+scuttling among them--birds, ponies, dogs, kittens, donkeys, and white
+mice in trailing swarms. There was not a minute to spare. One big
+Newfoundland brought several Persian kittens on his back, their tails
+behind them in the air like signals; a dignified black retriever held
+a baby in his mouth; and fat children by the score, with unfastened
+clothes and smudged faces, many of them in their nightclothes, poured
+along in hurrying, silent crowds, softer than clouds that hide a
+crescent moon in summer.
+
+'But this is impossible,' he cried to himself. 'The multiplication
+tables have gone wrong. The City has driven me mad. No shareholder
+would stand such a thing for a minute!'
+
+While, at the same time, that other voice in him kept shouting, ever
+more loudly--
+
+'Take your seats! Take your seats! The Starlight Express is off to
+Fairyland! Show your tickets! Show your tickets!'
+
+He laughed with happiness.
+
+The throng and rush were at first so great that he recognised hardly
+any of the passengers; but, the first press over, he saw several
+bringing up the rear who were as familiar as of yesterday. They nodded
+kindly to him as they passed, no sign of reproach for the long delay
+in their friendly eyes. He had left his place beside the lime trees,
+and now stood at the carriage door, taking careful note of each one as
+he showed his ticket to the Guard. And the Guard was the blue-eyed
+girl. She did not clip the tickets, but merely looked at them. She
+looked, first at the ticket, then into the face of the passenger. The
+glance of the blue eyes was the passport. Of course, he remembered
+now--both guard and engine-driver were obliged to have blue eyes. Blue
+eyes furnished the motor-power and scenery and everything. It was the
+spell that managed the whole business--the Spell of the Big Blue eyes
+--blue, the colour of youth and distance, of sky and summer flowers,
+of
+childhood.
+
+He watched these last passengers come up one by one, and as they filed
+past him he exchanged a word with each. How pleased they were to see
+him! But how ashamed he felt for having been so long away. Not one,
+however, reminded him of it, and--what touched him most of all--not
+one suspected he had nearly gone for good. All knew he would come
+back.
+
+What looked like a rag-and-bone man blundered up first, his face a
+perfect tangle of beard and hair, and the eyebrows like bits of tow
+stuck on with sealing-wax. It was The Tramp--Traveller of the World,
+the Eternal Wanderer, homeless as the wind; his vivid personality had
+haunted all the lanes of childhood. And, as Rogers nodded kindly to
+him, the figure waited for something more.
+
+'Ain't forgot the rhyme, 'ave yer?' he asked in a husky voice that
+seemed to issue from the ground beneath his broken boots. 'The rhyme
+we used to sing together in the Noight-Nursery when I put my faice
+agin' the bars, after climbin' along 'arf a mile of slippery slaites
+to git there.'
+
+And Rogers, smiling, found himself saying it, while the pretty Guard
+fixed her blue eyes on his face and waited patiently:--
+
+     I travel far and wide,
+     But in my own inside!
+     Such places
+     And queer races!
+     I never go to them, you see,
+     _Because they always come to me!_
+
+'Take your seat, please,' cried the Guard. 'No luggage, you know!' She
+pushed him in sideways, first making him drop his dirty bundle.
+
+With a quick, light step a very thin man hurried up. He had no
+luggage, but carried on his shoulder a long stick with a point of gold
+at its tip.
+
+'Light the lamps,' said the Guard impatiently, 'and then sit on the
+back buffers and hold your pole out to warn the shooting stars.'
+
+He hopped in, though not before Rogers had passed the time of night
+with him first:--
+
+     I stand behind the sky, and light the stars,--
+     Except on cloudy nights;
+     And then my head
+     Remains in bed,
+     And takes along the ceiling--easier flights!
+
+Others followed quickly then, too quickly for complete recognition.
+Besides, the Guard was getting more and more impatient.
+
+'You've clean forgotten _me_,' said one who had an awful air of
+darkness about him; 'and no wonder, because you never saw me properly.
+On Sundays, when I was nicely washed up you couldn't 'ardly reckernise
+me. Nachural 'nuff, too!'
+
+He shot by like a shadow, then pulled up a window with a rattle,
+popped his dirty head out, and called back thickly as if his mouth was
+full of smoke or pudding:--
+
+     The darkness suits _me_ best,
+     For my old face
+     Is out of place,
+     Except in chimney stacks!
+     Upon my crown
+     The soot comes down
+     Filling my eyes with blacks.
+     Don't light the fire,
+     Or I'd--.
+
+'Stop it!' cried the Guard, shutting the window with a snap, so that
+Rogers never knew whether the missing word used to be 'expire' or
+'perspire'; 'and go on to your proper place on the tender.' Then she
+turned quickly to fix her big blue eyes upon the next comer. And how
+they did come, to be sure! There was the Gypsy, the Creature of the
+Gravel-Pit, the long-legged, long-armed thing from the Long Walk--she
+could make her arm stretch the whole length like elastic--the enormous
+Woman of the Haystack, who lived beneath the huge tarpaulin cover, the
+owner of the Big Cedar, and the owner of the Little Cedar, all
+treading fast upon one another's heels.
+
+From the Blue Summer-house came the Laugher. Rogers remembered
+pretending once that he was going to faint. He had thrown himself upon
+the summer-house floor and kicked, and the blue-eyed girl, instead of
+being thrilled as both anticipated, had laughed abominably.
+
+'Painters don't kick!' she had said with scorn, while he had answered,
+though without conviction, 'Men-fainters do--kick dreadfully.' And she
+had simply laughed till her sides ached, while he lay there kicking
+till his muscles were sore, in the vain hope of winning her belief.
+
+He exchanged a glance with her now, as the Laugher slipped in past
+them. The eyes of the Guard were very soft. He was found out and
+forgiven at the same time.
+
+Then came the very mysterious figure of authority--the Head Gardener,
+a composite being who included all the lesser under-gardeners as well.
+His sunburned face presented a resume of them all. He was the man who
+burned the hills of dead leaves in autumn.
+
+'Give me of your fire, please,' whispered Rogers, something between
+joy and sadness in his heart, 'for there are hills of leaves that I
+would burn up quickly--' but the man hurried on, tossing his trowel
+over the Guard's head, and nearly hitting another passenger who
+followed too close. This was the Woman of the Haystack, an enormous,
+spreading traveller who utterly refused to be hurried, and only
+squeezed through the door because Rogers, the Guard, and several
+others pushed behind with all their might, while the Sweep, the Tramp,
+and those already in tugged breathlessly at the same time....
+
+Last of all, just as the train was starting, came a hurrying shadowy
+thing with dreamy eyes, long hair like waving grass, and open hands
+that he spread like wings, as though he were sowing something through
+the air. And he was singing softly as he came fumbling along the
+byeways of the dusk.
+
+'Oh, but I know _you_ well,' cried Rogers, watching him come with a
+thrill of secret wonder, 'and I love you better than all the rest
+together.'
+
+The face was hidden as he wafted silently past them. A delicious odour
+followed him. And something, fine as star-dust, as he scattered it all
+about him, sifted down before the other's sight. The Dustman entered
+like a ghost.
+
+'Oh, give me of your dust!' cried Rogers again, 'for there are eyes
+that I would blind with it--eyes in the world that I would blind with
+it--your dust of dreams and beauty...!'
+
+The man waved a shadowy hand towards him, and his own eyes filled. He
+closed the lids a moment; and when he opened them again he saw two
+monster meteors in the sky. They crossed in two big lines of glory
+above the house, dropping towards the cedars. The Net of Stars was
+being fastened. He remembered then his old Star Cave--cave where lost
+starlight was stored up by these sprites for future use.
+
+He just had time to seize the little hand the Guard held out, and to
+drop into a seat beside her, when the train began to move. It rose
+soundlessly with lightning speed. It shot up to a tremendous height,
+then paused, hovering in the night.
+
+The Guard turned her big blue eyes upon him.
+
+'Where to?' she whispered. And he suddenly remembered that it was
+always he who decided the destination, and that this time he was at a
+loss what to say.
+
+'The Star Cave, of course,' he cried, 'the cave where the lost
+starlight gathers.'
+
+'Which direction?' she asked, with the yellow whistle to her lips
+ready to signal the driver.
+
+'Oh, out there--to the north-west,' he answered, 'to the mountains of
+--across the Channel.'
+
+But this was not precise enough. Formerly he had always given very
+precise directions.
+
+'Name, please,' she urged, 'but quickly. The Interfering Sun, you
+know--there's no time to lose. We shall be meeting the Morning Spiders
+soon.'
+
+The Morning Spiders! How it all came back! The Morning Spiders that
+fly over the fields in the dawn upon their private threads of gossamer
+and fairy cotton.
+
+He remembered that, as children, they had never actually found this
+Star Cave, for the Interfering Sun had always come too soon and spoilt
+it all.
+
+'Name, please, and do hurry up. We can't hover here all night,' rang
+in his ears.
+
+And he made a plunge. He suddenly thought of Bourcelles, the little
+village in the Jura mountains, where he and his cousin had spent a
+year learning French. The idea flashed into him probably because it
+contained mountains, caves, and children. His cousin lived there now
+to educate his children and write his books. Only that morning he had
+got a letter from him.
+
+'Bourcelles, of course, Bourcelles!' he cried, 'and steer for the
+slopes of Boudry where the forests dip towards the precipices of the
+Areuse. I'll send word to the children to meet us.'
+
+'Splendid!' cried the Guard, and kissed him with delight. The whistle
+shrieked, the train turned swiftly in a tremendous sweeping curve, and
+vanished along the intricate star-rails into space, humming and
+booming as it went. It flew a mane of stars behind it through the sky.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+     Oh! thou art fairer than the evening air
+     Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.
+                   Doctor Famtus, CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE.
+
+The plop of a water-rat in the pond that occupied the rock-garden in
+the middle of the lawn brought him back to earth, and the Vicar's
+invitation to tea flashed across his mind.
+
+'Stock Exchange and typewriters!' he exclaimed, 'how rude he'll think
+me!' And he rubbed something out of his eyes. He gave one long,
+yearning glance at the spangled sky where an inquisitive bat darted
+zigzag several times between himself and the Pleiades, that bunch of
+star-babies as yet unborn, as the blue-eyed guard used to call them.
+
+'And I shall miss my supper and bed into the bargain!'
+
+He turned reluctantly from his place beside the lime trees, and
+crossed the lawn now wet with dew. The whole house seemed to turn its
+hooded head and watch him go, staring with amusement in its many
+lidless eyes. On the front lawn there was more light, for it faced the
+dying sunset. The Big and Little Cedar rose from their pools of
+shadow, beautifully poised. Like stately dowagers in voluminous skirts
+of velvet they seemed to curtsey to him as he passed. Stars like
+clusters of sprinkled blossoms hung upon their dignified old heads.
+The whole place seemed aware of him. Glancing a moment at the upper
+nursery windows, he could just distinguish the bars through which his
+little hands once netted stars, and as he did so a meteor shot across
+the sky its flashing light of wonder. Behind the Little Cedar it dived
+into the sunset afterglow. And, hardly had it dipped away, when
+another, coming crosswise from the south, drove its length of molten,
+shining wire straight against the shoulder of the Big Cedar.
+
+The whole performance seemed arranged expressly for his benefit. The
+Net was loosed--this Net of Stars and Thoughts--perhaps to go
+elsewhere. For this was taking out the golden nails, surely. It would
+hardly have surprised him next to see the Starlight Express he had
+been dreaming about dart across the heavens overhead. That cool air
+stealing towards him from the kitchen-garden might well have been the
+wind of its going. He could almost hear the distant rush and murmur of
+its flying mass.
+
+'How extraordinarily vivid it all was!' he thought to himself, as he
+hurried down the drive. 'What detail! What a sense of reality! How
+carefully I must have _thought_ these creatures as a boy! How
+thoroughly! And what a good idea to go out and see Jack's children at
+Bourcelles. They've never known these English sprites. I'll introduce
+'em!'
+
+He thought it out in detail, very vividly indeed. His imagination
+lingered over it and gave it singular reality.
+
+Up the road he fairly ran. For Henry Rogers was a punctual man; these
+last twenty years he had never once been late for anything. It had
+been part of the exact training he had schooled himself with, and the
+Vicar's invitation was not one he desired to trifle with. He made his
+peace, indeed, easily enough, although the excuses sounded a little
+thin. It was something of a shock, too, to find that the married
+daughter after all was not the blue-eyed girl of his boyhood's
+passion. For it was Joan, not May, who came down the gravel path
+between the roses to greet him.
+
+On the way up he had felt puzzled. Yet 'bemused,' perhaps, is the word
+that Herbert Minks would have chosen for one of his poems, to describe
+a state of mind he, however, had never experienced himself. And he
+would have chosen it instinctively--for onomatopoeic reasons--because
+it hums and drones and murmurs dreamily. 'Puzzled' was too sharp a
+word.
+
+Yet Henry Rogers, who felt it, said 'puzzled' without more ado,
+although mind, imagination, memory all hummed and buzzed pleasantly
+about his ears even while he did so.
+
+'A dream is a dream,' he reflected as he raced along the familiar
+dusty road in the twilight, 'and a reverie is a reverie; but that, I'd
+swear, went a bit further than either one or t'other. It puzzles me.
+Does vivid thinking, I wonder, make pictures everywhere?... And--can
+they last?'
+
+For the detailed reality of the experience had been remarkable, and
+the actuality of those childhood's creations scarcely belonged to
+dream or reverie. They were certainly quite as real as the sleek
+Directors who sat round the long Board Room table, fidgeting with fat
+quill pens and pewter ink-pots; more alive even than the Leading
+Shareholder who rose so pompously at Annual Meetings to second the
+resolution that the 'Report and Balance Sheet be adopted without
+criticism.'
+
+And he was conscious that in himself rose, too, a deep, passionate
+willingness to accept the whole experience, also 'without criticism.'
+Those picturesque passengers in the Starlight Express he knew so
+intimately, so affectionately, that he actually missed them. He felt
+that he had said good-bye to genuine people. He regretted their
+departure, and was keenly sorry he had not gone off with them--such a
+merry, wild, adventurous crew! He must find them again, whatever
+happened. There was a yearning in him to travel with that blue-eyed
+guard among the star-fields. He would go out to Bourcelles and tell
+the story to the children. He thought very hard indeed about it all.
+
+And now, in the Vicarage drawing-room after dinner, his bemusement
+increased rather than grew less. His mind had already confused a face
+and name. The blue-eyed May was not, after all, the girl of his
+boyhood's dream. His memory had been accurate enough with the
+passengers in the train. There was no confusion there. But this gentle
+married woman, who sang to her own accompaniment at her father's
+request, was not the mischievous, wilful creature who had teased and
+tortured his heart in years gone by, and had helped him construct the
+sprites and train and star-trips. It was, surely, the other daughter
+who had played that delicious role. Yet, either his memory was at
+fault, or the Vicar had mixed the names up. The years had played this
+little unimportant trick upon him anyhow. And that was clear.
+
+But if with so-called real people such an error was possible, how
+could he be sure of anything? Which after all, he asked himself, was
+real? It was the Vicar's mistake, he learned later, for May was now a
+teacher in London; but the trivial incident served to point this
+confusion in his mind between an outer and an inner world--to the
+disadvantage, if anything, of the former.
+
+And over the glass of port together, while they talked pleasantly of
+vanished days, Rogers was conscious that a queer, secret amusement
+sheltered in his heart, due to some faint, superior knowledge that
+this Past they spoke of had not moved away at all, but listened with
+fun and laughter just behind his shoulder, watching them. The old
+gentleman seemed never tired of remembering his escapades. He told
+them one after another, like some affectionate nurse or mother, Rogers
+thought, whose children were--to her--unique and wonderful. For he had
+really loved this good-for-nothing pupil, loved him the more, as
+mothers and nurses do, because of the trouble he had given, and
+because of his busy and fertile imagination. It made Rogers feel
+ridiculously young again as he listened. He could almost have played a
+trick upon him then and there, merely to justify the tales. And once
+or twice he actually called him 'Sir.' So that even the conversation
+helped to deepen this bemusement that gathered somewhat tenderly about
+his mind. He cracked his walnuts and watched the genial, peace-lit
+eyes across the table. He chuckled. Both chuckled. They spoke of his
+worldly success too--it seemed unimportant somehow now, although he
+was conscious that something in him expected, nay demanded tribute--
+but the former tutor kept reverting to the earlier days before
+achievement.
+
+'You were indeed a boy of mischief, wonder, and mystery,' he said, his
+eyes twinkling and his tone almost affectionate; 'you made the whole
+place alive with those creatures of your imagination. How Joan helped
+you too--or was it May? I used to wonder sometimes--' he glanced up
+rather searchingly at his companion a moment--' whether the people who
+took the Manor House after your family left did not encounter them
+sometimes upon the lawn or among the shrubberies in the dusk--those
+sprites of yours. Eh?' He passed a neatly pared walnut across the
+table to his guest. 'These ghosts that people nowadays explain
+scientifically--what are they but thoughts visualised by vivid
+thinking such as yours was--creative thinking? They may be just
+pictures created in moments of strong passionate feeling that persist
+for centuries and reach other minds direct They're not seen with the
+outer eye; that's certain, for no two people ever see them together.
+But I'm sure these pictures flame up through the mind sometimes just
+as clearly as some folk see Grey Ladies and the rest flit down the
+stairs at midnight.'
+
+They munched their walnuts a moment in silence. Rogers listened very
+keenly. How curious, he reflected, that the talk should lie this way.
+But he said nothing, hoping that the other would go on.
+
+'And if you really believed in your things,' the older man continued
+presently, 'as I am sure you did believe, then your old Dustman and
+Sweep and Lamplighter, your Woman of the Haystack and your Net of
+Stars and Star Train--all these, for instance, must still be living,
+where you left them, waiting perhaps for your return to lead their
+fresh adventures.'
+
+Rogers stared at him, choking a little over a nut he had swallowed too
+hurriedly.
+
+'Yet,' mused on the other, 'it's hardly likely the family that
+succeeded you met them. There were no children!'
+
+'Ah,' exclaimed the pupil impulsively, 'that's significant, yes--no
+children.' He looked up quickly, questioningly.
+
+'Very, I admit.'
+
+'Besides, the chief Magician had gone away into the City. They
+wouldn't answer to anybody's call, you know.'
+
+'True again. But the Magician never forgot them quite, I'll be bound,'
+he added. 'They're only in hiding till his return, perhaps!' And his
+bright eyes twinkled knowingly.
+
+'But, Vicar, really, you know, that is an extraordinary idea you have
+there-a wonderful idea. Do you really think--?'
+
+'I only mean,' the other replied more gravely, 'that what a man
+thinks, and makes with thinking, is the real thing. It's in the heart
+that sin is first real. The act is the least important end of it--
+grave only because it is the inevitable result of the thinking. Action
+is merely delayed thinking, after all. Don't think ghosts and bogeys,
+I always say to children, or you'll surely see them.'
+
+'Ah, in _that_ sense--!'
+
+'In any sense your mind and intuition can grasp. The thought that
+leaves your brain, provided it be a real thought strongly fashioned,
+goes all over the world, and may reach any other brain tuned to its
+acceptance. _You_ should understand that!' he laughed significantly.
+
+'I do,' said Rogers hastily, as though he felt ashamed of himself or
+were acknowledging a fault in his construing of Homer. 'I understand
+it perfectly. Only I put all those things--imaginative things--aside
+when I went into business. I had to concentrate my energies upon
+making money.'
+
+'You did, yes. Ah!' was the rejoinder, as though he would fain have
+added, 'And was that wise?'
+
+'And I made it, Vicar; you see, I've made it.' He was not exactly
+nettled, but he wanted a word of recognition for his success. 'But you
+know why, don't you?' he added, ashamed the same moment. There was a
+pause, during which both looked closely at their broken nuts. From one
+of the men came a sigh.
+
+'Yes,' resumed the older man presently, 'I remember your great dream
+perfectly well, and a noble one it was too. Its fulfilment now, I
+suppose, lies well within your reach? You have the means to carry it
+out, eh? You have indeed been truly blessed.' He eyed him again with
+uncommon keenness, though a smile ran from the eyes and mouth even up
+to the forehead and silvery hair. 'The world, I see, has not yet
+poisoned you. To carry it out as you once explained it to me would be
+indeed success. If I remember rightly,' he added, 'it was a--er--a
+Scheme for Disabled--'
+
+Rogers interrupted him quickly. 'And I am full of the same big dream
+still,' he repeated almost shyly. 'The money I have made I regard as
+lent to me for investment. I wish to use it, to give it away as one
+gives flowers. I feel sure--'
+
+He stopped abruptly, caught by the glow of enthusiasm that had leaped
+into the other's face with a strangely beautiful expression.
+
+'You never did anything by halves, I remember,' the Vicar said,
+looking at him proudly. 'You were always in earnest, even in your
+play, and I don't mind telling you that I've often prayed for
+something of that zeal of yours--that zeal for others. It's a
+remarkable gift. You will never bury it, will you?' He spoke eagerly,
+passionately, leaning forward a little across the table. 'Few have it
+nowadays; it grows rarer with the luxury and self-seeking of the age.
+It struck me so in you as a boy, that even your sprites worked not for
+themselves but for others--your Dustman, your Sweep, your absurd
+Lamplighter, all were busy doing wonderful things to help their
+neighbours, all, too, without reward.'
+
+Rogers flushed like a boy. But he felt the thrill of his dream course
+through him like great fires. Wherein was any single thing in the
+world worth doing, any object of life worth following, unless as means
+to an end, and that end helping some one else. One's own little
+personal dreams became exhausted in a few years, endeavours for self
+smothered beneath the rain of disappointments; but others, and work
+for others, this was endless and inexhaustible.
+
+'I've sometimes thought,' he heard the older man going on, 'that in
+the dusk I saw'--his voice lowered and he glanced towards the windows
+where the rose trees stood like little figures, cloaked and bonneted
+with beauty beneath the stars--'that I saw your Dustman scattering his
+golden powder as he came softly up the path, and that some of it
+reached my own eyes, too; or that your swift Lamplighter lent me a
+moment his gold-tipped rod of office so that I might light fires of
+hope in suffering hearts here in this tiny world of my own parish.
+Your dreadful Head Gardener, too! And your Song of the Blue-Eyes
+Fairy,' he added slyly, almost mischievously, 'you remember that, I
+wonder?'
+
+'H'm--a little, yes--something,' replied Rogers confusedly. 'It was a
+dreadful doggerel. But I've got a secretary now,' he continued
+hurriedly and in rather a louder voice,' a fellow named Minks, a jewel
+really of a secretary he is--and he, I believe, can write real--'
+
+'It was charming enough for us all to have remembered it, anyhow,' the
+Vicar stopped him, smiling at his blushes,' and for May--or was it
+Joan? dear me, how I do forget names!--to have set it to music. She
+had a little gift that way, you may remember; and, before she took up
+teaching she wrote one or two little things like that.'
+
+'Ah, did she really?' murmured the other. He scarcely knew what he was
+saying, for a mist of blue had risen before his eyes, and in it he was
+seeing pictures. 'The Spell of Blue, wasn't it, or something like
+that?' he said a moment later, 'blue, the colour of beauty in flowers,
+sea, sky, distance--the childhood colour par excellence?'
+
+'But chiefly in the eyes of children, yes,' the Vicar helped him,
+rising at the same time from the table. 'It was the spell, the
+passport, the open sesame to most of your adventures. Come now, if you
+won't have another glass of port, and we'll go into the drawing-room,
+and Joan, May I mean--no, Joan, of course, shall sing it to you. For
+this is a very special occasion for us, you know,' he added as they
+passed across the threshold side by side. 'To see you is to go back
+with you to Fairyland.'
+
+The piano was being idly strummed as they went in, and the player was
+easily persuaded to sing the little song. It floated through the open
+windows and across the lawn as the two men in their corners listened.
+She knew it by heart, as though she often played it. The candles were
+not lit. Dusk caught the sound and muted it enchantingly. And somehow
+the simple melody helped to conceal the meagreness of the childish
+words. Everywhere, from sky and lawn and solemn trees, the Past came
+softly in and listened too.
+
+    There's a Fairy that hides in the beautiful eyes
+    Of children who treat her well;
+    In the little round hole where the eyeball lies
+    She weaves her magical spell.
+
+    Oh, tell it to me,
+    Oh, how can it be,
+    This Spell of the Blue-Eyes Fairy.
+
+    Well,--the eyes must be blue,
+    And the heart must be true,
+    And the child must be _better_ than gold;
+    And then, if you'll let her,
+    The quicker the better,
+    She'll make you forget that you're old,
+    That you're heavy and stupid, and--old!
+
+    So, if such a child you should chance to see,
+    Or with such a child to play,
+    No matter how weary and dull you be,
+    Nor how many tons you weigh;
+    You will suddenly find that you're young again,
+    And your movements are light and airy,
+    And you'll try to be solemn and stiff in vain--
+    It's the Spell of the Blue-Eyes Fairy!
+
+    Now I've told it to you,
+    And you _know_ it is true--
+    It's the Spell of the Blue-Eyes Fairy!
+
+'And it's the same spell,' said the old man in his corner as the last
+notes died away, and they sat on some minutes longer in the fragrant
+darkness, 'that you cast about us as a boy, Henry Rogers, when you
+made that wonderful Net of Stars and fastened it with your comets'
+nails to the big and little cedars. The one catches your heart, you
+see, while the other gets your feet and head and arms till you're a
+hopeless prisoner--a prisoner in Fairyland.'
+
+'Only the world to-day no longer believes in Fairyland,' was the
+reply, 'and even the children have become scientific. Perhaps it's
+only buried though. The two ought to run in harness really--opposite
+interpretations of the universe. One might revive it--here and there
+perhaps. Without it, all the tenderness seems leaking out of life--'
+
+Joan presently said good-night, but the other two waited on a little
+longer; and before going to bed they took a turn outside among the
+flower-beds and fruit-trees that formed the tangled Vicarage garden at
+the back. It was uncommonly warm for a night in early spring. The
+lilacs were in bud, and the air most exquisitely scented.
+
+Rogers felt himself swept back wonderfully among his early years. It
+seemed almost naughty to be out at such an hour instead of asleep in
+bed. It was quite ridiculous--but he loved the feeling and let himself
+go with happy willingness. The story of 'Vice Versa,' where a man
+really became a boy again, passed through his mind and made him laugh.
+
+And the old Vicar kept on feeding the semi-serious mood with what
+seemed almost intentional sly digs. Yet the digs were not intentional,
+really; it was merely that his listener, already prepared by his
+experience with the Starlight Express, read into them these searching
+meanings of his own. Something in him was deeply moved.
+
+'You might make a great teacher, you know,' suggested his companion,
+stooping to sniff a lilac branch as they paused a moment. 'I thought
+so years ago; I think so still. You've kept yourself so simple.'
+
+'How not to do most things,' laughed the other, glad of the darkness.
+
+'How to do the big and simple things,' was the rejoinder; 'and do them
+well, without applause. You have Belief.'
+
+'Too much, perhaps. I simply can't get rid of it.'
+
+'Don't try to. It's belief that moves the world; people want teachers
+--that's my experience in the pulpit and the parish; a world in
+miniature, after all--but they won't listen to a teacher who hasn't
+got it. There are no great poets to-day, only great discoverers. The
+poets, the interpreters of discovery, are gone--starved out of life by
+ridicule, and by questions to which exact answers are impossible. With
+your imagination and belief you might help a world far larger than
+this parish of mine at any rate. I envy you.'
+
+Goodness! how the kind eyes searched his own in this darkness. Though
+little susceptible to flattery, he was aware of something huge the
+words stirred in the depths of him, something far bigger than he yet
+had dreamed of even in his boyhood, something that made his cherished
+Scheme seem a little pale and faded.
+
+'Take the whole world with you into fairyland,' he heard the low voice
+come murmuring in his ear across the lilacs. And there was starlight
+in it--that gentle, steady brilliance that steals into people while
+they sleep and dream, tracing patterns of glory they may recognise
+when they wake, yet marvelling whence it came. 'The world wants its
+fairyland back again, and won't be happy till it gets it.'
+
+A bird listening to them in the stillness sang a little burst of song,
+then paused again to listen.
+
+'Once give them of your magic, and each may shape his fairyland as he
+chooses...' the musical voice ran on.
+
+The flowers seemed alive and walking. This was a voice of beauty. Some
+lilac bud was singing in its sleep. Sirius had dropped a ray across
+its lips of blue and coaxed it out to dance. There was a murmur and a
+stir among the fruit-trees too. The apple blossoms painted the
+darkness with their tiny fluttering dresses, while old Aldebaran
+trimmed them silently with gold, and partners from the Milky Way swept
+rustling down to lead the violets out. Oh, there was revelry to-night,
+and the fairy spell of the blue-eyed Spring was irresistible....
+
+'But the world will never dance,' he whispered sadly, half to himself
+perhaps; 'it's far too weary.'
+
+'It will follow a leader,' came the soft reply, 'who dances well and
+pipes the true old music so that it can hear. Belief inspires it
+always. And that Belief you have.' There was a curious vibration in
+his voice; he spoke from his heart, and his heart was evidently moved.
+
+'I wonder when it came to me, then, and how?'
+
+The Vicar turned and faced him where they stood beneath the lime
+trees. Their scent was pouring out as from phials uncorked by the
+stars.
+
+'It came,' he caught the answer that thrilled with earnestness, 'when
+you saw the lame boy on the village hill and cried. As long ago as
+that it came.'
+
+His mind, as he listened, became a plot of fresh-turned earth the Head
+Gardener filled with flowers. A mass of covering stuff the years had
+laid ever thicker and thicker was being shovelled away. The flowers he
+saw being planted there were very tiny ones. But they would grow. A
+leaf from some far-off rocky mount of olive trees dropped fluttering
+through the air and marvellously took root and grew. He felt for a
+moment the breath of night air that has been tamed by an eastern sun.
+He saw a group of men, bare-headed, standing on the slopes, and in
+front of them a figure of glory teaching little, simple things they
+found it hard to understand....
+
+'You have the big and simple things alive in you,' the voice carried
+on his pictured thought among the flowers. 'In your heart they lie all
+waiting to be used. Nothing can smother them. Only-you must give them
+out.'
+
+'If only I knew how--!'
+
+'Keep close to the children,' sifted the strange answer through the
+fruit-trees; 'the world is a big child. And catch it when it lies
+asleep--not thinking of itself,' he whispered.
+
+'The time is so short--'
+
+'At forty you stand upon the threshold of life, with values learned
+and rubbish cleared away. So many by that time are already dead--in
+heart. I envy your opportunities ahead. You have learned already one
+foundation truth--the grandeur of toil and the insignificance of
+acquisition. The other foundation thing is even simpler--you have a
+neighbour. Now, with your money to give as flowers, and your Belief to
+steer you straight, you have the world before you. And--keep close to
+the children.'
+
+'Before there are none left,' added Rogers under his breath. But the
+other heard the words and instantly corrected him--
+
+'Children of any age, and wherever you may find them.'
+
+And they turned slowly and made their way in silence across the
+soaking lawn, entering the house by the drawing-room window.
+
+'Good-night,' the old man said, as he lit his candle and led him to
+his room; 'and pleasant, happy, inspiring dreams.'
+
+He seemed to say it with some curious, heartfelt meaning in the common
+words. He disappeared slowly down the passage, shading the candle with
+one hand to pick his way, and Rogers watched him out of sight, then
+turned and entered his own room, closing the door as softly as
+possible behind him.
+
+It had been an astonishing conversation. All his old enthusiasm was
+stirred. Embers leaped to flame. No woman ever had done as much. This
+old fellow, once merely respected tutor, had given him back his first
+original fire and zeal, yet somehow cleansed and purified. And it
+humbled him at the same time. Dead leaves, dropped year by year in his
+City life, were cleared away as though a mighty wind had swept him.
+The Gardener was burning up dead leaves; the Sweep was cleaning out
+the flues; the Lamplighter waving his golden signal in the sky--far
+ahead, it is true, but gleaming like a torch and beacon. The Starlight
+Express was travelling at top speed among the constellations. He stood
+at the beginning of the important part of life....
+
+And now, as he lay in bed and heard the owls hooting in the woods, and
+smelt the flowers through the open window, his thoughts followed
+strongly after that old Star Train that he used to drive about the
+sky. He was both engine-driver and passenger. He fell asleep to dream
+of it.
+
+And all the vital and enchanting thoughts of his boyhood flowed back
+upon him with a rush, as though they had never been laid aside. He
+remembered particularly one singular thing about them--that they had
+never seemed quite his own, but that he had either read or heard them
+somewhere else. As a child the feeling was always strong that these
+'jolly thoughts,' as he called them, were put into him by some one
+else--some one who whispered to him--some one who lived close behind
+his ears. He had to listen very hard to catch them. It was _not_
+dreams, yet all night long, especially when he slept tightly, as he
+phrased it, this fairy whispering continued, and in the daytime he
+remembered what he could and made up his stories accordingly. He stole
+these ideas about a Star Net and a Starlight Express. One day he would
+be caught and punished for it. It was trespassing upon the preserves
+of some one else.
+
+Yet he could never discover who this some one else was, except that it
+was a 'she' and lived among the stars, only coming out at night. He
+imagined she hid behind that little dusty constellation called the
+Pleiades, and that was why the Pleiades wore a veil and were so dim--
+lest he should find her out. And once, behind the blue gaze of the
+guard-girl, who was out of his heart by this time, he had known a
+moment of thrilling wonder that was close to awe. He saw another pair
+of eyes gazing out at him They were ambery eyes, as he called them--
+just what was to be expected from a star. And, so great was the shock,
+that at first he stood dead still and gasped, then dashed up suddenly
+close to her and stared into her face, frightening her so much that
+she fell backwards, and the amber eyes vanished instantly. It was the
+'some one else' who whispered fairy stories to him and lived behind
+his ear. For a second she had been marvellously close. And he had lost
+her!
+
+From that moment, however, his belief in her increased enormously, and
+he never saw a pair of brown-ambery eyes without feeling sure that she
+was somewhere close about him. The lame boy, for instance, had the
+same delicate tint in his sad, long, questioning gaze. His own collie
+had it too! For years it was an obsession with him, haunting and
+wonderful--the knowledge that some one who watched close beside him,
+filling his mind with fairy thoughts, might any moment gaze into his
+face through a pair of ordinary familiar eyes. And he was certain that
+all his star-imagination about the Net, the Starlight Express, and the
+Cave of Lost Starlight came first into him from this hidden 'some one
+else' who brought the Milky Way down into his boy's world of fantasy.
+
+'If ever I meet her in real life,' he used to say, 'I'm done for. She
+is my Star Princess!'
+
+And now, as he fell asleep, the old atmosphere of that Kentish garden
+drew thickly over him, shaking out clusters of stars about his bed.
+Dreams usually are determined by something more remote than the talk
+that has just preceded going to bed, but to-night it was otherwise.
+And two things the old Vicar had let fall--two things sufficiently
+singular, it seemed, when he came to think about them--influenced his
+night adventures. 'Catch the world when it's asleep,' and 'Keep close
+to the children'--these somehow indicated the route his dream should
+follow. For he headed the great engine straight for the village in the
+Jura pine woods where his cousin's children lived. He did not know
+these children, and had seen his cousin but rarely in recent years;
+yet, it seemed, they came to meet the train up among the mountain
+forests somewhere. For in this village, where he had gone to study
+French, the moods of his own childhood had somehow known continuation
+and development. The place had once been very dear to him, and he had
+known delightful adventures there, many of them with this cousin. Now
+he took all his own childhood's sprites out in this Starlight Express
+and introduced them to these transplanted children who had never made
+acquaintance with the English breed. They had surprising, wild
+adventures all together, yet in the morning he could remember very
+little of it all. The interfering sun melted them all down in dew. The
+adventures had some object, however; that was clear; though what the
+object was, except that it did good somewhere to. some one, was gone,
+lost in the deeps of sleep behind him. They scurried about the world.
+The sprites were very active indeed--quite fussily energetic. And his
+Scheme for Disabled Something-or other was not anywhere discoverable
+in these escapades. That seemed forgotten rather, as though they found
+bigger, more important things to do, and nearer home too. Perhaps the
+Vicar's hint about the 'Neighbour' was responsible for that. Anyhow,
+the dream was very vivid, even though the morning sun melted it away
+so quickly and completely. It seemed continuous too. It filled the
+entire night.
+
+Yet the thing that Rogers took off with him to town next morning was,
+more than any other detail, the memory of what the old tutor had said
+about the living reality and persistence of figures that passionate
+thinking has created--that, and the value of Belief.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+     Be thou my star, and thou in me be seen
+     To show what source divine is, and prevails.
+     I mark thee planting joy in constant fire.
+                   _To Sirius_, G. MEREDITH.
+
+And he rather astonished the imperturbable Minks next day by the
+announcement that he was thinking of going abroad for a little
+holiday. 'When I return, it will be time enough to take up the Scheme
+in earnest,' he said. For Minks had brought a sheaf of notes embodying
+the results of many hours' labour, showing what others had already
+done in that particular line of philanthropy.
+
+'Very good indeed, Minks, very good. I'll take 'em with me and make a
+careful study of the lot. I shall be only gone a week or so,' he
+added, noticing the other's disappointment. For the secretary had
+hoped to expound these notes himself at length. 'Take a week's holiday
+yourself,' he added. 'Mrs. Minks might like to get to the sea,
+perhaps. There'll only be my letters to forward. I'll give you a
+little cheque.' And he explained briefly that he was going out to
+Bourcelles to enjoy a few days' rest before they attacked great
+problems together. After so many years of application to business he
+had earned it. Crayfield, it seemed, had given him a taste for
+sentimental journeys. But the fact was, too, the Tramp, the Dustman,
+the Lamplighter, and the Starlight Express were all in his thoughts
+still.
+
+And it was spring. He felt this sudden desire to see his cousin again,
+and make the acquaintance of his cousin's children. He remembered how
+the two of them had tramped the Jura forests as boys. They had met in
+London at intervals since. He dictated a letter to him then and there
+--Minks taking it down like lightning--and added a postscript in his
+own handwriting:--
+
+'I feel a longing,' he wrote, 'to come out and see the little haven of
+rest you have chosen, and to know your children. Our ways have gone
+very far apart--too far--since the old days when we climbed out of the
+windows of _la cure_ with a sheet, and tramped the mountains all night
+long. Do you remember? I've had my nose on the grindstone ever since,
+and you've worked hard too, judging by your name in publishers' lists.
+I hope your books are a great success. I'm ashamed I've never any time
+to read now. But I'm "retired" from business at last and hope to do
+great things. I'll tell you about a great Scheme I have in hand when
+we meet. I should like your advice too.
+
+'Any room will do--sunny aspect if possible. And please give my love
+to your children in advance. Tell them I shall come out in the
+Starlight Express. Let me have a line to say if it's all right.'
+
+In due course the line--a warm-hearted one--arrived. Minks came to
+Charing Cross to see him off, the gleam of the sea already in his
+pale-blue eyes.
+
+'The Weather Report says "calm," Mr. Rogers,' he kept repeating.
+'You'll have a good crossing, I hope and trust. I'm taking Mrs. Minks
+myself---'
+
+'Yes, yes, that's good,' was the quick reply. 'Capital. And--let me
+see-I've got your notes with me, haven't I? I'll draft out a general
+plan and send it to you as soon as I get a moment. You think over it
+too, will you, while I'm away. And enjoy yourself at the same time.
+Put your children in the sea--nothing like the sea for children--sea
+and sun and sand and all that sort of thing.'
+
+'Thank you very much, Mr. Rogers, and I trust---'
+
+Somebody bumped against him, cutting short a carefully balanced
+sentence that was intended to be one-third good wishes, one-third
+weather remark, and the last third Mrs. Minks. Her letter of thanks
+had never been referred to. It rankled, though very slightly.
+
+'What an absurd-looking person!' exclaimed the secretary to himself,
+following the aggressor with one eye, and trying to recapture the lost
+sentence at the same time. 'They really should not allow such people
+in a railway terminus,' he added aloud. The man was ragged and unkempt
+to the last degree--a sort of tramp; and as he bought a ticket at the
+third-class wicket, just beyond, he kept looking up slyly at Minks and
+his companion. 'The way he knocked against me almost seemed
+intentional,' Minks thought. The idea of pickpockets and cleverly
+disguised detectives ran confusedly in his mind. He felt a little
+flustered for some reason.
+
+'I beg your pardon,' Mr. Rogers was saying to a man who tried to push
+in front of him. 'But we _must_ each take our turn, you know.' The
+throng of people was considerable. This man looked like a dustman.
+He, too, was eagerly buying a ticket, but had evidently mistaken the
+window. 'Third-class is lower down I think,' Mr. Rogers suggested with
+a touch of authority.
+
+'What a lot of foreigners there are about,' remarked Minks. 'These
+stations are full of suspicious characters.' The notice about
+loitering flashed across him.
+
+He took the ticket Mr. Rogers handed to him, and went off to register
+the luggage, and when later he joined his chief at the carriage door
+he saw him talking to a couple of strangers who seemed anxious to get
+in.
+
+'I took _this_ corner seat for you, Mr. Rogers,' he explained, both to
+prove his careful forethought and to let the strangers know that his
+master was a person of some importance. They were such an
+extraordinary couple too! Had there been hop-pickers about he could
+have understood it. They were almost figures of masquerade; for while
+one resembled more than anything else a chimney-sweep who had
+forgotten to wash his face below the level of the eyes, the other
+carried a dirty sack across his shoulders, which apparently he had
+just been trying to squeeze into the rack.
+
+They moved off when they saw Minks, but the man with the sack made a
+gesture with one hand, as though he scattered something into the
+carriage through the open door.
+
+The secretary threw a reproachful look at a passing guard, but there
+was nothing he could do. People with tickets had a right to travel.
+Still, he resented these crowding, pushing folk. 'I'm sorry, Mr.
+Rogers,' he said, as though he had chosen a poor train for his
+honoured chief; 'there must be an excursion somewhere. There's a big
+fete of Vegetarians, I know, at Surbiton to-day, but I can hardly
+think these people---'
+
+'Don't wait, Minks,' said the other, who had taken his seat. 'I'll let
+you hear from me, you know, about the Scheme and--other things. Don't
+wait.' He seemed curiously unobservant of these strange folk, almost
+absent-minded.
+
+The guard was whistling. Minks shut the door and gave the travelling-
+rug a last tuck-in about his feet. He felt as though he were packing
+off a child. The mother in him became active. Mr. Rogers needed
+looking after. Another minute and he would have patted him and told
+him what to eat and wear. But instead he raised his hat and smiled.
+The train moved slowly out, making a deep purring sound like flowing
+water. The platform had magically thinned. Officials stood lonely
+among the scattered wavers of hats and handkerchiefs. As he stepped
+backwards to keep the carriage window in sight until the last possible
+moment, Minks was nearly knocked over by a man who hurried along the
+platform as if he still had hopes of catching the train.
+
+'Really, sir!' gasped the secretary, stooping to pick up his newspaper
+and lavender glove--he wore one glove and carried the other--the
+collision had sent flying. But the man was already far beyond the
+reach of his voice. 'He must be an escaped lamplighter, or something,'
+he laughed good-naturedly, as he saw the long legs vanish down the
+platform. He leaped on to the line. Evidently he was a railway
+employe. He seemed to be vainly trying to catch the departing buffers.
+An absurd and reckless fellow, thought Minks.
+
+But what caught the secretary's attention last, and made him wonder a
+little if anything unusual was happening to the world, was the curious
+fact that, as the last carriage glided smoothly past, he recognised
+four figures seated comfortably inside. Their feet were on the
+cushions--disgracefully. They were talking together, heads forward,
+laughing, even--singing. And he could have sworn that they were the
+two men who had watched himself and Mr. Rogers at the ticket window,
+and the strangers who had tried to force their way into Mr. Rogers's
+carriage when he came up just in time to interfere.
+
+'They got in somehow after all, then,' he said to himself. 'Of course,
+I had forgotten. The Company runs third-class carriages on the
+continental trains now. Odd!' He mentally rubbed his eyes.
+
+The train swept round the corner out of sight, leaving a streaming
+cloud of smoke and sparks behind it. It went out with a kind of rush
+of delight, glad to be off, and conscious of its passengers' pleasure.
+
+'Odd.' This was the word that filled his mind as he walked home.
+'Perhaps--our minds are in such intimate sympathy together--perhaps he
+was thinking of--of that kind of thing--er--and some of his thoughts
+got into my own imagination. Odd, though, very, _very_ odd.'
+
+He had once read somewhere in one of his new-fangled books that
+'thoughts are things.' It had made a great impression on him. He had
+read about Marconi too. Later he made a more thorough study of this
+'thinking business.'
+
+And soon afterwards, having put his chief's papers in order at the
+flat, he went home to Mrs. Minks and the children with this other
+thought--that he had possibly been overworking himself, and that it
+was a good thing he was going to have a holiday by the sea.
+
+He liked to picture himself as an original thinker, not afraid of new
+ideas, but in reality he preferred his world sober, ordinary, logical.
+It was merely big-sounding names he liked. And this little incident
+was somewhere out of joint. It was--odd.
+
+     Success that poisons many a baser mind
+     May lift---
+
+But the sonnet had never known completion. In the space it had
+occupied in his mind another one abruptly sprouted. The first subject
+after all was banal. A better one had come to him--
+
+     Strong thoughts that rise in a creative mind
+     May flash about the world, and carry joy---
+
+Then it stuck. He changed 'may' to 'shall,' but a moment later decided
+that 'do' was better, truer than either. After that inspiration failed
+him. He retired gracefully upon prose again.
+
+'Odd,' he thought, 'very odd!'
+
+And he relieved his mind by writing a letter to a newspaper. He did
+not send it in the end, for his better judgment prevented, but he had
+to do something by way of protest, and the only alternative was to
+tell his wife about it, when she would look half puzzled, half pained,
+and probably reply with some remark about the general cost of living.
+So he wrote the letter instead.
+
+For Herbert Minks regarded himself as a man with the larger view of
+citizenship, a critic of public affairs, and, in a measure, therefore,
+an item of that public opinion which moulded governments. Hence he had
+a finger, though but a little finger, in the destiny of nations and in
+the polity--a grand word that!--of national councils. He wrote
+frequent letters, thus, to the lesser weekly journals; these letters
+were sometimes printed; occasionally--oh, joy!--they were answered by
+others like himself, who referred to him as 'your esteemed
+correspondent.' As yet, however, his following letter had never got
+into print, nor had he experienced the importance of that editorial
+decision, appended between square brackets: 'This correspondence must
+now cease'--so vital, that is, that the editor and the entire office
+staff might change their opinions unless it _did_ cease.
+
+Having drafted his letter, therefore, and carried it about with him
+for several hours in his breast pocket, he finally decided not to send
+it after all, for the explanation of his 'odd' experience, he well
+knew, was hardly one that a newspaper office could supply, or that
+public correspondence could illuminate. His better judgment always won
+the day in the end. Thinking _was_ creative, after all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+              ... The sun,
+     Closing his benediction,
+     Sinks, and the darkening air
+     Thrills with a sense of the triumphing night-
+     Night with her train of stars
+     And her great gift of sleep.
+                     W. E. HENLEY.
+
+In a southern-facing room on the first floor of La Citadelle the
+English family sat after tea. The father, a spare, mild-eyed man, his
+thatch of brown hair well sprinkled with grey above the temples, was
+lighting his pipe for the tenth time-the tenth match, but the same
+pipeful of tobacco; and his wife, an ample, motherly woman, slightly
+younger than himself, was knitting on the other side of the open
+fireplace, in which still glowed a mass of peat ashes. From time to
+time she stirred them with a rickety pair of tongs, or with her foot
+kicked into the grate the matches he invariably threw short upon the
+floor. But these were adventures ill-suited to her. Knitting was her
+natural talent. She was always knitting.
+
+By the open window stood two children, a boy and a girl of ten and
+twelve respectively, gazing out into the sunshine. It was the end of
+April, and though the sun was already hot, there was a sharpness in
+the air that told of snow still lying on the mountain heights behind
+the village. Across vineyard slopes and patches of agricultural land,
+the Lake of Neuchatel lay blue as a southern sea, while beyond it, in
+a line of white that the sunset soon would turn to pink and gold,
+stretched the whole range of Alps, from Mont Blanc to where the Eiger
+and the Weisshorn signalled in the east. They filled the entire
+horizon, already cloud-like in the haze of coming summer.
+
+The door into the corridor opened, and a taller child came in. A mass
+of dark hair, caught by a big red bow, tumbled untidily down her back.
+She was sixteen and very earnest, but her eyes, brown like her
+father's, held a curious puzzled look, as though life still confused
+her so much that while she did her duties bravely she did not quite
+understand why it should be so.
+
+'Excuse me, Mother, shall I wash up?' she said at once. She always did
+wash up. And 'excuse me' usually prefaced her questions.
+
+'Please, Jane Anne,' said Mother. The entire family called her Jane
+Anne, although her baptismal names were rather fine. Sometimes she
+answered, too, to Jinny, but when it was a question of household
+duties it was Jane Anne, or even 'Ria.'
+
+She set about her duties promptly, though not with any special
+deftness. And first she stooped and picked up the last match her
+father had dropped upon the strip of carpet that covered the linoleum.
+
+'Daddy,' she said reprovingly, 'you do make such a mess.' She brushed
+tobacco ashes from his coat. Mother, without looking up, went on
+talking to him about the bills-washing, school-books, boots, blouses,
+oil, and peat. And as she did so a puzzled expression was visible in
+his eyes akin to the expression in Jane Anne's. Both enjoyed a similar
+mental confusion sometimes as to words and meanings and the import of
+practical life generally.
+
+'We shan't want any more now, thank goodness,' he said vaguely,
+referring to the peat, though Mother was already far ahead, wading
+among boots and shirts and blouses.
+
+'But if we get a load in now, you see, it's _cheaper_,' she said with
+emphasis on every alternate word, slowing up the pace to suit him.
+
+'Mother, where _did_ you put the washing-up rag?' came the voice of
+Jinny in plaintive accents from the tiny kitchen that lay beyond the
+adjoining bedroom. 'I can't find it anywhere,' she added, poking her
+head round the door suddenly.
+
+'Pet lamb,' was Mother's answer, still bending over her knitting-she
+was prodigal of terms like this and applied them indiscriminately, for
+Jane Anne resembled the animal in question even less than did her
+father--'I saw it last on the geranium shelf--you know, where the
+fuchsias and the-' She hesitated, she was not sure herself. 'I'll get
+it, my duckie, for you,' she added, and began to rise. She was a
+voluminous, very stately woman. The operation took time.
+
+'Let me,' said Daddy, drawing his mind with difficulty from the peat,
+and rising too. They rose together.
+
+'It's all right, I've got it,' cried the child, who had disappeared
+again. 'It was in the sink. That's Jimbo; he washed up yesterday.'
+
+'Pas vrai!' piped a little voice beside the open window, overhearing
+his name, 'because I only dried. It was Monkey who washed up.' They
+talked French and English all mixed up together.
+
+But Monkey was too busy looking at the Alps through an old pair of
+opera-glasses, relic of her father's London days that served for
+telescope, to think reply worth while. Her baptismal names were also
+rather wonderful, though neither of her parents could have supplied
+them without a moment's reflection first. There was commotion by that
+window for a moment but it soon subsided again, for things that Jinny
+said never provoked dissension, and Jimbo and Monkey just then were
+busy with a Magic Horse who had wings of snow, and was making fearful
+leaps from the peaks of the Dent du Midi across the Blumlisalp to the
+Jungfrau.
+
+'Will you please carry the samovar for me?' exclaimed Jane Anne,
+addressing both her parents, as though uncertain which of them would
+help her. 'You filled it so awfully full to-day, I can't lift it. I
+advertise for help.'
+
+Her father slowly rose. 'I'll do it, child,' he said kindly, but with
+a patience, almost resignation, in his tone suggesting that it was
+absurd to expect such a thing of him. 'Then do exactly as you think
+best,' he let fall to his wife as he went, referring to the chaos of
+expenses she had been discussing with him. 'That'll be all right.' For
+his mind had not yet sorted the jumble of peat, oil, boots, school-
+books, and the rest. 'We can manage THAT at any rate; you see it's
+francs, not shillings,' he added, as Jane Anne pulled him by the
+sleeve towards the steaming samovar. He held the strings of an ever
+empty purse.
+
+'Daddy, but you've _always_ got a crumb in your beard,' she was
+saying, 'and if it isn't a crumb, it's ashes on your coat or a match
+on the floor.' She brushed the crumb away. He gave her a kiss. And
+between them they nearly upset the old nickel-plated samovar that was
+a present from a Tiflis Armenian to whom the mother once taught
+English. They looked round anxiously as though afraid of a scolding;
+but Mother had not noticed. And she was accustomed to the noise and
+laughter. The scene then finished, as it usually did, by the mother
+washing up, Jane Anne drying, and Daddy hovering to and fro in the
+background making remarks in his beard about the geraniums, the China
+tea, the indigestible new bread, the outrageous cost of the
+necessaries of life, or the book he was at work on at the moment. He
+often enough gave his uncertain assistance in the little menial duties
+connected with the preparation or removal of the tea-things, and had
+even been known to dry. Only washing-up he never did. Somehow his
+vocation rendered him immune from that. He might bring the peat in,
+fill the lamps, arrange and dust the scanty furniture, but washing-up
+was not a possibility even. As an author it was considered beneath his
+dignity altogether, almost improper--it would have shocked the
+children. Mother could do anything; it was right and natural that she
+should---poor soul I But Daddy's profession set him in an enclosure
+apart, and there were certain things in this servantless menage he
+could not have done without disgracing the entire family. Washing-up
+was one; carrying back the empty basket of tea-things to the Pension
+was another. Daddy wrote books. As Jane Anne put it forcibly and
+finally once, 'Shakespeare never washed up or carried a tea-basket in
+the street!'--which the others accepted as a conclusive statement of
+authority.
+
+And, meantime, the two younger children, who knew how to amuse each
+other for hours together unaided, had left the Magic Horse in its
+stables for the night--an enormous snow-drift--and were sitting side
+by side upon the sofa conning a number of _Punch_ some English aunt
+had sent them. The girl read out the jokes, and her brother pointed
+with a very dirty finger to the pictures. None of the jokes were
+seized by either, but Jimbo announced each one with, 'Oh! I say!' and
+their faces were grave and sometimes awed; and when Jimbo asked, 'But
+what does THAT mean?' his sister would answer, 'Don't you see, I
+suppose the cabman meant--' finishing with some explanation very far
+from truth, whereupon Jimbo, accepting it doubtfully, said nothing,
+and they turned another page with keen anticipation. They never
+appealed for outside aid, but enjoyed it in their own dark, mysterious
+way. And, presently, when the washing-up was finished, and the dusk
+began to dim the landscape and conceal the ghostly-looking Alps, they
+retired to the inner bedroom--for this was Saturday and there were no
+school tasks to be prepared--and there, seated on the big bed in the
+corner, they opened a book of _cantiques_ used in school, and sang one
+hymn and song after another, interrupting one another with jokes and
+laughter and French and English sentences oddly mixed together. Jimbo
+sang the tune, and Monkey the alto. It was by no means unpleasant to
+listen to. And, upon the whole, it was a very grave business
+altogether, graver even than their attitude to "Punch." Jane Anne
+considered it a foolish waste of time, but she never actually said so.
+She smiled her grave smile and went her own puzzled way alone.
+
+Usually at this hour the Den presented a very different appearance,
+the children, with slates and _cahiers_, working laboriously round the
+table, Jane Anne and mother knitting or mending furiously, Mere
+Riquette, the old cat, asleep before the fire, and a general
+schoolroom air pervading the place. The father, too, tea once
+finished, would depart for the little room he slept in and used as
+work-place over at the carpenter's house among the vineyards. He kept
+his books there, his rows of pipes and towering little heap of half-
+filled match-boxes, and there he wrote his clever studies that yet
+were unproductive of much gold and brought him little more than
+pleasant notices and occasional letters from enthusiastic strangers.
+It seemed very unremunerative labour indeed, and the family had done
+well to migrate from Essex into Switzerland, where, besides the
+excellent schools which cost barely two pounds annually per head, the
+children learned the language and enjoyed the air of forest and
+mountain into the bargain. Life, for all that, was a severe problem to
+them, and the difficulty of making both ends come in sight of each
+other, let alone meeting, was an ever-present one. That they jogged
+along so well was due more than the others realised to the untiring
+and selfless zeal of the Irish mother, a plucky, practical woman, and
+a noble one if ever such existed on this earth. The way she contrived
+would fill a book; her economies, so clever they hardly betrayed
+themselves, would supply a comic annual with material for years,
+though their comedy involved a pathos of self-denial and sleepless
+nights that only those similarly placed could have divined. Herself a
+silent, even inarticulate, woman, she never spoke of them, least of
+all to her husband, whose mind it was her brave desire to keep free
+from unnecessary worries for his work. His studies she did not
+understand, but his stories she read aloud with patient resignation to
+the children. She marked the place when the reading was interrupted
+with a crimson paper-knife, and often Jimbo would move it several
+pages farther on without any of them discovering the gap. Jane Anne,
+however, who made no pretence of listening to 'Daddy's muddle-
+stories,' was beginning to realise what went on in Mother's mind
+underground. She hardly seized the pathos, but she saw and understood
+enough to help. And she was in many ways a little second edition--a
+phrase the muddle-stories never knew, alas!--of her mother, with the
+same unselfishness that held a touch of grandeur, the same clever
+domestic instinct for contrivance, and the same careful ways that yet
+sat ill upon a boundless generosity of heart beneath. She loved to be
+thought older than she was, and she used the longest, biggest,
+grandest words she could possibly invent or find.
+
+And the village life suited them all in all respects, for, while there
+was no degrading poverty anywhere, all the inhabitants, from the
+pasteur to the carpenter, knew the exact value of a centime; there was
+no question of keeping up impossible appearances, but a general
+frankness with regard to the fundamental values of clothing, food, and
+education that all shared alike and made no pretence about. Any
+faintest sign of snobbery, for instance, would have been drummed out
+of the little mountain hamlet at once by Gygi, the gendarme, who spent
+more time in his fields and vineyards than in his uniform. And, while
+every one knew that a title and large estates were a not impossible
+future for the famille anglaise, it made no slightest difference in
+the treatment of them, and indeed hardly lent them the flavour of a
+faintest cachet. They were the English family in La Citadelle, and
+that was all there was about it.
+
+The peasants, however, rather pitied the hard-working author who 'had
+to write all those books,' than paid him honourable tribute for his
+work. It seemed so unnecessary. Vineyards produced wine a man could
+drink and pay for, but books---! Well, results spoke for themselves,
+and no one who lived in La Citadelle was millionaire.
+
+Yet the reputation of John Frederic Campden stood high enough, for all
+his meagre earnings, and he was an ineffective author chiefly,
+perhaps, because he missed his audience. Somewhere, somehow, he fell
+between two stools. And his chagrin was undeniable; for though the
+poet's heart in him kept all its splendid fires alight, his failure
+chilled a little the intellect that should fashion them along
+effective moulds. Now, with advancing years, the increasing cost of
+the children's growing-up, and the failing of his wife's health a
+little, the burdens of life were heavier than he cared to think about.
+
+But this evening, as the group sat round the wide peat fire, cheerful
+and jolly in the lamplight, there was certainly no sign of sadness.
+They were like a party of children in which the grave humour of the
+ever-knitting mother kept the balance true between fun and
+foolishness.
+
+'Please, Daddy, a story at once,' Jane Anne demanded, 'but a told one,
+not a read-aloud one. I like a romantic effort best.'
+
+He fumbled in his pocket for a light, and Jimbo gravely produced a box
+he had secretly filled with matches already used, collected
+laboriously from the floor during the week. Then Monkey, full of
+mischief, came over from the window where she had been watching them
+with gasps of astonishment no one had heeded through the small end of
+the opera-glasses. There was a dancing brilliance in her movements,
+and her eyes, brown like her mother's, sparkled with fun and
+wickedness. Taking the knee Jimbo left unoccupied, and waiting till
+the diversion caused by the match-box had subsided, she solemnly
+placed a bread-crumb in his rather tangled beard.
+
+'Now you're full-dress,' she said, falling instantly so close against
+him that he could not tickle her, while Mother glanced up a second
+uncertain whether to criticise the impertinence or let it pass. She
+let it pass. None of the children had the faintest idea what it meant
+to be afraid of their father.
+
+'People who waste bread,' he began, 'end by getting so thin themselves
+that they double up like paper and disappear.'
+
+'But _how_ thin, Daddy?' asked Jane Anne, ever literal to the death.
+'And is it romantic or just silly?'
+
+He was puzzled for a moment what to reply.
+
+'He doesn't know. He's making up,' piped Jimbo.
+
+'I _do_ know,' came the belated explanation, as he put the crumb into
+the bowl of his extinguished pipe with a solemnity that delighted
+them, but puzzled Jane Anne, who suggested it would taste 'like toast
+smelt.' 'People who take bread that doesn't belong to them end by
+having no dinner---'
+
+'But that isn't anything about thinness,' interrupted Jinny, still
+uncomforted. Some one wasted by love was in her mind perhaps.
+
+'It is, child, because they get so frightfully thin,' he went on,
+'that they end by getting thinner than the thin end of a wedge.'
+
+The eyes of Mother twinkled, but the children still stared, waiting.
+They had never heard of this phrase about the wedge. Indeed Jane Anne
+shared with Jimbo total ignorance of the word at all. Like the
+audience who read his books, or rather ought to have read them, they
+expected something different, yet still hoped.
+
+'It's a rhyme, and not a story though,' he added, anticipating perhaps
+their possible disappointment. For the recent talk about expenses had
+chilled his imagination too much for an instantaneous story, whereas
+rhymes came ever to him easily.
+
+'All right! Let's have it anyhow,' came the verdict in sentences of
+French and English. And in the breathless pause that followed, even
+Mother looking up expectantly from her busy fingers, was heard this
+strange fate of the Thin Child who stole another's bread-crumb:--
+
+     He then grew thinner than the thin,
+     The thin end of the wedge;
+     He grew so pitifully thin
+     It set his teeth on edge;
+     But the edge it set his teeth upon
+     Was worse than getting thinner,
+     For it was the edge of appetite,
+     And his teeth were in no dinner!
+
+There was a deep silence. Mother looked as though she expected more,--
+the good part yet to come. The rhyme fell flat as a pancake, for of
+course the children did not understand it. Its nonsense, clever
+enough, escaped them. True nonsense is for grown-ups only. Jane Anne
+stared steadily at him with a puzzled frown. Her face wore an
+expression like a moth.
+
+'Thank you, Daddy, _very_ much,' she said, certain as ever that the
+fault if any was her own, since all that Daddy said and did was simply
+splendid. Whereupon the others fairly screamed with delight, turning
+attention thereby from the dismal failure.
+
+'She doesn't understand it, but she's always so polite!' cried Monkey.
+
+Her mother quickly intervened. 'Never mind, Jane Anne,' she soothed
+her, lest her feelings should be ruffled; 'you shall never want a
+dinner, lovey; and when all Monkey's teeth are gone you'll still be
+able to munch away at something.'
+
+But Jinny's feelings were never ruffled exactly, only confused and
+puzzled. She was puzzled now. Her confidence in her father's splendour
+was unshakable.
+
+'And, anyhow, Mother, you'll never be a thin wedge,' she answered,
+meaning to show her gratitude by a compliment. She joined herself as
+loudly as anybody in the roar that followed this sally. Obviously, she
+had said a clever and amusing thing, though it was not clear to her
+why it was so. Her flushed face was very happy; it even wore a touch
+of proud superiority. Her talents were domestic rather than
+intellectual.
+
+'Excuse me, Daddy,' she said gravely, in a pause that followed
+presently. 'But what is a wedge, exactly? And I think I'd like to copy
+that poetry in my book, please.' For she kept a book in which his
+efforts were neatly inscribed in a round copy-book handwriting, and
+called by Monkey 'The Muddle Book.' There his unappreciated doggerels
+found fame, though misunderstood most of all by the affectionate child
+who copied them so proudly.
+
+The book was brought at once. Her father wrote out the nonsense verse
+on his knee and made a funny little illustration in the margin. 'Oh, I
+say!' said Jimbo, watching him, while Monkey, lapsing into French,
+contributed with her usual impudence, 'Pas tant mal!' They all loved
+the illustrations.
+
+The general interest, then, as the way is with children, puppies, and
+other young Inconsistencies, centred upon the contents of the book.
+They eagerly turned the pages, as though they did not know its
+contents by heart already. They praised for the hundredth time the
+drawing of the Muddle Animal who
+
+     Hung its hopes upon a nail
+     Or laid them on the shelf;
+     Then pricked its conscience with its tail,
+     And sat upon itself.
+
+They looked also with considerable approval upon the drawings and
+descriptions of the Muddle Man whose manners towards the rest of the
+world were cool; because
+
+     He saw things with his naked eye,
+     That's why his glance was chilly.
+
+But the explanation of the disasters he caused everywhere by his
+disagreeable sharpness of speech and behaviour did _not_ amuse them.
+They observed as usual that it was 'too impossible'; the drawings,
+moreover, did not quite convince:--
+
+     So cutting was his speaking tone
+     Each phrase snipped off a button,
+     So sharp his words, they have been known
+     To carve a leg of mutton;
+     He shaved himself with sentences,
+     And when he went to dances,
+     He made--Oh shocking tendencies!-
+     Deep holes with piercing glances.
+
+But on the last page the Muddle Man behaved so badly, was so
+positively indecent in his conduct, that he was persuaded to disappear
+altogether; and his manner of extinguishing himself in the
+illustration delighted the children far more than the verse whose fun
+again escaped them:--
+
+     They observed he was indecent,
+     But he said it wasn't true,
+     For _he_ pronounced it 'in descent'--
+     Then disappeared from view!
+
+Mother's alleged 'second sight' was also attributed to the fact that
+she 'looked twice before she leaped'--and the drawing of that leap
+never failed to produce high spirits. For her calm and steady way of
+walking--sailing--had earned her the name of the frigate--and this was
+also illustrated, with various winds, all coloured, driving her along.
+
+The time passed happily; some one turned the lamp out, and Daddy,
+regardless of expense--he had been grumbling about it ten minutes
+before--heaped on the bricks of peat. Riquette, a bit of movable
+furniture without which the room seemed incomplete, deftly slipped in
+between the circle of legs and feet, and curled up upon Jinny's lap.
+Her snoring, a wheezy noise that made Jimbo wonder 'why it didn't
+scrape her,' was as familiar as the ticking of the clock. Old Mere
+Riquette knew her rights. And she exacted them. Jinny's lap was one of
+these. She had a face like an old peasant woman, with a curious snub
+nose and irregular whiskers that betrayed recklessly the advance of
+age. Her snores and gentle purring filled the room now. A hush came
+over the whole party. At seven o'clock they must all troop over to the
+Pension des Glycines for supper, but there was still an hour left. And
+it was a magic hour. Sighs were audible here and there, as the
+exhausted children settled deeper into their chairs.
+
+A change came over the atmosphere. Would nothing exciting ever happen?
+
+'The stars are out,' said Jimbo in his soft, gentle little voice,
+turning his head towards the windows. The others looked too--all
+except Mother, whose attitude suggested suspiciously that she slept,
+and Riquette, who most certainly did sleep. Above the rampart of the
+darkened Alps swung up the army of the stars. The brighter ones were
+reflected in the lake. The sky was crowded. Tiny, golden pathways slid
+down the purple walls of the night. 'Some one in heaven is letting
+down the star-ladders...' he whispered.
+
+Jimbo's sentence had marked the change of key. Enchantment was abroad
+--the Saturday evening spell was in the room.
+
+And suddenly a new enormous thing stirred in their father's heart.
+Whence it came, or why, he knew not. Like a fire it rose in him deep
+down, from very far away, delightful. Was it an inspiration coming, he
+wondered? And why did Jimbo use that phrase of beauty about star-
+ladders? How did it come into the mind of a little boy? The phrase
+opened a new channel in the very depths of him, thence climbing up and
+outwards, towards the brain.... And, with a thrill of curious high
+wonder, he let it come. It was large and very splendid. It came with a
+rush--as of numerous whispering voices that flocked about him, urging
+some exquisite, distant sweetness in him to unaccustomed delivery. A
+softness of ten thousand stars trooped down into his blood. Some
+constellation like the Pleiades had flung their fiery tackle across
+the dusk upon his mind. His thought turned golden....
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+    We are the stars which sing.
+    We sing with our light.
+    We are the birds of fire.
+    We fly across the heaven.
+    Our light is a star.
+    We make a road for Spirits,
+    A road for the Great Spirit.
+    Among us are three hunters
+    Who chase a bear:
+    There never was a time
+    When they were not hunting;
+    We look down on the mountains.
+    This is the Song of the Mountains.
+
+    _Red Indian_ (_Algonquin_) _Lyric_.
+        Translator, J. D. PRINCE.
+
+'A star-story, please,' the boy repeated, cuddling up. They all drew,
+where possible, nearer. Their belief in their father's powers, rarely
+justified, was pathetic. Each time they felt sure he would make the
+adventures seem real, yet somehow he never quite did. They were aware
+that it was invention only. These things he told about he had not
+experienced himself. For they badly needed a leader, these children;
+and Daddy just missed filling the position. He was too 'clever,' his
+imagination neither wild nor silly enough, for children. And he felt
+it. He threw off rhymes and stories for them in a spirit of bravado
+rather--an expression of disappointment. Yet there was passion in them
+too--concealed. The public missed the heart he showed them in his
+books in the same way.
+
+'The stars are listening....' Jimbo's voice sounded far away, almost
+outside the window. Mother now snored audibly. Daddy took his courage
+in both hands and made the plunge.
+
+'You know about the Star Cavern, I suppose--?' he began. It was the
+sudden idea that had shot into him, he knew not whence.
+
+'No.'
+
+'Never heard of it.'
+
+'Where is it, please?'
+
+'Don't interrupt. That wasn't a _real_ question. Stories always begin
+like that.' It was Jane Anne who thus finally commanded order.
+
+'It's not a story exactly, but a sort of adventure,' he continued,
+hesitating yet undaunted. 'Star Caverns are places where the unused
+starlight gathers. There are numbers of them about the world, and one
+I know of is up here in our mountains,' he pointed through the north
+wall towards the pine-clad Jura, 'not far from the slopes of Boudry
+where the forests dip towards the precipices of the Areuse--' The
+phrase ran oddly through him like an inspiration, or the beginning of
+a song he once had heard somewhere.
+
+'Ah, beyond le Vallon Vert? I know,' whispered Jimbo, his blue eyes
+big already with wonder.
+
+'Towards the precipices on the farther side,' came the explanation,
+'where there are those little open spaces among the trees.'
+
+'Tell us more exactly, please.'
+
+'Star-rays, you see,' he evaded them, 'are visible in the sky on their
+way to us, but once they touch the earth they disappear and go out
+like a candle. Unless a chance puddle, or a pair of eyes happens to be
+about to catch them, you can't tell where they've gone to. They go
+really into these Star Caverns.'
+
+'But in a puddle or a pair of eyes they'd be lost just the same,' came
+the objection.
+
+'On the contrary,' he said; 'changed a little--increased by
+reflection--but not lost.'
+
+There was a pause; the children stared, expectantly. Here was mystery.
+
+'See how they mirror themselves whenever possible,' he went on,
+'doubling their light and beauty by giving themselves away! What is a
+puddle worth until a Star's wee golden face shines out of it? And
+then--what gold can buy it? And what are your eyes worth until a star
+has flitted in and made a nest there?'
+
+'Oh, like that, you mean--!' exclaimed Jane Anne, remembering that the
+wonderful women in the newspaper stories always had 'starry eyes.'
+
+'Like that, yes.' Daddy continued. 'Their light puts sympathy in you,
+and only sympathy makes you lovely and--and--'
+
+He stopped abruptly. He hesitated a moment. He was again most suddenly
+aware that this strange idea that was born in him came from somewhere
+else, almost from _some one_ else. It was not his own idea, nor had he
+captured it completely yet. Like a wandering little inspiration from
+another mind it seemed passing through him on uncertain, feathery
+feet. He had suddenly lost it again. Thought wandered. He stared at
+Jimbo, for Jimbo somehow seemed the channel.
+
+The children waited, then talked among themselves. Daddy so often got
+muddled and inattentive in this way. They were accustomed to it,
+expected it even.
+
+'I always love being out at night,' said Monkey, her eyes very bright;
+'it sort of excites and makes me soft and happy.'
+
+'Excuse me, Daddy, but have you been inside one? What's it like? The
+Cave, I mean?' Jinny stuck to the point. She had not yet travelled
+beyond it.
+
+'It all collects in there and rises to the top like cream,' he went
+on, 'and has a little tiny perfume like wild violets, and by walking
+through it you get clothed and covered with it, and come out again all
+soft-shiny--'
+
+'What's soft-shiny, please?'
+
+'Something half-primrose and half-moon. You're like a star--'
+
+'But how--like a star?'
+
+'Why,' he explained gently, yet a little disappointed that his
+adventure was not instantly accepted, 'you shine, and your eyes
+twinkle, and everybody likes you and thinks you beautiful--'
+
+'Even if you're not?' inquired Jinny.
+
+'But you _are_--'
+
+'Couldn't we go there now? Mother's fast asleep!' suggested Jimbo in a
+mysterious whisper. He felt a curious excitement. This, he felt, was
+more real than usual. He glanced at Monkey's eyes a moment.
+
+'Another time,' said Daddy, already half believing in the truth of his
+adventure, yet not quite sure of himself. 'It collects, and collects,
+and collects. Sometimes, here and there, a little escapes and creeps
+out into yellow flowers like dandelions and buttercups. A little, too,
+slips below the ground and fills up empty cracks between the rocks.
+Then it hardens, gets dirty, and men dig it out again and call it
+gold. And some slips out by the roof--though very, very little--and
+you see it flashing back to find the star it belongs to, and people
+with telescopes call it a shooting star, and--' It came pouring
+through him again.
+
+'But when you're in it--in the Cavern,' asked Monkey impatiently;
+'what happens then?'
+
+'Well,' he answered with conviction, 'it sticks to you. It sticks to
+the eyes most, but a little also to the hair and voice, and nobody
+loves you unless you've got a bit of it somewhere on you. A girl,
+before any one falls in love with her, has always been there, and
+people who write stories and music and things--all have got some on
+their fingers or else nobody cares for what they write--'
+
+'Oh, Daddy, then why don't you go there and get sticky all over with
+it?' Jinny burst out with sudden eagerness, ever thinking of others
+before herself. 'I'll go and get some for you--lots and lots.'
+
+'I _have_ been there,' he answered slowly, 'once long, long ago. But
+it didn't stick very well with me. It wipes off so quickly in the day-
+time. The sunlight kills it.'
+
+'But you got _some_!' the child insisted. 'And you've got it still, I
+mean?'
+
+'A little, perhaps, a very little.'
+
+All felt the sadness in his voice without understanding it. There was
+a moment's pause. Then the three of them spoke in a single breath--
+
+'Please show it to us--_now_,' they cried.
+
+'I'll try,' he said, after a slight hesitation, 'but--er--it's only a
+rhyme, you see'; and then began to murmur very low for fear of waking
+Mother: he almost sang it to them. The flock of tiny voices whispered
+it to his blood. He merely uttered what he heard:--
+
+     Starlight
+     Runs along my mind
+     And rolls into a ball of golden silk--
+     A little skein
+     Of tangled glory;
+     And when I want to get it out again
+     To weave the pattern of a verse or story,
+     It must unwind.
+
+     It then gets knotted, looped, and all up-jumbled,
+     And long before I get it straight again, unwumbled,
+     To make my verse or story,
+     The interfering sun has risen
+     And burst with passion through my silky prison
+     To melt it down in dew,
+     Like so much spider-gossamer or fairy-cotton.
+     Don't you?
+     _I_ call it rotten!
+
+A hushed silence followed. Eyes sought the fire. No one spoke for
+several minutes. There was a faint laughter, quickly over, but
+containing sighs. Only Jinny stared straight into her father's face,
+expecting more, though prepared at any stage to explode with unfeigned
+admiration.
+
+'But that "don't you" comes in the wrong place,' she objected
+anxiously. 'It ought to come after "I call it rotten"---' She was
+determined to make it seem all right.
+
+'No, Jinny,' he answered gravely, 'you must always put others before
+yourself. It's the first rule in life and literature.'
+
+She dropped her eyes to the fire like the others. 'Ah,' she said, 'I
+see; of course.' The long word blocked her mind like an avalanche,
+even while she loved it.
+
+'_I_ call it rotten,' murmured Monkey under her breath. Jimbo made no
+audible remark. He crossed his little legs and folded his arms. He was
+not going to express an opinion until he understood better what it was
+all about. He began to whisper to his sister. Another longish pause
+intervened. It was Jinny again who broke it.
+
+'And "wumbled,"' she asked solemnly as though the future of everybody
+depended on it, 'what _is_ wumbled, really? There's no such thing, is
+there?--In life, I mean?' She meant to add 'and literature,' but the
+word stopped her like a hedge.
+
+'It's what happens to a verse or story I lose in that way,' he
+explained, while Jimbo and Monkey whispered more busily still among
+themselves about something else. 'The bit of starlight that gets lost
+and doesn't stick, you see--ineffective.'
+
+'But there _is_ no such word, really,' she urged, determined to clear
+up all she could. 'It rhymes--that's all.'
+
+'And there _is_ no verse or story,' he replied with a sigh. 'There
+_was_--that's all.'
+
+There was another pause. Jimbo and Monkey looked round suspiciously.
+They ceased their mysterious whispering. They clearly did not wish the
+others to know what their confabulation was about.
+
+'That's why your books are wumbled, is it?' she inquired, proud of an
+explanation that excused him, yet left his glory somehow unimpaired.
+Her face was a map of puzzled wrinkles.
+
+'Precisely, Jinny. You see, the starlight never gets through properly
+into my mind. It lies there in a knot. My plot is wumbled. I can't
+disentangle it quite, though the beauty lies there right enough---'
+
+'Oh, yes,' she interrupted, 'the beauty lies there still.' She got up
+suddenly and gave him a kiss.
+
+'Never mind, Daddy,' she whispered. 'I'll get it straight for you one
+day. I'll unwumble it. I'll do it like a company promoter, I will.'
+She used words culled from newspapers.
+
+'Thank you, child,' he smiled, returning her kiss; 'I'm sure you will.
+Only, you'd better let me know when you're coming. It might be
+dangerous to my health otherwise.'
+
+She took it with perfect seriousness. 'Oh, but, excuse me, I'll come
+when you're asleep,' she told him, so low that the others could not
+hear. 'I'll come to you when I'm dreaming. I dream all night like a
+busy Highlander.'
+
+'That's right,' he whispered, giving her a hug. 'Come when I'm asleep
+and all the stars are out; and bring a comb and a pair of scissors---'
+
+'And a hay-rake,' added Monkey, overhearing.
+
+Everybody laughed. The children cuddled up closer to him. They pitied
+him. He had failed again, though his failure was as much a pleasure as
+his complete success. They sat on his knees and played with him to
+make up for it, repeating bits of the rhyme they could remember. Then
+Mother and Riquette woke up together, and the spell was broken. The
+party scattered. Only Jimbo and his younger sister, retiring into a
+corner by themselves, continued their mysterious confabulation. Their
+faces were flushed with excitement. There was a curious animation in
+their eyes--though this may have been borrowed from the embers of the
+peat. Or, it may have been the stars, for they were close to the open
+window. Both seemed soft-shiny somehow. _They_, certainly, were not
+wumbled.
+
+And several hours later, when they had returned from supper at the
+Pension and lay in bed, exchanging their last mysterious whispers
+across the darkness, Monkey said in French--
+
+'Jimbo, I'm going to find that Cavern where the star stuff lies,' and
+Jimbo answered audaciously, 'I've already been there.'
+
+'Will you show me the way, then?' she asked eagerly, and rather
+humbly.
+
+'Perhaps,' he answered from beneath the bedclothes, then added, 'Of
+course I will.' He merely wished to emphasise the fact that he was
+leader.
+
+'Sleep quickly, then, and join me--over there.' It was their game to
+believe they joined in one another's dreams.
+
+They slept. And the last thing that reached them from the outer world
+was their mother's voice calling to them her customary warning: that
+the _ramoneur_ was already in the chimney and that unless they were
+asleep in five minutes he would come and catch them by the tail. For
+the Sweep they looked upon with genuine awe. His visits to the
+village--once in the autumn and once in the spring--were times of
+shivery excitement.
+
+Presently Mother rose and sailed on tiptoe round the door to peep. And
+a smile spread softly over her face as she noted the characteristic
+evidences of the children beside each bed. Monkey's clothes lay in a
+scattered heap of confusion, half upon the floor, but Jimbo's garments
+were folded in a precise, neat pile upon the chair. They looked ready
+to be packed into a parcel. His habits were so orderly. His school
+blouse hung on the back, the knickerbockers were carefully folded, and
+the black belt lay coiled in a circle on his coat and what he termed
+his 'westkit.' Beneath the chair the little pair of very dirty boots
+stood side by side. Mother stooped and kissed the round plush-covered
+head that just emerged from below the mountainous _duvet_. He looked
+like a tiny radish lying in a big ploughed field.
+
+Then, hunting for a full five minutes before she discovered the shoes
+of Monkey, one beneath the bed and the other inside her petticoat, she
+passed on into the little kitchen where she cleaned and polished both
+pairs, and then replaced them by their respective owners. This done,
+she laid the table in the outer room for their breakfast at half-past
+six, saw that their school-books and satchels were in order, gave them
+each a little more unnecessary tucking-up and a kiss so soft it could
+not have waked a butterfly, and then returned to her chair before the
+fire where she resumed the mending of a pile of socks and shirts,
+blouses and stockings, to say nothing of other indescribable garments,
+that lay in a formidable heap upon the big round table.
+
+This was her nightly routine. Sometimes her husband joined her. Then
+they talked the children over until midnight, discussed expenses that
+threatened to swamp them, yet turned out each month 'just manageable
+somehow' and finally made a cup of cocoa before retiring, she to her
+self-made bed upon the sofa, and he to his room in the carpenter's
+house outside the village. But sometimes he did not come. He remained
+in the Pension to smoke and chat with the Russian and Armenian
+students, who attended daily lectures in the town, or else went over
+to his own quarters to work at the book he was engaged on at the
+moment. To-night he did not come. A light in an attic window, just
+visible above the vineyards, showed that he was working.
+
+The room was very still; only the click of the knitting needles or the
+soft noise of the collapsing peat ashes broke the stillness. Riquette
+snored before the fire less noisily than usual.
+
+'He's working very late to-night,' thought Mother, noticing the
+lighted window. She sighed audibly; mentally she shrugged her
+shoulders. Daddy had long ago left that inner preserve of her heart
+where she completely understood him. Sympathy between them, in the
+true sense of the word, had worn rather thin.
+
+'I hope he won't overtire himself,' she added, but this was the habit
+of perfunctory sympathy. She might equally have said, 'I wish he would
+do something to bring in a little money instead of earning next to
+nothing and always complaining about the expenses.'
+
+Outside the stars shone brightly through the fresh spring night, where
+April turned in her sleep, dreaming that May was on the way to wake
+her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+     Wrap thy form in a mantle gray,
+                 Star-inwrought!
+      Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day;
+      Kiss her until she be wearied out,
+      Then wander o'er city, and sea, and land,
+      Touching all with thine opiate wand-
+                 Come, long sought!
+                            To _Night_, SHELLEY.
+
+Now, cats are curious creatures, and not without reason, perhaps, are
+they adored by some, yet regarded with suspicious aversion by others.
+They know so much they never dare to tell, while affecting that they
+know nothing and are innocent. For it is beyond question that several
+hours later, when the village and the Citadelle were lost in slumber,
+Mere Riquette stirred stealthily where she lay upon the hearth, opened
+her big green eyes, and--began to wash.
+
+But this toilette was pretence in case any one was watching. Really,
+she looked about her all the time. Her sleep also had been that sham
+sleep of cats behind which various plots and plans mature--a
+questionable business altogether. The washing, as soon as she made
+certain no one saw her, gave place to another manoeuvre. She stretched
+as though her bones were of the very best elastic. Gathering herself
+together, she arched her round body till it resembled a toy balloon
+straining to rise against the pull of four thin ropes that held it
+tightly to the ground. Then, unable to float off through the air, as
+she had expected, she slowly again subsided. The balloon deflated. She
+licked her chops, twitched her whiskers, curled her tail neatly round
+her two front paws--and grinned complacently. She waited before that
+extinguished fire of peat as though she had never harboured a single
+evil purpose in all her days. 'A saucer of milk,' she gave the world
+to understand, c is the only thing _I_ care about.' Her smile of
+innocence and her attitude of meek simplicity proclaimed this to the
+universe at large. 'That's me,' she told the darkness, 'and I don't
+care a bit who knows it.' She looked so sleek and modest that a mouse
+need not have feared her. But she did not add, 'That's what I mean the
+world to think,' for this belonged to the secret life cats never talk
+about. Those among humans might divine it who could, and welcome. They
+would be admitted. But the rest of the world were regarded with mere
+tolerant disdain. They bored.
+
+Then, satisfied that she was unobserved, Mere Riquette abandoned all
+further pretence, and stalked silently about the room. The starlight
+just made visible her gliding shadow, as first she visited the made-up
+sofa-bed where the exhausted mother snored mildly beneath the book-
+shelves, and then, after a moment's keen inspection, turned back and
+went at a quicker pace into the bedroom where the children slept.
+There the night-light made her movements easily visible. The cat was
+excited. Something bigger than any mouse was coming into her life just
+now.
+
+Riquette then witnessed a wonderful and beautiful thing, yet witnessed
+it obviously not for the first time. Her manner suggested no surprise.
+'It's like a mouse, only bigger,' her expression said. And by this she
+meant that it was natural. She accepted it as right and proper.
+
+For Monkey got out of herself as out of a case. She slipped from her
+body as a sword slips from its sheath, yet the body went on breathing
+in the bed just as before; the turned-up nose with the little platform
+at its tip did not cease from snoring, and the lids remained fastened
+tightly over the brilliant brown eyes, buttoned down so securely for
+the night. Two plaits of hair lay on the pillow; another rose and fell
+with the regular breathing of her little bosom. But Monkey herself
+stood softly shining on the floor within a paw's length.
+
+Riquette blinked her eyes and smiled complacently. Jimbo was close
+behind her, even brighter than his sister, with eyes like stars.
+
+The visions of cats are curious things, no doubt, and few may guess
+their furry, silent pathways as they go winding along their length of
+inconsequent development. For, softer than any mouse, the children
+glided swiftly into the next room where Mother slept beneath the book-
+shelves--two shining little radiant figures, hand in hand. They tried
+for a moment to pull out Mother too, but found her difficult to move.
+Somewhere on the way she stuck. They gave it up.
+
+Turning towards the window that stood open beyond the head of the
+sofa-bed, they rose up lightly and floated through it out into the
+starry night. Riquette leaped like a silent shadow after them, but
+before she reached the roof of red-brown tiles that sloped down to the
+yard, Jimbo and Monkey were already far away. She strained her big
+green eyes in vain, seeing nothing but the tops of the plane trees,
+thick with tiny coming leaves, the sweep of vines and sky, and the
+tender, mothering night beyond. She pattered softly back again, gave a
+contemptuous glance at Mother in passing, and jumped up at once into
+the warm nest of sheets that gaped invitingly between the shoulder of
+Jimbo's body and the pillow. She shaped the opening to her taste,
+kneading it with both front paws, turned three times round, and then
+lay down. Curled in a ball, her nose buried between her back feet, she
+was asleep in a single moment. Her whiskers ceased to quiver.
+
+The children were tugging at Daddy now over in the carpenter's house.
+His bed was short, and his body lay in a kind of knot. On the chair
+beside it were books and papers, and a candle that had burnt itself
+out. A pencil poked its nose out among the sheets, and it was clear he
+had fallen asleep while working.
+
+'Wumbled!' sighed Jimbo, pointing to the scribbled notes. But Monkey
+was busy pulling him out, and did not answer. Then Jimbo helped her.
+And Daddy came out magnificently--as far as the head--then stuck like
+Mother. They pulled in vain. Something in his head prevented complete
+release.
+
+'En voila un!' laughed Monkey. 'Quel homme!' It was her natural
+speech, the way she talked at school. 'It's a pity,' said Jimbo with a
+little sigh. They gave it up, watching him slide slowly back again.
+The moment he was all in they turned towards the open window. Hand in
+hand they sailed out over the sleeping village. And from almost every
+house they heard a sound of weeping. There were sighs and prayers and
+pleadings. All slept and dreamed--dreamed of their difficulties and
+daily troubles. Released in sleep, their longings rose to heaven
+unconsciously, automatically as it were. Even the cheerful and the
+happy yearned a little, even the well-to-do whom the world judged so
+secure--these, too, had their burdens that found release, and so
+perhaps relief in sleep.
+
+'Come, and we'll help them,' Jimbo said eagerly. 'We can change all
+that a little. Oh, I say, what a lot we've got to do to-night.'
+
+'Je crois bien,' laughed Monkey, turning somersaults for joy as she
+followed him. Her tendency to somersaults in this condition was
+irresistible, and a source of worry to Jimbo, who classed it among the
+foolish habits of what he called 'womans and things like that!'
+
+And the sound came loudest from the huddled little building by the
+Church, the Pension where they had their meals, and where Jinny had
+her bedroom. But Jinny, they found, was already out, off upon
+adventures of her own. A solitary child, she always went her
+independent way in everything. They dived down into the first floor,
+and there, in a narrow bedroom whose windows stood open upon the
+wistaria branches, they found Madame Jequier--'Tante Jeanne,' as they
+knew the sympathetic, generous creature best, sister-in-law of the
+Postmaster--not sleeping like the others, but wide awake and praying
+vehemently in a wicker-chair that creaked with every nervous movement
+that she made. All about her were bits of paper covered with figures,
+bills, calculations, and the rest.
+
+'We can't get at her,' said Monkey, her laughter hushed for a moment.
+'There's too much sadness. Come on! Let's go somewhere else.'
+
+But Jimbo held her tight. 'Let's have a try. Listen, you silly, can't
+you!'
+
+They stood for several minutes, listening together, while the
+brightness of their near approach seemed to change the woman's face a
+little. She looked up and listened as though aware of something near
+her.
+
+'She's praying for others as well as herself,' explained Jimbo.
+
+'Ca vaut la peine alors,' said Monkey. And they drew cautiously
+nearer.... But, soon desisting, the children were far away, hovering
+about the mountains. They had no steadiness as yet.
+
+'Starlight,' Jimbo was singing to himself, 'runs along my mind.'
+
+'You're all up-jumbled,' Monkey interrupted him with a laugh, turning
+repeated somersaults till she looked like a catherine wheel of
+brightness.
+
+'... the pattern of my verse or story...' continued Jimbo half aloud,
+'... a little ball of tangled glory....'
+
+'You must unwind!' cried Monkey. 'Look out, it's the sun! It'll melt
+us into dew!'
+
+But it was not the sun. Out there beyond them, towards the purple
+woods still sleeping, appeared a draught of starbeams like a broad,
+deep river of gold. The rays, coming from all corners of the sky, wove
+a pattern like a network.
+
+'Jimbo!' gasped the girl, 'it's like a fishing-net. We've never
+noticed it before.'
+
+'It _is_ a net,' he answered, standing still as a stone, though he had
+not thought of it himself until she said so. He instantly dressed
+himself, as he always translated _il se dressait_ in his funny Franco-
+English. _Deja_ and _comme ca_, too, appeared everywhere. 'It is a net
+like that. I saw it already before, once.'
+
+'Monkey,' he added, 'do you know what it really is? Oh, I say!'
+
+'Of course I do.' She waited nevertheless for him to tell her, and he
+was too gallant just then in his proud excitement for personal
+exultation.
+
+'It's the Star Cave--it's Daddy's Star Cave. He said it was up here
+"where the Boudry forests dip below the cliffs towards the Areuse."
+...' He remembered the very words.
+
+His sister forgot to turn her usual somersaults. Wonder caught them
+both. 'A pair of eyes, then, or a puddle! Quick!' she cried in a
+delighted whisper. She looked about her everywhere at once, making
+confused and rushing little movements of helplessness. 'Quick, quick!'
+
+'No,' said Jimbo, with a man's calm decision, 'it's when they
+_can't_ find eyes or puddles that they go in there. Don't interfere.'
+
+She admitted her mistake. This was no time to press a petty advantage.
+
+'I'll shut my eyes while you sponge up the puddles with a wedge of
+moss,' she began. But her brother cut her short. He was very sure of
+himself. He was leader beyond all question.
+
+'You follow me,' he commanded firmly, 'and you'll get in somehow.
+We'll get all sticky with it. Then we'll come out again and help those
+crying people like Tante Jeanne and....' A list of names poured out.
+'They'll think us wonderful---'
+
+'We shall be wonderful,' whispered Monkey, obeying, yet peeping with
+one big brown eye.
+
+The cataract of starbeams rushed past them in a flood of gold.
+
+They moved towards an opening in the trees where the limestone cliffs
+ran into rugged shapes with pinnacles and towers. They found the
+entrance in the rocks. Water dripped over it, making little splashes.
+The lime had run into hanging pillars and a fringe of pointed fingers.
+Past this the river of starlight poured its brilliant golden stream.
+Its soft brightness shone yellow as a shower of primrose dust.
+
+'Look out! The Interfering Sun!' gasped Monkey again, awed and
+confused with wonder. 'We shall melt in dew or fairy cotton. Don't
+you? ... I call it rotten ...!'
+
+'You'll unwind all right,' he told her, trying hard to keep his head
+and justify his leadership. He, too, remembered phrases here and
+there. 'I'm a bit knotted, looped, and all up-jumbled too, inside. But
+the sun is miles away still. We're both soft-shiny still.'
+
+They stooped to enter, plunging their bodies to the neck in the silent
+flood of sparkling amber.
+
+Then happened a strange thing. For how could they know, these two
+adventurous, dreaming children, that Thought makes images which,
+regardless of space, may flash about the world, and reach minds
+anywhere that are sweetly tuned to their acceptance?
+
+'What's that? Look out! _Gare!_ Hold tight!' In his sudden excitement
+Jimbo mixed questions with commands. He had caught her by the hand.
+There was a new sound in the heavens above them--a roaring, rushing
+sound. Like the thunder of a train, it swept headlong through the sky.
+Voices were audible too.
+
+'There's something enormous caught in the star-net,' he whispered.
+
+'It's Mother, then,' said Monkey.
+
+They both looked up, trembling with anticipation. They saw a big, dark
+body like a thundercloud hovering above their heads. It had a line of
+brilliant eyes. From one end issued a column of white smoke. It
+settled slowly downwards, moving softly yet with a great air of bustle
+and importance. Was this the arrival of a dragon, or Mother coming
+after them? The blood thumped in their ears, their hands felt icy. The
+thing dipped slowly through the trees. It settled, stopped, began to
+purr.
+
+'It's a railway train,' announced Jimbo finally with authority that
+only just disguised amazement. 'And the passengers are getting out.'
+With a sigh of immense relief he said it. 'You're not in any danger,
+Monkey,' he added.
+
+He drew his sister back quickly a dozen steps, and they hid behind a
+giant spruce to watch. The scene that followed was like the holiday
+spectacle in a London Terminus, except that the passengers had no
+luggage. The other difference was that they seemed intent upon some
+purpose not wholly for their own advantage. It seemed, too, they had
+expected somebody to meet them, and were accordingly rather confused
+and disappointed. They looked about them anxiously.
+
+'Last stop; all get out here!' a Guard was crying in a kind of
+pleasant singing voice. 'Return journey begins five minutes before the
+Interfering Sun has risen.'
+
+Jimbo pinched his sister's arm till she nearly screamed. 'Hear that?'
+he whispered. But Monkey was too absorbed in the doings of the busy
+passengers to listen or reply. For the first passenger that hurried
+past her was no less a person than--Jane Anne! Her face was not
+puzzled now. It was like a little sun. She looked utterly happy and
+contented, as though she had found the place and duties that belonged
+to her.
+
+'Jinny!' whispered the two in chorus. But Jane Anne did not so much as
+turn her head. She slipped past them like a shaft of light. Her hair
+fell loose to her waist. She went towards the entrance. The flood rose
+to her neck.
+
+'Oh! there she is!' cried a voice. 'She travelled with us instead of
+coming to meet us.' Monkey smiled. She knew her sister's alien,
+unaccountable ways only too well.
+
+The train had settled down comfortably enough between the trees, and
+lay there breathing out a peaceable column of white smoke, panting a
+little as it did so. The Guard went down the length of it, turning out
+the lamps; and from the line of open doors descended the stream of
+passengers, all hurrying to the entrance of the cave. Each one stopped
+a moment in front of the Guard, as though to get a ticket clipped, but
+instead of producing a piece of pasteboard, or the Guard a punching
+instrument, they seemed to exchange a look together. Each one stared
+into his face, nodded, and passed on.
+
+'What blue eyes they've got,' thought Monkey to herself, as she peered
+into each separate face as closely as she dared. 'I wish mine were
+like that!' The wind, sighing through the tree-tops, sent a shower of
+dew about their feet. The children started. 'What a lovely row!' Jimbo
+whispered. It was like footsteps of a multitude on the needles. The
+fact that it was so clearly audible showed how softly all these
+passengers moved about their business.
+
+The Guard, they noticed then, called out the names of some of them;
+perhaps of all, only in the first excitement they did not catch them
+properly. And each one went on at once towards the entrance of the
+cave and disappeared in the pouring river of gold.
+
+The light-footed way they moved, their swiftness as of shadows, the
+way they tossed their heads and flung their arms about--all this made
+the children think it was a dance. Monkey felt her own legs twitch to
+join them, but her little brother's will restrained her.
+
+'If you turn a somersault here,' he said solemnly, 'we're simply
+lost.' He said it in French; the long word had not yet dawned upon his
+English consciousness. They watched with growing wonder then, and
+something like terror seized them as they saw a man go past them with
+a very familiar look about him. He went in a cloud of sparkling, black
+dust that turned instantly into shining gold when it reached the
+yellow river from the stars. His face was very dirty.
+
+'It's _not_ the _ramoneur_,' whispered Jimbo, uncertain whether the
+shiver he felt was his sister's or his own. 'He's much too springy.'
+Sweeps always had a limp.
+
+For the figure shot along with a running, dancing leap as though he
+moved on wires. He carried long things over his shoulders. He flashed
+into the stream like a shadow swallowed by a flame. And as he went,
+they caught such merry words, half sung, half chanted:--,
+
+'I'll mix their smoke with hope and mystery till they see dreams and
+faces in their fires---' and he was gone.
+
+Behind him came a couple arm in arm, their movements equally light and
+springy, but the one behind dragging a little, as though lazily. They
+wore rags and torn old hats and had no collars to their shirts. The
+lazy one had broken boots through which his toes showed plainly. The
+other who dragged him had a swarthy face like the gypsies who once had
+camped near their house in Essex long, oh, ever so long ago.
+
+'I'll get some too,' the slow one sang huskily as he stumbled along
+with difficulty 'but there's never any hurry. I'll fill their journeys
+with desire and make adventure call to them with love---'
+
+'And I,' the first one answered, 'will sprinkle all their days with
+the sweetness of the moors and open fields, till houses choke their
+lungs and they come out to learn the stars by name. Ho, ho!'
+
+They dipped, with a flying leap, into the rushing flood. Their rags
+and filthy slouched hats flashed radiant as they went, all bathed and
+cleaned in glory.
+
+Others came after them in a continuous stream, some too outlandish to
+be named or recognised, others half familiar, very quick and earnest,
+but merry at the same time, and all intent upon bringing back
+something for the world. It was not for themselves alone, or for their
+own enjoyment that they hurried in so eagerly.
+
+'How splendid! What a crew!' gasped Monkey. '_Quel spectacle_!' And
+she began a somersault.
+
+'Be quiet, will you?' was the rejoinder, as a figure who seemed to
+have a number of lesser faces within his own big one of sunburned
+brown, tumbled by them somewhat heavily and left a smell of earth and
+leaves and potting-sheds about the trees behind him. 'Won't my flowers
+just shine and dazzle 'em? And won't the dead leaves crackle as I burn
+'em up!' he chuckled as he disappeared from view. There was a rush of
+light as an eddy of the star-stream caught him, and something
+certainly went up in flame. A faint odour reached the children that
+was like the odour of burning leaves.
+
+Then, with a rush, came a woman whose immensely long thin arms reached
+out in front of her and vanished through the entrance a whole minute
+before the rest of her. But they could not see the face. Some one with
+high ringing laughter followed, though they could not see the outline
+at all. It went so fast, they only heard the patter of light footsteps
+on the moss and needles. Jimbo and Monkey felt slightly uncomfortable
+as they watched and listened, and the feeling became positive
+uneasiness the next minute as a sound of cries and banging reached
+them from the woods behind. There was a great commotion going on
+somewhere in the train.
+
+'I can't get out, I can't get out!' called a voice unhappily. 'And if
+I do, how shall I ever get in again? The entrance is so ridiculously
+small. I shall only stick and fill it up. Why did I ever come? Oh, why
+did I come at all?'
+
+'Better stay where you are, lady,' the Guard was saying. 'You're good
+ballast. You can keep the train down. That's something. Steady
+thinking's always best, you know.'
+
+Turning, the children saw a group of figures pushing and tugging at a
+dark mass that appeared to have stuck halfway in the carriage door.
+The pressure of many willing hands gave it a different outline every
+minute. It was like a thing of india-rubber or elastic. The roof
+strained outwards with ominous cracking sounds; the windows threatened
+to smash; the foot-board, supporting the part of her that had emerged,
+groaned with the weight already.
+
+'Oh, what's the good of _me_?' cried the queer deep voice with
+petulance. 'You couldn't get a wisp of hay in there, much less all of
+me. I should block the whole cave up!'
+
+'Come out a bit!' a voice cried.
+
+'I can't.'
+
+'Go back then!' suggested the Guard.
+
+'But I can't. Besides I'm upside down!'
+
+'You haven't got any upside down,' was the answer; 'so that's
+impossible.'
+
+'Well, anyhow, I'm in a mess and muddle like this,' came the smothered
+voice, as the figures pulled and pushed with increasing energy.' And
+my tarpaulin skirt is all askew. The winds are at it as usual.'
+
+'Nothing short of a gale can help you now,' was somebody's verdict,
+while Monkey whispered beneath her breath to Jimbo. 'She's even bigger
+than Mother. Quelle masse!'
+
+Then came a thing of mystery and wonder from the sky. A flying figure,
+scattering points of light through the darkness like grains of shining
+sand, swooped down and stood beside the group.
+
+'Oh, Dustman,' cried the guard, 'give her of your dust and put her to
+sleep, please. She's making noise enough to bring the Interfering Sun
+above the horizon before his time.'
+
+Without a word the new arrival passed one hand above the part of her
+that presumably was the face. Something sifted downwards. There was a
+sound of gentle sprinkling through the air; a noise followed that was
+half a groan and half a sigh. Her struggles grew gradually less, then
+ceased. They pushed the bulk of her backwards through the door. Spread
+over many seats the Woman of the Haystack slept.
+
+'Thank you,' said several voices with relief. 'She'll dream she's been
+in. That's just as good.'
+
+'Every bit,' the others answered, resuming their interrupted journey
+towards the cavern's mouth.
+
+'And when I come out she shall have some more,' answered the Dustman
+in a soft, thick voice; 'as much as ever she can use.'
+
+He flitted in his turn towards the stream of gold. His feet were
+already in it when he paused a moment to shift from one shoulder to
+the other a great sack he carried. And in that moment was heard a low
+voice singing dreamily the Dustman's curious little song. It seemed to
+come from the direction of the train where the Guard stood talking to
+a man the children had not noticed before. Presumably he was the
+engine-driver, since all the passengers were out now. But it may have
+been the old Dustman himself who sang it. They could not tell exactly.
+The voice made them quite drowsy as they listened:--
+
+     The busy Dustman flutters down the lanes,
+     He's off to gather star-dust for our dreams.
+
+     He dusts the Constellations for his sack,
+     Finding it thickest on the Zodiac,
+     But sweetest in the careless meteor's track;
+        _That_ he keeps only
+        For the old and lonely,
+        (And is very strict about it!)
+    Who sleep so little that they need the best;
+        The rest,--
+        The common stuff,--
+        Is good enough
+
+     For Fraulein, or for Baby, or for Mother,
+              Or any other
+              Who likes a bit of dust,
+              But yet can do without it
+              If they _must_!
+
+     The busy Dustman hurries through the sky
+     The kind old Dustman's coming to _your_ eye!
+
+By the time the song was over he had disappeared through the opening.
+
+'I'll show 'em the real stuff!' came back a voice--this time certainly
+his own--far inside now.
+
+'I simply love that man,' exclaimed Monkey. 'Songs are usually such
+twiddly things, but that was real.' She looked as though a somersault
+were imminent. 'If only Daddy knew him, he'd learn how to write
+unwumbled stories. Oh! we _must_ get Daddy out.'
+
+'It's only the head that sticks,' was her brother's reply. 'We'll
+grease it.'
+
+They remained silent a moment, not knowing what to do next, when they
+became aware that the big man who had been talking to the Guard was
+coming towards them.
+
+'They've seen us!' she whispered in alarm. '_He's_ seen us.' An
+inexplicable thrill ran over her.
+
+'They saw us long ago,' her brother added contemptuously. His voice
+quavered.
+
+Jimbo turned to face them, getting in front of his sister for
+protection, although she towered above him by a head at least. The
+Guard, who led the way, they saw now, was a girl--a girl not much
+older than Monkey, with big blue eyes. 'There they are,' the Guard
+said loudly, pointing; and the big man, looking about him as though he
+did not see very clearly, stretched out his hands towards him. 'But
+you must be very quick,' she added, 'the Interfering Sun---'
+
+'I'm glad you came to meet us. I hoped you might. Jane Anne's gone in
+ages ago. Now we'll all go in together,' he said in a deep voice, 'and
+gather star-dust for our dreams...' He groped to find them. His hands
+grew shadowy. He felt the empty air.
+
+His voice died away even as he said it, and the difficulty he had in
+seeing seemed to affect their own eyes as well. A mist rose. It turned
+to darkness. The river of starlight faded. The net had suddenly big
+holes in it. They were slipping through. Wind whispered in the trees.
+There was a sharp, odd sound like the plop of a water-rat in a
+pond....
+
+'We must be quick,' his voice came faintly from far away. They just
+had time to see his smile, and noticed the gleam of two gold teeth....
+Then the darkness rushed up and covered them. The stream of tangled,
+pouring beams became a narrow line, so far away it was almost like the
+streak of a meteor in the sky.... Night hid the world and everything
+in it....
+
+Two radiant little forms slipped past Riquette and slid feet first
+into the sleeping bodies on the beds.
+
+There came soon after a curious sound from the outer room, as Mother
+turned upon her sofa-bed and woke. The sun was high above the
+Blumlisalp, spreading a sheet of gold and silver on the lake. Birds
+were singing in the plane trees. The roof below the open windows shone
+with dew, and draughts of morning air, sweet and fresh, poured into
+the room. With it came the scent of flowers and forests, of fields and
+peaty smoke from cottage chimneys....
+
+But there was another perfume too. Far down the sky swept some fleet
+and sparkling thing that made the world look different. It was
+delicate and many-tinted, soft as a swallow's wing, and full of
+butterflies and tiny winds.
+
+For, with the last stroke of midnight from the old church tower, May
+had waked April; and April had run off into the mountains with the
+dawn. Her final shower of tears still shone upon the ground. Already
+May was busy drying them.
+
+
+That afternoon, when school was over, Monkey and Jimbo found
+themselves in the attics underneath the roof together. They had
+abstracted their father's opera-glasses from the case that hung upon
+the door, and were using them as a telescope.
+
+'What can you see?' asked Jimbo, waiting for his turn, as they looked
+towards the hazy mountains behind the village.
+
+'Nothing.'
+
+'That must be the opening, then,' he suggested, 'just air.'
+
+His sister lowered the glasses and stared at him. 'But it can't be a
+real place?' she said, the doubt in her tone making her words a
+question. 'Daddy's never been there himself, I'm sure--from the way he
+told it. You only dreamed it.' 'Well, anyhow,' was the reply with
+conviction, 'it's there, so there must be _somebody_ who believes in
+it.' And he was evidently going to add that he had been there, when
+Mother's voice was heard calling from the yard below, 'Come down from
+that draughty place. It's dirty, and there are dead rats in it. Come
+out and play in the sunshine. Try and be sensible like Jinny.'
+
+They smuggled the glasses into their case again, and went off to the
+woods to play. Though their union seemed based on disagreements
+chiefly they were always quite happy together like this, living in a
+world entirely their own. Jinny went her own way apart always--ever
+busy with pots and pans and sewing. She was far too practical and
+domestic for their tastes to amalgamate; yet, though they looked down
+upon her a little, no one in their presence could say a word against
+her. For they recognised the child's unusual selflessness, and rather
+stood in awe of it.
+
+And this afternoon in the woods they kept coming across places that
+seemed oddly familiar, although they had never visited them before.
+They had one of their curious conversations about the matter--queer
+talks they indulged in sometimes when quite alone. Mother would have
+squelched such talk, and Daddy muddled them with long words, while
+Jane Anne would have looked puzzled to the point of tears.
+
+'I'm _sure_ I've been here before,' said Monkey, looking across the
+trees to a place where the limestone cliffs dropped in fantastic
+shapes of pointed rock. 'Have you got that feeling too?'
+
+Jimbo, with his hands in the pockets of his blue reefer overcoat and
+his feet stuck wide apart, stared hard at her a moment. His little
+mind was searching too.
+
+'It's natural enough, I suppose,' he answered, too honest to pretend,
+too proud, though, to admit he had not got it.
+
+They were rather breathless with their climb, and sat down on a
+boulder in the shade.
+
+'I know all this awfully well,' Monkey presently resumed, looking
+about her. 'But certainly we've never come as far as this. I think my
+underneath escapes and comes to places by itself. I feel like that.
+Does yours?'
+
+He looked up from a bundle of moss he was fingering. This was rather
+beyond him.
+
+'Oh, I feel all right,' he said, 'just ordinary.' He would have given
+his ten francs in the savings bank, the collection of a year, to have
+answered otherwise. 'You're always getting tummy-aches and things,' he
+added kindly. 'Girls do.' It was pride that made the sharp addition.
+But Monkey was not hurt; she did not even notice what he said. The
+insult thus ignored might seem almost a compliment Jimbo thought with
+quick penitence.
+
+'Then, perhaps,' she continued, more than a little thrilled by her own
+audacity, 'it's somebody else's thinking. Thinking skips about the
+world like anything, you know. I read it once in one of Daddy's
+books.'
+
+'Oh, yes--like that---'
+
+'Thinking hard _does_ make things true, of course,' she insisted.
+
+'But you can't exactly see them,' he put in, to explain his own
+inexperience. He felt jealous of these privileges she claimed. 'They
+can't last, I mean.' 'But they can't be wiped out either,' she said
+decidedly. 'I'm sure of that.'
+
+Presently they scrambled higher and found among the rocks an opening
+to a new cave. The Jura mountains are riddled with caves which the
+stalactites turn into palaces and castles. The entrance was rather
+small, and they made no attempt to crawl in, for they knew that coming
+out again was often very difficult. But there was great excitement
+about it, and while Monkey kept repeating that she knew it already, or
+else had seen a picture of it somewhere, Jimbo went so far as to admit
+that they had certainly found it _very_ easily, while suggesting that
+the rare good fortune was due rather to his own leadership and skill.
+
+But when they came home to tea, full of the glory of their discovery,
+they found that a new excitement made the announcement fall a little
+flat. For in the Den, Daddy read a telegram he had just received from
+England to say that Cousin Henry was coming out to visit them for a
+bit. His room had already been engaged at the carpenter's house. He
+would arrive at the end of the week.
+
+It was the first of May!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+One of the great facts of the world I hold to be the registration in
+the Universe of every past scene and thought.
+                                        F. W. M.
+
+No place worth knowing yields itself at sight, and those the least
+inviting on first view may leave the most haunting pictures upon the
+walls of memory.
+
+This little village, that Henry Rogers was thus to revisit after so
+long an interval, can boast no particular outstanding beauty to lure
+the common traveller. Its single street winds below the pine forest;
+its tiny church gathers close a few brown-roofed houses; orchards
+guard it round about; the music of many fountains tinkle summer and
+winter through its cobbled yards; and its feet are washed by a
+tumbling stream that paints the fields with the radiance of countless
+wild-flowers in the spring. But tourists never come to see them. There
+is no hotel, for one thing, and ticket agents, even at the railway
+stations, look puzzled a moment before they realise where this place
+with the twinkling name can hide.... Some consult books. Yet, once you
+get there, it is not easy to get away again. Something catches the
+feet and ears and eyes. People have been known to go with all their
+luggage on Gygi's handcart to the station--then turn aside at the last
+moment, caught back by the purple woods.
+
+A traveller, glancing up at the little three-storey house with 'Poste
+et Telegraphe' above the door, could never guess how busy the world
+that came and went beneath its red-tiled roof. In spring the wistaria
+tree (whence the Pension borrowed its brave name, Les Glycines) hangs
+its blossoms between 'Poste' and 'Telegraphe,' and the perfume of
+invisible lilacs drenches the street from the garden at the back.
+Beyond, the road dips past the bee-hives of _la cure_; and Boudry
+towers with his five thousand feet of blue pine woods over the
+horizon. The tinkling of several big stone fountains fills the street.
+
+But the traveller would not linger, unless he chanced to pass at
+twelve o'clock and caught the stream of people going into their mid-
+day dinner at the Pension. And even then he probably would not see the
+presiding genius, Madame Jequier, for as often as not she would be in
+her garden, busy with eternal bulbs, and so strangely garbed that if
+she showed herself at all, it would be with a shrill, plaintive
+explanation--'Mais il ne faut pas me regarder. Je suis invisible!'
+Whereupon, consistently, she would not speak again, but flit in
+silence to and fro, as though she were one of those spirits she so
+firmly believed in, and sometimes talked to by means of an old
+Planchette.
+
+And on this particular morning the Widow Jequier was 'invisible' in
+her garden clothes as Gygi, the gendarme, came down the street to ring
+the _midi_ bell. Her mind was black with anxiety. She was not thinking
+of the troop that came to _dejeuner_, their principal meal of the day,
+paying a franc for it, but rather of the violent scenes with unpaid
+tradesmen that had filled the morning-tradesmen who were friends as
+well (which made it doubly awkward) and often dropped in socially for
+an evening's music and conversation. Her pain darkened the sunshine,
+and she found relief in the garden which was her passion. For in three
+weeks the interest on the mortgages was due, and she had nothing saved
+to meet it. The official notice had come that morning from the Bank.
+Her mind was black with confused pictures of bulbs, departed
+_pensionnaires_, hostile bankers, and--the ghastly _charite de la
+Commune_ which awaited her. Yet her husband, before he went into the
+wine-business so disastrously, had been pasteur here. He had preached
+from this very church whose bells now rang out the mid-day hour. The
+spirit of her daughter, she firmly believed, still haunted the garden,
+the narrow passages, and the dilapidated little salon where the ivy
+trailed along the ceiling.
+
+Twelve o'clock, striking from the church-tower clock, and the voice of
+her sister from the kitchen window, then brought the Widow Jequier
+down the garden in a flying rush. The table was laid and the soup was
+almost ready. The people were coming in. She was late as usual; there
+was no time to change. She flung her garden hat aside and scrambled
+into more presentable garments, while footsteps already sounded on the
+wooden stairs that led up from the village street.
+
+One by one the retired governesses entered, hung their cloaks upon the
+pegs in the small, dark hallway, and took their places at the table.
+They began talking among themselves, exchanging the little gossip of
+the village, speaking of their books and clothes and sewing, of the
+rooms in which they lived, scattered down the street, of the heating,
+of barking dogs that disturbed their sleep, the behaviour of the
+postman, the fine spring weather, and the views from their respective
+windows across the lake and distant Alps. Each extolled her own
+position: one had a garden; another a balcony; a third was on the top
+floor and so had no noisy tenant overhead; a fourth was on the ground,
+and had no stairs to climb. Each had her secret romance, and her
+secret method of cheap feeding at home. There were five or six of
+them, and this was their principal meal in the day; they meant to make
+the most of it; they always did; they went home to light suppers of
+tea and coffee, made in their own _appartements_. Invitations were
+issued and accepted. There were some who would not speak to each
+other. Cliques, divisions, _societes a part_, existed in the little
+band. And they talked many languages, learned in many lands--Russian,
+German, Italian, even Armenian--for all had laboured far from their
+country, spending the best of their years teaching children of foreign
+families, many of them in important houses. They lived upon their
+savings. Two, at least, had less than thirty pounds a year between
+them and starvation, and all were of necessity careful of every
+centime. They wore the same dresses from one year's end to another.
+They had come home to die.
+
+The Postmaster entered with the cash-box underneath one arm. He bowed
+gravely to the assembled ladies, and silently took his seat at the
+table. He never spoke; at meals his sole remarks were statements: 'Je
+n'ai pas de pain,' 'Il me manque une serviette,' and the like, while
+his black eyes glared resentfully at every one as though they had done
+him an injury. But his fierceness was only in the eyes. He was a meek
+and solemn fellow really. Nature had dressed him in black, and he
+respected her taste by repeating it in his clothes. Even his
+expression was funereal, though his black eyes twinkled.
+
+The servant-girl at once brought in his plate of soup, and he tucked
+the napkin beneath his chin and began to eat. From twelve to two the
+post was closed; his recreation time was precious, and no minute must
+be lost. After dinner he took his coat off and did the heavy work of
+the garden, under the merciless oversight of the Widow Jequier, his
+sister-in-law, the cash-box ever by his side. He chatted with his tame
+_corbeau_, but he never smiled. In the winter he did fretwork. On the
+stroke of two he went downstairs again and disappeared into the
+cramped and stuffy bureau, whose window on the street was framed by
+the hanging wistaria blossoms; and at eight o'clock his day of labour
+ended. He carried the cash-box up to bed at 8.15. At 8.30 his wife
+followed him. From nine to five he slept.
+
+Alone of all the little household the Widow Jequier scorned routine.
+She came and went with the uncertainty of wind. Her entrances and
+exits, too, were like the wind. With a scattering rush she scurried
+through the years--noisy, ineffective, yet somewhere fine. Her brother
+had finished his plate of soup, wiped his black moustaches
+elaborately, and turned his head towards the kitchen door with the
+solemn statement 'Je n'ai pas de viande,' when she descended upon the
+scene like a shrill-voiced little tempest.
+
+'Bonjour Mesdames, bonjour Mademoiselle, bonjour, bonjour,' she bowed
+and smiled, washing her hands in the air; 'et comment allez-vous ce
+matin?' as the little band of hungry governesses rose with one accord
+and moved to take their places. Some smiled in answer; others merely
+bowed. She made enemies as well as friends, the Widow Jequier. With
+only one of them she shook hands warmly-the one whose payments were
+long overdue. But Madame Jequier never asked for her money; she knew
+the old body's tiny income; she would pay her when she could. Only
+last week she had sent her food and clothing under the guise of a
+belated little Easter present. Her heart was bigger than her body.
+
+'La famille Anglaise n'est pas encore ici,' announced the Postmaster
+as though it were a funeral to come. He did not even look up. His
+protests passed ever unobserved.
+
+'But I hear them coming,' said a governess, swallowing her soup with a
+sound of many waters. And, true enough, they came. There was a thunder
+on the stairs, the door into the hall flew open, voices and laughter
+filled the place, and Jimbo and Monkey raced in to take their places,
+breathless, rosy, voluble, and very hungry. Jane Anne followed
+sedately, bowing to every one in turn. She had a little sentence for
+all who cared for one. Smiles appeared on every face. Mother, like a
+frigate coming to anchor with a favourable wind, sailed into her
+chair; and behind her stumbled Daddy, looking absent-minded and pre-
+occupied. Money was uncommonly scarce just then--the usual Bourcelles
+complaint.
+
+Conversation in many tongues, unmusically high-pitched, then at once
+broke loose, led ever by _la patronne_ at the head of the table. The
+big dishes of meat and vegetables were handed round; plates were piled
+and smothered; knives and forks were laid between mouthfuls upon
+plate-edges, forming a kind of frieze all round the cloth; the gossip
+of the village was retailed with harmless gusto. _Dejeuner_ at Les
+Glycines was in full swing. When the apples and oranges came round,
+most of the governesses took two apiece, slipping one or other into
+little black velvet bags they carried on their laps below the table.
+
+Some, it was whispered, put bread there too to keep them company. But
+this was probably a libel. Madame Jequier, at any rate, never saw it
+done. She looked the other way. 'We all must live,' was her invariable
+answer to such foolish stories. 'One cannot sleep if one's supper is
+too light.' Like her body, her soul was a bit untidy--careless, that
+is, with loose ends. Who would have guessed, for instance, the anxiety
+that just now gnawed her very entrails? She was a mixture of shameless
+egotism, and of burning zeal for others. There was a touch of grandeur
+in her.
+
+At the end of the table, just where the ivy leaves dropped rather low
+from their trailing journey across the ceiling, sat Miss Waghorn, her
+vigorous old face wrapped, apparently, in many apple skins. She was
+well past seventy, thin, erect, and active, with restless eyes, and
+hooked nose, the poor old hands knotted with rheumatism, yet the voice
+somehow retaining the energy of forty. Her manners were charming and
+old-fashioned, and she came of Quaker stock. Seven years before she
+arrived at the Pension for the summer, and had forgotten to leave. For
+she forgot most things within ten minutes of their happening. Her
+memory was gone; she remembered a face, as most other things as well,
+about twenty minutes; introductions had to be repeated every day, and
+sometimes at supper she would say with her gentle smile, 'We haven't
+met before, I think,' to some one she had held daily intercourse with
+for many months. 'I was born in '37,' she loved to add, 'the year of
+Queen Victoria's accession'; and five minutes later you might hear her
+ask, 'Now, guess how old I am; I don't mind a bit.' She was as proud
+of her load of years as an old gentleman of his thick hair. 'Say
+exactly what you think. And don't guess too low, mind.' Her numerous
+stories were self-repeaters.
+
+Miss Waghorn's memory was a source of worry and anxiety to all except
+the children, who mercilessly teased her. She loved the teasing,
+though but half aware of it. It was their evil game to extract as many
+of her familiar stories as possible, one after another. They knew all
+the clues. There was the Cornishman--she came from Cornwall--who had
+seen a fairy; his adventure never failed to thrill them, though she
+used the same words every time and they knew precisely what was
+coming. She was particularly strong on family reminiscences:--her
+father was bald at thirty, her brother's beard was so long that he
+tied it round his neck when playing cricket; her sister 'had the
+shortest arms you ever saw.' Always of youth she spoke; it was
+pathetic, so determined was she to be young at seventy. Her family
+seemed distinguished in this matter of extremes.
+
+But the superiority of Cornish over Devonshire cream was her _piece
+de resistance_. Monkey need merely whisper--Miss Waghorn's acuteness
+of hearing was positively uncanny--'Devonshire cream is what _I_
+like,' to produce a spurt of explanation and defence that lasted a
+good ten minutes and must be listened to until the bitter end.
+
+Jimbo would gravely inquire in a pause--of a stranger, if possible, if
+not, of the table in general--
+
+'Have you ever seen a fairy?'
+
+'No, but I've eaten Cornish cream--it's poison, you know,' Monkey
+would reply. And up would shoot the keen old face, preened for the
+fray.
+
+'We haven't been introduced, I think'--forgetting the formal
+introduction of ten minutes ago--'but I overheard, if you'll forgive
+my interrupting, and I can tell you all about Cornish cream. I was
+born in '37'--with her eager smile--'and for years it was on our
+table. I have made quantities of it. The art was brought first by the
+Phoenicians----'
+
+'Venetians,' said Monkey.
+
+'No, Phoenicians, dear, when they came to Cornwall for tin----'
+
+'To put the cream in,' from the same source.
+
+'No, you silly child, to get tin from the mines, of course, and----'
+
+Then Mother or Daddy, noting the drift of things, would interfere, and
+the youngsters would be obliterated--until next time. Miss Waghorn
+would finish her recital for the hundredth time, firmly believing it
+to be the first. She was a favourite with everybody, in spite of the
+anxiety she caused. She would go into town to pay her bill at the
+bootmaker's, and order another pair of boots instead, forgetting why
+she came. Her income was sixty pounds a year. She forgot in the
+afternoon the money she had received in the morning, till at last the
+Widow Jequier seized it for her the moment it arrived. And at night
+she would doze in her chair over the paper novel she had been "at"
+for a year and more, beginning it every night afresh, and rarely
+getting beyond the opening chapter. For it was ever new. All were
+anxious, though, what she would do next. She was so full of battle.
+
+Everybody talked at once, but forced conversation did not flourish.
+Bourcelles was not fashionable; no one ever had appendicitis there.
+Yet ailments of a milder order were the staple, inexhaustible subjects
+at meals. Instead of the weather, _mon estomac_ was the inexhaustible
+tale. The girl brought in the little Cantonal newspaper, and the widow
+read out selections in a high, shrill voice, regardless who listened.
+Misfortunes and accidents were her preference. _Grand ciel_ and
+_quelle horreur_ punctuated the selections. 'There's Tante Jeanne
+grand-cieling as usual,' Mother would say to her husband, who, being a
+little deaf, would answer, 'What?' and Tante Jeanne, overhearing him,
+would re-read the accident for his especial benefit, while the
+governesses recounted personal experiences among themselves, and Miss
+Waghorn made eager efforts to take part in it all, or tell her little
+tales of fairies and Cornish cream....
+
+One by one the governesses rose to leave; each made a comprehensive
+bow that included the entire company. Daddy lit a cigarette or let
+Jimbo light it for him, too wumbled with his thoughts of afternoon
+work to notice the puff stolen surreptitiously on the way. Jane Anne
+folded her napkin carefully, talking with Mother in a low voice about
+the packing of the basket with provisions for tea. Tea was included in
+the Pension terms; in a small clothes-basket she carried bread, milk,
+sugar, and butter daily across to La Citadelle, except on Sundays when
+she wore gloves and left the duty to the younger children who were
+less particular.
+
+The governesses, charged with life for another twenty-four hours at
+least, flocked down the creaking stairs. They nodded as they passed
+the Bureau window where the Postmaster pored over his collection of
+stamps, or examined a fretwork pattern of a boy on a bicycle--there
+was no heavy garden work that day--and went out into the street. They
+stood in knots a moment, discussing unfavourably the food just eaten,
+and declaring they would stand it no longer. 'Only where else can we
+go?' said one, feeling automatically at her velvet bag to make sure
+the orange was safely in it. Upstairs, at the open window, Madame
+Jequier overheard them as she filled the walnut shells with butter for
+the birds. She only smiled.
+
+'I wish we could help her,' Mother was saying to her husband, as they
+watched her from the sofa in the room behind. 'A more generous
+creature never lived.' It was a daily statement that lacked force
+owing to repetition, yet the emotion prompting it was ever new and
+real.
+
+'Or a more feckless,' was his reply. 'But if we ever come into our
+estates, we will. It shall be the first thing.' His mind always
+hovered after those distant estates when it was perplexed by immediate
+financial difficulty, and just now he was thinking of various bills
+and payments falling due. It was his own sympathetic link with the
+widow--ways and means, and the remorseless nature of sheets of paper
+with columns of figures underneath the horrible word _doit._
+
+'So Monsieur 'Enry Rogairs is coming,' she said excitedly, turning to
+them a moment on her way to the garden. 'And after all these years! He
+will find the house the same, and the garden better--oh, wonderfully
+improved. But us, _helas!_ he will find old, oh, how old!' She did not
+really mean herself, however.
+
+She began a long 'reminiscent' chapter, full of details of the days
+when he and Daddy had been boys together, but in the middle of it
+Daddy just got up and walked out, saying, 'I must get over to my work,
+you know.' There was no artificiality of manners at Bourcelles. Mother
+followed him, with a trifle more ceremony. 'Ah, c'est partir a
+l'anglaise!' sighed the widow, watching them go. She was accustomed to
+it. She went out into her garden, full of excitement at the prospect
+of the new arrival. Every arrival for her meant a possible chance of
+help. She was as young as her latest bulb really. Courage, hope, and
+generosity invariably go together.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+      Take him and cut him out in little stars,
+      And he will make the face of heaven so fine
+      That all the world will be in love with night
+      And pay no worship to the garish sun!
+                        Romeo and Juliet.
+
+The announcement of Henry Rogers's coming was received--variously, for
+any new arrival into the Den circle was subjected to rigorous
+criticism. This criticism was not intentional; it was the instinctive
+judgment that children pass upon everything, object or person, likely
+to affect themselves. And there is no severer bar of judgment in the
+world.
+
+'Who _is_ Cousinenry? What a name! Is he stiff, I wonder?' came from
+Monkey, almost before the announcement had left her father's lips.
+'What will he think of Tante Jeanne?' Her little torrent of questions
+that prejudged him thus never called for accurate answers as a rule,
+but this time she meant to have an answer. 'What is he exaccurately?'
+she added, using her own invention made up of 'exact' and 'accurate.'
+
+Mother looked up from the typewritten letter to reply, but before she
+could say, 'He's your father's cousin, dear; they were here as boys
+twenty years ago to learn French,' Jinny burst in with an explosive
+interrogation. She had been reading _La Bonne Menagere_ in a corner.
+Her eyes, dark with conjecture, searched the faces of both parents
+alternately. 'Excuse me, Mother, but is he a clergyman?' she asked
+with a touch of alarm.
+
+'Whatever makes you think that, child?'
+
+'Clergymen are always called the reverundhenry. He'll wear black and
+have socks that want mending.'
+
+'He shouldn't punt his letters,' declared Monkey. 'He's not an author,
+is he?'
+
+Jimbo, busy over school tasks, with a huge slate-pencil his crumpled
+fingers held like a walking-stick, watched and listened in silence. He
+was ever fearful, perhaps, lest his superior man's knowledge might be
+called upon and found wanting. Questions poured and crackled like
+grapeshot, while the truth slowly emerged from the explanations the
+parents were occasionally permitted to interject. The personality of
+Cousin Henry Rogers grew into life about them--gradually. The result
+was a curious one that Minks would certainly have resented with
+indignation. For Cousinenry was, apparently, a business man with
+pockets full of sovereigns; stern, clever, and important; the sort of
+man that gets into Governments and things, yet somewhere with the
+flavour of the clergyman about him. This clerical touch was Jane
+Anne's contribution to the picture; and she was certain that he wore
+silk socks of the most expensive description--a detail she had read
+probably in some chance fragments of a newspaper. For Jinny selected
+phrases in this way from anywhere, and repeated them on all occasions
+without the slightest relevancy. She practised them. She had a way of
+giving abrupt information and making startling statements _a propos_
+of nothing at all. Certain phrases stuck in her mind, it seemed, for
+no comprehensible reason. When excited she picked out the one that
+first presented itself and fired it off like a gun, the more inapt the
+better. And 'busy' was her favourite adjective always.
+
+'It's like a communication from a company,' Mother was saying, as she
+handed back the typewritten letter.
+
+'Is he a company promoter then?' asked Jinny like a flash, certainly
+ignorant what that article of modern life could mean.
+
+'Oh, I say!' came reproachfully from Jimbo, thus committing himself
+for the first time to speech. He glanced up into several faces round
+him, and then continued the picture of Cousin Henry he was drawing on
+his slate. He listened all the time. Occasionally he cocked an eye or
+ear up. He took in everything, saying little. His opinions matured
+slowly. The talk continued for a long time, questions and answers.
+
+'I think he's nice,' he announced at length in French. For intimate
+things, he always used that language; his English, being uncertain,
+was kept for matters of unimportance. 'A gentle man.'
+
+And it was Jimbo's verdict that the children then finally adopted.
+Cousin Henry was _gentil._ They laughed loudly at him, yet agreed. His
+influence on their little conclaves, though never volubly expressed--
+because of that very fact, perhaps--was usually accepted. Jimbo was so
+decided. And he never committed himself to impulsive judgments that
+later had to be revised. He listened in silence to the end, then went
+plump for one side or the other. 'I think he'll be a nice man,' was
+the label, therefore, then and there attached to Mr. Henry Rogers in
+advance of delivery. Further than that, however, they would not go. It
+would have been childish to commit themselves more deeply till they
+saw him.
+
+The conversation then slipped beyond their comprehension, or rather
+their parents used long words and circumventing phrases that made it
+difficult to follow. Owing to lack of space, matters of importance
+often had to be discussed in this way under the children's eyes,
+unless at night, when all were safe in bed; for French, of course, was
+of no avail for purposes of concealment. Long words were then made use
+of, dark, wumbled sentences spoken very quickly, with suggestive
+gestures and expressions of the eyes labelled by Monkey with, 'Look,
+Mother and Daddy are making faces--something's up!'
+
+But, none the less, all listened, and Monkey, whose intuitive
+intelligence soaked up hidden meanings like a sponge, certainly caught
+the trend of what was said. She detailed it later to the others, when
+Jinny checked her exposition with a puzzled 'but Mother could never
+have said _that_,' while Jimbo looked wise and grave, as though he had
+understood it all along, and was even in his parents' councils.
+
+On this occasion, however, there was nothing very vital to retail.
+Cousin Henry was to arrive to-morrow by the express from Paris. He was
+a little younger than Daddy, and would have the room above him in the
+carpenter's house. His meals he would take at the Pension just as they
+did, and for tea he would always come over to the Den. And this latter
+fact implied that he was to be admitted into intimacy at once, for
+only intimates used the Den regularly for tea, of course.
+
+It was serious. It involved a change in all their lives. Jinny
+wondered if it 'would cost Daddy any more money,' or whether
+'Cousinenry would bring a lot of things with him,' though not
+explaining whether by 'things' she meant food or presents or clothes.
+He was not married, so he couldn't be very old; and Monkey, suggesting
+that he might 'get to love' one of the retired governesses who came to
+the Pension for their mid-day dinner, was squelched by Jimbo with 'old
+governesses _never_ marry; they come back to settle, and then they
+just die off.'
+
+Thus was Henry Rogers predigested. But at any rate he was accepted.
+And this was fortunate; for a new arrival whom the children did not
+'pass' had been known to have a time that may best be described as not
+conducive to repose of body, mind, or spirit.
+
+The arrival of Mr. Henry Rogers in the village--in La Citadelle, that
+is--was a red-letter day. This, however, seems a thin description of
+its glory. For a more adequate description a well-worn phrase must be
+borrowed from the poems of Montmorency Minks--a 'Day of Festival,' for
+which 'coronal' invariably lay in waiting for rhyming purposes a
+little further down the sonnet.
+
+Monkey that afternoon managed to get home earlier than usual from
+Neuchatel, a somewhat suspicious explanation as her passport. Her eyes
+were popping. Jimbo was always out of the village school at three. He
+carried a time-table in his pocket; but it was mere pretence, since he
+was a little walking Bradshaw, and knew every train by heart--the
+Geneva Express, the Paris Rapide, the 'omnibus' trains, and the
+mountain ones that climbed the forest heights towards La Chaux de
+Fonds and Le Locle. Of these latter only the white puffing smoke was
+visible from the village, but he knew with accuracy their times of
+departure, their arrival, and the names of every station where they
+stopped. In the omnibus trains he even knew some of the guards
+personally, the engine-drivers too. He might be seen any day after
+school standing in the field beside the station, waiting for them to
+pass; _mecanicien_ and _conducteur_ were the commonest words in his
+whole vocabulary. When possible he passed the time of day with both of
+these important personages, or from the field he waved his hand and
+took his cap off. All engines, moreover, were 'powerful locomotives.'
+The phrase was stolen from his father--a magnificent sound it had,
+taking several seconds to pronounce. No day was wholly lived in vain
+which enabled him to turn to some one with, 'There's the Paris Rapide;
+it's five minutes late'; or 'That's the Geneva omnibus. You see, it
+has to have a very'--here a deep breath--'powerful locomotive.'
+
+So upon this day of festival it was quite useless to talk of common
+things, and even the holidays acquired a very remote importance.
+Everybody in the village knew it. From Gygi, the solitary gendarme, to
+Henri Beguin, who mended boots, but had the greater distinction that
+he was the only man Gygi ever arrested, for periodical wild behaviour
+--all knew that 'Cousin Henry, father's cousin, you know,' was
+expected to arrive in the evening, that he was an important person in
+the life of London, and that he was not exactly a _pasteur_, yet
+shared something of a clergyman's grave splendour. Clothed in a
+sacerdotal atmosphere he certainly was, though it was the gravity of
+Jane Anne's negative description that fastened this wild
+ecclesiastical idea upon him.
+
+'He's not _exactly_ a clergyman,' she told the dressmaker, who for two
+francs every Monday afternoon sat in the kitchen and helped with the
+pile of indiscriminate mending,' because he has to do with rather big
+companies and things. But he is a serious man all the same--and most
+fearfully busy always.'
+
+'We're going to meet him in the town,' said Jimbo carelessly. 'You
+see, the Paris Rapide doesn't stop here. We shall come back with him
+by the 6.20. It gets here at 6.50, so he'll be in time for supper, if
+it's punctual. It usually is.'
+
+And accordingly they went to Neuchatel and met the Paris train. They
+met their Cousin Henry, too. Powerful locomotives and everything else
+were instantly forgotten when they saw their father go up to a tall
+thin man who jumped--yes, jumped--down the high steps on to the level
+platform and at once began to laugh. He had a beard like their father.
+'How _will_ they know which is which?' thought Jinny. They stood in
+everybody's way and stared. He was so tall. Daddy looked no bigger
+than little Beguin beside him. He had a large, hooked nose, brown
+skin, and keen blue eyes that took in everything at a single glance.
+They twinkled absurdly for so big a man. He wore rough brown tweeds
+and a soft felt travelling hat. He wore also square-toed English
+boots. He carried in one hand a shiny brown leather bag with his
+initials on it like a member of the Government.
+
+The clergyman idea was destroyed in a fraction of a second, never to
+revive. The company promoter followed suit. Jinny experienced an
+entirely new sensation in her life--something none but herself had
+ever felt before--something romantic. 'He's like a soldier--a
+General,' she said to anybody who cared to listen, and she said it so
+loudly that many did listen. But she did not care. She stood apart
+from the others, staring as though it were a railway accident. This
+tall figure of a cousin she could fit nowhere as yet into her limited
+scheme of life. She admired him intensely. Yet Daddy laughed and
+chatted with him as if he were nothing at all! She kept outside the
+circle, wondering about his socks and underclothes. His beard was much
+neater and better trimmed than her father's. At least no crumb or bit
+of cotton was in it.
+
+But Jimbo felt no awe. After a moment's hesitation, during which the
+passers-by butted him this way and that, he marched straight up and
+looked him in the face. He reached to his watch-chain only.
+
+'I'll be your sekrity, too,' he announced, interrupting Daddy's
+foolishness about 'this is my youngest lad, Rogers.' Youngest lad
+indeed!
+
+And Henry Rogers then stooped and kissed the lot of them. One after
+the other he put his big arms round them and gave them a hug that was
+like the hug of a bear standing on its hind legs. They took it, each
+in his own way, differently. Jimbo proudly; Monkey, with a smacking
+return kiss that somehow conveyed the note of her personality--
+impudence; but Jane Anne, with a grave and outraged dignity, as though
+in a public railway station this kind of behaviour was slightly
+inappropriate. She wondered for days afterwards whether she had been
+quite correct. He was a cousin, but still he was--a man. And she
+wondered what she ought to call him. 'Mr. Rogers' was not quite right,
+yet 'Mr. Cousin Henry' was equally ill-chosen. She decided upon a
+combination of her own, a kind of code-word that was affectionate yet
+distant: 'Cousinenry.' And she used it with an explosive directness
+that was almost challenge--he could accept which half he chose.
+
+But all accepted him at once without fear. They felt, moreover, a
+secret and very tender thing; there was something in this big,
+important man that made them know he would love them for themselves;
+and more--that something in him had need of them. Here lay the
+explanation of their instant confidence and acceptance.
+
+'What a jolly bunch you are, to be sure!' he exclaimed. 'And you're to
+be my secretary, are you?' he added, taking Jimbo by the shoulders.
+'How splendid!'
+
+'_I'm_ not,' said Monkey, with a rush of laughter already too long
+restrained. Her manner suggested a somersault, only prevented by
+engines and officials.
+
+But Jimbo was a little shocked. This sort of thing disgraced them.
+
+'Oh, I say!' he exclaimed reproachfully.
+
+'Daddy, isn't she awful?' added Jane Anne under her breath, a sentence
+of disapproval in daily use. Her life seemed made up of apologising
+for her impudent sister.
+
+'The 6.20 starts at 6.20, you know,' Jimbo announced. 'The Lausanne
+Express has gone. Are your "baggages" registered?' And the party moved
+off in a scattered and uncertain manner to buy tickets and register
+the luggage. They went back second class--for the first time in their
+lives. It was Cousin Henry who paid the difference. That sealed his
+position finally in their eyes. He was a millionaire. All London
+people went first or second class.
+
+But Jimbo and his younger sister had noticed something else about the
+new arrival besides his nose and eyes and length. Even his luxurious
+habit of travelling second class did not impress them half as much as
+this other detail in his appearance. They referred to it in a
+whispered talk behind the shelter of the _conducteur's_ back while
+tickets were being punched.
+
+'You know,' whispered Monkey, her eyes popping, 'I've seen Cousin
+Henry before somewhere. I'm certain.' She gave a little gasp.
+
+Jimbo stared, only half believing, yet undeniably moved. Even his
+friend, the Guard, was temporarily neglected. 'Where?' he asked; 'do
+you mean in a picture?'
+
+'No,' she answered with decision, 'out here, I think. In the woods or
+somewhere.' She seemed vague. But her very vagueness helped him to
+believe. She was not inventing; he was sure of that.
+
+The _conducteur_ at that moment passed away along the train, and
+Cousin Henry looked straight at the pair of them. Through the open
+window dusk fluttered down the sky with spots of gold already on its
+wings.
+
+'What jolly stars you've got here,' he said, pointing. 'They're like
+diamonds. Look, it's a perfect network far above the Alps. By gum--
+what beauties!'
+
+And as he said it he smiled. Monkey gave her brother a nudge that
+nearly made him cry out. He wondered what she meant, but all the same
+he returned the nudge significantly. For Cousin Henry, when he smiled,
+had plainly shown--two teeth of gold.
+
+The children had never seen gold-capped teeth.
+
+'I'd like one for my collection,' thought Jimbo, meaning a drawer that
+included all his loose possessions of small size. But another thing
+stirred in him too, vague, indefinite, far away, something he had, as
+it were, forgotten.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+     O star benignant and serene,
+       I take the good to-morrow,
+     That fills from verge to verge my dream,
+       With all its joy and sorrow!
+     The old sweet spell is unforgot
+       That turns to June December;
+     And, though the world remember not,
+       Love, we would remember.
+                    _Life and Death_, W. E. HENLEY.
+
+And Rogers went over to unpack. It was soon done. He sat at his window
+in the carpenter's house and enjoyed the peace. The spell of evening
+stole down from the woods. London and all his strenuous life seemed
+very far away. Bourcelles drew up beside him, opened her robe, let
+down her forest hair, and whispered to him with her voice of many
+fountains....
+
+She lies just now within the fringe of an enormous shadow, for the sun
+has dipped behind the blue-domed mountains that keep back France.
+Small hands of scattered mist creep from the forest, fingering the
+vineyards that troop down towards the lake. A dog barks. Gygi, the
+gendarme, leaves the fields and goes home to take his uniform from its
+peg. Pere Langel walks among his beehives. There is a distant tinkling
+of cow-bells from the heights, where isolated pastures gleam like a
+patchwork quilt between the spread of forest; and farther down a train
+from Paris or Geneva, booming softly, leaves a trail of smoke against
+the background of the Alps where still the sunshine lingers.
+
+But trains, somehow, do not touch the village; they merely pass it.
+Busy with vines, washed by its hill-fed stream, swept by the mountain
+winds, it lies unchallenged by the noisy world, remote, un-noticed,
+half forgotten. And on its outskirts stands the giant poplar that
+guards it--_la sentinelle_ the peasants call it, because its lofty
+crest, rising to every wind, sends down the street first warning of
+any coming change. They see it bend or hear the rattle of its leaves.
+The _coup de Joran_, most sudden and devastating of mountain winds, is
+on the way from the precipice of the Creux du Van. It comes howling
+like artillery down the deep Gorges de l'Areuse. They run to fasten
+windows, collect the washing from roof and garden, drive the cattle
+into shelter, and close the big doors of the barns. The children clap
+their hands and cry to Gygi, 'Plus vite! Plus vite!' The lake turns
+dark. Ten minutes later it is raging with an army of white horses like
+the sea.
+
+Darkness drapes the village. It comes from the whole long line of
+Jura, riding its troop of purple shadows--slowly curtaining out the
+world. For the carpenter's house stands by itself, apart. Perched upon
+a knoll beside his little patch of vineyard, it commands perspective.
+From his upper window Rogers saw and remembered....
+
+High up against the fading sky ridges of limestone cliff shine out
+here and there, and upon the vast slopes of Boudry--_l'immense geant
+de Boudry_--lies a flung cloak of forest that knows no single seam.
+The smoke from _bucheron_ fires, joining the scarves of mist, weaves
+across its shoulder a veil of lace-like pattern, and at its feet, like
+some great fastening button, hides the village of the same name, where
+Marat passed his brooding youth. Its evening lights are already
+twinkling. They signal across the vines to the towers of Colombier,
+rising with its columns of smoke and its poplars against the sheet of
+darkening water--Colombier, in whose castle _milord marechal Keith_
+had his headquarters as Governor of the Principality of Neuchatel
+under the King of Prussia. And, higher up, upon the flank of wooded
+mountains, is just visible still the great red-roofed farm of
+Cotendard, built by his friend Lord Wemyss, another Jacobite refugee,
+who had strange parties there and entertained Jean Jacques Rousseau in
+his exile. La Citadelle in the village was the wing of another castle
+he began to build, but left unfinished.
+
+White in the gathering dusk, Rogers saw the strip of roadway where
+passed the gorgeous coach--_cette fameuse diligence du milord marshal
+Keith_--or more recent, but grimmer memory, where General Bourbaki's
+division of the French army, 80,000 strong, trailed in unspeakable
+anguish, hurrying from the Prussians. At Les Verrieres, upon the
+frontier, they laid down their arms, and for three consecutive days
+and nights the pitiful destitute procession passed down that strip of
+mountain road in the terrible winter of 1870-71.
+
+Some among the peasants still hear that awful tramping in their sleep:
+the kindly old _vigneron_ who stood in front of his chalet from dawn
+to sunset, giving each man bread and wine; and the woman who nursed
+three soldiers through black small-pox, while neighbours left food
+upon the wall before the house.... Memories of his boyhood crowded
+thick and fast. The spell of the place deepened about him with the
+darkness. He recalled the village postman--fragment of another
+romance, though a tattered and discredited one. For this postman was
+the descendant of that audacious pale-frenier who married Lord Wemyss'
+daughter, to live the life of peasants with her in a yet tinier hamlet
+higher up the slopes. If you asked him, he would proudly tell you,
+with his bullet-shaped, close-cropped head cocked impertinently on one
+side, how his brother, now assistant in a Paris shop, still owned the
+title of baron by means of which his reconciliated lordship sought
+eventually to cover up the unfortunate escapade. He would hand you
+English letters--and Scotch ones too!--with an air of covert insolence
+that was the joy of half the village. And on Sundays he was to be
+seen, garbed in knickerbockers, gaudy stockings, and sometimes high,
+yellowish spats, walking with his peasant girl along the very road his
+more spirited forbear covered in his runaway match....
+
+The night stepped down more quickly every minute from the heights.
+Deep-noted bells floated upwards to him from Colombier, bringing upon
+the evening wind some fragrance of these faded boyhood memories. The
+stars began to peep above the peaks and ridges, and the mountains of
+the Past moved nearer. A veil of gossamer rose above the tree-tops,
+hiding more and more of the landscape; he just could see the slim new
+moon dip down to drink from her own silver cup within the darkening
+lake. Workmen, in twos and threes, came past the little house from
+their toil among the vines, and fragments of the Dalcroze songs rose
+to his ear--songs that the children loved, and that he had not heard
+for nearly a quarter of a century. Their haunting refrains completed
+then the spell, for all genuine spells are set to some peculiar music
+of their own. These Dalcroze melodies were exactly right.... The
+figures melted away into the single shadow of the village street. The
+houses swallowed them, voices, footsteps, and all.
+
+And his eye, wandering down among the lights that twinkled against the
+wall of mountains, picked out the little ancient house, nestling so
+close beside the church that they shared a wall in common. Twenty-five
+years had passed since first he bowed his head beneath the wistaria
+that still crowned the Pension doorway. He remembered bounding up the
+creaking stairs. He felt he could still bound as swiftly and with as
+sure a step, only--he would expect less at the top now. More truly
+put, perhaps, he would expect less for himself. That ambition of his
+life was over and done with. It was for others now that his desires
+flowed so strongly. Mere personal aims lay behind him in a faded heap,
+their seductiveness exhausted.... He was a man with a Big Scheme now--
+a Scheme to help the world....
+
+The village seemed a dull enough place in those days, for the big Alps
+beckoned beyond, and day and night he longed to climb them instead of
+reading dull French grammar. But now all was different. It dislocated
+his sense of time to find the place so curiously unchanged. The years
+had played some trick upon him. While he himself had altered,
+developed, and the rest, this village had remained identically the
+same, till it seemed as if no progress of the outer world need ever
+change it. The very people were so little altered--hair grown a little
+whiter, shoulders more rounded, steps here and there a trifle slower,
+but one and all following the old routine he knew so well as a boy.
+
+Tante Jeanne, in particular, but for wrinkles that looked as though a
+night of good sound sleep would smooth them all away, was the same
+brave woman, still 'running' that Wistaria Pension against the burden
+of inherited debts and mortgages. 'We're still alive,' she had said to
+him, after greetings delayed a quarter of a century, 'and if we
+haven't got ahead much, at least we haven't gone back!' There was no
+more hint of complaint than this. It stirred in him a very poignant
+sense of admiration for the high courage that drove the ageing fighter
+forward still with hope and faith. No doubt she still turned the
+kitchen saucer that did duty for planchette, unconsciously pushing its
+blunted pencil towards the letters that should spell out coming help.
+No doubt she still wore that marvellous tea-gown garment that did duty
+for so many different toilettes, even wearing it when she went with
+goloshes and umbrella to practise Sunday's hymns every Saturday night
+on the wheezy church harmonium. And most likely she still made
+underskirts from the silk of discarded umbrellas because she loved the
+sound of frou-frou thus obtained, while the shape of the silk exactly
+adapted itself to the garment mentioned. And doubtless, too, she still
+gave away a whole week's profits at the slightest call of sickness in
+the village, and then wondered how it was the Pension did not pay...!
+
+A voice from below interrupted his long reverie.
+
+'Ready for supper, Henry?' cried his cousin up the stairs. 'It's past
+seven. The children have already left the Citadelle.'
+
+And as the two middle-aged dreamers made their way along the winding
+street of darkness through the vines, one of them noticed that the
+stars drew down their grand old network, fastening it to the heights
+of Boudry and La Tourne. He did not mention it to his companion, who
+was wumbling away in his beard about some difficult details of his
+book, but the thought slipped through his mind like the trail of a
+flying comet: 'I'd like to stay a long time in this village and get
+the people straight a bit,'--which, had he known it, was another
+thought carefully paraphrased so that he should not notice it and feel
+alarm: 'It will be difficult to get away from here. My feet are in
+that net of stars. It's catching about my heart.'
+
+Low in the sky a pale, witched moon of yellow watched them go....
+
+'The Starlight Express is making this way, I do believe,' he thought.
+But perhaps he spoke the words aloud instead of thinking them.
+
+'Eh! What's that you said, Henry?' asked the other, taking it for a
+comment of value upon the plot of a story he had referred to.
+
+'Oh, nothing particular,' was the reply. 'But just look at those stars
+above La Tourne. They shine like beacons burning on the trees.' Minks
+would have called them 'braziers.'
+
+'They are rather bright, yes,' said the other, disappointed. 'The air
+here is so very clear.' And they went up the creaking wooden stairs to
+supper in the Wistaria Pension as naturally as though the years had
+lifted them behind the mountains of the past in a single bound--
+twenty-five years ago.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+    Near where yonder evening star
+      Makes a glory in the air,
+    Lies a land dream--found and far
+      Where it is light always.
+    There those lovely ghosts repair
+      Who in sleep's enchantment are,
+    In Cockayne dwell all things fair--
+      (But it is far away).
+                               Cockayne Country, Agnes Duclaux.
+
+The first stage in Cousinenry's introduction took place, as has been
+seen, at a railway station; but further stages were accomplished
+later. For real introductions are not completed by merely repeating
+names and shaking hands, still less by a hurried kiss. The ceremony
+had many branches too--departments, as it were. It spread itself, with
+various degrees, over many days as opportunity offered, and included
+Gygi, the gendarme, as well as the little troop of retired governesses
+who came to the Pension for their mid-day dinner. Before two days were
+passed he could not go down the village street without lifting his cap
+at least a dozen times. Bourcelles was so very friendly; no room for
+strangers there; a new-comer might remain a mystery, but he could not
+be unknown. Rogers found his halting French becoming rapidly fluent
+again. And every one knew so much about him--more almost than he knew
+himself.
+
+At the Den next day, on the occasion of their first tea together, he
+realised fully that introduction--to the children at any rate--
+involved a kind of initiation.
+
+It seemed to him that the room was full of children, crowds of them,
+an intricate and ever shifting maze. For years he had known no
+dealings with the breed, and their movements now were so light and
+rapid that it rather bewildered him. They were in and out between the
+kitchen, corridor, and bedroom like bits of a fluid puzzle. One moment
+a child was beside him, and the next, just as he had a suitable
+sentence ready to discharge at it, the place was vacant. A minute
+later 'it' appeared through another door, carrying the samovar, or was
+on the roof outside struggling with Riquette.
+
+'Oh, there you are!' he exclaimed. 'How you do dart about, to be
+sure!'
+
+And the answer, if any, was invariably of the cheeky order--
+
+'One can't keep still here; there's not room enough.'
+
+Or, worse still--
+
+'I must get past you somehow!' This, needless to say, from Monkey, who
+first made sure her parents were out of earshot.
+
+But he liked it, for he recognised this proof that he was accepted and
+made one of the circle. These were tentative invitations to play. It
+made him feel quite larky, though at first he found his machinery of
+larking rather stiff. The wheels required oiling. And his first
+attempt to chase Miss Impudence resulted in a collision with Jane Anne
+carrying a great brown pot of home-made jam for the table. There was a
+dreadful sound. He had stepped on the cat at the same time.
+
+His introduction to the cat was the immediate result, performed
+solemnly by Jimbo, and watched by Jinny, still balancing the jar of
+jam, with an expression of countenance that was half amazement and
+half shock. Collisions with creatures of his size and splendour were a
+new event to her.
+
+'I must advertise for help if it occurs again!' she exclaimed.
+
+'That's Mere Riquette, you know,' announced Jimbo formally to his
+cousin, standing between them in his village school blouse, hands
+tucked into his belt.
+
+'I heard her, yes.' From a distance the cat favoured him with a single
+comprehensive glance, then turned away and disappeared beneath the
+sofa. She, of course, reserved her opinion.
+
+'It didn't REALLY hurt her. She always squeals like that.'
+
+'Perhaps she likes it,' suggested Rogers.
+
+'She likes better tickling behind the ear,' Jimbo thought, anxious to
+make him feel all right, and then plunged into a description of her
+general habits--how she jumped at the door handles when she wanted to
+come in, slept on his bed at night, and looked for a saucer in a
+particular corner of the kitchen floor. This last detail was a
+compliment. He meant to imply that Cousin Henry might like to see to
+it himself sometimes, although it had always been his own special
+prerogative hitherto.
+
+'I shall know in future, then,' said Rogers earnestly, showing, by
+taking the information seriously, that he possessed the correct
+instinct.
+
+'Oh yes, it's quite easy. You'll soon learn it,' spoken with feet wide
+apart and an expression of careless importance, as who should say,
+'What a sensible man you are! Still, these _are_ little things one has
+to be careful about, you know.'
+
+Mother poured out tea, somewhat laboriously, as though the exact
+proportions of milk, hot water, and sugar each child took were
+difficult to remember. Each had a special cup, moreover. Her mind,
+ever crammed with a thousand domestic details which she seemed to
+carry all at once upon the surface, ready for any sudden question,
+found it difficult to concentrate upon the teapot. Her mind was ever
+worrying over these. Her husband was too vague to be of practical
+help. When any one spoke to her, she would pause in the middle of the
+operation, balancing a cup in one hand and a milk jug in the other,
+until the question was properly answered, every t crossed and every i
+dotted. There was no mistaking what Mother meant--provided you had the
+time to listen. She had that careful thoroughness which was no friend
+of speed. The result was that hands were stretched out for second cups
+long before she had completed the first round. Her own tea began
+usually when everybody else had finished--and lasted--well, some time.
+
+'Here's a letter I got,' announced Jimbo, pulling a very dirty scrap
+of paper from a pocket hidden beneath many folds of blouse. 'You'd
+like to see it.' He handed it across the round table, and Rogers took
+it politely. 'Thank you very much; it came by this morning's post, did
+it?'
+
+'Oh, no,' was the reply, as though a big correspondence made the date
+of little importance. 'Not by _that_ post.' But Monkey blurted out
+with the jolly laughter that was her characteristic sound, 'It came
+ages ago. He's had it in his pocket for weeks.'
+
+Jimbo, ignoring the foolish interruption, watched his cousin's face,
+while Jinny gave her sister a secret nudge that every one could see.
+
+'Darling Jimbo,' was what Rogers read, 'I have been to school, and did
+strokes and prickings and marched round. I am like you now. A fat kiss
+and a hug, your loving---' The signature was illegible, lost amid
+several scratchy lines in a blot that looked as if a beetle had
+expired after violent efforts in a pool of ink.
+
+'Very nice indeed, very well put,' said Rogers, handing it gravely
+back again, while some one explained that the writer, aged five, had
+just gone to a kindergarten school in Geneva. 'And have you answered
+it?'
+
+'Oh, yes. I answered it the same day, you see.' It was, perhaps, a
+foolish letter for a man to have in his pocket. Still--it was a
+letter.
+
+'Good! What a capital secretary you'll make me.' And the boy's flush
+of pleasure almost made the dish of butter rosy.
+
+'Oh, take another; take a lot, please,' Jimbo said, handing the cakes
+that Rogers divined were a special purchase in his honour; and while
+he did so, managed to slip one later on to the plates of Monkey and
+her sister, who sat on either side of him. The former gobbled it up at
+once, barely keeping back her laughter, but Jinny, with a little bow,
+put hers carefully aside on the edge of her plate, not knowing quite
+the 'nice' thing to do with it. Something in the transaction seemed a
+trifle too familiar perhaps. She stole a glance at mother, but mother
+was filling the cups and did not notice. Daddy could have helped her,
+only he would say 'What?' in a loud voice, and she would have to
+repeat her question for all to hear. Later, she ate the cake in very
+small morsels, a little uncomfortably.
+
+It was a jolly, merry, cosy tea, as teas in the Den always were. Daddy
+wumbled a number of things in his beard to which no one need reply
+unless they felt like it. The usual sentences were not heard to-day:
+'Monkey, what a mouthful! You _must_ not shovel in your food like
+that!' or, 'Don't _gurgle_ your tea down; swallow it quietly, like a
+little lady'; or, 'How often have you been told _not_ to drink with
+your mouth full; this is not the servants' hall, remember!' There were
+no signs of contretemps of any kind, nothing was upset or broken, and
+the cakes went easily round, though not a crumb was left over.
+
+But the entire time Mr. Rogers was subjected to the keenest scrutiny
+imaginable. Nothing he did escaped two pairs of eyes at least. Signals
+were flashed below as well as above the table. These signals were of
+the kind birds know perhaps--others might be aware of their existence
+if they listened very attentively, yet might not interpret them. No
+Comanche ever sent more deft communications unobserved to his brother
+across a camp fire.
+
+Yet nothing was done visibly; no crumb was flicked; and the table hid
+the pressure of the toe which, fortunately, no one intercepted.
+Monkey, at any rate, had eyes in both her feet, and Jimbo knew how to
+keep his counsel without betrayal. But inflections of the voice did
+most of the work--this, with flashes of brown and blue lights,
+conveyed the swift despatches.
+
+'My underneath goes out to him,' Monkey telegraphed to her brother
+while she asked innocently for 'jam, please, Jimbo'; and he replied,
+'Oh, he's all right, I think, but better not go too fast,' as he wiped
+the same article from his chin and caught her big brown eye upon him.
+'He'll be our Leader,' she conveyed later by the way she stirred her
+cup of tea-hot-water-milk, 'when once we've got him "out" and taught
+him'; and Jimbo offered and accepted his own resignation of the
+coveted, long-held post by the way he let his eyelid twiddle in answer
+to her well-directed toe-nudge out of sight.
+
+This, in a brief resume, was the purport of the give and take of
+numerous despatches between them during tea, while outwardly Mother--
+and Father, too, when he thought about it--were delighted with their
+perfect company manners.
+
+Jane Anne, outside all this flummery, went her own way upon an even
+keel. She watched him closely too, but not covertly. She stared him in
+the face, and imitated his delicate way of eating. Once or twice she
+called him 'Mr. Rogers,' for this had a grown-up flavour about it that
+appealed to her, and 'Cousin Henry' did not come easily to her at
+first. She could not forget that she had left the _ecole secondaire_
+and was on her way to a Geneva Pension where she would attend an
+_ecole menagere_. And the bursts of laughter that greeted her polite
+'Mr. Rogers, did you have a nice journey, and do you like
+Bourcelles?'--in a sudden pause that caught Mother balancing cup and
+teapot in mid-air--puzzled her a good deal. She liked his quiet answer
+though--'Thank you, Miss Campden, I think both quite charming.' He did
+not laugh. He understood, whatever the others might think. She had
+wished to correct the levity of the younger brother and sister, and he
+evidently appreciated her intentions. He seemed a nice man, a very
+nice man.
+
+Tea once over, she carried off the loaded tray to the kitchen to do
+the washing-up. Jimbo and Monkey had disappeared. They always vanished
+about this time, but once the unenvied operation was safely under way,
+they emerged from their hiding-places again. No one ever saw them go.
+They were gone before the order, 'Now, children, help your sister take
+the things away,' was even issued. By the time they re-appeared Jinny
+was halfway through it and did not want to be disturbed.
+
+'Never mind, Mother,' she said, 'they're chronic. They're only little
+busy Highlanders!' For 'chronic' was another catch-word at the moment,
+and sometimes by chance she used it appropriately. The source of 'busy
+Highlanders' was a mystery known only to herself. And resentment, like
+jealousy, was a human passion she never felt and did not understand.
+Jane Anne was the spirit of unselfishness incarnate. It was to her
+honour, but made her ineffective as a personality.
+
+Daddy lit his big old meerschaum--the 'squelcher' Jinny called it,
+because of its noise--and mooned about the room, making remarks on
+literature or politics, while Mother picked a work-basket cleverly
+from a dangerously overloaded shelf, and prepared to mend and sew. The
+windows were wide open, and framed the picture of snowy Alps, now
+turning many-tinted in the slanting sunshine. (Riquette, gorged with
+milk, appeared from the scullery and inspected knees and chairs and
+cushions that seemed available, selecting finally the best arm-chair
+and curling up to sleep. Rogers smoked a cigarette, pleased and
+satisfied like the cat.) A hush fell on the room. It was the hour of
+peace between tea and the noisy Pension supper that later broke the
+spell. So quiet was it that the mouse began to nibble in the bedroom
+walls, and even peeped through the cracks it knew between the boards.
+It came out, flicked its whiskers, and then darted in again like
+lightning. Jane Anne, rinsing out the big teapot in the scullery,
+frightened it. Presently she came in softly, put the lamp ready for
+her mother's needle, in case of need later, gave a shy queer look at
+'Mr. Rogers' and her father, both of whom nodded absent-mindedly to
+her, and then went on tip-toe out of the room. She was bound for the
+village shop to buy methylated spirits, sugar, blotting-paper, and--a
+'plaque' of Suchard chocolate for her Cousinenry. The forty centimes
+for this latter was a large item in her savings; but she gave no
+thought to that. What sorely perplexed her as she hurried down the
+street was whether he would like it 'milk' or 'plain.' In the end she
+bought both.
+
+Down the dark corridor of the Citadelle, before she left, she did not
+hear the muffled laughter among the shadows, nor see the movement of
+two figures that emerged together from the farther end.
+
+'He'll be on the sofa by now. Shall we go for him?' It was the voice
+of Monkey.
+
+'Leave it to me.' Jimbo still meant to be leader so far as these two
+were concerned at any rate. Let come later what might.
+
+'Better get Mother out of the way first, though.'
+
+'Mother's nothing. She's sewing and things,' was the reply. He
+understood the conditions thoroughly. He needed no foolish advice.
+
+'He's awfully easy. You saw the two gold teeth. It's him, I'm sure.'
+
+'Of course he's easy, only a person doesn't want to be pulled about
+after tea,' in the tone of a man who meant to feel his way a bit.
+
+Clearly they had talked together more than once since the arrival at
+the station. Jimbo made up for ignorance by decision and sublime self-
+confidence. He answered no silly questions, but listened, made up his
+mind, and acted. He was primed to the brim--a born leader.
+
+'Better tell him that we'll come for him to-night,' the girl insisted.
+'He'll be less astonished then. You can tell he dreams a lot by his
+manner. Even now he's only half awake.'
+
+The conversation was in French--school and village French. Her brother
+ignored the question with 'va te cacher!' He had no doubts himself.
+
+'Just wait a moment while I tighten my belt,' he observed. 'You can
+tell it by his eyes,' he added, as Monkey urged him forward to the
+door. 'I know a good dreamer when I see one.'
+
+Then fate helped them. The door against their noses opened and Daddy
+came out, followed by his cousin. All four collided.
+
+'Oh, is the washing-up finished?' asked Monkey innocently, quick as a
+flash.
+
+'How you startled me!' exclaimed Daddy. 'You really must try to be
+less impetuous. You'd better ask Mother about the washing,' he
+repeated, 'she's in there sewing.' His thoughts, it seemed, were just
+a trifle confused. Plates and linen both meant washing, and sometimes
+hair and other stuff as well.
+
+'There's no light, you see, yet,' whispered Jimbo. A small lamp
+usually hung upon the wall. Jane Anne at that moment came out carrying
+it and asking for a match.
+
+'No starlight, either,' added Monkey quickly, giving her cousin a
+little nudge. 'It's all upwumbled, or whatever Daddy calls it.'
+
+The look he gave her might well have suppressed a grown-up person--
+'grande personne,' as Jimbo termed it, translating literally--but on
+Monkey it had only slight effect. Her irrepressible little spirit
+concealed springs few could regulate. Even avoir-dupois increased
+their resiliency the moment it was removed. But Jimbo checked her
+better than most. She did look a trifle ashamed--for a second.
+
+'Can't you wait?' he whispered. 'Daddy'll spoil it if you begin it
+here. How you do fidget!'
+
+They passed all together out into the yard, the men in front, the two
+children just behind, walking warily.
+
+Then came the separation, yet none could say exactly how it was
+accomplished. For separations are curious things at the best of times,
+the forces that effect them as mysterious as wind that blows a pair of
+butterflies across a field. Something equally delicate was at work.
+One minute all four stood together by the fountain, and the next Daddy
+was walking downhill towards the carpenter's house alone, while the
+other three were already twenty metres up the street that led to the
+belt of forest.
+
+Jimbo, perhaps, was responsible for the deft manoeuvring. At any rate,
+he walked beside his big cousin with the air of a successful aide-de-
+camp. But Monkey, too, seemed flushed with victory, rolling along--her
+rotundity ever suggested rolling rather than the taking of actual
+steps--as if she led a prisoner.
+
+'Don't bother your cousin, children,' their father's voice was heard
+again faintly in the distance. Then the big shoulder of La Citadelle
+hid him from view and hearing.
+
+And so the sight was seen of these three, arm in arm, passing along
+the village street in the twilight. Gygi saw them go and raised his
+blue, peaked cap; and so did Henri Favre, standing in the doorway of
+his little shop, as he weighed the possible value of the new customer
+for matches, chocolate, and string--the articles English chiefly
+bought; and likewise Alfred Sandoz, looking a moment through the
+window of his cabaret, the Guillaume Tell, saw them go past like
+shadows towards the woods, and observed to his carter friend across
+the table, 'They choose queer times for expeditions, these English,
+_ouah!_'
+
+'It's their climate makes them like that,' put in his wife, a touch of
+pity in her voice. Her daughter swept the Den and lit the
+_fourneau_ for _la famille anglaise_ in the mornings, and the mother,
+knowing a little English, spelt out the weather reports in the _Daily
+Surprise_ she sometimes brought.
+
+Meanwhile the three travellers had crossed the railway line, where
+Jimbo detained them for a moment's general explanation, and passed the
+shadow of the sentinel poplar. The cluster of spring leaves rustled
+faintly on its crest. The village lay behind them now. They turned a
+moment to look back upon the stretch of vines and fields that spread
+towards the lake. From the pool of shadow where the houses nestled
+rose the spire of the church, a strong dark line against the fading
+sunset. Thin columns of smoke tried to draw it after them. Lights
+already twinkled on the farther shore, five miles across, and beyond
+these rose dim white forms of the tremendous ghostly Alps. Dusk slowly
+brought on darkness.
+
+Jimbo began to hum the song of the village he had learned in school--
+
+      P'tit Bourcelles sur sa colline
+      De partout a gentille mine;
+      On y pratique avec success
+      L'exploitation du francais,
+
+and the moment it was over, his sister burst out with the question
+that had been buzzing inside her head the whole time--
+
+'How long are you going to stay?' she said, as they climbed higher
+along the dusty road.
+
+'Oh, about a week,' he told her, giving the answer already used a
+dozen times. 'I've just come out for a holiday--first holiday I've had
+for twenty years. Fancy that! Pretty long time, eh?'
+
+They simply didn't believe that; they let it pass--politely.
+
+'London's stuffy, you know, just now,' he added, aware that he was
+convicted of exaggeration. 'Besides, it's spring.'
+
+'There are millions of flowers here,' Jimbo covered his mistake
+kindly, 'millions and millions. Aren't there, Monkey?'
+
+'Oh, billions.'
+
+'Of course,' he agreed.
+
+'And more than anywhere else in the whole world.'
+
+'It looks like that,' said Cousin Henry, as proudly as they said it
+themselves. And they told him how they picked clothes-baskets full of
+the wild lily of the valley that grew upon the Boudry slopes,
+hepaticas, periwinkles, jonquils, blue and white violets, as well as
+countless anemones, and later, the big yellow marguerites.
+
+'Then how long are you going to stay--_really_?' inquired Monkey once
+again, as though the polite interlude were over. It was a delicate way
+of suggesting that he had told an untruth. She looked up straight into
+his face. And, meeting her big brown eyes, he wondered a little--for
+the first time--how he should reply.
+
+'Daddy came here meaning to stay only six months--first.'
+
+'When I was littler,' Jimbo put in.
+
+'----and stayed here all this time--four years.'
+
+'I hope to stay a week or so--just a little holiday, you know,' he
+said at length, giving the answer purposely. But he said it without
+conviction, haltingly. He felt that they divined the doubt in him.
+They guessed his thought along the hands upon his arm, as a horse
+finds out its rider from the touch upon the reins. On either side big
+eyes watched and judged him; but the brown ones put a positive
+enchantment in his blood. They shone so wonderfully in the dusk.
+
+'Longer than that, I think,' she told him, her own mind quite made up.
+'It's not so easy to get away from.'
+
+'You mean it?' he asked seriously. 'It makes one quite nervous.'
+
+'There's such a lot to do here,' she said, still keeping her eyes
+fixed upon his face till he felt the wonder in him become a little
+unmanageable. 'You'll never get finished in a week.'
+
+'My secretary,' he stammered, 'will help me,' and Jimbo nodded,
+fastening both hands upon his arm, while Monkey indulged in a little
+gust of curious laughter, as who should say 'He who laughs last,
+laughs best.'
+
+They entered the edge of the forest. Hepaticas watched them with their
+eyes of blue. Violets marked their tread. The frontiers of the
+daylight softly closed behind them. A thousand trees opened a way to
+let them pass, and moss twelve inches thick took their footsteps
+silently as birds. They came presently to a little clearing where the
+pines stood in a circle and let in a space of sky. Looking up, all
+three saw the first small stars in it. A wild faint scent of coming
+rain was in the air--those warm spring rains that wash the way for
+summer. And a signal flashed unseen from the blue eyes to the brown.
+
+'This way,' said Jimbo firmly. 'There's an armchair rock where you can
+rest and get your wind a bit,' and, though Rogers had not lost his
+wind, he let himself be led, and took the great grey boulder for his
+chair. Instantly, before he had arranged his weight among the points
+and angles, both his knees were occupied.
+
+'By Jove,' flashed through his mind. 'They've brought me here on
+purpose. I'm caught!'
+
+A tiny pause followed.
+
+'Now, look here, you little Schemers, I want to know what----'
+
+But the sentence was never finished. The hand of Monkey was already
+pointing upwards to the space of sky. He saw the fringe of pine tops
+fencing it about with their feathery, crested ring, and in the centre
+shone faint, scattered stars. Over the fence of mystery that surrounds
+common objects wonder peeped with one eye like a star.
+
+'Cousinenry,' he heard close to his ear, so soft it almost might have
+been those tree-tops whispering to the night, 'do you know anything
+about a Star Cave--a place where the starlight goes when there are no
+eyes or puddles about to catch it?'
+
+A Star Cave! How odd! His own boyhood's idea. He must have mentioned
+it to his cousin perhaps, and _he_ had told the children. And all that
+was in him of nonsense, poetry, love rose at a bound as he heard it.
+He felt them settle themselves more comfortably upon his knees. He
+forgot to think about the points and angles. Here surely a gateway was
+opening before his very feet, a gateway into that world of fairyland
+the old clergyman had spoken about. A great wave of tenderness swept
+him--a flood strong and deep, as he had felt it long ago upon the hill
+of that Kentish village. The golden boyhood's mood rushed over him
+once more with all its original splendour. It took a slightly
+different form, however. He knew better how to direct it for one
+thing. He pressed the children closer to his side.
+
+'A what?' he asked, speaking low as they did. 'Do I know a what?'
+
+'A cave where lost starlight collects,' Monkey repeated, 'a Star
+Cave.'
+
+And Jimbo said aloud the verses he had already learned by heart. While
+his small voice gave the words, more than a little mixed, a bird high
+up among the boughs woke from its beauty sleep and sang. The two
+sounds mingled. But the singing of the bird brought back the scenery
+of the Vicarage garden, and with it the strange, passionate things the
+old clergyman had said. The two scenes met in his mind, passed in and
+out of one another like rings of smoke, interchanged, and finally
+formed a new picture all their own, where flowers danced upon a carpet
+of star-dust that glittered in mid-air.
+
+He knew some sudden, deep enchantment of the spirit. The Fairyland the
+world had lost spread all about him, and--he had the children close.
+The imaginative faculty that for years had invented ingenious patents,
+woke in force, and ran headlong down far sweeter channels--channels
+that fastened mind, heart, and soul together in a single intricate
+network of soft belief. He remembered the dusk upon the Crayfield
+lawns.
+
+'Of course I know a Star Cave,' he said at length, when Jimbo had
+finished his recitation, and Monkey had added the details their father
+had told them. 'I know the very one your Daddy spoke about. It's not
+far from where we're sitting. It's over there.' He pointed up to the
+mountain heights behind them, but Jimbo guided his hand in the right
+direction--towards the Boudry slopes where the forests dip upon the
+precipices of the Areuse.
+
+'Yes, that's it--exactly,' he said, accepting the correction
+instantly; 'only _I_ go to the top of the mountains first so as to
+slide down with the river of starlight.'
+
+'We go straight,' they told him in one breath.
+
+'Because you've got more star-stuff in your eyes than I have, and find
+the way better,' he explained.
+
+That touched their sense of pity. 'But you can have ours,' they cried,
+'we'll share it.'
+
+'No,' he answered softly, 'better keep your own. I can get plenty now.
+Indeed, to tell the truth--though it's a secret between ourselves,
+remember--that's the real reason I've come out here. I want to get a
+fresh supply to take back to London with me. One needs a fearful lot
+in London----'
+
+'But there's no sun in London to melt it,' objected Monkey instantly.
+
+'There's fog though, and it gets lost in fog like ink in blotting-
+paper. There's never enough to go round. I've got to collect an awful
+lot before I go back.'
+
+'That'll take more than a week,' she said triumphantly.
+
+They fastened themselves closer against him, like limpets on a rock.
+
+'I told you there was lots to do here,' whispered Monkey again.
+'You'll never get it done in a week.'
+
+'And how will you take it back?' asked Jimbo in the same breath. The
+answer went straight to the boy's heart.
+
+'In a train, of course. I've got an express train here on purpose----'
+
+'The "Rapide"?' he interrupted, his blue eyes starting like flowers
+from the earth.
+
+'Quicker far than that. I've got----'
+
+They stared so hard and so expectantly, it was almost like an
+interruption. The bird paused in its rushing song to listen too.
+
+'----a Starlight Express,' he finished, caught now in the full tide of
+fairyland. 'It came here several nights ago. It's being loaded up as
+full as ever it can carry. I'm to drive it back again when once it's
+ready.'
+
+'Where is it now?'
+
+'Who's loading it?'
+
+'How fast does it go? Are there accidents and collisions?'
+
+'How do you find the way?'
+
+'May I drive it with you?'
+
+'Tell us exactly everything in the world about it--at once!'
+
+Questions poured in a flood about him, and his imagination leaped to
+their answering. Above them the curtain of the Night shook out her
+million stars while they lay there talking with bated breath together.
+On every single point he satisfied them, and himself as well. He told
+them all--his visit to the Manor House, the sprites he found there
+still alive and waiting as he had made them in his boyhood, their
+songs and characters, the Dustman, Sweep, and Lamplighter, the
+Laugher, and the Woman of the Haystack, the blue-eyed Guard----
+
+'But now her eyes are brown, aren't they?' Monkey asked, peering very
+close into his face. At the same moment she took his heart and hid it
+deep away among her tumbling hair.
+
+'I was coming to that. They're brown now, of course, because in this
+different atmosphere brown eyes see better than blue in the dark. The
+colours of signals vary in different countries.
+
+'And I'm the _mecanicien_,' cried Jimbo. 'I drive the engine.'
+
+'And I'm your stoker,' he agreed, 'because here we burn wood instead
+of coal, and I'm director in a wood-paving company and so know all
+about it.'
+
+They did not pause to dissect his logic--but just tore about full
+speed with busy plans and questionings. He began to wonder how in the
+world he would satisfy them--and satisfy himself as well!--when the
+time should come to introduce them to Express and Cave and Passengers.
+For if he failed in that, the reality of the entire business must fall
+to the ground. Yet the direct question did not come. He wondered more
+and more. Neither child luckily insisted on immediate tangible
+acquaintance. They did not even hint about it. So far the whole thing
+had gone splendidly and easily, like floating a new company with the
+rosiest prospectus in the world; but the moment must arrive when
+profits and dividends would have to justify mere talk. Concrete
+results would be demanded. If not forthcoming, where would his
+position be?
+
+Yet, still the flood of questions, answers, explanations flowed on
+without the critical sentence making its appearance. He had led them
+well--so far. How in the world, though, was he to keep it up, and
+provide definite result at the end?
+
+Then suddenly the truth dawned upon him. It was not he who led after
+all; it was they. He was being led. They knew. They understood. The
+reins of management lay in their small capable hands, and he had never
+really held them at all. Most cleverly, with utmost delicacy, they had
+concealed from him his real position. They were Directors, he the
+merest shareholder, useful only for 'calls.' The awkward question that
+he feared would never come, but instead he would receive instructions.
+'Keep close to the children; they will guide you.' The words flashed
+back. He was a helpless prisoner; but had only just discovered the
+fact. He supplied the funds; they did the construction. Their plans
+and schemes netted his feet in fairyland just as surely as the weight
+of their little warm, soft bodies fastened him to the boulder where he
+sat. He could not move. He could not go further without their will and
+leadership.
+
+But his captivity was utterly delightful to him....
+
+The sound of a deep bell from the Colombier towers floated in to them
+between the trees. The children sprang from his knees. He rose slowly,
+a little cramped and stiff.
+
+'Half-past six,' said Jimbo. 'We must go back for supper.'
+
+He stood there a moment, stretching, while the others waited, staring
+up at him as though he were a tree. And he felt like a big tree; they
+were two wild-flowers his great roots sheltered down below.
+
+And at that moment, in the little pause before they linked up arms and
+started home again, the Question of Importance came, though not in the
+way he had expected it would come.
+
+'Cousinenry, do you sleep very tightly at night, please?' Monkey asked
+it, but Jimbo stepped up nearer to watch the reply.
+
+'Like a top,' he said, wondering.
+
+Signals he tried vainly to intercept flashed between the pair of them.
+
+'Why do you ask?' as nothing further seemed forthcoming.
+
+'Oh, just to know,' she explained. 'It's all right.'
+
+'Yes, it's quite all right like that,' added Jimbo. And without more
+ado they took his arms and pulled him out of the forest.
+
+And Henry Rogers heard something deep, deep down within himself echo
+the verdict.
+
+'I think it is all right.'
+
+On the way home there were no puddles, but there were three pairs of
+eyes--and the stars were uncommonly thick overhead. The children asked
+him almost as many questions as there were clusters of them between
+the summits of Boudry and La Tourne. All three went floundering in
+that giant Net. It was so different, too, from anything they had been
+accustomed to. Their father's stories, answers, explanations, and the
+like, were ineffective because they always felt he did not quite
+believe them himself even while he gave them. He did not think he
+believed them, that is. But Cousin Henry talked of stars and star-
+stuff as though he had some in his pocket at the moment. And, of
+course, he had. For otherwise they would not have listened. He could
+not have held their attention.
+
+They especially liked the huge, ridiculous words he used, because such
+words concealed great mysteries that pulsed with wonder and
+exquisitely wound them up. Daddy made things too clear. The bones of
+impossibility were visible. They saw thin nakedness behind the
+explanations, till the sense of wonder faded. They were not babies to
+be fed with a string of one-syllable words!
+
+Jimbo kept silence mostly, his instinct ever being to conceal his
+ignorance; but Monkey talked fifteen to the dozen, filling the pauses
+with long 'ohs' and bursts of laughter and impudent observations. Yet
+her cheeky insolence never crossed the frontier where it could be
+resented. Her audacity stopped short of impertinence.
+
+'There's a point beyond which--' her cousin would say gravely, when
+she grew more daring than usual; and, while answering 'It'll stick
+into you, then, not into me,' she yet withdrew from the borders of
+impertinence at once.
+
+'What is star-stuff really then?' she asked.
+
+'The primordial substance of the universe,' he answered solemnly, no
+whit ashamed of his inaccuracy.
+
+'Ah yes!' piped Jimbo, quietly. _Ecole primaire_ he understood. This
+must be something similar.
+
+'But what does it do, I mean, and why is it good for people to have it
+in them--on them--whatever it is?' she inquired.
+
+'It gives sympathy and insight; it's so awfully subtle and delicate,'
+he answered. 'A little of it travels down on every ray and soaks down
+into you. It makes you feel inclined to stick to other people and
+understand them. That's sympathy.'
+
+'_Sympathie_,' said Jimbo for his sister's benefit apparently, but in
+reality because he himself was barely treading water.
+
+'But sympathy,' the other went on, 'is no good without insight--which
+means seeing things as others see them--from inside. That's insight---
+'
+
+'Inside sight,' she corrected him.
+
+'That's it. You see, the first stuff that existed in the universe was
+this star-stuff--nebulae. Having nothing else to stick to, it stuck to
+itself, and so got thicker. It whirled in vortices. It grew together
+in sympathy, for sympathy brings together. It whirled and twirled
+round itself till it got at last into solid round bodies--worlds--
+stars. It passed, that is, from mere dreaming into action. And when
+the rays soak into you, they change your dreaming into action. You
+feel the desire to do things--for others.'
+
+'Ah! yes,' repeated Jimbo, 'like that.'
+
+'You must be full of vorty seas, then, because you're so long,' said
+Monkey, 'but you'll never grow into a solid round body----'
+
+He took a handful of her hair and smothered the remainder of the
+sentence.
+
+'The instant a sweet thought is born in your mind,' he continued, 'the
+heavenly stables send their starry messengers to harness it for use. A
+ray, perhaps, from mighty Sirius picks it out of your heart at birth.'
+
+'Serious!' exclaimed Jimbo, as though the sun were listening.
+
+'Sirius--another sun, that is, far bigger than our own--a perfect
+giant, yet so far away you hardly notice him.'
+
+The boy clasped his dirty fingers and stared hard. The sun _was_
+listening.
+
+'Then what I _think_ is known--like that--all over the place?' he
+asked. He held himself very straight indeed.
+
+'Everywhere,' replied Cousinenry gravely. 'The stars flash your
+thoughts over the whole universe. None are ever lost. Sooner or later
+they appear in visible shape. Some one, for instance, must have
+thought this flower long ago'--he stooped and picked a blue hepatica
+at their feet--'or it couldn't be growing here now.'
+
+Jimbo accepted the statement with his usual gravity.
+
+'Then I shall always think enormous and tremendous things--powerful
+locomotives, like that and--and----'
+
+'The best is to think kind little sweet things about other people,'
+suggested the other. 'You see the results quicker then.'
+
+'Mais oui,' was the reply, 'je pourrai faire ca au meme temps, n'est-
+ce pas?'
+
+'Parfaitemong,' agreed his big cousin.
+
+'There's no room in her for inside sight,' observed Monkey as a portly
+dame rolled by into the darkness. 'You can't tell her front from her
+back.' It was one of the governesses.
+
+'We'll get her into the cave and change all that,' her cousin said
+reprovingly. 'You must never judge by outside alone. Puddings should
+teach you that.'
+
+But no one could reprove Monkey without running a certain risk.
+
+'We don't have puddings here,' she said, 'we have dessert--sour
+oranges and apples.'
+
+She flew from his side and vanished down the street and into the
+Citadelle courtyard before he could think of anything to say. A
+shooting star flashed at the same moment behind the church tower,
+vanishing into the gulf of Boudry's shadow. They seemed to go at the
+same pace together.
+
+'Oh, I say!' said Jimbo sedately, 'you must punish her for that, you
+know. Shall I come with you to the carpenter's?' he added, as they
+stood a moment by the fountain. 'There's just ten minutes to wash and
+brush your hair for supper.'
+
+'I think I can find my way alone,' he answered, 'thank you all the
+same.'
+
+'It's nothing,' he said, lifting his cap as the village fashion was,
+and watching his cousin's lengthy figure vanish down the street.
+
+'We'll meet at the Pension later,' the voice came back, 'and in the
+morning I shall have a lot of correspondence to attend to. Bring your
+shorthand book and lots of pencils, mind.'
+
+'How many?'
+
+'Oh, half a dozen will do.'
+
+The boy turned in and hurried after his sister. But he was so busy
+collecting all the pencils and paper he could find that he forgot to
+brush his hair, and consequently appeared at the supper table with a
+head like a tangled blackberry bush. His eyes were bright as stars.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+     O pure one, take thy seat in the barque of the Sun,
+       And sail thou over the sky.
+         Sail thou with the imperishable stars,
+           Sail thou with the unwearied stars.
+               _Pyramid Texts, Dynasty VI._
+
+But Henry Rogers ran the whole two hundred yards to his lodgings in
+the carpenter's house. He ran as though the entire field of brilliant
+stars were at his heels. There was bewilderment, happiness,
+exhilaration in his blood. He had never felt so light-hearted in his
+life. He felt exactly fifteen years of age--and a half. The half was
+added to ensure a good, safe margin over the other two.
+
+But he was late for supper too--later than the children, for first he
+jotted down some notes upon the back of an envelope. He wrote them at
+high speed, meaning to correct them later, but the corrections were
+never made. Later, when he came to bed, the envelope had been tidied
+away by the careful housewife into the dustbin. And he was ashamed to
+ask for them. The carpenter's wife read English.
+
+'Pity,' he said to himself. 'I don't believe Minks could have done it
+better!'
+
+The energy that went to the making of those 'notes' would have run
+down different channels a few years ago. It would have gone into some
+ingenious patent. The patent, however, might equally have gone into
+the dustbin. There is an enormous quantity of misdirected energy
+pouring loose about the world!
+
+The notes had run something like this--
+
+     O children, open your arms to me,
+     Let your hair fall over my eyes;
+     Let me sleep a moment--and then awake
+     In your Gardens of sweet Surprise!
+     For the grown-up folk
+     Are a wearisome folk,
+     And they laugh my fancies to scorn,
+     My fun and my fancies to scorn.
+
+     O children, open your hearts to me,
+     And tell me your wonder-thoughts;
+     Who lives in the palace inside your brain?
+     Who plays in its outer courts?
+     Who hides in the hours To-morrow holds?
+     Who sleeps in your yesterdays?
+     Who tiptoes along past the curtained folds
+     Of the shadow that twilight lays?
+
+     O children, open your eyes to me,
+     And tell me your visions too;
+     Who squeezes the sponge when the salt tears flow
+     To dim their magical blue?
+     Who draws up their blinds when the sun peeps in?
+     Who fastens them down at night?
+     Who brushes the fringe of their lace-veined lids?
+     Who trims their innocent light?
+
+     Then, children, I beg you, sing low to me,
+     And cover my eyes with your hands;
+     O kiss me again till I sleep and dream
+     That I'm lost in your fairylands;
+     For the grown-up folk
+     Are a troublesome folk,
+     And the book of their childhood is torn,
+     Is blotted, and crumpled, and torn!
+
+Supper at the Pension dissipated effectively the odd sense of
+enchantment to which he had fallen a victim, but it revived again with
+a sudden rush when Jimbo and his sister came up at half-past eight to
+say good-night. It began when the little fellow climbed up to plant a
+resounding kiss upon his lips, and it caught him fullest when Monkey's
+arms were round his neck, and he heard her whisper in his ear--
+
+'Sleep as tightly as you can, remember, and don't resist. We'll come
+later to find you.' Her brown eyes were straight in front of his own.
+Goodness, how they shone! Old Sirius and Aldebaran had certainly left
+a ray in each.
+
+'Hope you don't get any longer when you're asleep!' she added, giving
+him a sly dig in the ribs--then was gone before he could return it, or
+ask her what she meant by 'we'll find you later.'
+
+'And don't say a word to Mother,' was the last thing he heard as she
+vanished down the stairs.
+
+Slightly confused, he glanced down at the aged pumps he happened to
+have on, and noticed that one bow was all awry and loose. He stooped
+to fidget with it, and Mother caught him in the act.
+
+'I'll stitch it on for you,' she said at once. 'It won't take a
+minute. One of the children can fetch it in the morning.'
+
+But he was ashamed to add to her endless sewing. Like some female
+Sisyphus, she seemed always pushing an enormous needle through a
+mountain of clothes that grew higher each time she reached the top.
+
+'I always wear it like that,' he assured her gravely, his thoughts
+still busy with two other phrases--' find you' and 'sleep tightly.'
+What in the world could they mean? Did the children really intend to
+visit him at night? They seemed so earnest about it. Of course it was
+all nonsense. And yet----!
+
+'You mustn't let them bother you too much,' he heard their mother
+saying, her voice sounding a long way off. 'They're so wildly happy to
+have some one to play with.'
+
+'That's how I like them,' he answered vaguely, referring half to the
+pumps and half to the children. 'They're no trouble at all, believe
+me.'
+
+'I'm afraid we've spoilt them rather----'
+
+'But--not at all,' he murmured, still confused. 'They're only a little
+loose--er--lively, I mean. That's how they should be.'
+
+And outside all heard their laughing voices dying down the street as
+they raced along to the Citadelle for bed. It was Monkey's duty to see
+her brother safely in. Ten minutes later Mother would follow to tell
+them tuck-up stories and hear their prayers.
+
+'Excuse me! Have you got a hot-water bottle?' asked a sudden jerky
+voice, and he turned with a start to see Jane Anne towering beside
+him.
+
+'I'm sorry,' he answered, 'but I don't carry such things about with
+me.' He imagined she was joking, then saw that it was very serious.
+
+She looked puzzled a moment. 'I meant--would you like one? Everybody
+uses them here.' She thought all grown-ups used hot-water bottles.
+
+He hesitated a second. The child looked as though she would produce
+one from her blouse like any conjurer. As yet, however, the article in
+question had not entered his scheme of life. He declined it with many
+thanks.
+
+'I can get you a big one,' she urged. But even that did not tempt him.
+
+'Will you have a cold-water bandage then--for your head--or anything?'
+
+She seemed so afflicted with a desire to do something for him that he
+almost said 'Yes'; only the fear that she might offer next a beehive
+or a gramophone restrained him.
+
+'Thank you _so_ much, but really I can manage without it--to-night.'
+
+Jane Anne made no attempt to conceal her disappointment. What a man he
+was, to be sure! And what a funny place the world was!
+
+'It's Jinny's panacea,' said Mother, helping herself with reckless
+uncertainty to a long word. 'She's never happy unless she's doing for
+somebody,' she added ambiguously. 'It's her _metier_ in life.'
+
+'Mother, what _are_ you saying?' said the child's expression. Then she
+made one last attempt. She remembered, perhaps, the admiring way he
+had watched her brother and sister's antics in the Den before. She was
+not clever on her feet, but at least she could try.
+
+'Shall I turn head over heels for you, then?'
+
+He caught her mother's grave expression just in time to keep his
+laughter back. The offer of gymnastics clearly involved sacrifice
+somewhere.
+
+'To-morrow,' he answered quickly. 'Always put off till to-morrow what
+you're too old to do to-day.'
+
+'Of course; I see--yes.' She was more perplexed than ever, as he meant
+that she should be. His words were meaningless, but they helped the
+poignant situation neatly. She could not understand why all her offers
+were refused like this. There must be something wrong with her
+selection, perhaps. She would think of better ones in future. But, oh,
+what a funny place the world was!
+
+'Good-night, then, Mr.--Cousin Rogers,' she said jerkily with
+resignation. 'Perhaps to-morrow--when I'm older----'
+
+'If it comes.' He gravely shook the hand she held out primly, keeping
+a certain distance from him lest he should attempt to kiss her.
+
+'It always comes; it's a chronic monster,' she laughed, saying the
+first thing that came into her queer head. They all laughed. Jane Anne
+went out, feeling happier. At least, she had amused him. She marched
+off with the air of a grenadier going to some stern and difficult
+duty. From the door she flung back at him a look of speechless
+admiration, then broke into a run, afraid she might have been immodest
+or too forward. They heard her thumping overhead.
+
+And presently he followed her example. The Pension sitting-room
+emptied. Unless there was something special on hand--a dance, a romp,
+a game, or some neighbours who dropped in for talk and music--it was
+rarely occupied after nine o'clock. Daddy had already slipped home--he
+had this mysterious way of disappearing when no one saw him go. At
+this moment, doubtless, a wumbled book absorbed him over at the
+carpenter's. Old Miss Waghorn sat in a corner nodding over her novel,
+and the Pension cat, Borelle, was curled up in her sloping, inadequate
+lap.
+
+The big, worn velvet sofa in the opposite corner was also empty. On
+romping nights it was the _train de Moscou_, where Jimbo sold tickets
+to crowded passengers for any part of the world. To-night it was a
+mere dead sofa, uninviting, dull.
+
+He went across the darkened room, his head scraping acquaintance with
+the ivy leaves that trailed across the ceiling. He slipped through the
+little hall. In the kitchen he heard the shrill voice of Mme. Jequier
+talking very loudly about a dozen things at once to the servant-girl,
+or to any one else who was near enough to listen. Luckily she did not
+see him. Otherwise he would never have escaped without another offer
+of a hot-water bottle, a pot of home-made marmalade, or a rug and
+pillow for his bed. He made his way downstairs into the street
+unnoticed; but just as he reached the bottom his thundering tread
+betrayed him. The door flew open at the top.
+
+'Bon soir, bonne nuit,' screamed the voice; 'wait a moment and I'll
+get the lamp. You'll break your neck. Is there anything you want--a
+hot-water bottle, or a box of matches, or some of my marmalade for
+your breakfast? Wait, and I'll get it in a moment----' She would have
+given the blouse off her back had he needed, or could have used it.
+
+She flew back to the kitchen to search and shout. It sounded like a
+quarrel; but, pretending not to hear, he made good his escape and
+passed out into the street. The heavy door of the Post Office banged
+behind him, cutting short a stream of excited sentences. The peace and
+quiet of the night closed instantly about his steps.
+
+By the fountain opposite the Citadelle he paused to drink from the
+pipe of gushing mountain water. The open courtyard looked inviting,
+but he did not go in, for, truth to tell, there was a curious
+excitement in him--an urgent, keen desire to get to sleep as soon as
+possible. Not that he felt sleepy--quite the reverse in fact, but that
+he looked forward to his bed and to 'sleeping tightly.'
+
+The village was already lost in slumber. No lights showed in any
+houses. Yet it was barely half-past nine. Everywhere was peace and
+stillness. Far across the lake he saw the twinkling villages. Behind
+him dreamed the forests. A deep calm brooded over the mountains; but
+within the calm, and just below the surface in himself, hid the
+excitement as of some lively anticipation. He expected something.
+Something was going to happen. And it was connected with the children.
+Jimbo and Monkey were at the bottom of it. They had said they would
+come for him--to 'find him later.' He wondered--quite absurdly he
+wondered.
+
+He passed his cousin's room on tiptoe, and noticed a light beneath the
+door. But, before getting into bed, he stood a moment at the open
+window and drew in deep draughts of the fresh night air. The world of
+forest swayed across his sight. The outline of the Citadelle merged
+into it. A point of light showed the window where the children already
+slept. But, far beyond, the moon was loading stars upon the trees, and
+a rising wind drove them in glittering flocks along the heights....
+
+Blowing out the candle, he turned over on his side to sleep, his mind
+charged to the brim with wonder and curious under-thrills of this
+anticipation. He half expected--what? Reality lay somewhere in the
+whole strange business; it was not merely imaginative nonsense.
+Fairyland was close.
+
+And the moment he slept and began to dream, the thing took a lively
+and dramatic shape. A thousand tiny fingers, soft and invisible, drew
+him away into the heart of fairyland. There was a terror in him lest
+he should--stick. But he came out beautifully and smoothly, like a
+thread of summer grass from its covering sheath.
+
+'I _am_ slippery after all, then--slippery enough,' he remembered
+saying with surprised delight, and then----
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+                         Look how the floor of heaven
+      Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold.
+      There's not the smallest orb which thou beholdest
+      But in his motion like an angel sings,
+      Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims.
+                              _Merchant of Venice_.
+
+----there came to him a vivid impression of sudden light in the room,
+and he knew that something very familiar was happening to him, yet
+something that had not happened consciously for thirty years and more
+--since his early childhood in the night-nursery with the bars across
+the windows.
+
+He was both asleep and awake at the same time. Some part of him,
+rather, that never slept was disengaging itself--with difficulty. He
+was getting free. Stimulated by his intercourse with the children,
+this part of him that in boyhood used to be so easily detached, light
+as air, was getting loose. The years had fastened it in very tightly.
+Jimbo and Monkey had got at it. And Jimbo and Monkey were in the room
+at this moment. They were pulling him out.
+
+It was very wonderful; a glory of youth and careless joy rushed
+through him like a river. Some sheath or vesture melted off. It seemed
+to tear him loose. How in the world could he ever have forgotten it--
+let it go out of his life? What on earth could have seemed good enough
+to take its place? He felt like an eagle some wizard spell had
+imprisoned in a stone, now released and shaking out its crumpled
+wings. A mightier spell had set him free. The children stood beside
+his bed!
+
+'I can manage it alone,' he said firmly. 'You needn't try to help me.'
+
+No sound was audible, but they instantly desisted. This thought, that
+took a dozen words to express ordinarily, shot from him into them the
+instant it was born. A gentle pulsing, like the flicker of a flame,
+ran over their shining little forms of radiance as they received it.
+They shifted to one side silently to give him room. Thus had he seen a
+searchlight pass like lightning from point to point across the sea.
+
+Yet, at first, there was difficulty; here and there, in places, he
+could not get quite loose and free.
+
+'He sticks like Daddy,' he heard them think. 'In the head it seems,
+too.'
+
+There was no pain in the sensation, but a certain straining as of
+unaccustomed muscles being stretched. He felt uncomfortable, then
+embarrassed, then--exhilarated. But there were other exquisite
+sensations too. Happiness, as of flooding summer sunshine, poured
+through him.
+
+'He'll come with a rush. Look out!' felt Jimbo--'felt' expressing
+'thought' and 'said' together, for no single word can convey the
+double operation thus combined in ordinary life.
+
+The reality of it caught him by the throat.
+
+'This,' he exclaimed, 'is real and actual. It is happening to me now!'
+
+He looked from the pile of clothes taken off two hours ago--goodness,
+what a mass!--to the children's figures in the middle of the room. And
+one was as real as the other. The moods of the day and evening, their
+play and nonsense, had all passed away. He had crossed a gulf that
+stood between this moment and those good-nights in the Pension. This
+was as real as anything in life; more real than death. Reality--he
+caught the obvious thought pass thickly through the body on the bed--
+is what has been experienced. Death, for that reason, is not real, not
+realised; dinner is. And this was real because he had been through it,
+though long forgotten it. Jimbo stood aside and 'felt' directions.
+
+'Don't push,' he said.
+
+'Just think and wish,' added Monkey with a laugh.
+
+It was her laugh, and perhaps the beauty of her big brown eyes as
+well, that got him finally loose. For the laughter urged some queer,
+deep yearning in him towards a rush of exquisite accomplishment. He
+began to slip more easily and freely. The brain upon the bed, oddly
+enough, remembered a tradition of old Egypt--that Thoth created the
+world by bursting into seven peals of laughter. It touched forgotten
+springs of imagination and belief. In some tenuous, racy vehicle his
+thought flashed forth. With a gliding spring, like a swooping bird
+across a valley, he was suddenly--out.
+
+'I'm out!' he cried.
+
+'All out!' echoed the answering voices.
+
+And then he understood that first vivid impression of light. It was
+everywhere, an evenly distributed light. He saw the darkness of the
+night as well, the deep old shadows that draped the village, woods,
+and mountains. But in themselves was light, a light that somehow
+enabled them to see everything quite clearly. Solid things were all
+transparent.
+
+ Light even radiated from objects in the room. Two much-loved books
+upon the table shone beautifully--his Bible and a volume of poems;
+and, fairer still, more delicate than either, there was a lustre on
+the table that had so brilliant a halo it almost corruscated. The
+sparkle in it was like the sparkle in the children's eyes. It came
+from the bunch of violets, gentians, and hepaticas, already faded,
+that Mother had placed there days ago on his arrival. And overhead,
+through plaster, tiles, and rafters he saw--the stars.
+
+'We've already been for Jinny,' Jimbo informed him; 'but she's gone as
+usual. She goes the moment she falls asleep. We never can catch her up
+or find her.'
+
+'Come on,' cried Monkey. 'How slow you both are! We shan't get
+anywhere at this rate.' And she made a wheel of coloured fire in the
+air. 'I'm ready,' he answered, happier than either. 'Let's be off at
+once.'
+
+Through his mind flashed this explanation of their elder sister's day-
+expression--that expression of a moth she had, puzzled, distressed,
+only half there, as the saying is. For if she went out so easily at
+night in this way, some part of her probably stayed out altogether.
+She never wholly came back. She was always dreaming. The entire
+instinct of the child, he remembered, was for others, and she thought
+of herself as little as did the sun--old tireless star that shines for
+all.
+
+'She's soaked in starlight,' he cried, as they went off headlong. 'We
+shall find her in the Cave. Come on, you pair of lazy meteors.'
+
+He was already far beyond the village, and the murmur of the woods
+rose up to them. They entered the meshes of the Star Net that spun its
+golden threads everywhere about them, linking up the Universe with
+their very hearts.
+
+'There are no eyes or puddles to-night. Everybody sleeps. Hooray,
+hooray!' they cried together.
+
+There were cross-currents, though. The main, broad, shining stream
+poured downwards in front of them towards the opening of the Cave, a
+mile or two beyond, where the forests dipped down among the precipices
+of the Areuse; but from behind--from some house in the slumbering
+village--came a golden tributary too, that had a peculiar and
+astonishing brightness of its own. It came, so far as they could make
+out, from the humped outline of La Citadelle, and from a particular
+room there, as though some one in that building had a special source
+of supply. Moreover, it scattered itself over the village in separate
+swift rivulets that dived and dipped towards particular houses here
+and there. There seemed a constant coming and going, one stream
+driving straight into the Cave, and another pouring out again, yet
+neither mingling. One stream brought supplies, while the other
+directed their distribution. Some one, asleep or awake--they could not
+tell--was thinking golden thoughts of love and sympathy for the world.
+
+'It's Mlle. Lemaire,' said Jimbo. 'She's been in bed for thirty
+years---' His voice was very soft.
+
+'The Spine, you know,' exclaimed Monkey, a little in the rear.
+
+'----and even in the daytime she looks white and shiny,' added the
+boy. 'I often go and talk with her and tell her things.' He said it
+proudly. 'She understands everything--better even than Mother.' Jimbo
+had told most. It was all right. His leadership was maintained and
+justified. They entered the main stream and plunged downwards with it
+towards the earth--three flitting figures dipped in this store of
+golden brilliance.
+
+A delicious and wonderful thing then happened. All three remembered.
+
+'This was where we met you first,' they told him, settling down among
+the trees together side by side. 'We saw your teeth of gold. You came
+in that train----'
+
+'I was thinking about it--in England,' he exclaimed, 'and about coming
+out to find you here.'
+
+'The Starlight Express,' put in Jimbo.
+
+'----and you were just coming up to speak to us when we woke, or you
+woke, or somebody woke--and it all went,' said Monkey.
+
+'That was when I stopped thinking about it,' he explained.
+
+'It all vanished anyhow. And the next time was'--she paused a moment--
+'you--we saw your two gold teeth again somewhere, and half recognised
+you----'
+
+It was the daylight world that seemed vague and dreamlike now, hard to
+remember clearly.
+
+'In another train--' Jimbo helped her, 'the Geneva omnibus that starts
+at--at----' But even Jimbo could not recall further details.
+
+'You're wumbled,' said Rogers, helping himself and the others at the
+same time. 'You want some starlight to put you in touch again. Come
+on; let's go in. We shall find all the others inside, I suspect, hard
+at it.'
+
+'At what?' asked two breathless voices.
+
+'Collecting, of course--for others. Did you think they ate the stuff,
+just to amuse themselves?'
+
+'They glided towards the opening, cutting through the little tributary
+stream that was pouring out on its way down the sky to that room in La
+Citadelle. It was brighter than the main river, they saw, and shone
+with a peculiar brilliance of its own, whiter and swifter than the
+rest. Designs, moreover, like crystals floated on the crest of every
+wave.
+
+'That's the best quality,' he told them, as their faces shone a moment
+in its glory. 'The person who deserves it must live entirely for
+others. That he keeps only for the sad and lonely. The rest, the
+common stuff, is good enough for Fraulein or for baby, or for mother,
+or any other----' The words rose in him like flowers that he knew.
+
+'Look out, _mon vieux_! 'It was Monkey's voice. They just had time to
+stand aside as a figure shot past them and disappeared into the
+darkness above the trees. A big bundle, dripping golden dust, hung
+down his back.
+
+'The Dustman!' they cried with excitement, easily recognising his
+energetic yet stooping figure; and Jimbo added, 'the dear old
+Dustman!' while Monkey somersaulted after him, returning breathless a
+minute later with, 'He's gone; I couldn't get near him. He went
+straight to La Citadelle----'
+
+And then collided violently with the Lamplighter, whose pole of office
+caught her fairly in the middle and sent her spinning like a
+conjurer's plate till they feared she would never stop. She kept on
+laughing the whole time she spun--like a catherine wheel that laughs
+instead of splutters. The place where the pole caught her, however--it
+was its lighted end--shines and glows to this day: the centre of her
+little heart.
+
+'Do let's be careful,' pleaded Jimbo, hardly approving of these wild
+gyrations. He really did prefer his world a trifle more dignified. He
+was ever the grave little gentleman.
+
+They stooped to enter by the narrow opening, but were stopped again--
+this time by some one pushing rudely past them to get in. From the
+three points of the compass to which the impact scattered them, they
+saw a shape of darkness squeeze itself, sack and all, to enter. An
+ordinary man would have broken every bone in his body, judging by the
+portion that projected into the air behind. But he managed it somehow,
+though the discomfort must have been intolerable, they all thought.
+The darkness dropped off behind him in flakes like discarded clothing;
+he turned to gold as he went in; and the contents of his sack--he
+poured it out like water--shone as though he squeezed a sponge just
+dipped in the Milky Way.
+
+'What a lot he's collected,' cried Rogers from his point of vantage
+where he could see inside. 'It all gets purified and clean in there.
+Wait a moment. He's coming out again--off to make another collection.'
+
+And then they knew the man for what he was. He shot past them into the
+night, carrying this time a flat and emptied sack, and singing like a
+blackbird as he went:--
+
+    Sweeping chimneys and cleaning flues,
+    That is the work I love;
+    Brushing away the blacks and the blues,
+    And letting in light from above!
+    I twirl my broom in your tired brain
+    When you're tight in sleep up-curled,
+    Then scatter the stuff in a soot-like rain
+    Over the edge of the world.
+
+The voice grew fainter and fainter in the distance--
+
+    For I'm a tremendously busy Sweep,
+    Catching the folk when they're all asleep,
+    And tossing the blacks on the Rubbish Heap
+    Over the edge of the world...!
+
+The voice died away into the wind among the high branches, and they
+heard it no more.
+
+'There's a Sweep worth knowing,' murmured Rogers, strong yearning in
+him.
+
+'There are no blacks or blues in _my_ brain,' exclaimed Monkey, 'but
+Jimbo's always got some on his face.'
+
+The impudence passed ignored. Jimbo took his cousin's hand and led him
+to the opening. The 'men' went in first together; the other sex might
+follow as best it could. Yet somehow or other Monkey slipped between
+their legs and got in before them. They stood up side by side in the
+most wonderful place they had ever dreamed of.
+
+And the first thing they saw was--Jane Anne.
+
+'I'm collecting for Mother. Her needles want such a chronic lot, you
+see.' Her face seemed full of stars; there was no puzzled expression
+in the eyes now. She looked beautiful. And the younger children stared
+in sheer amazement and admiration.
+
+'I have no time to waste,' she said, moving past them with a load in
+her spread apron that was like molten gold; 'I have to be up and awake
+at six to make your porridge before you go to school. I'm a busy
+monster, I can tell you!' She went by them like a flash, and out into
+the night.
+
+Monkey felt tears in her somewhere, but they did not fall. Something
+in her turned ashamed--for a moment. Jimbo stared in silence. 'What a
+girl!' he thought. 'I'd like to be like that!' Already the light was
+sticking to him.
+
+'So this is where she always comes,' said Monkey, soon recovering from
+the temporary attack of emotion. 'She's better out than in; she's
+safest when asleep! No wonder she's so funny in the daytime.'
+
+Then they turned to look about them, breathing low as wild-flowers
+that watch a rising moon.
+
+The place was so big for one thing--far bigger than they had expected.
+The storage of lost starlight must be a serious affair indeed if it
+required all this space to hold it. The entire mountain range was
+surely hollow. Another thing that struck them was the comparative
+dimness of this huge interior compared with the brilliance of the
+river outside. But, of course, lost things are ever dim, and those
+worth looking for dare not be too easily found.
+
+A million tiny lines of light, they saw, wove living, moving patterns,
+very intricate and very exquisite. These lines and patterns the three
+drew in with their very breath. They swallowed light--the tenderest
+light the world can know. A scent of flowers--something between a
+violet and a wild rose--floated over all. And they understood these
+patterns while they breathed them in. They read them. Patterns in
+Nature, of course, are fairy script. Here lay all their secrets
+sweetly explained in golden writing, all mysteries made clear. The
+three understood beyond their years; and inside-sight, instead of
+glimmering, shone. For, somehow or other, the needs of other people
+blazed everywhere, obliterating their own. It was most singular.
+
+Monkey ceased from somersaulting and stared at Jimbo.
+
+'You've got two stars in your face instead of eyes. They'll never
+set!' she whispered. 'I love you because I understand every bit of
+you.'
+
+'And you,' he replied, as though he were a grande personne, 'have got
+hair like a mist of fire. It will never go out!'
+
+'Every one will love me now,' she cried, 'my underneath is gold.'
+
+But her brother reproved her neatly:--
+
+'Let's get a lot--simply an awful lot'--he made a grimace to signify
+quantity--'and pour it over Daddy's head till it runs from his eyes
+and beard. He'll write real fairy stories then and make a fortune.'
+
+And Cousin Henry moved past them like a burning torch. They held their
+breath to see him. Jane Anne, their busy sister, alone excelled him in
+brightness. Her perfume, too, was sweeter.
+
+'He's an old hand at this game,' Monkey said in French.
+
+'But Jinny's never done anything else since she was born,' replied her
+brother proudly.
+
+And they all three fell to collecting, for it seemed the law of the
+place, a kind of gravity none could disobey. They stooped--three semi-
+circles of tender brilliance. Each lost the least desire to gather for
+himself; the needs of others drove them, filled them, made them eager
+and energetic.
+
+'Riquette would like a bit,' cried Jimbo, almost balancing on his head
+in his efforts to get it all at once, while Monkey's shining fingers
+stuffed her blouse and skirts with sheaves of golden gossamer that
+later she meant to spread in a sheet upon the pillow of Mademoiselle
+Lemaire.
+
+'She sleeps so little that she needs the best,' she sang, realising
+for once that her own amusement was not the end of life. 'I'll make
+her nights all wonder.'
+
+Cousinenry, meanwhile, worked steadily like a man who knows his time
+is short. He piled the stuff in heaps and pyramids, and then
+compressed it into what seemed solid blocks that made his pockets
+bulge like small balloons. Already a load was on his back that bent
+him double.
+
+'Such a tiny bit is useful,' he explained, 'if you know exactly how
+and where to put it. This compression is my own patent.'
+
+'Of course,' they echoed, trying in vain to pack it up as cleverly as
+he did.
+
+Nor were these three the only gatherers. The place was full of
+movement. Jane Anne was always coming back for more, deigning no
+explanations. She never told where she had spent her former loads. She
+gathered an apron full, sped off to spend and scatter it in places she
+knew of, and then came bustling in again for more. And they always
+knew her whereabouts because of the whiter glory that she radiated
+into the dim yellow world about them.
+
+And other figures, hosts of them, were everywhere--stooping, picking,
+loading one another's backs and shoulders. To and fro they shot and
+glided, like Leonids in autumn round the Earth. All were collecting,
+though the supply seemed never to grow less. An inexhaustible stream
+poured in through the narrow opening, and scattered itself at once in
+all directions as though driven by a wind. How could the world let so
+much escape it, when it was what the world most needed every day. It
+ran naturally into patterns, patterns that could be folded and rolled
+up like silken tablecloths. In silence, too. There was no sound of
+drops falling. Sparks fly on noiseless feet. Sympathy makes no bustle.
+
+'Even on the thickest nights it falls,' a voice issued from a robust
+patch of light beside them that stooped with huge brown hands all
+knotted into muscles; 'and it's a mistake to think different.' His
+voice rolled on into a ridiculous bit of singing:--
+
+     It comes down with the rain drops,
+     It comes down with the dew,
+     There's always 'eaps for every one--
+     For 'im and me and you.
+
+They recognised his big face, bronzed by the sun, and his great neck
+where lines drove into the skin like the rivers they drew with blunt
+pencils on their tedious maps of Europe. It was several faces in one.
+The Head Gardener was no stranger to their imaginations, for they
+remembered him of old somewhere, though not quite sure exactly where.
+He worked incessantly for others, though these 'others' were only
+flowers and cabbages and fruit-trees. He did his share in the world,
+he and his army of queer assistants, the under-gardeners.
+
+Peals of laughter, too, sounded from time to time in a far away corner
+of the cavern, and the laughter sent all the stuff it reached into
+very delicate, embroidered patterns. For it was merry and infectious
+laughter, joy somewhere in it like a lamp. It bordered upon singing;
+another touch would send it rippling into song. And to that far
+corner, attracted by the sound, ran numberless rivulets of light,
+weaving a lustrous atmosphere about the Laugher that, even while it
+glowed, concealed the actual gatherer from sight. The children only
+saw that the patterns were even more sweet and dainty than their own.
+And they understood. Inside-sight explained the funny little mystery.
+Laughter is magical--brings light and help and courage. They laughed
+themselves then, and instantly saw their own patterns wave and tremble
+into tiny outlines that they could squeeze later even into the
+darkest, thickest head.
+
+Cousinenry, meanwhile, they saw, stopped for nothing. He was singing
+all the time as he bent over his long, outstretched arms. And it was
+the singing after all that made the best patterns--better even than
+the laughing. He knew all the best tricks of this Star Cave. He
+remained their leader.
+
+And the stuff no hands picked up ran on and on, seeking a way of
+escape for itself. Some sank into the ground to sweeten the body of
+the old labouring earth, colouring the roots of myriad flowers; some
+soaked into the rocky walls, tinting the raw materials of hills and
+woods and mountain tops. Some escaped into the air in tiny drops that,
+meeting in moonlight or in sunshine, instantly formed wings. And
+people saw a brimstone butterfly--all wings and hardly any body. All
+went somewhere for some useful purpose. It was not in the nature of
+star-stuff to keep still. Like water that must go down-hill, the law
+of its tender being forced it to find a place where it could fasten on
+and shine. It never could get wholly lost; though, if the place it
+settled on was poor, it might lose something of its radiance. But
+human beings were obviously what most attracted it. Sympathy must find
+an outlet; thoughts are bound to settle somewhere.
+
+And the gatherers all sang softly--'Collect for others, never mind
+yourself!'
+
+Some of it, too, shot out by secret ways in the enormous roof. The
+children recognised the exit of the separate brilliant stream they had
+encountered in the sky--the one especially that went to the room of
+pain and sickness in La Citadelle. Again they understood. That
+unselfish thinker of golden thoughts knew special sources of supply.
+No wonder that her atmosphere radiated sweetness and uplifting
+influence. Her patience, smiles, and courage were explained. Passing
+through the furnace of her pain, the light was cleansed and purified.
+Hence the delicate, invariable radiation from her presence, voice, and
+eyes. From the bed of suffering she had not left for thirty years she
+helped the world go round more sweetly and more easily, though few
+divined those sudden moments of beauty they caught flashing from her
+halting words, nor guessed their source of strength.
+
+'Of course,' thought Jimbo, laughing, 'I see now why I like to go and
+tell her everything. She understands all before I've said it. She's
+simply stuffed with starlight--bursting with inside-sight.'
+
+'That's sympathy,' his cousin added, hearing the vivid thought. And he
+worked away like an entire ant-heap. But he was growing rather
+breathless now. 'There's too much for me,' he laughed as though his
+mouth were full. 'I can't manage it all!' He was wading to the waist,
+and his coat and trousers streamed with runnels of orange-coloured
+light.
+
+'Swallow it then!' cried Monkey, her hair so soaked that she kept
+squeezing it like a sponge, both eyes dripping too.
+
+It was their first real experience of the joy of helping others, and
+they hardly knew where to begin or end. They romped and played in the
+stuff like children in sand or snow--diving, smothering themselves,
+plunging, choking, turning somersaults, upsetting each other's
+carefully reared loads, and leaping over little pyramids of gold.
+Then, in a flash, their laughter turned the destroyed heaps into
+wonderful new patterns again; and once more they turned sober and
+began to work.
+
+But their cousin was more practical. 'I've got all I can carry
+comfortably,' he sang out at length. 'Let's go out now and sow it
+among the sleepers. Come on!'
+
+A field of stars seemed to follow him from the roof as he moved with
+difficulty towards the opening of the cave.
+
+Some one shot out just in front of him. 'My last trip!' The words
+reached them from outside. His bulging figure squeezed somehow through
+the hole, layers of light scraping off against the sides. The children
+followed him. But no one stuck. All were beautifully elastic; the
+starlight oiled and greased their daring, subtle star-bodies. Laden to
+the eyes, they sped across the woods that still slept heavily. The
+tips of the pines, however, were already opening a million eyes. There
+was a faint red glimmer in the east. Hours had passed while they were
+collecting.
+
+'The Interfering Sun is on the way. Look out!' cried some one,
+shooting past them like an unleashed star. 'I must get just a little
+more--my seventeenth journey to-night!' And Jane Anne, the puzzled
+look already come back a little into her face, darted down towards the
+opening. The waking of the body was approaching.
+
+'What a girl!' thought Jimbo again, as they hurried after their grown-
+up cousin towards the village.
+
+And here, but for the leadership of Cousin Henry, they must have gone
+astray and wasted half their stores in ineffective fashion. Besides,
+the east was growing brighter, and there was a touch of confusion in
+their little star-bodies as sleep grew lighter and the moment of the
+body's waking drew nearer.
+
+Ah! the exquisite adjustment that exists between the night and day
+bodies of children! It is little wonder that with the process of
+growing-up there comes a coarsening that congeals the fluid passages
+of exit, and finally seals the memory centres too. Only in a few can
+this delicate adjustment be preserved, and the sources of inspiration
+known to children be kept available and sweet--in the poets, dreamers,
+and artists of this practical, steel-girdled age.
+
+'This way,' called Cousinenry. 'Follow me.' They settled down in a
+group among Madame Jequier's lilacs. 'We'll begin with the Pension des
+Glycines. Jinny is already busy with La Citadelle.'
+
+They perched among the opening blossoms. Overhead flashed by the
+Sweep, the Dustman, and the Laugher, bound for distant ports, perhaps
+as far as England. The Head Gardener lumbered heavily after them to
+find his flowers and trees. Starlight, they grasped, could be no
+separate thing. The rays started, indeed, from separate points, but
+all met later in the sky to weave this enormous fairy network in which
+the currents and cross-currents and criss-cross-currents were so
+utterly bewildering. Alone, the children certainly must have got lost
+in the first five minutes.
+
+Their cousin gathered up the threads from Monkey's hair and Jimbo's
+eyes, and held them in one hand like reins. He sang to them a moment
+while they recovered their breath and forces:--
+
+
+     The stars in their courses
+     Are runaway horses
+     That gallop with Thoughts from the Earth;
+     They collect them, and race
+     Back through wireless space,
+     Bringing word of the tiniest birth;
+     Past old Saturn and Mars,
+     And the hosts of big stars,
+     Who strain at their leashes for joy.
+     Kind thoughts, like fine weather,
+       Bind sweetly together
+       God's suns--with the heart of a boy.
+
+    So, beware what you think;
+    It is written in ink
+    That is golden, and read by His Stars!
+
+'Hadn't we better get on?' cried Monkey, pulling impatiently at the
+reins he held.
+
+'Yes,' echoed Jimbo. 'Look at the sky. The "rapide" from Paris comes
+past at six o'clock.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+    Aus den Himmelsaugen droben
+    Fallen zitternd goldne Funken
+    Durch die Nacht, und meine Seele
+    Dehnt sich liebeweit und weiter.
+
+    O ihr Himmelsaugen droben,
+    Weint euch aus in meine Seele,
+    Dass von lichten Sternentranen
+    Uberfliesset meine Seele!
+                        Heine.
+
+
+They rose, fluttered a moment above the lilac bushes, and then shot
+forward like the curve of a rainbow into the sleeping house. The next
+second they stood beside the bed of the Widow Jequier.
+
+She lay there, so like a bundle of untidy sticks that, but for the
+sadness upon the weary face, they could have burst out laughing. The
+perfume of the wistaria outside the open window came in sweetly, yet
+could not lighten the air of heavy gloom that clothed her like a
+garment. Her atmosphere was dull, all streaked with greys and black,
+for her mind, steeped in anxiety even while she slept, gave forth
+cloudy vapours of depression and disquietude that made impossible the
+approach of--light. Starlight, certainly, could not force an entrance,
+and even sunlight would spill half its radiance before it reached her
+heart. The help she needed she thus deliberately shut out. Before
+going to bed her mood had been one of anxious care and searching
+worry. It continued, of course, in sleep.
+
+'Now,' thought their leader briskly, 'we must deal with this at once';
+and the children, understanding his unspoken message, approached
+closer to the bed. How brilliant their little figures were--Jimbo, a
+soft, pure blue, and Monkey tinged faintly here and there with
+delicate clear orange. Thus do the little clouds of sunset gather
+round to see the sun get into bed. And in utter silence; all their
+intercourse was silent--thought, felt, but never spoken.
+
+For a moment there was hesitation. Cousinenry was uncertain exactly
+how to begin. Tante Jeanne's atmosphere was so very thick he hardly
+knew the best way to penetrate it. Her mood had been so utterly black
+and rayless. But his hesitation operated like a call for help that
+flew instantly about the world and was communicated to the golden
+threads that patterned the outside sky. They quivered, flashed the
+message automatically; the enormous network repeated it as far as
+England, and the answer came. For thought is instantaneous, and desire
+is prayer. Quick as lightning came the telegram. Beside them stood a
+burly figure of gleaming gold.
+
+'I'll do it,' said the earthy voice. 'I'll show you 'ow. For she loves
+'er garden. Her sympathy with trees and flowers lets me in. Always
+send for _me_ when she's in a mess, or needs a bit of trimmin' and
+cleanin' up.'
+
+The Head Gardener pushed past them with his odour of soil and burning
+leaves, his great sunburned face and his browned, stained hands. These
+muscular, big hands he spread above her troubled face; he touched her
+heart; he blew his windy breath of flowers upon her untidy hair; he
+called the names of lilac, wistaria, roses, and laburnum....
+
+The room filled with the little rushing music of wind in leaves; and,
+as he said 'laburnum,' there came at last a sudden opening channel
+through the fog that covered her so thickly. Starlight, that was like
+a rivulet of laburnum blossoms melted into running dew, flowed down
+it. The Widow Jequier stirred in her sleep and smiled. Other channels
+opened. Light trickled down these, too, drawn in and absorbed from the
+store the Gardener carried. Then, with a rush of scattering fire, he
+was gone again. Out into the enormous sky he flew, trailing golden
+flame behind him. They heard him singing as he dived into the Network
+--singing of buttercups and cowslips, of primroses and marigolds and
+dandelions, all yellow flowers that have stored up starlight.
+
+And the atmosphere of Tante Jeanne first glowed, then shone; it
+changed slowly from gloom to glory. Golden channels opened everywhere,
+making a miniature network of their own. Light flashed and corruscated
+through it, passing from the children and their leader along the tiny
+pipes of sympathy the Gardener had cleared of rubbish and decay. Along
+the very lines of her face ran tiny shining rivers; flooding across
+her weary eyelids, gilding her untidy hair, and pouring down into her
+heavy heart. She ceased fidgeting; she smiled in her sleep; peace
+settled on her face; her fingers on the coverlet lost their touch of
+strain. Finally she turned over, stretched her old fighting body into
+a more comfortable position, sighed a moment, then settled down into a
+deep and restful slumber. Her atmosphere was everywhere 'soft-shiny'
+when they left her to shoot next into the attic chamber above, where
+Miss Waghorn lay among her fragments of broken memory, and the litter
+of disordered images that passed with her for 'thinking.'
+
+And here, again, although their task was easier, they needed help to
+show the right way to begin. Before they reached the room Jimbo had
+wondered how they would 'get at' her. That wonder summoned help. The
+tall, thin figure was already operating beside the bed as they
+entered. His length seemed everywhere at once, and his slender pole, a
+star hanging from the end, was busy touching articles on walls and
+floor and furniture. The disorder everywhere was the expression of her
+dishevelled mind, and though he could not build the ruins up again, at
+least he could trace the outlines of an ordered plan that she might
+use when she left her body finally and escaped from the rebellious
+instrument in death. And now that escape was not so very far away.
+Obviously she was already loose. She was breaking up, as the world
+expresses it.
+
+And the children, watching with happy delight, soon understood his
+method. Each object that he touched emitted a tiny light. In her mind
+he touched the jumble of wandering images as well. On waking she would
+find both one and the other better assorted. Some of the lost things
+her memory ever groped for she would find more readily. She would see
+the starlight on them.
+
+'See,' said their leader softly, as the long thin figure of the
+Lamplighter shot away into the night, 'she sleeps so lightly because
+she is so old--fastened so delicately to the brain and heart. The
+fastenings are worn and loose now. Already she is partly out!'
+
+'That's why she's so muddled in the daytime,' explained Jimbo, for his
+sister's benefit.
+
+'Exaccurately, I knew it already!' was the reply, turning a somersault
+like a wheel of twirling meteors close to the old lady's nose.
+
+'Carefully, now!' said their leader. 'And hurry up! There's not much
+we can do here, and there's heaps to do elsewhere. We must remember
+Mother and Daddy--before the Interfering Sun is up, you know.'
+
+They flashed about the attic chamber, tipping everything with light,
+from the bundle of clothes that strewed the floor to the confused
+interior of the black basket-trunk where she kept her money and
+papers. There were no shelves in this attic chamber; no room for
+cupboards either; it was the cheapest room in the house. And the old
+woman in the bed sometimes opened her eyes and peered curiously,
+expectantly, about her. Even in her sleep she looked for things.
+Almost, they felt, she seemed aware of their presence near her, she
+knew that they were there; she smiled.
+
+A moment later they were in mid-air on their way to the Citadelle,
+singing as they went:--
+
+    He keeps that only
+    For the old and lonely,
+    Who sleep so little that they need the best.
+      The rest--
+      The common stuff--
+      Is good enough
+    For Fraulein, or for baby, or for mother,
+      Or any other
+      Who likes a bit of dust,
+      And yet can do without it--
+         If they must...
+
+Already something of the Dawn's faint magic painting lay upon the
+world. Roofs shone with dew. The woods were singing, and the flowers
+were awake. Birds piped and whistled shrilly from the orchards. They
+heard the Mer Dasson murmuring along her rocky bed. The rampart of the
+Alps stood out more clearly against the sky.
+
+'We must be _very_ quick,' Cousin Henry flashed across to them,
+'quicker than an express train.'
+
+'That's impossible,' cried Jimbo, who already felt the call of waking
+into his daily world. 'Hark! There's whistling already....'
+
+The next second, in a twinkling, he was gone. He had left them. His
+body had been waked up by the birds that sang and whistled so loudly
+in the plane tree outside his window. Monkey and her guide raced on
+alone into the very room where he now sat up and rubbed his eyes in
+the Citadelle. He was telling his mother that he had just been
+'dreaming extraordinary.' But Mother, sleeping like a fossil monster
+in the Tertiary strata, heard him not.
+
+'He often goes like that,' whispered Monkey in a tone of proud
+superiority. 'He's only a little boy really, you see.'
+
+But the sight they then witnessed was not what they expected.
+
+For Mademoiselle Lemaire herself was working over Mother like an
+engine, and Mother was still sleeping like the dead. The radiance that
+emanated from the night-body of this suffering woman, compared to
+their own, was as sunlight is to candle-light. Its soft glory was
+indescribable, its purity quite unearthly, and the patterns that it
+wove lovely beyond all telling. Here they surprised her in the act,
+busy with her ceaseless activities for others, working for the world
+by _thinking_ beauty. While her pain-racked body lay asleep in the bed
+it had not left for thirty years, nor would ever leave again this side
+of death, she found her real life in loving sympathy for the pain of
+others everywhere. For thought is prayer, and prayer is the only true
+effective action that leaves no detail incomplete. She _thought_ light
+and glory into others. Was it any wonder that she drew a special,
+brilliant supply from the Starlight Cavern, when she had so much to
+give? For giving-out involved drawing-in to fill the emptied spaces.
+Her pure and endless sources of supply were all explained.
+
+'I've been working on her for years,' she said gently, looking round
+at their approach, 'for her life is so thickly overlaid with care, and
+the care she never quite knows how to interpret. We were friends, you
+see, in childhood.... You'd better hurry on to the carpenter's house.
+You'll find Jinny there doing something for her father.' She did not
+cease her working while she said it, this practical mind so familiar
+with the methods of useful thinking, this loving heart so versed in
+prayer while her broken body, deemed useless by the world, lay in the
+bed that was its earthly prison-house. '_He_ can give me all the help
+I need,' she added.
+
+She pointed, and they saw the figure of the Sweep standing in the
+corner of the room among a pile of brimming sacks. His dirty face was
+beaming. They heard him singing quietly to himself under his breath,
+while his feet and sooty hands marked time with a gesture of quaintest
+dancing:--
+
+     _Such_ a tremendously busy Sweep,
+     Catching the world when it's all asleep,
+     And tossing the blacks on the Rubbish Heap
+       Over the edge of the world!
+
+'Come,' whispered Cousin Henry, catching at Monkey's hair, 'we can do
+something, but we can't do _that_. She needs no help from us!'
+
+They sped across to the carpenter's house among the vineyards.
+
+'What a splendour!' gasped the child as they went. 'My starlight seems
+quite dim beside hers.'
+
+'She's an old hand at the game,' he replied, noticing the tinge of
+disappointment in her thought. 'With practice, you know----'
+
+'And Mummy must be pretty tough,' she interrupted with a laugh, her
+elastic nature recovering instantly.
+
+'----with practice, I was going to say, your atmosphere will get
+whiter too until it simply shines. That's why the saints have halos.'
+
+But Monkey did not hear this last remark, she was already in her
+father's bedroom, helping Jinny.
+
+Here there were no complications, no need for assistance from a Sweep,
+or Gardener, or Lamplighter. It was a case for pulling, pure and
+simple. Daddy was wumbled, nothing more. Body, mind, and heart were
+all up-jumbled. In making up the verse about the starlight he had
+merely told the truth--about himself. The poem was instinctive and
+inspirational confession. His atmosphere, as he lay there, gently
+snoring in his beauty sleep, was clear and sweet and bright, no
+darkness in it of grey or ugliness; but its pattern was a muddle, or
+rather there were several patterns that scrambled among each other for
+supremacy. Lovely patterns hovered just outside him, but none of them
+got really in. And the result was chaos. Daddy was not clear-headed;
+there was no concentration. Something of the perplexed confusion that
+afflicted his elder daughter in the daytime mixed up the patterns
+inextricably. There was no main pathway through his inner world.
+
+And the picture proved it. It explained why Jinny pulled in vain. His
+night-body came out easily as far as the head, then stuck hopelessly.
+He looked like a knotted skein of coloured wools. Upon the paper where
+he had been making notes before going to sleep--for personal
+atmosphere is communicated to all its owner touches--lay the same
+confusion. Scraps of muddle, odds and ends of different patterns,
+hovered in thick blots of colour over the paragraphs and sentences.
+His own uncertainty was thus imparted to what he wrote, and his
+stories brought no conviction to his readers. He was too much the
+Dreamer, or too much the Thinker, which of the two was not quite
+clear. Harmony was lacking.
+
+'That's probably what I'M like, too,' thought his friend, but so
+softly that the children did not hear it. That Scheme of his passed
+vaguely through his mind.
+
+Then he cried louder--a definite thought:--
+
+'There's no good tugging like that, my dears. Let him slip in again.
+You'll only make him restless, and give him distorted dreams.'
+
+'I've tugged like this every night for months,' said Jinny, 'but the
+moment I let go he flies back like elastic.'
+
+'Of course. We must first untie the knots and weave the patterns into
+one. Let go!'
+
+Daddy's night-body flashed back like a sword into its sheath. They
+stood and watched him. He turned a little in his sleep, while above
+him the lines twined and wriggled like phosphorus on moving water, yet
+never shaped themselves into anything complete. They saw suggestions
+of pure beauty in them here and there that yet never joined together
+into a single outline; it was like watching the foam against a
+steamer's sides in moonlight--just failing of coherent form.
+
+'They want combing out,' declared Jane Anne with a brilliant touch of
+truth. 'A rake would be best.'
+
+'Assorting, sifting, separating,' added Cousinenry, 'but it's not
+easy.' He thought deeply for a moment. 'Suppose you two attend to the
+other things,' he said presently, 'while I take charge of the combing-
+out.'
+
+They knew at once his meaning; it was begun as soon as thought, only
+they could never have thought of it alone; none but a leader with real
+sympathy in his heart could have discovered the way.
+
+Like Fairies, lit internally with shining lanterns, they flew about
+their business. Monkey picked up his pencils and dipped their points
+into her store of starlight, while Jinny drew the cork out of his ink-
+pot and blew in soft-shiny radiance of her own. They soaked his books
+in it, and smoothed his paper out with their fingers of clean gold.
+His note-books, chair, and slippers, his smoking-coat and pipes and
+tobacco-tins, his sponge, his tooth-brush and his soap--everything
+from dressing-gown to dictionary, they spread thickly with their
+starlight, and continued until the various objects had drunk in enough
+to make them shine alone.
+
+Then they attacked the walls and floor and ceiling, sheets and bed-
+clothes. They filled the tin-bath full to the very brim, painted as
+well the windows, door-handles, and the wicker chair in which they
+knew he dozed after dejeuner. But with the pencils, pens, and ink-pots
+they took most trouble, doing them very thoroughly indeed. And his
+enormous mountain-boots received generous treatment too, for in these
+he went for his long lonely walks when he thought out his stories
+among the woods and valleys, coming home with joy upon his face--'I
+got a splendid idea to-day--a magnificent story--if only I can get it
+on to paper before it's gone...!' They understood his difficulty now:
+the 'idea' was wumbled before he could fashion it. He could not get
+the pattern through complete.
+
+And his older friend, working among the disjointed patterns, saw his
+trouble clearly too. It was not that he lacked this sympathy that
+starlight brings, but that he applied it without discernment. The
+receiving instrument was out of order, some parts moving faster than
+others. Reason and imagination were not exaccurately adjusted. He
+gathered plenty in, but no clear stream issued forth again; there was
+confusion in delivery. The rays were twisted, the golden lines caught
+into knots and tangles. Yet, ever just outside him, waiting to be
+taken in, hovered these patterns of loveliness that might bring joy to
+thousands. They floated in beauty round the edges of his atmosphere,
+but the moment they sank in to reach his mind, there began the
+distortion that tore their exquisite proportions and made designs mere
+disarrangement. Inspiration, without steady thought to fashion it, was
+of no value.
+
+He worked with infinite pains to disentangle the mass of complicated
+lines, and one knot after another yielded and slipped off into
+rivulets of gold, all pouring inwards to reach heart and brain. It was
+exhilarating, yet disappointing labour. New knots formed themselves so
+easily, yet in the end much surely had been accomplished. Channels had
+been cleared; repetition would at length establish habit.
+
+But the line of light along the eastern horizon had been swiftly
+growing broader meanwhile. It was brightening into delicate crimson.
+Already the room was clearer, and the radiance of their bodies fading
+into a paler glory. Jane Anne grew clumsier, tumbling over things, and
+butting against her more agile sister. Her thoughts became more
+muddled. She said things from time to time that showed it--hints that
+waking was not far away.
+
+'Daddy's a wumbled Laplander, you know, after all. Hurry up!' The
+foolish daylight speech came closer.
+
+'Give his ink-pot one more blow,' cried Monkey. Her body always slept
+at least an hour longer than the others. She had more time for work.
+
+Jane Anne bumped into the washhand-stand. She no longer saw quite
+clearly.
+
+'I'm a plenipotentiary, that's what I am. I'm afraid of nothing. But
+the porridge has to be made. I must get back....'
+
+She vanished like a flash, just as her brother had vanished half an
+hour before.
+
+'We'll go on with it to-morrow night,' signalled Cousin Henry to his
+last remaining helper. 'Meet me here, remember, when...the moon...is
+high enough to...cast...a...shadow....'
+
+The opening and shutting of a door sounded through his sleep. He
+turned over heavily. Surely it was not time to get up yet. That could
+not be hot water coming! He had only just fallen asleep. He plunged
+back again into slumber.
+
+But Monkey had disappeared.
+
+'What a spanking dream I've had...!' Her eyes opened, and she saw her
+school-books on the chair beside the bed. Mother was gently shaking
+her out of sleep. 'Six o'clock, darling. The bath is ready, and
+Jinny's nearly got the porridge done. It's a lovely morning!'
+
+'Oh, Mummy, I----'
+
+But Mummy lifted her bodily out of bed, kissed her sleepy eyes awake,
+and half carried her over to the bath. 'You can tell me all about that
+later,' she said with practical decision; 'when the cold water's
+cleared your head. You're always fuzzy when you wake.'
+
+Another day had begun. The sun was blazing high above the Blumlisalp.
+The birds sang in chorus. Dew shone still on the fields, but the men
+were already busy in the vineyards.
+
+And presently Cousin Henry woke too and stared lazily about his room.
+He looked at his watch.
+
+'By Jove,' he murmured. 'How one does sleep in this place! And what a
+dream to be sure--I who never dream!'
+
+He remembered nothing more. From the moment he closed his eyes, eight
+hours before, until this second, all was a delicious blank. He felt
+refreshed and wondrously light-hearted, at peace with all the world.
+There was music in his head. He began to whistle as he lay among the
+blankets for half an hour longer. And later, while he breakfasted
+alone downstairs, he remembered that he ought to write to Minks. He
+owed Minks a letter. And before going out into the woods he wrote it.
+'I'm staying on a bit,' he mentioned at the end. 'I find so much to do
+here, and it's such a rest. Meanwhile I can leave everything safely in
+your hands. But as soon as I get a leisure moment I'll send you the
+promised draft of my Scheme for Disabled, etc., etc.'
+
+But the Scheme got no further somehow. New objections, for one thing,
+kept cropping up in his mind. It would take so long to build the
+place, and find the site, satisfy County Councils, and all the rest.
+The Disabled, moreover, were everywhere; it was invidious to select
+one group and leave the others out. Help the world, yes--but what was
+'the world'? There were so many worlds. He touched a new one every day
+and every hour. Which needed his help most? Bourcelles was quite as
+important, quite as big and hungry as any of the others. 'That old
+Vicar knew a thing or two,' he reflected later in the forest, while he
+gathered a bunch of hepaticas and anemones to take to Mlle. Lemaire.
+'There are "neighbours" everywhere, the world's simply chock full of
+'em. But what a pity that we die just when we're getting fit and ready
+to begin. Perhaps we go on afterwards, though. I wonder...!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+    The stars ran loose about the sky,
+    Wasting their beauty recklessly,
+      Singing and dancing,
+      Shooting and prancing,
+    Until the Pole Star took command,
+    Changing each wild, disordered band
+    Into a lamp to guide the land--
+         A constellation.
+
+    And so, about my mind and yours,
+    Thought dances, shoots, and wastes its powers,
+      Coming and going,
+      Aimlessly flowing,
+    Until the Pole Star of the Will
+    Captains them wisely, strong, and still,
+    Some dream for others to fulfil
+         With consecration.
+                 Selected Poems, Montmorency Minke.
+
+There was a certain air of unreality somewhere in the life at
+Bourcelles that ministered to fantasy. Rogers had felt it steal over
+him from the beginning. It was like watching a children's play in
+which the scenes were laid alternately in the Den, the Pension, and
+the Forest. Side by side with the grim stern facts of existence ran
+the coloured spell of fairy make-believe. It was the way they mingled,
+perhaps, that ministered to this spirit of fantasy.
+
+There were several heroines for instance--Tante Jeanne, Mademoiselle
+Lemaire, and Mother; each played her role quite admirably. There were
+the worthy sterling men who did their duty dumbly, regardless of
+consequences--Daddy, the Postmaster, and the picturesque old clergyman
+with failing powers. There was the dark, uncertain male character, who
+might be villain, yet who might prove extra hero--the strutting
+postman of baronial ancestry; there was the role of quaint pathetic
+humour Miss Waghorn so excellently filled, and there were the honest
+rough-and-tumble comedians--half mischievous, half malicious--the
+retired governesses. Behind them all, brought on chiefly in scenes of
+dusk and moonlight, were the Forest Elves who, led by Puck, were
+responsible for the temporary confusion that threatened disaster, yet
+was bound to have a happy ending--the children. It was all a
+children's play set in the lovely scenery of mountain, forest, lake,
+and old-world garden.
+
+Numerous other characters also flitted in and out. There was the cat,
+the bird, the donkey as in pantomime; goblin caves and haunted valleys
+and talking flowers; and the queer shadowy folk who came to the
+Pension in the summer months, then vanished into space again. Links
+with the outside world were by no means lacking. As in the theatre,
+one caught now and again the rumble of street traffic and the roar of
+everyday concerns. But these fell in by chance during quiet intervals,
+and served to heighten contrast only.
+
+And so many of the principal roles were almost obviously assumed,
+interchangeable almost; any day the players might drop their wigs, rub
+off the paint, and appear otherwise, as they were in private life. The
+Widow Jequier's husband, for instance, had been a _pasteur_ who had
+gone later into the business of a wine-merchant. She herself was not
+really the keeper of a Pension for Jeune Filles, but had drifted into
+it owing to her husband's disastrous descent from pulpit into cellar--
+understudy for some one who had forgotten to come on. The Postmaster,
+too, had originally been a photographer, whose funereal aspect had
+sealed his failure in that line. His customers could never smile and
+look pleasant. The postman, again, was a baron in disguise--in private
+life he had a castle and retainers; and even Gygi, the gendarme, was a
+make-believe official who behind the scenes was a _vigneron_ and
+farmer in a very humble way. Daddy, too, seemed sometimes but a tinsel
+author dressed up for the occasion, and absurdly busy over books that
+no one ever saw on railway bookstalls. While Mademoiselle Lemaire was
+not in fact and verity a suffering, patient, bed-ridden lady, but a
+princess who escaped from her disguise at night into glory and great
+beneficent splendour.
+
+Mother alone was more real than the other players. There was no make-
+believe about Mother. She thundered across the stage and stood before
+the footlights, interrupting many a performance with her stubborn
+common-sense and her grip upon difficult grave issues. 'This
+performance will finish at such and such an hour,' was her cry. 'Get
+your wraps ready. It will be cold when you go out. And see that you
+have money handy for your 'bus fares home!' Yes, Mother was real. She
+knew some facts of life at least. She knitted the children's stockings
+and did the family mending.
+
+Yet Rogers felt, even with her, that she was merely waiting. She knew
+the cast was not complete as yet. She waited. They all waited--for
+some one. These were rehearsals; Rogers himself had dropped in also
+merely as an understudy. Another role was vacant, and it was the
+principal role. There was no one in the company who could play it,
+none who could understudy it even. Neither Rogers nor Daddy could
+learn the lines or do the 'business.' The part was a very important
+one, calling for a touch of genius to be filled adequately. And it was
+a feminine role. For here was a Fairy Play without a Fairy Queen.
+There was not even a Fairy Princess!
+
+This idea of a representation, all prepared specially for himself,
+induced a very happy state of mind; he felt restful, calm, at peace
+with all the world. He had only to sit in his stall and enjoy. But it
+brought, too, this sense of delicate bewilderment that was continually
+propounding questions to which he found no immediate answer. With the
+rest of the village, he stood still while Time flowed past him. Later,
+with Minks, he would run after it and catch it up again. Minks would
+pick out the lost clues. Minks stood on the banks--in London--noting
+the questions floating by and landing them sometimes with a rod and
+net. His master would deal with them by and by; but just now he could
+well afford to wait and enjoy himself. It was a holiday; there was no
+hurry; Minks held the fort meanwhile and sent in reports at intervals.
+
+And the sweet spring weather continued; days were bright and warm; the
+nights were thick with stars. Rogers postponed departure on the
+flimsiest reasons. It was no easy thing to leave Bourcelles. 'Next
+week the muguet will be over in the vallon vert. We must pick it
+quickly together for Tante Anna.' Jinny brought every spring flower to
+Mademoiselle Lemaire in this way the moment they appeared. Her room
+was a record of their sequence from week to week. And Jimbo knew
+exactly where to find them first; his mind was a time-table of flowers
+as well as of trains, dates of arrival, and stations where they grew.
+He knew it all exaccurately. This kind of fact with him was never
+wumbled. 'Soon the sabot de Venus will be in flower at the Creux du
+Van, but it takes time to find it. It's most awfully rare, you see.
+You'll have to climb beyond the fontaine froide. That's past the Ferme
+Robert, between Champ du Moulin and Noiraigue. The snow ought to be
+gone by now. We'll go and hunt for it. I'll take you in--oh, in about
+deux semaines--comme ca.' Alone, those dangerous cliffs were out of
+bounds for him, but if he went with Cousinenry, permission could not
+be refused. Jimbo knew what he was about. And he took for granted that
+his employer would never leave Bourcelles again. 'Thursday and
+Saturday would be the best days,' he added. They were his half-
+holidays, but he did not say so. Secretaries, he knew, did not have
+half-holidays comme ca. 'Je suis son vrai secretaire,' he had told
+Mademoiselle Lemaire, who had confirmed it with a grave mais oui. No
+one but Mother heard the puzzled question one night when he was being
+tucked into bed; it was asked with just a hint of shame upon a very
+puckered little face--'But, Mummy, what really _is_ a sekrity?'
+
+And so Rogers, from day to day, stayed on, enjoying himself and
+resting. The City would have called it loafing, but in the City the
+schedule of values was a different one. Meanwhile the bewilderment he
+felt at first gradually disappeared. He no longer realised it, that
+is. While still outside, attacked by it, he had realised the soft
+entanglement. Now he was in it, caught utterly, a prisoner. He was no
+longer mere observer. He was part and parcel of it. 'What does a few
+weeks matter out of a whole strenuous life?' he argued. 'It's all to
+the good, this holiday. I'm storing up strength and energy for future
+use. My Scheme can wait a little. I'm thinking things out meanwhile.'
+
+He often went into the forest alone to think his things out, and
+'things' always meant his Scheme ... but the more he thought about it
+the more distant and impracticable seemed that wondrous Scheme. He had
+the means, the love, the yearning, all in good condition, waiting to
+be put to practical account. In his mind, littered more and more now
+with details that Minks not infrequently sent in, this great Scheme by
+which he had meant to help the world ran into the confusion of new
+issues that were continually cropping up. Most of these were caused by
+the difficulty of knowing his money spent exactly as he wished, not
+wasted, no pound of it used for adornment, whether salaries, uniforms,
+fancy stationery, or unnecessary appearances, whatever they might be.
+Whichever way he faced it, and no matter how carefully thought out
+were the plans that Minks devised, these leakages cropped up and
+mocked him. Among a dozen propositions his original clear idea went
+lost, and floundered. It came perilously near to wumbling itself away
+altogether.
+
+For one thing, there were rivals on the scene--his cousin's family,
+the education of these growing children, the difficulties of the Widow
+Jequier, some kind of security he might ensure to old Miss Waghorn,
+the best expert medical attendance for Mademoiselle Lemaire ... and
+his fortune was after all a small one as fortunes go. Only his simple
+scale of personal living could make these things possible at all. Yet
+here, at least, he would know that every penny went exaccurately where
+it was meant to go, and accomplished the precise purpose it was
+intended to accomplish.
+
+And the more he thought about it, the more insistent grew the claims
+of little Bourcelles, and the more that portentous Scheme for Disabled
+Thingumabobs faded into dimness. The old Vicar's words kept singing in
+his head: 'The world is full of Neighbours. Bring them all back to
+Fairyland.' He thought things out in his own way and at his leisure.
+He loved to wander alone among the mountains... thinking in this way.
+His thoughts turned to his cousin's family, their expenses, their
+difficulties, the curious want of harmony somewhere. For the
+conditions in which the _famille anglaise_ existed, he had soon
+discovered, were those of muddle pure and simple, yet of muddle on so
+large a scale that it was fascinating and even exhilarating. It must
+be lovely, he reflected, to live so carelessly. They drifted. Chance
+forces blew them hither and thither as gusts of wind blow autumn
+leaves. Five years in a place and then--a gust that blew them
+elsewhere. Thus they had lived five years in a London suburb, thinking
+it permanent; five years in a lonely Essex farm, certain they would
+never abandon country life; and five years, finally, in the Jura
+forests.
+
+Neither parent, though each was estimable, worthy, and entirely of
+good repute, had the smallest faculty for seeing life whole; each
+studied closely a small fragment of it, the fragment limited by the
+Monday and the Saturday of next week, or, in moments of optimistic
+health, the fragment that lies between the first and thirty-first of a
+single month. Of what lay beyond, they talked; oh, yes, they talked
+voluminously and with detail that sounded impressive to a listener,
+but somehow in circles that carried them no further than the starting-
+point, or in spirals that rose higher with each sentence and finally
+lifted them bodily above the solid ground. It was merely talk--
+ineffective--yet the kind that makes one feel it has accomplished
+something and so brings the false security of carelessness again.
+Neither one nor other was head of the house. They took it in turns,
+each slipping by chance into that onerous position, supported but
+uncoveted by the other. Mother fed the children, mended everything,
+sent them to the dentist when their teeth ached badly, but never
+before as a preventative, and--trusted to luck.
+
+'Daddy,' she would say in her slow gentle way, 'I do wish we could be
+more practical sometimes. Life is such a business, isn't it?' And they
+would examine in detail the grain of the stable door now that the
+horse had escaped, then close it very carefully.
+
+'I really must keep books,' he would answer, 'so that we can see
+exactly how we stand,' having discovered at the end of laborious
+calculation concerning the cost of the proposed Geneva schooling for
+Jinny that they had reckoned in shillings instead of francs. And then,
+with heads together, they selected for their eldest boy a profession
+utterly unsuited to his capacities, with coaching expenses far beyond
+their purses, and with the comforting consideration that 'there's a
+pension attached to it, you see, for when he's old.'
+
+Similarly, having planned minutely, and with personal sacrifice, to
+save five francs in one direction, they would spend that amount
+unnecessarily in another. They felt they had it to spend, as though it
+had been just earned and already jingled in their pockets. Daddy would
+announce he was walking into Neuchatel to buy tobacco. 'Better take
+the tram,' suggested Mother, 'it's going to rain. You save shoe
+leather, too,' she added laughingly. 'Will you be back to tea?' He
+thought not; he would get a cup of tea in town. 'May I come, too?'
+from Jimbo. 'Why not?' thought Mother. 'Take him with you, he'll enjoy
+the trip.' Monkey and Jane Ann, of course, went too. They _all_ had
+tea in a shop, and bought chocolate into the bargain. The  five francs
+melted into--nothing, for tea at home was included in their Pension
+terms. Saving is in the mind. There was no system in their life.
+
+'It would be jolly, yes, if you could earn a little something regular
+besides your work,' agreed Mother, when he thought of learning a
+typewriter to copy his own books, and taking in work to copy for
+others too.
+
+'I'll do it,' he decided with enthusiasm that was forgotten before he
+left the room ten minutes later.
+
+It was the same with the suggestion of teaching English. He had much
+spare time, and could easily have earned a pound a week by giving
+lessons, and a pound a week is fifty pounds a year--enough to dress
+the younger children easily. The plan was elaborated laboriously. 'Of
+course,' agreed Daddy, with genuine interest. 'It's easily done. I
+wonder we never thought of it before.' Every few months they talked
+about it, but it never grew an inch nearer to accomplishment. They
+drifted along, ever in difficulty, each secretly blaming the other,
+yet never putting their thoughts into speech. They did not quite
+understand each other's point of view.
+
+'Mother really might have foreseen _that_!' when Jimbo, growing like a
+fairy beanstalk, rendered his recent clothes entirely useless. 'Boys
+must grow. Why didn't she buy the things a size or two larger?'
+
+'It's rather thoughtless, almost selfish, of Daddy to go on writing
+these books that bring in praise without money. He could write
+anything if he chose. At least, he might put his shoulder to the wheel
+and teach, or something!'
+
+And so, not outwardly in spoken words or quarrels, but inwardly, owing
+to that deadliest of cancers, want of sympathy, these two excellent
+grown-up children had moved with the years further and further apart.
+Love had not died, but want of understanding, not attended to in time,
+had frayed the edges so that they no longer fitted well together. They
+have blown in here, thought Rogers as he watched them, like seeds the
+wind has brought. They have taken root and grown a bit. They think
+they're here for ever, but presently a wind will rise and blow them
+off again elsewhere. And thinking it is their own act, they will look
+wisely at each other, as children do, and say, 'Yes, it _is_ time now
+to make a move. The children are getting big. Our health, too, needs a
+change.' He wondered, smiling a little, in what vale or mountain top
+the wind would let them down. And a big decision blazed up in his
+heart. 'I'm not very strong in the domestic line,' he exclaimed, 'but
+I think I can help them a bit. They're neighbours at any rate. They're
+all children too. Daddy's no older than Jimbo, or Mother than Jane
+Anne!'
+
+* * *
+
+In the spaces of the forest there was moss and sunshine. It was very
+still. The primroses and anemones had followed the hepaticas and
+periwinkles. Patches of lily of the valley filled the air with
+fragrance. Through openings of the trees he caught glimpses of the
+lake, deep as the Italian blue of the sky above his head. White Alps
+hung in the air beyond its farther shore line. Below him, already far
+away, the village followed slowly, bringing its fields and vineyards
+with it, until the tired old church called halt. And then it lay back,
+nestling down to sleep, very small, very cosy, mere handful of brown
+roofs among the orchards. Only the blue smoke of occasional peat fires
+moved here and there, betraying human occupation.
+
+The peace and beauty sank into his heart, as he wandered higher across
+Mont Racine's velvet shoulder. And the contrast stirred memories of
+his recent London life. He thought of the scurrying busy-bodies in the
+'City,' and he thought of the Widow Jequier attacking life so
+restlessly in her garden at that very minute. That other sentence of
+the old Vicar floated though his mind: 'the grandeur of toil and the
+insignificance of acquisition.'... Far overhead two giant buzzards
+circled quietly, ceaselessly watching from the blue. A brimstone
+butterfly danced in random flight before his face. Two cuckoos
+answered one another in the denser forest somewhere above him. Bells
+from distant village churches boomed softly through the air, voices
+from a world forgotten.
+
+And the contrast brought back London. He thought of the long busy
+chapter of his life just finished. The transition had been so abrupt.
+As a rule periods fade into one another gradually in life, easily,
+divisions blurred; it is difficult on looking back to say where the
+change began. One is well into the new before the old is realised as
+left behind. 'How did I come to this?' the mind asks itself. 'I don't
+remember any definite decision. Where was the boundary crossed?' It
+has been imperceptibly accomplished.
+
+But here the change had been sudden and complete, no shading anywhere.
+He had leaped a wall. Turmoil and confusion lay on that side; on this
+lay peace, rest and beauty. Strain and ugliness were left behind, and
+with them so much that now seemed false, unnecessary, vain. The
+grandeur of toil, and the insignificance of acquisition--the phrase
+ran through his mind with the sighing of the pine trees; it was like
+the first line of a song. The Vicar knew the song complete. Even
+Minks, perhaps, could pipe it too. Rogers was learning it. 'I must
+help them somehow,' he thought again. 'It's not a question of money
+merely. It's that they want welding together more--more harmony--more
+sympathy. They're separate bits of a puzzle now, whereas they might be
+a rather big and lovely pattern. ...'
+
+He lay down upon the moss and flung his hat away. He felt that Life
+stood still within him, watching, waiting, asking beautiful, deep,
+searching questions. It made him slightly uncomfortable. Henry Rogers,
+late of Threadneedle Street, took stock of himself, not of set
+intention, yet somehow deliberately. He reviewed another Henry Rogers
+who had been unable to leap that wall. The two peered at one another
+gravely.
+
+The review, however, took no definite form; precise language hardly
+came to help with definite orders. A vague procession of feelings,
+half sad, half pleasurable, floated past his closing eyes. ... Perhaps
+he slept a moment in the sunshine upon that bed of moss and pine
+needles. ...
+
+Such curious thoughts flowed up and out and round about, dancing like
+the brimstone butterflies out of reach before he could seize them,
+calling with voices like the cuckoos, themselves all the time just out
+of sight. Who ever saw a cuckoo when it's talking? Who ever foretold
+the instant when a butterfly would shoot upwards and away? Such
+darting, fragile thoughts they were, like hints, suggestions. Still,
+they _were_ thoughts.
+
+Minks, dragging behind him an enormous Scheme, emerged from the dark
+vaults of a Bank where gold lay piled in heaps. Minks was looking for
+him, yet smiling a little, almost pityingly, as he strained beneath
+the load. It was like a comic opera. Minks was going down the noisy,
+crowded Strand. Then, suddenly, he paused, uncertain of the way. From
+an upper window a shining face popped out and issued clear directions
+--as from a pulpit. 'That way--towards the river,' sang the voice--and
+far down the narrow side street flashed a gleam of flowing water with
+orchards on the farther bank. Minks instantly turned and went down it
+with his load so fast that the scenery changed before the heavy
+traffic could get out of the way. Everything got muddled up with
+fields and fruit-trees; the Scheme changed into a mass of wild-
+flowers; a lame boy knocked it over with his crutch; gold fell in a
+brilliant, singing shower, and where each sovereign fell there sprang
+up a buttercup or dandelion. Rogers rubbed his eyes ... and realised
+that the sun was rather hot upon his face. A dragon fly was perched
+upon his hat three feet away. ...
+
+The tea hour at the Den was close, and Jimbo, no doubt, was already
+looking for him at the carpenter's house. Rogers hurried home among
+the silent forest ways that were sweet with running shadows and
+slanting sunshine. Oh, how fragrant was the evening air! And how the
+lily of the valley laughed up in his face! Normally, at this time, he
+would be sitting in a taxi, hurrying noisily towards his Club,
+thoughts full of figures, politics, philanthropy cut to line and
+measure--a big Scheme standing in squares across the avenue of the
+future. Now, moss and flowers and little children took up all the
+available space. ... How curiously out of the world Bourcelles was, to
+be sure. Newspapers had no meaning any longer. Picture-papers and
+smart weekly Reviews, so necessary and important in St. James's
+Street, here seemed vulgar, almost impertinent--ridiculous even. Big
+books, yes; but not pert, topical comments issued with an absurd
+omnipotence upon things merely ephemeral. How the mind accumulated
+rubbish in a city! It seemed incredible. He surely had climbed a wall
+and dropped down into a world far bigger, though a world the 'city'
+would deem insignificant and trivial. Yet only because it had less
+detail probably! A loved verse flashed to him across the years:--
+
+  'O to dream, O to awake and wander
+   There, and with delight to take and render,
+       Through the trance of silence,
+          Quiet breath!
+
+   Lo! for there among the flowers and grasses,
+   Only the mightier movement sounds and passes;
+      Only winds and rivers,
+         Life and death.'
+
+Bourcelles was important as London, yes, while simple as the nursery.
+The same big questions of life and death, of battle, duty, love, ruled
+the peaceful inhabitants. Only the noisy shouting, the clatter of
+superfluous chattering and feverish striving had dropped away. Hearts
+and minds wore fewer clothes among these woods and vineyards. There
+was no nakedness though ... there were flowers and moss, blue sky and
+peace and beauty. ... Thought ran into confused, vague pictures. He
+could not give them coherence, shape, form. ...
+
+He crossed the meadows and entered the village through the Pension
+garden. The Widow Jequier gave him a spray of her Persian lilac on the
+way. 'It's been growing twenty-five years for you,' she said, 'only do
+not look at _me_. I'm in my garden things--invisible.' He remembered
+with a smile Jane Anne's description--that 'the front part of the
+house was all at the back.'
+
+Tumbling down the wooden stairs, he crossed the street and made for
+the Citadelle, where the children opened the door for him even before
+he rang. Jimbo and Monkey, just home from school, pulled him by both
+arms towards the tea-table. They had watched for his coming.
+
+'The samovar's just boiling,' Mother welcomed him. Daddy was on the
+sofa by the open window, reading manuscript over to himself in a
+mumbling voice; and Jane Anne, apron on, sleeves tucked up, face
+flushed, poked her head in from the kitchen:
+
+'Excuse me, Mother, the cupboard's all in distress. I can't find the
+marmalade anywhere.'
+
+'But it's already on the table, child.'
+
+She saw her Cousin and popped swiftly back again from view. One heard
+fragments of her sentences--'wumbled ... chronic ... busy monster. ...
+'And two minutes later _la famille anglaise_ was seriously at tea.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+   What art thou, then? I cannot guess;
+     But tho' I seem in star and flower
+     To feel thee some diffusive power,
+   I do not therefore love thee less.
+                           _Love and Death,_ TENNYSON.
+
+In the act of waking up on the morning of the Star Cave experience,
+Henry Rogers caught the face of a vivid dream close against his own--
+but in rapid motion, already passing. He tried to seize it. There was
+a happy, delightful atmosphere about it. Examination, however, was
+impossible; the effort to recover the haunting dream dispersed it. He
+saw the tip, like an express train flying round a corner; it flashed
+and disappeared, fading into dimness. Only the delightful atmosphere
+remained and the sense that he had been somewhere far away in very
+happy conditions. People he knew quite well, had been there with him;
+Jimbo and Monkey; Daddy too, as he had known him in his boyhood. More
+than this was mere vague surmise; he could not recover details. Others
+had been also of the merry company, familiar yet unrecognisable. Who
+in the world were they? It all seemed oddly real.
+
+'How I do dream in this place, to be sure,' he thought; 'I, who
+normally dream so little! It was like a scene of my childhood--
+Crayfield or somewhere.' And he reflected how easily one might be
+persuaded that the spirit escaped in sleep and knew another order of
+experience. The sense of actuality was so vivid.
+
+He lay half dozing for a little longer, hoping to recover the
+adventures. The flying train showed itself once or twice again, but
+smaller, and much, much farther away. It curved off into the distance.
+A deep cutting quickly swallowed it. It emerged for the last time,
+tiny as a snake upon a chess-board of far-off fields. Then it dipped
+into mist; the snake shot into its hole. It was gone. He sighed. It
+had been so lovely. Why must it vanish so entirely? Once or twice
+during the day it returned, touched him swiftly on the heart and was
+gone again. But the waking impression of a dream is never the dream
+itself. Sunshine destroys the sense of enormous wonder.
+
+'I believe I've been dreaming all night long, and going through all
+kinds of wild adventures.'
+
+He dressed leisurely, still hunting subconsciously for fragments of
+that happy dreamland. Its aroma still clung about him. The sunshine
+poured into the room. He went out on to the balcony and looked at the
+Alps through his Zeiss field-glasses. The brilliant snow upon the
+Diablerets danced and sang into his blood; across the broken teeth of
+the Dent du Midi trailed thin strips of early cloud. Behind him rose
+great Boudry's massive shoulders, a pyramid of incredible deep blue.
+And the limestone precipices of La Tourne stood dazzlingly white,
+catching the morning sunlight full in their face.
+
+The air had the freshness of the sea. Men were singing at their work
+among the vineyards. The tinkle of cow-bells floated to him from the
+upper pastures upon Mont Racine. Little sails like sea-gulls dipped
+across the lake. Goodness, how happy the world was at Bourcelles!
+Singing, radiant, careless of pain and death. And, goodness, how he
+longed to make it happier still!
+
+Every day now this morning mood had been the same. Desire to do
+something for others ran races with little practical schemes for
+carrying it out. Selfish considerations seemed to have taken flight,
+all washed away while he slept. Moreover, the thought of his Scheme
+had begun to oppress him; a touch of shame came with it, almost as
+though an unworthy personal motive were somewhere in it. Perhaps after
+all--he wondered more and more now--there had been an admixture of
+personal ambition in the plan. The idea that it would bring him honour
+in the eyes of the world had possibly lain there hidden all along. If
+so, he had not realised it; the depravity had been unconscious. Before
+the Bourcelles standard of simplicity, artificial elements dropped off
+automatically, ashamed. ... And a profound truth, fished somehow out
+of that vanished dreamland, spun its trail of glory through his heart.
+Kindness that is thanked-for surely brings degradation--a degradation
+almost as mean as the subscription acknowledged in a newspaper, or the
+anonymous contribution kept secret temporarily in order that its later
+advertisement may excite the more applause. Out flashed this blazing
+truth: kind acts must be instinctive, natural, thoughtless. One hand
+must be in absolute ignorance of the other's high adventures. ... And
+when the carpenter's wife brought up his breakfast tray, with the
+bunch of forest flowers standing in a tumbler of water, she caught him
+pondering over another boyhood's memory--that friend of his father's
+who had given away a million anonymously.
+
+... In his heart plans shaped themselves with soft, shy eyes and
+hidden faces.... He longed to get _la famille anglaise_ straight
+... for one thing. ...
+
+It was an hour later, while he still sat dreaming in the sunshine by
+the open window, that a gentle tap came at the door, and Daddy
+entered. The visit was a surprise. Usually, until time for _dejeuner_,
+he kept his room, busily unwumbling stories. This was unusual. And
+something had happened to him; he looked different. What was it that
+had changed? Some veil had cleared away; his eyes were shining. They
+greeted one another, and Rogers fell shyly to commonplaces, while
+wondering what the change exactly was.
+
+But the other was not to be put off. He was bursting with something.
+Rogers had never seen him like this before.
+
+'You've stopped work earlier than usual,' he said, providing the
+opening. He understood his diffidence, his shyness in speaking of
+himself. Long disappointments lay so thinly screened behind his
+unfulfilled enthusiasm.
+
+But this time the enthusiasm swept diffidence to the winds. It had
+been vitally stirred.
+
+'Early indeed,' he cried. 'I've been working four hours without a
+break, man. Why, what do you think?--I woke at sunrise, a thing I
+never do, with--with a brilliant idea in my head. Brilliant, I tell
+you. By Jove, if only I can carry it out as I see it----!'
+
+'You've begun it already?'
+
+'Been at it since six o'clock, I tell you. It was in me when I woke--
+idea, treatment, everything complete, all in a perfect pattern of
+Beauty.'
+
+There was a glow upon his face, his hair was untidy; a white muffler
+with blue spots was round his neck instead of collar. One end stuck up
+against his chin. The safety pin was open.
+
+'By Jove! I am delighted!' Rogers had seen him excited before over a
+'brilliant idea,' but the telling of it always left him cold. It
+touched the intellect, yet not the heart. It was merely clever. This
+time, however, there was a new thing in his manner. 'How did you get
+it?' he repeated. Methods of literary production beyond his own
+doggerels were a mystery to him. 'Sort of inspiration, eh?'
+
+'Woke with it, I tell you,' continued his cousin, twisting the muffler
+so that it tickled his ear now instead of his chin. 'It must have come
+to me in sleep----' 'In sleep,' exclaimed the other; 'you dreamt it,
+then?'
+
+'Kind of inspiration business. I've heard of that sort of thing, but
+never experienced it----' The author paused for breath.
+
+'What is it? Tell me.' He remembered how ingenious details of his
+patents had sometimes found themselves cleared up in the morning after
+refreshing slumber. This might be something similar. 'Let's hear it,'
+he added; 'I'm interested.'
+
+His cousin's recitals usually ended in sad confusion, so that all he
+could answer by way of praise was--' You ought to make something good
+out of that. I shall like to read it when you've finished it.' But
+this time, he felt, there was distinctly a difference. There were new
+conditions.
+
+The older man leaned closer, his face alight, his manner shyly,
+eagerly confidential. The morning sunshine blazed upon his untidy
+hair. A bread crumb from breakfast still balanced in his beard.
+
+'It's difficult to tell in a few words, you see,' he began, the
+enthusiasm of a boy in his manner, 'but--I woke with the odd idea that
+this little village might be an epitome of the world. All the emotions
+of London, you see, are here in essence--the courage and cowardice,
+the fear and hope, the greed and sacrifice, the love and hate and
+passion--everything. It's the big world in miniature. Only--with one
+difference.'
+
+'That's good,' said Rogers, trying to remember when it was he had told
+his cousin this very thing. Or had he only _thought_ it? 'And what
+_is_ the difference?'
+
+'The difference,' continued the other, eyes sparkling, face alight,
+'that here the woods, the mountains and the stars are close. They pour
+themselves in upon the village life from every side--above, below, all
+round. Flowers surround it; it dances to the mountain winds; at night
+it lies entangled in the starlight. Along a thousand imperceptible
+channels an ideal simplicity from Nature pours down into it, modifying
+the human passions, chastening, purifying, uplifting. Don't you see?
+And these sweet, viewless channels--who keeps them clean and open?
+Why, God bless you----. The children! _My_ children!'
+
+'By Jingo, yes; _your_ children.'
+
+Rogers said it with emphasis. But there was a sudden catch at his
+heart; he was conscious of a queer sensation he could not name. This
+was exactly what he had felt himself--with the difference that his own
+thought had been, perhaps, emotion rather than a reasoned-out idea.
+His cousin put it into words and gave it form. A picture--had he seen
+it in a book perhaps?--flashed across his mind. A child, suspiciously
+like Monkey, held a pen and dipped it into something bright and
+flowing. A little boy with big blue eyes gathered this shining stuff
+in both hands and poured it in a golden cataract upon the eyelids of a
+sleeping figure. And the figure had a beard. It was a man ...
+familiar. ... A touch of odd excitement trembled through his undermind
+... thrilled ... vanished. ...
+
+All dived out of sight again with the swiftness of a darting swallow.
+His cousin was talking at high speed. Rogers had lost a great deal of
+what he had been saying.
+
+'... it may, of course, have come from something you said the other
+night as we walked up the hill to supper--you remember?--something
+about the brilliance of our stars here and how they formed a shining
+network that hung from Boudry and La Tourne. It's impossible to say.
+The germ of a true inspiration is never discoverable. Only, I
+remember, it struck me as an odd thing for _you_ to say. I was telling
+you about my idea of the scientist who married--no, no, it wasn't
+that, it was my story of the materialist doctor whom circumstances
+compelled to accept a position in the Community of Shakers, and how
+the contrast produced an effect upon his mind of--of--you remember,
+perhaps? It was one or the other; I forget exactly,'--then suddenly--
+'No, no, I've got it--it was the analysis of the father's mind when he
+found----'
+
+'Yes, yes,' interrupted Rogers. 'We were just passing the Citadelle
+fountain. I saw the big star upon the top of Boudry, and made a remark
+about it.' His cousin was getting sadly wumbled. He tried to put
+severity and concentration into his voice.
+
+'That's it,' the other cried, head on one side and holding up a
+finger, 'because I remember that my own thought wandered for a moment
+--thought will, you know, in spite of one's best effort sometimes--and
+you said a thing that sent a little shiver of pleasure through me for
+an instant--something about a Starlight Train--and made me wonder
+where you got the idea. That's it. I do believe you've hit the nail on
+the head. Isn't it curious sometimes how a practical mind may suggest
+valuable material to the artist? I remember, several years ago----'
+
+'Starlight Express, wasn't it?' said his friend with decision in his
+voice. He thumped the table vigorously with one fist. 'Keep to the
+point, old man. Follow it out. Your idea is splendid.'
+
+'Yes, I do believe it is.' Something in his voice trembled.
+
+One sentence in particular Rogers heard, for it seemed plucked out of
+the talk he had with the children in the forest that day two weeks
+ago.
+
+'You see, all light meets somewhere. It's all one, I mean. And so with
+minds. They all have a common meeting-place. Sympathy is the name for
+that place--that state--they feel with each other, see flash-like from
+the same point of view for a moment. And children are the conduits.
+They do not think things out. They feel them, eh?' He paused an
+instant.
+
+'For you see, along these little channels that the children--my
+children, as I think I mentioned--keep sweet and open, there might
+troop back into the village--Fairyland. Not merely a foolish fairyland
+of make-believe and dragons and princesses imprisoned in animals, but
+a fairyland the whole world needs--the sympathy of sweet endeavour,
+love, gentleness and sacrifice for others. The stars would bring it--
+starlight don't you see? One might weave starlight in and out
+everywhere--use it as the symbol of sympathy--and--er--so on---'
+
+Rogers again lost the clue. Another strangely familiar picture, and
+then another, flashed gorgeously before his inner vision; his mind
+raced after them, yet never caught them up. They were most curiously
+familiar. Then, suddenly, he came back and heard his cousin still
+talking. It was like a subtle plagiarism. Too subtle altogether,
+indeed, it was for him. He could only stare and listen in amazement.
+
+But the recital grew more and more involved. Perhaps, alone in his
+work-room, Daddy could unwumble it consistently. He certainly could
+not tell it. The thread went lost among a dozen other things. The
+interfering sun had melted it all down in dew and spider gossamer and
+fairy cotton. ...
+
+'I must go down and work,' he said at length, rising and fumbling with
+the door handle. He seemed disappointed a little. He had given out his
+ideas so freely, perhaps too freely. Rogers divined he had not
+sympathised enough. His manner had been shamefully absent-minded. The
+absent-mindedness was really the highest possible praise, but the
+author did not seem to realise it.
+
+'It's glorious, my dear fellow, glorious,' Rogers added emphatically.
+'You've got a big idea, and you can write it too. You will.' He said
+it with conviction. 'You touch my heart as you tell it. I congratulate
+you. Really I do.'
+
+There was no mistaking the sincerity of his words and tone. The other
+came back a step into the room again. He stroked his beard and felt
+the crisp, hard crumb. He picked it out, examining it without
+surprise. It was no unfamiliar thing, perhaps; at any rate, it was an
+excuse to lower his eyes. Shyness returned upon him.
+
+'Thank you,' he said gently; 'I'm glad you think so. You see, I
+sometimes feel--perhaps--my work has rather suffered from--been a
+little deficient in--the human touch. One must reach people's hearts
+if one wants big sales. So few have brains. Not that I care for money,
+or could ever write for money, for that brings its own punishment in
+loss of inspiration. But of course, with a family to support. ... I
+_have_ a family, you see.' He raised his eyes and looked out into the
+sunshine. 'Well, anyhow, I've begun this thing. I shall send it in
+short form to the _X. Review_. It may attract attention there. And
+later I can expand it into a volume.' He hesitated, examined the crumb
+closely again, tossed it away, and looked up at his cousin suddenly
+full in the face. The high enthusiasm flamed back into his eyes again.
+'Bring the world back to Fairyland, you see!' he concluded with
+vehemence, 'eh?'
+
+'Glorious!' Surely thought ran about the world like coloured flame, if
+this was true.
+
+The author turned towards the door. He opened it, then stopped on the
+threshold and looked round like a person who has lost his way.
+
+'I forgot,' he added, 'I forgot another thing, one of the chief
+almost. It's this: there must be a Leader--who shall bring it back.
+Without the Guide, Interpreter, Pioneer, how shall the world listen or
+understand, even the little world of Bourcelles?'
+
+'Of course, yes--some big figure--like a priest or prophet, you mean?
+A sort of Chairman, President, eh?'
+
+'Yes,' was the reply, while the eyes flashed fires that almost
+recaptured forgotten dreams, 'but hardly in the way you mean, perhaps.
+A very simple figure, _I_ mean, unconscious of its mighty role. Some
+one with endless stores of love and sympathy and compassion that have
+never found an outlet yet, but gone on accumulating and accumulating
+unexpressed.'
+
+'I see, yes.' Though he really did not 'see' a bit. 'But who is there
+like that here? You'll have to invent him.' He remembered his own
+thought that some principal role was vacant in his Children's Fairy
+Play. How queer it all was! He stared. 'Who is there?' he repeated.
+
+'No one--now. I shall bring her, though.'
+
+'_Her_!' exclaimed Rogers with surprise. 'You mean a woman?'
+
+'A childless woman,' came the soft reply. 'A woman with a million
+children--all unborn.' But Rogers did not see the expression of the
+face. His cousin was on the landing. The door closed softly on the
+words. The steps went fumbling down the stairs, and presently he heard
+the door below close too. The key was turned in it.
+
+'A childless woman!' The phrase rang on long after he had gone. What
+an extraordinary idea! 'Bring her here' indeed! Could his cousin mean
+that some such woman might read his story and come to claim the
+position, play the vacant role? No, nothing so literal surely. The
+idea was preposterous. He had heard it said that imaginative folk,
+writers, painters, musicians, all had a touch of lunacy in them
+somewhere. He shrugged his shoulders. And what a job it must be, too,
+the writing of a book! He had never realised it before. A real book,
+then, meant putting one's heart into sentences, telling one's inmost
+secrets, confessing one's own ideals with fire and lust and passion.
+That was the difference perhaps between literature and mere facile
+invention. His cousin had never dared do this before; shyness
+prevented; his intellect wove pretty patterns that had no heat of life
+in them. But now he had discovered a big idea, true as the sun, and
+able, like the sun, to warm thousands of readers, all ready for it
+without knowing it. ...
+
+Rogers sat on thinking in the bright spring sunshine, smoking one
+cigarette after another. For the idea his cousin had wumbled over so
+fubsily had touched his heart, and for a long time he was puzzled to
+find the reason. But at length he found it. In that startling phrase
+'a childless woman' lay the clue. A childless woman was like a vessel
+with a cargo of exquisite flowers that could never make a port.
+Sweetening every wind, she yet never comes to land. No harbour
+welcomes her. She sails endless seas, charged with her freight of
+undelivered beauty; the waves devour her glory, her pain, her lovely
+secret all unconfessed. To bring such a woman into port, even
+imaginatively in a story, or subconsciously in an inner life, was
+fulfilment of a big, fine, wholesome yearning, sacred in a way, too.
+
+'By George!' he said aloud. He felt strange, great life pour through
+him. He had made a discovery ... in his heart ... deep, deep down.
+
+Something in himself, so long buried it was scarcely recognisable,
+stirred out of sight and tried to rise. Some flower of his youth that
+time had hardened, dried, yet never killed, moved gently towards
+blossoming. It shone. It was still hard a little, like a crystal,
+glistening down there among shadows that had gathered with the years.
+And then it suddenly melted, running in a tiny thread of gold among
+his thoughts into that quiet sea which so rarely in a man may dare the
+relief of tears. It was a tiny yellow flower, like a daisy that had
+forgotten to close at night, so that some stray starbeam changed its
+whiteness into gold.
+
+Forgotten passion, and yearning long denied, stirred in him with that
+phrase. His cousin's children doubtless had prepared the way. A faded
+Dream peered softly into his eyes across the barriers of the years.
+For every woman in the world was a mother, and a childless woman was
+the grandest, biggest mother of them all. And he had longed for
+children of his own; he, too, had remained a childless father. A
+vanished face gazed up into his own. Two vessels, making the same fair
+harbour, had lost their way, yet still sailed, perhaps, the empty
+seas. Yet the face he did not quite recognise. The eyes, instead of
+blue, were amber. ...
+
+And did this explain a little the spell that caught him in this Jura
+village, perhaps? Were these children, weaving a network so cunningly
+about his feet, merely scouts and pilots? Was his love for the world
+of suffering folk, after all, but his love for a wife and children of
+his own transmuted into wider channels? Denied the little garden he
+once had planned for it, did it seek to turn the whole big world into
+a garden? Suppression was impossible; like murder, it must out. A bit
+of it had even flamed a passage into work and patents and 'City' life.
+For love is life, and life is ever and everywhere one. He thought and
+thought and thought. A man begins by loving himself; then, losing
+himself, he loves a woman; next, that love spreads itself over a still
+bigger field, and he loves his family, his wife and children, and
+their families again in turn. But, that expression denied, his love
+inevitably, irrepressibly seeking an outlet, finds it in a Cause, a
+Race, a Nation, perhaps in the entire world. The world becomes his
+'neighbour.' It was a great Fairy Story. ...
+
+Again his thoughts returned to that one singular sentence ... and he
+realised what his cousin meant. Only a childless Mother, some woman
+charged to the brim with this power of loving to which ordinary
+expression had been denied, could fill the vacant role in his great
+Children's Play. No man could do it. He and his cousin were mere
+'supers' on this stage. His cousin would invent her for his story. He
+would make her come. His passion would create her. That was what he
+meant.
+
+Rogers smiled to himself, moving away from the window where the
+sunshine grew too fierce for comfort. What a funny business it all
+was, to be sure! And how curiously every one's thinking had
+intermingled! The children had somehow divined his own imaginings in
+that Crayfield garden; their father had stolen the lot for his story.
+It was most extraordinary. And then he remembered Minks, and all his
+lunatic theories about thought and thought-pictures. The garden scene
+at Crayfield came back vividly, the one at Charing Cross, in the
+orchard, too, with the old Vicar, when they had talked beneath the
+stars. Who among them all was the original sponsor? And which of them
+had set the ball a-rolling? It was stranger than the story of
+creation. ... It _was_ the story of creation.
+
+Yet he did not puzzle very long. Actors in a play are never puzzled;
+it is the bewildered audience who ask questions. And Henry Rogers was
+on the stage. The gauzy curtain hung between him and the outside point
+of view. He was already deeply involved in Fairyland. ... His feet
+were in the Net of Stars. ... He was a prisoner.
+
+And that woman he had once dreamed might mother his own children--
+where was she? Until a few years ago he had still expected, hoped to
+meet her. One day they would come together. She waited somewhere. It
+was only recently he had let the dream slip finally from him,
+abandoned with many another personal ambition.
+
+Idly he picked up a pencil, and before he was aware of it the words
+ran into lines. It seemed as though his cousin's mood, thought,
+inspiration, worked through him.
+
+    Upon what flowering shore,
+    'Neath what blue skies
+    She stands and waits,
+    It is not mine to know;
+    Only I know that shore is fair,
+    Those skies are blue.
+
+    Her voice I may not hear,
+    Nor see her eyes,
+    Yet there are times
+    When in the wind she speaks.
+    When stars and flowers
+    Tell me of her eyes.
+    When rivers chant her name.
+
+    If ever signs were sure,
+    I know she waits;
+    If not, what means this sweetness in the wind,
+    The singing in the rain, the love in flowers?
+    What mean these whispers in the air,
+    This calling from the hills and from the sea?
+    These tendernesses of the Day and Night?
+    Unless she waits!
+
+What in the world was this absurd sweetness running in his veins?
+
+He laughed a little. A slight flush, too, came and went its way. The
+tip of the pencil snapped as he pressed too heavily on it. He had
+drawn it through the doggerel with impatience, for he suddenly
+realised that he had told a deep, deep secret to the paper. It had
+stammered its way out before he was aware of it. This was youth and
+boyhood strong upon him, the moods of Crayfield that he had set long
+ago on one side--deliberately. The mood that wrote the Song of the
+Blue Eyes had returned, waking after a sleep of a quarter of a
+century.
+
+'What rubbish!' he exclaimed; 'I shall be an author next!' He tore it
+up and, rolling the pieces into a ball, played catch with it. 'What
+waste of energy! Six months ago that energy would have gone into
+something useful, a patent--perhaps an improvement in the mechanism
+of--of--' he hesitated, then finished the sentence with a sigh of
+yearning and another passing flush--'a perambulator!'
+
+He tossed it out of the window and, laughing, leaned out to watch it
+fall. It bounced upon a head of tousled hair beneath, then flew off
+sideways in the wind and rattled away faintly among the vines. The
+head was his cousin's.
+
+'What are you up to?' cried the author, looking up. 'I'm not a waste-
+paper basket.' There was a cigarette ash in his beard.
+
+'Sending you ideas, he answered. 'I'm coming myself now. Look out!' He
+was in high spirits again. He believed in that Fairy Princess.
+
+'All right; I've put you in already. Everybody will wonder who
+Cousinenry is. ...' The untidy head of hair popped in again.
+
+'Hark!' cried Rogers, trying to look round the corner of the house. He
+edged himself out at a dangerous angle. His ears had caught another
+sound. There was music in the air.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+The sweet spring winds came laughing down the street, bearing a voice
+that mingled with their music.
+
+_Daddy! Daddy! vite; il y a un paquet!'_ sounded in a child's excited
+cry. 'It arrives this afternoon. It's got the Edinburgh postmark. Here
+is the notice. _C'est enorme!'_
+
+The figure of Jimbo shot round the corner, dancing into view. He waved
+a bit of yellow paper in his hand. A curious pang tore its way into
+the big man's heart as he saw him--a curious, deep, searching pain
+that yet left joy all along its trail. Positively moisture dimmed his
+eyes a second.
+
+But Jimbo belonged to some one else.
+
+Daddy's wumbled head projected instantly again from the window
+beneath.
+
+'A box?' he asked, equally excited. 'A box from Scotland? Why, we had
+one only last month. Bless their hearts! How little they know what
+help and happiness. ... 'The rest of the sentence disappeared with the
+head; and a moment later Jimbo was heard scampering up the stairs.
+Both men went out to meet him.
+
+The little boy was breathless with excitement, yet the spirit of the
+man of affairs worked strongly in him. He deliberately suppressed
+hysterics. He spoke calmly as might be, both hands in his trouser-
+pockets beneath the blouse of blue cotton that stuck out like a ballet
+skirt all round. The belt had slipped down. His eyes were never still.
+He pulled one hand out, holding the crumpled paper up for inspection.
+
+'It's a _paquet_,' he said, '_comme ca._' He used French and English
+mixed, putting the latter in for his cousin's benefit. He had little
+considerate ways like that. It's coming from Scotland, _et puis ca
+pese soixante-quinze kilos_. Oh, it's big. It's enormous. The last one
+weighed,' he hesitated, forgetful, 'much, much less,' he finished. He
+paused, looking like a man who has solved a problem by stating it.
+
+'One hundred and fifty pounds,' exclaimed his father, just as eager as
+the boy. 'Let me look,' and he held his hand out for the advice from
+the railway. 'What _can_ be in it?'
+
+'Something for everybody,' said Jimbo decidedly. 'All the village
+knows it. It will come by the two o'clock train from Bale, you know.'
+He gave up the paper unwillingly. It was his badge of office. 'That's
+the paper about it,' he added again.
+
+Daddy read out slowly the advice of consignment, with dates and
+weights and address of sender and recipient, while Jimbo corrected the
+least mistake. He knew it absolutely by heart.
+
+'There'll be dresses and boots for the girls this time,' he announced,
+'and something big enough for Mother to wear, too. You can tell---'
+
+'How can you tell?' asked Daddy, laughing slyly, immensely pleased
+about it all.
+
+'Oh, by the weight of the _paquet, comme ca_,' was the reply. 'It
+weighs 75 kilos. That means there must be something for Mummy in it.'
+
+The author turned towards his cousin, hiding his smile. 'It's a box of
+clothes,' he explained, 'from my cousins in Scotland, Lady X you know,
+and her family. Things they give away--usually to their maids and
+what-not. Awfully good of them, isn't it? They pay the carriage too,'
+he added. It was an immense relief to him.
+
+'Things they can't wear,' put in Jimbo, 'but _very_ good things--
+suits, blouses, shirts, collars, boots, gloves, and--oh, _toute sorte
+de choses comme ca_.'
+
+'Isn't it nice of 'em,' repeated Daddy. It made life easier for him--
+ever so much easier. 'A family like that has such heaps of things. And
+they always pay the freight. It saves me a pretty penny I can tell
+you. Why, I haven't bought the girls a dress for two years or more.
+And Edward's dressed like a lord, I tell you,' referring to his eldest
+boy now at an expensive tutor's. 'You can understand the excitement
+when a box arrives. We call it the Magic Box.'
+
+Rogers understood. It had puzzled him before why the children's
+clothes, Daddy's and Mummy's as well for that matter, were such an
+incongruous assortment of village or peasant wear, and smart, well-cut
+garments that bore so obviously the London mark.
+
+'They're very rich indeed,' said Jimbo. 'They have a motor car. These
+are the only things that don't fit them. There's not much for me
+usually; I'm too little yet. But there's lots for the girls and the
+others.' And 'the others,' it appeared, included the Widow Jequier,
+the Postmaster and his wife, the carpenter's family, and more than one
+household in the village who knew the use and value of every
+centimetre of ribbon. Even the retired governesses got their share. No
+shred or patch was ever thrown away as useless. The assortment of
+cast-off clothing furnished Sunday Bests to half the village for weeks
+to come. A consignment of bullion could not have given half the
+pleasure and delight that the arrival of a box produced.
+
+But _midi_ was ringing, and _dejeuner_ had to be eaten first. Like a
+meal upon the stage, no one ate sincerely; they made a brave pretence,
+but the excitement was too great for hunger. Every one was in the
+secret--the Postmaster (he might get another hat out of it for
+himself) had let it out with a characteristic phrase: 'Il y a un
+paquet pour la famille anglaise!' Yet all feigned ignorance. The
+children exchanged mysterious glances, and afterwards the governesses
+hung about the Post Office, simulating the purchase of stamps at two
+o'clock. But every one watched Daddy's movements, for he it was who
+would say the significant words.
+
+And at length he said them. 'Now, we had better go down to the
+station,' he observed casually, 'and see if there is anything for us.'
+His tone conveyed the impression that things often arrived in this
+way; it was an everyday affair. If there was nothing, it didn't matter
+much. His position demanded calmness.
+
+'Very well,' said Jimbo. 'I'll come with you.' He strutted off,
+leading the way.
+
+'And I, and I,' cried Monkey and Jane Anne, for it was a half-holiday
+and all were free. Jimbo would not have appeared to hurry for a
+kingdom.
+
+'I think I'll join you, too,' remarked Mother, biting her lips, 'only
+please go slowly.' There were hills to negotiate.
+
+They went off together in a party, and the governesses watched them
+go. The Widow Jequier put her head out of the window, pretending she
+was feeding the birds. Her sister popped out opportunely to post a
+letter. The Postmaster opened his _guichet_ window and threw a bit of
+string into the gutter; and old Miss Waghorn, just then appearing for
+her daily fifteen minutes' constitutional, saw the procession and
+asked him, 'Who in the world all those people were?' She had
+completely forgotten them. 'Le barometre a monte,' he replied, knowing
+no word of English, and thinking it was her usual question about the
+weather. He reported daily the state of the barometer. 'Vous n'aurez
+pas besoin d'un parapluie.' 'Mercy,' she said, meaning _merci_.
+
+The train arrived, and with it came the box. They brought it up
+themselves upon the little hand-cart--_le char_. It might have weighed
+a ton and contained priceless jewels, the way they tugged and pushed,
+and the care they lavished on it. Mother puffed behind, hoping there
+would be something to fit Jimbo this time.
+
+'Shall we rest a moment?' came at intervals on the hill, till at last
+Monkey said, 'Sit on the top, Mummy, and we'll pull you too.' And
+during the rests they examined the exterior, smelt it, tapped it,
+tried to see between the cracks, and ventured endless and confused
+conjectures as to its probable contents.
+
+They dragged the hand-cart over the cobbles of the courtyard, and
+heaved the box up the long stone staircase. It was planted at length
+on the floor beside the bed of Mlle. Lemaire, that she might witness
+the scene from her prison windows. Daddy had the greatest difficulty
+in keeping order, for tempers grow short when excitement is too long
+protracted. The furniture was moved about to make room. Orders flew
+about like grape-shot. Everybody got in everybody else's way. But
+finally the unwieldy packing-case was in position, and a silence fell
+upon the company.
+
+'My gum, we've put it upside down,' said Daddy, red in the face with
+his exertions. It was the merest chance that there was no wisp of
+straw yet in his beard.
+
+'Then the clothes will all be inside out,' cried Monkey, 'and we shall
+have to stand on our heads.'
+
+'You silly,' Jane Anne rebuked her, yet half believing it was true,
+while Jimbo, holding hammer and chisel ready, looked unutterable
+contempt. 'Can't you be serious for a moment?' said his staring blue
+eyes.
+
+The giant chest was laboriously turned over, the two men straining
+every muscle in the attempt. Then, after a moment's close inspection
+again to make quite sure, Daddy spoke gravely. Goodness, how calm he
+was!
+
+'Jimbo, boy, pass me the hammer and the chisel, will you?'
+
+In breathless silence the lid was slowly forced open and the
+splintered pieces gingerly removed. Sheets of dirty brown paper and
+bundles of odorous sacking came into view.
+
+'Perhaps that's all there is,' suggested Jinny.
+
+'Ugh! What a whiff!' said Monkey.
+
+'Fold them up carefully and put them in a corner,' ordered Mother.
+Jane Anne religiously obeyed. Oh dear, how slow she was about it!
+
+Then everybody came up very close, heads bent over, hands began to
+stretch and poke. You heard breathing--nothing more.
+
+'Now, wait your turn,' commanded Mother in a dreadful voice, 'and let
+your Father try on everything first.' And a roar of laughter made the
+room echo while Daddy extracted wonder after wonder that were packed
+in endless layers one upon another.
+
+Perhaps what would have struck an observer most of all would have been
+the strange seriousness against which the comedy was set. The laughter
+was incessant, but it was a weighty matter for all that. The bed-
+ridden woman, who was sole audience, understood that; the parents
+understood it too. Every article of clothing that could be worn meant
+a saving, and the economy of a franc was of real importance. The
+struggles of _la famille anglaise_ to clothe and feed and educate
+themselves were no light affair. The eldest boy, now studying for the
+consular service, absorbed a third of their entire income. The
+sacrifices involved for his sake affected each one in countless ways.
+And for two years now these magic boxes had supplied all his suits and
+shirts and boots. The Scotch cousins luckily included a boy of his own
+size who had extravagant taste in clothes. A box sometimes held as
+many as four excellent suits. Daddy contented himself with one a year
+--ordered ready-made from the place they called
+Chasbakerinhighholborn.' Mother's clothes were 'wropp in mystery'
+ever. No one ever discovered where they came from or how she made
+them. She did. It seemed always the same black dress and velvet
+blouse.
+
+Gravity and laughter, therefore, mingled in Daddy's face as he drew
+out one paper parcel after another, opened it, tried the article on
+himself, and handed it next to be tried on similarly by every one in
+turn.
+
+And the first extraction from the magic box was a curious looking
+thing that no one recognised. Daddy unfolded it and placed it solemnly
+on his head. He longed for things for himself, but rarely found them.
+He tried on everything, hoping it might 'just do,' but in the end
+yielded it with pleasure to the others. He rarely got more than a pair
+of gloves or a couple of neckties for himself. The coveted suits just
+missed his size.
+
+Grave as a judge he balanced the erection on his head. It made a
+towering heap. Every one was puzzled. 'It's a motor cap,' ventured
+some one at length in a moment of intuition.
+
+'It's several!' cried Monkey. She snatched the bundle and handed it to
+Mother. There were four motor caps, neatly packed together. Mother put
+on each in turn. They were in shades of grey. They became her well.
+
+'You look like a duchess,' said Daddy proudly. 'You'd better keep them
+all.'
+
+'I think perhaps they'll do,' she said, moving to the glass, 'if no
+one else can wear them.' She flushed a little and looked self-
+conscious.
+
+'They want long pins,' suggested Jinny. 'They'll keep the rain off
+too, like an umbrella.' She laughed and clapped her hands. Mother
+pinned one on and left it there for the remainder of the afternoon.
+The unpacking of the case continued.
+
+The next discovery was gloves. The lid of the box looked like a
+counter in a glove shop. There were gloves of leather and chamois,
+gauntlets, driving-gloves, and gloves of suede, yellow, brown, and
+grey. All had been used a little, but all were good. 'They'll wash,'
+said Jane Anne. They were set aside in a little heap apart. No one
+coveted them. It was not worth while. In the forests of Bourcelles
+gloves were at a discount, and driving a pleasure yet unknown. Jinny,
+however a little later put on a pair of ladies' suede that caught her
+fancy, and wore them faithfully to the end of the performance, just to
+keep her mother's motor cap in countenance.
+
+The main contents of the box were as yet unbroached, however, and when
+next an overcoat appeared, with velvet collar and smart, turned-up
+cuffs, Daddy beamed like a boy and was into it before any one could
+prevent. He went behind a screen. The coat obviously did not fit him,
+but he tugged and pulled and wriggled his shoulders with an air of
+'things that won't fit must be made to fit.'
+
+'You'll bust the seams! You'll split the buttons! See what's in the
+pockets!' cried several voices, while he shifted to and fro like a man
+about to fight.
+
+'It may stretch,' he said hopefully. 'I think I can use it. It's just
+what I want.' He glanced up at his wife whose face, however, was
+relentless.
+
+'Maybe,' replied the practical mother, 'but it's more Edward's build,
+perhaps.' He looked fearfully disappointed, but kept it on. Edward got
+the best of every box. He went on with the unpacking, giving the coat
+sly twitches from time to time, as he pulled out blouses, skirts,
+belts, queer female garments, boots, soft felt hats--the green Homburg
+he put on at once, as who should dare to take it from him--black and
+brown Trilbys, shooting-caps, gaiters, flannel shirts, pyjamas, and
+heaven knows what else besides.
+
+The excitement was prodigious, and the floor looked like a bargain
+sale. Everybody talked at once; there was no more pretence of keeping
+order Mlle. Lemaire lay propped against her pillows, watching the
+scene with feelings between tears and laughter. Each member of the
+family tried on everything in turn, but yielded the treasures
+instantly at a word from Mother--'That will do for so and so; this
+will fit Monkey; Jimbo, you take this,' and so on.
+
+The door into the adjoining bedroom was for ever opening and shutting,
+as the children disappeared with armfuls and reappeared five minutes
+later, marvellously apparelled. There was no attempt at sorting yet.
+Blouses and flannel trousers lay upon the floor with boots and motor
+veils. Every one had something, and the pile set aside for Edward grew
+apace. Only Jimbo was disconsolate. He was too small for everything;
+even the ladies' boots were too narrow and too pointed for his little
+feet. From time to time he rummaged with the hammer and chisel (still
+held _very_ tightly) among the mass of paper at the bottom. But, as
+usual, there was nothing but gaudy neckties that he could use. And
+these he did not care about. He said no word, but stood there watching
+the others and trying to laugh, only keeping the tears back with the
+greatest difficulty.
+
+From his position in the background Rogers took it all in. He moved up
+and slipped a ten-franc piece into the boy's hand. 'Secretaries don't
+wear clothes like this,' he whispered. 'We'll go into town to-morrow
+and get the sort of thing you want.'
+
+Jimbo looked up and stared. He stood on tip-toe to kiss him. 'Oh,
+thank you so much,' he said, fearful lest the others should see; and
+tucked the coin away into a pocket underneath his cotton blouse. A
+moment later he came back from the corner where he had hid himself to
+examine it. 'But, Cousin Henry,' he whispered, utterly astonished,
+'it's gold.' He had thought the coin was a ten-centime piece such as
+Daddy sometimes gave him. He could not believe it. He had never seen
+gold before. He ran up and told his parents. His sisters were too
+excited to be told just then. After that he vanished into the passage
+without being noticed, and when he returned five minutes later his
+eyes were suspiciously red. But no one heard him say a word about
+getting nothing out of the box. He stood aside, with a superior manner
+and looked quietly on. 'It's very nice for the girls,' his expression
+said. His  interest in the box had grown decidedly less. He could buy
+an entire shop for himself now.
+
+'Mother, Daddy, everybody,' cried an excited voice, 'will you look at
+me a minute, please! It all fits me perfectly,' and Jinny emerged from
+the bedroom door. She had been trying on. A rough brown dress of
+Harris tweed became her well; she wore a motor veil about her head,
+and another was tied round her neck; a white silk blouse, at least one
+size too large for her, bulged voluminously from beneath the neat
+tweed jacket. She wore her suede gloves still. 'And there's an outside
+pocket in the skirt, you see.' She pulled it up and showed a very
+pointed pair of brown boots; they were much too long; they looked
+ridiculous after her square village boots. 'I can waggle my toes in
+them,' she explained, strutting to and fro to be admired. 'I'm a
+fashionable monster now!'
+
+But she only held the centre of the stage a minute, for Monkey entered
+at her heels, bursting with delight in a long green macintosh thrown
+over another tweed skirt that hid her feet and even trailed behind. A
+pair of yellow spats were visible sometimes that spread fan-shaped
+over her boots and climbed half-way up the fat legs.
+
+'It all fits me exaccurately,' was her opinion. The sisters went arm
+in arm about the room, dancing and laughing.
+
+'We're busy blackmailers,' cried Jinny, using her latest acquisition
+which she practised on all possible occasions. 'We're in Piccadilly,
+going to see the Queen for tea.'
+
+They tripped over Monkey's train and one of the spats came off in the
+struggle for recovery. Daddy, in his Homburg hat, looked round and
+told them sternly to make less noise. Behind a screen he was getting
+surreptitiously into a suit that Mother had put aside for Edward. He
+tried on several in this way, hopeful to the last.
+
+'I think this will fit me all right,' he said presently, emerging with
+a grave expression on his puckered face. He seemed uncertain about it.
+He was solemn as a judge. 'You could alter the buttons here and there,
+you know,' and he looked anxiously at his wife. The coat ran up
+behind, the waistcoat creased badly owing to the strain, and the
+trousers were as tight as those of a cavalry officer. Anywhere, and
+any moment, he might burst out into unexpected revelation. 'A little
+alteration,' he suggested hopefully, 'and it would be all right--don't
+you think?' And then he added 'perhaps.'
+
+He turned and showed himself. Even the roar of laughter that greeted
+his appearance did not quite convince him. He looked like a fat,
+impoverished bookmaker.
+
+'I think it will fit Edward better,' said Mother again without pity,
+for she did not like to see her husband look foolish before the
+children. He disappeared behind the screen, but repeated the
+performance with two other suits. 'This striped one seems a little
+looser,' he said; or, 'If you'd let out the trousers at the bottom, I
+think they would do.' But in the end all he got from the box was two
+pairs of pink silk pyjamas, the Homburg hat, several pairs of gloves,
+spats, and gaiters, and half a dozen neckties that no one else would
+wear. He made his heap carefully in the corner of the room, and later,
+when the mess was all cleared up and everybody went off with their
+respective treasures, he entirely forgot them in his pleasure and
+admiration of the others. He left them lying in the corner. Riquette
+slept on them that night, and next morning Jimbo brought them over for
+him to the carpenter's house. And Edward later magnanimously yielded
+up two flannel shirts because he had so many left over from the
+previous box. Also a pair of pumps.
+
+'I've not done so badly after all,' was his final matured opinion.
+'Poor mother! She got nothing but motor caps.' Jimbo, however, had
+made a final discovery of value for himself--of some value, at least.
+When the empty case was overturned as a last hope, he rummaged among
+the paper with his hammer and chisel, and found four pairs of golf
+stockings! The legs fitted him admirably, but the feet were much too
+big. There was some discussion as to whether they had belonged to a
+very thin-legged boy with big feet or to a girl who had no calves.
+Luckily, the former was decided upon, for otherwise they would have
+given no pleasure to Jimbo. Even as it was, he adopted them chiefly
+because it pleased his parents. Mother cut off the feet and knitted
+new ones a little smaller. But there was no mystery about those
+stockings. No special joy went with them. He had watched Mother
+knitting too often for that; she could make stockings half asleep.
+
+Two hours later, while Jane Ann and Mother prepared the tea in the
+Den, Daddy, Jimbo, and Cousin Henry went in a procession to the
+carpenter's house carrying the piles of clothing in their arms to the
+astonishment of half the village. They were to be re-sorted there in
+privacy by the 'men,' where the 'children' could not interfere. The
+things they could not use were distributed later among the
+governesses; the Pension and the village also, got their share. And
+the Postmaster got his hat--a black Trilby. He loved its hue.
+
+And for days afterwards the children hoarded their treasures with
+unholy joy. What delighted them as much as anything, perhaps, were the
+coronets upon the pyjamas and the shirts. They thought it was a London
+or Edinburgh laundry mark. But Jimbo told them otherwise: 'It means
+that Daddy's Cousin is a Lord-and-Waiting, and goes to see the King.'
+This explanation was generally accepted.
+
+The relief to the parents, however, as they sat up in the Den that
+night and discussed how much this opportune Magic Box had saved them,
+may be better imagined than described. The sum ran into many, many
+francs. Edward had suits now for at least two years. 'He's stopped
+growing,' said his mother; 'thank goodness,' said his father.
+
+And to the long list he prayed for twice a day Jimbo added of his
+accord, 'Ceux qui ont envoye la grosse caisse.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+     Break up the heavens, O Lord! and far,
+     Thro' all yon starlight keen,
+     Draw me, thy bride, a glittering star,
+     In raiment white and clean.
+
+     He lifts me to the golden doors;
+     The flashes come and go;
+     All heaven bursts her starry floors,
+     And strews her lights below.
+           _St. Agnes' Eve, Tennyson_.
+
+Miss Waghorn, of late, had been unusually trying, and especially full
+of complaints. Her poor old memory seemed broken beyond repair. She
+offered Madame Jequier her weekly payment twice within ten minutes,
+and was quite snappy about it when the widow declined the second
+tender.
+
+'But you had the receipt in your hand wizin ten minutes ago, Mees
+Wag'orn. You took it upstairs. The ink can hardly be now already yet
+dry.' But nothing would satisfy her that she had paid until they went
+up to her room together and found it after much searching between her
+Bible and her eternal novel on the writing-table.
+
+'Forgive me, Madame, but you do forget sometimes, don't you?' she
+declared with amusing audacity. 'I like to make quite sure---
+especially where money is concerned.' On entering the room she had
+entirely forgotten why they came there. She began complaining,
+instead, about the bed, which had not yet been made. A standing source
+of grumbling, this; for the old lady would come down to breakfast many
+a morning, and then go up again before she had it, thinking it was
+already late in the day. She worried the _pensionnaires_ to death,
+too. It was their duty to keep the salon tidy, and Miss Waghorn would
+flutter into the room as early as eight o'clock, find the furniture
+still unarranged, and at once dart out again to scold the girls. These
+interviews were amusing before they became monotonous, for the old
+lady's French was little more than 'nong pas' attached to an
+infinitive verb, and the girls' Swiss-German explanations of the
+alleged neglect of duty only confused her. 'Nong pas faire la
+chambre,' she would say, stamping her foot with vexation. 'You haven't
+done the room, though it's nearly dejooner time!' Or else--'Ten
+minutes ago it was tidy. Look at it now!' while she dragged them in
+and forced them to put things straight, until some one in authority
+came and explained gently her mistake. 'Oh, excuse me, Madame,' she
+would say then, 'but they do forget _so_ often.' Every one was very
+patient with her as a rule.
+
+And of late she had been peculiarly meddlesome, putting chairs
+straight, moving vases, altering the lie of table-cloths and the angle
+of sofas, opening windows because it was 'so stuffy,' and closing them
+a minute later with complaints about the draught, forcing occupants of
+arm-chairs to get up because the carpet was caught, fiddling with
+pictures because they were crooked either with floor or ceiling, and
+never realising that in the old house these latter were nowhere
+parallel. But her chief occupation was to prevent the children
+crossing their legs when they sat down, or pulling their dresses
+lower, with a whispered, 'You _must_ not cross your legs like that; it
+isn't ladylike, dear.'
+
+She had been very exasperating and interfering. Tempers had grown
+short. Twice running she had complained about the dreadful noise the
+_pensionnaires_ made at seven o'clock in the morning. 'Nong pas creer
+comme ca!' she called, running down the passage in her dressing-gown
+and bursting angrily into their rooms without knocking--to find them
+empty. The girls had left the day before.
+
+But to-day (the morning after the Star Cave adventure) the old lady
+was calmer, almost soothed, and at supper she was composed and gentle.
+Sleep, for some reason, had marvellously refreshed her. Attacks that
+opened as usual about Cornish Cream or a Man with a long Beard, she
+repelled easily and quietly. 'I've told you that story before, my
+dear; I know I have.' It seemed her mind and memory were more orderly
+somehow. And the Widow Jequier explained how sweet and good-natured
+she had been all day--better than for years. 'When I took her drops
+upstairs at eleven o'clock I found her tidying her room; she was
+sorting her bills and papers. She read me a letter she had written to
+her nephew to come out and take her home--well written and quite
+coherent. I've not known her mind so clear for months. Her memory,
+too. She said she had slept so well. If only it would last,
+_helas_!'
+
+'There _are_ days like that,' she added presently, 'days when
+everything goes right and easily. One wakes up happy in the morning
+and sees only the bright side of things. Hope is active, and one has
+new courage somehow.' She spoke with feeling, her face was brighter,
+clearer, her mind less anxious. She had planned a visit to the Bank
+Manager about the mortgages. It had come as an inspiration. It might
+be fruitless, but she was hopeful, and so knew a little peace. 'I
+wonder why it is,' she added, 'and what brings these changes into the
+heart so suddenly.'
+
+'Good sleep and sound digestion,' Mrs. Campden thought. She expressed
+her views deliberately like this in order to counteract any growth of
+fantasy in the children.
+
+'But it is strange,' her husband said, remembering his new story; 'it
+may be much deeper than that. While the body sleeps the spirit may get
+into touch with helpful forces----' His French failed him. He wumbled
+painfully.
+
+'Thought-forces possibly from braver minds,' put in Rogers. 'Who
+knows? Sleep and dreaming have never really been explained.' He
+recalled a theory of Minks.
+
+'_I_ dream a great deal,' Miss Waghorn observed, eager to take part.
+'It's delightful, dreaming--if only one could remember!' She looked
+round the table with challenge in her eager old eyes. But no one took
+her up. It involved such endless repetition of well-known stories. The
+Postmaster might have said a word--he looked prepared--but, not
+understanding English, he went on with his salad instead.
+
+'Life is a dream,' observed Monkey, while Jinny seemed uncertain
+whether she should laugh or take it seriously.
+
+The Widow Jequier overheard her. There was little she did not
+overhear.
+
+'Coquine!' she said, then quoted with a sentimental sigh:--
+
+     La vie est breve,
+     Un peu d'amour.
+     Un peu de rive
+     Et puis--bonjour!
+
+She hung her head sideways a moment for effect. There was a pause all
+down the long table.
+
+'I'm sure dreams have significance,' she went on. 'There's more in
+dreaming than one thinks. They come as warnings or encouragement. All
+the saints had dreams. I always pay attention to mine.'
+
+'Madame, _I_ dream a great deal,' repeated Miss Waghorn, anxious not
+to be left out of a conversation in which she understood at least the
+key-word _reve_; 'a very great deal, I may say.'
+
+Several looked up, ready to tell nightmares of their own at the least
+sign of encouragement. The Postmaster faced the table, laying down his
+knife and fork. He took a deep breath. This time he meant to have his
+say. But his deliberation always lost him openings.
+
+_I_ don't,' exclaimed Jinny, bluntly, five minutes behind the others.
+'When I'm in bed, I sleep.' The statement brought laughter that
+confused her a little. She loved to define her position. She had
+defined it. And the Postmaster had lost his chance. Mlle. Sandoz, a
+governess who was invited to supper as payment for a music lesson
+given to his boy, seized the opening.
+
+'Last night I dreamed that a bull chased me. Now what did _that_ mean,
+I wonder?'
+
+'That there was no danger since it was only a dream!' said the
+Postmaster sharply, vexed that he had not told his own.
+
+But no one applauded, for it was the fashion to ignore his
+observations, unless they had to do with stamps and weights of
+letters, parcels, and the like. A clatter of voices rose, as others,
+taking courage, decided to tell experiences of their own; but it was
+the Postmaster's wife in the hall who won. She had her meals outside
+with the kitchen maid and her niece, who helped in the Post Office,
+and she always tried to take part in the conversation from a distance
+thus. She plunged into a wordy description of a lengthy dream that had
+to do with clouds, three ravens, and a mysterious face. All listened,
+most of them in mere politeness, for as cook she was a very important
+personage who could furnish special dishes on occasion--but her sister
+listened as to an oracle. She nodded her head and made approving
+gestures, and said, 'Aha, you see,' or 'Ah, voila!' as though that
+helped to prove the importance of the dream, if not its actual truth.
+And the sister came to the doorway so that no one could escape. She
+stood there in her apron, her face hot and flushed still from the
+kitchen.
+
+At length it came to an end, and she looked round her, hoping for a
+little sympathetic admiration, or at least for expressions of wonder
+and interest. All waited for some one else to speak. Into the pause
+came her husband's voice, 'Je n'ai pas de sel.'
+
+There was no resentment. It was an everyday experience. The spell was
+broken instantly. The cook retired to her table and told the dream all
+over again with emphatic additions to her young companions. The
+Postmaster got his salt and continued eating busily as though dreams
+were only fit for women and children to talk about. And the English
+group began whispering excitedly of their Magic Box and all it had
+contained. They were tired of dreams and dreaming.
+
+Tante Jeanne made a brave effort to bring the conversation back to the
+key of sentiment and mystery she loved, but it was not a success.
+
+'At any rate I'm certain one's mood on going to bed decides the kind
+of dream that comes,' she said into the air. 'The last thought before
+going to sleep is very important. It influences the adventures of the
+soul when it leaves the body every night.'
+
+For this was a tenet of her faith, although she always forgot to act
+upon it. Only Miss Waghorn continued the train of ideas this started,
+with a coherence that surprised even herself. Somehow the jabber about
+dreams, though in a language that only enabled her to catch its
+general drift, had interested her uncommonly. She seemed on the verge
+of remembering something. She had listened with patience, a look of
+peace upon her anxious old face that was noticed even by Jane Anne.
+'It smoothed her out,' was her verdict afterwards, given only to
+herself though. 'Everything is a sort of long unfinished dream to her,
+I suppose, at _that_ age.'
+
+While the _famille anglaise_ renewed noisily their excitement of the
+Magic Box, and while the talk in the hall went on and on, re-hashing
+the details of the cook's marvellous experience, and assuming entirely
+new proportions, Miss Waghorn glanced about her seeking whom she might
+devour--and her eye caught Henry Rogers, listening as usual in
+silence.
+
+'Ah,' she said to him, 'but _I_ look forward to sleep. I might say I
+long for it.' She sighed very audibly. It was both a sigh for release
+and a faint remembrance that last night her sleep had been somehow
+deep and happy, strangely comforting.
+
+'It is welcome sometimes, isn't it?' he answered, always polite and
+rather gentle with her.
+
+'Sleep unravels, yes,' she said, vaguely as to context, yet with a
+querulous intensity. It was as if she caught at the enthusiasm of a
+connected thought somewhere. 'I might even say it unties,' she added,
+encouraged by his nod, 'unties knots--if you follow me.'
+
+'It does, Miss Waghorn. Indeed, it does.' Was this a precursor of the
+Brother with the Beard, he wondered? 'Untied knots' would inevitably
+start her off. He made up his mind to listen to the tale with interest
+for the twentieth time if it came. But it didn't come.
+
+'I am very old and lonely, and _I_ need the best,' she went on
+happily, half saying it to herself.
+
+Instantly he took her up--without surprise too. It was like a dream.
+
+'Quite so. The rest, the common stuff----'
+
+'Is good enough----' she chimed in quickly--
+
+'For Fraulein, or for baby, or for mother,' he laughed.
+
+'Or any other,' chuckled Miss Waghorn.
+
+'Who needs a bit of sleep----'
+
+'But yet can do without it----' she carried it on.
+
+Then both together, after a second's pause--
+
+'If they must----' and burst out laughing.
+
+Goodness, how did _she_ know the rhyme? Was it everywhere? Was thought
+running loose like wireless messages to be picked up by all who were
+in tune for acceptance?
+
+'Well, I never!' he heard her exclaim, 'if that's not a nursery rhyme
+of my childhood that I've not heard for sixty years and more! I
+declare,' she added with innocent effrontery, 'I've not heard it since
+I was ten years old. And I was born in '37--the year----'
+
+'Just fancy!' he tried to stop her.
+
+'Queen Victoria came to the throne.'
+
+'Strange,' he said more to himself than to any one else. She did not
+contradict him.
+
+'You or me?' asked Monkey, who overheard.
+
+'All of us,' he answered. 'We all think the same things. It's a dream,
+I believe; the whole thing is a dream.'
+
+'It's a fact though,' said Miss Waghorn with decision, 'and now I must
+go and write my letters, and then finish a bit of lace I'm doing. You
+will excuse me?' She rose, made a little bow, and left the table.
+
+Mother watched her go. 'What _has_ come over the old lady?' she
+thought. 'She seems to be getting back her mind and memory too. How
+very odd!'
+
+
+In the afternoon Henry Rogers had been into Neuchatel. It seemed he
+had some business there of a rather private nature. He was very
+mysterious about it, evading several offers to accompany him, and
+after supper he retired early to his own room in the carpenter's
+house. And, since he now was the principal attraction, a sort of
+magnet that drew the train of younger folk into his neighbourhood, the
+Pension emptied, and the English family, deprived of their leader,
+went over to the Den.
+
+'Partir a l'anglaise,' laughed the Widow Jequier, as she saw them file
+away downstairs; and then she sighed. Some day, when the children were
+older and needed a different education, they would all go finally.
+Down these very stairs they would go into the street. She loved them
+for themselves, but, also, the English family was a permanent source
+of income to her, and the chief. They stayed on in the winter, when
+boarders were few and yet living expenses doubled. She sighed, and
+fluttered into her tiny room to take her finery off, finery that had
+once been worn in Scotland and had reached her by way of Cook and
+_la petite vitesse_ in the Magic Box.
+
+And presently she fluttered out again and summoned her sister. The
+Postmaster had gone to bed; the kitchen girl was washing up the last
+dishes; Miss Waghorn would hardly come down again. The salon was
+deserted.
+
+'Come, Anita,' she cried, yet with a hush of excitement in her voice,
+'we will have an evening of it. Bring the _soucoupe_ with you, while I
+prepare the little table.' In her greasy kitchen apron Anita came.
+Zizi, her boy, came with her. Madame Jequier, with her flowing garment
+that was tea-gown, garden-dress, and dressing-gown all in one, looked
+really like a witch, her dark hair all askew and her eyes shining with
+mysterious anticipation. 'We'll ask the spirits for help and
+guidance,' she said to herself, lest the boy should overhear. For Zizi
+often helped them with their amateur planchette, only they told him it
+was electricity: _le magnetisme_, _le fluide_, was the term they
+generally made use of. Its vagueness covered all possible explanations
+with just the needed touch of confusion and suggestion in it.
+
+They settled down in a corner of the room, where the ivy from the
+ceiling nearly touched their heads. The small round table was
+produced; the saucer, with an arrow pencilled on its edge, was
+carefully placed upon the big sheet of paper which bore the letters of
+the alphabet and the words _oui_ and _non_ in the corners. The light
+behind them was half veiled by ivy; the rest of the old room lay in
+comparative darkness; through the half-opened door a lamp shone upon
+the oil-cloth in the hall, showing the stains and the worn, streaked
+patches where the boards peeped through. The house was very still.
+
+They began with a little prayer--to _ceux qui ecoutent_,--and then
+each of them placed a finger on the rim of the upturned saucer,
+waiting in silence. They were a study in darkness, those three
+pointing fingers.
+
+'Zizi, tu as beaucoup de fluide ce soir, oui?' whispered the widow
+after a considerable interval.
+
+'Oh, comme d'habitude,' he shrugged his shoulders. He loved these
+mysterious experiments, but he never claimed much _fluide_ until the
+saucer moved, jealous of losing his reputation as a storehouse of
+this strange, human electricity.
+
+Yet behind this solemn ritual, that opened with prayer and invariably
+concluded with hope renewed and courage strengthened, ran the tragic
+element that no degree of comedy could kill. In the hearts of the two
+old women, ever fighting their uphill battle with adversity, burned
+the essence of big faith, the faith that plays with mountains. Hidden
+behind the curtain, an indulgent onlooker might have smiled, but tears
+would have wet his eyes before the smile could have broadened into
+laughter. Tante Jeanne, indeed, _had_ heard that the subconscious mind
+was held to account for the apparent intelligence that occasionally
+betrayed itself in the laboriously spelled replies; she even made use
+of the word from time to time to baffle Zizi's too importunate
+inquiries. But after _le subconscient_ she always tacked on _fluide_,
+_magnetisme_, or _electricite_ lest he should be frightened, or she
+should lose her way. And of course she held to her belief that spirits
+produced the phenomena. A subconscious mind was a cold and comfortless
+idea.
+
+And, as usual, the saucer told them exactly what they had desired to
+know, suggested ways and means that hid already in the mind of one or
+other, yet in stammered sentences that included just enough surprise
+or turn of phrase to confirm their faith and save their self-respect.
+It was their form of prayer, and with whole hearts they prayed.
+Moreover, they acted on what was told them. Had they discovered that
+it was merely the content of their subconscious mind revealing thus
+its little hopes and fears, they would have lost their chief support
+in life. God and religion would have suffered a damaging eclipse. Big
+scaffolding in their lives would have collapsed.
+
+Doubtless, Tante Jeanne did not knowingly push the saucer, neither did
+the weighty index finger of the concentrated cook deliberately exert
+muscular pressure. Nor, similarly, was Zizi aware that the weight of
+his entire hand helped to urge the dirty saucer across the slippery
+surface of the paper in whatever direction his elders thus indicated.
+But one and all knew 'subconsciously' the exact situation of
+consonants and vowels--that _oui_ lay in the right-hand corner and
+_non_ in the left. And neither Zizi nor his mother dared hint to their
+leader not to push, because she herself monopolised that phrase,
+saying repeatedly to them both, 'mais il ne faut _pas_ pousser!
+Legerement avec les doigts, toujours tres legerement! Sans ca il n'y a
+pas de valeur, tu comprends!' Zizi inserted an occasional electrical
+question. It was discreetly ignored always.
+
+They asked about the Bank payments, the mortgages, the future of their
+much-loved old house, and of themselves; and the answers, so vague
+concerning any detailed things to come, were very positive indeed
+about the Bank. They were to go and interview the Manager three days
+from now. They had already meant to go, only the date was undecided;
+the corroboration of the spirits was required to confirm it. This
+settled it. Three days from to-night!
+
+'Tu vois!' whispered Tante Jeanne, glancing mysteriously across the
+table at her sister. 'Three days from now! That explains your dream
+about the three birds. Aha, tu vois!' She leaned back, supremely
+satisfied. And the sister gravely bowed her head, while Zizi looked up
+and listened intently, without comprehension. He felt a little alarm,
+perhaps, to-night.
+
+For this night there _was_ indeed something new in the worn old
+ritual. There was a strange, uncalculated element in it all,
+unexpected, and fearfully thrilling to all three. Zizi for the first
+time had his doubts about its being merely electricity.
+
+'C'est d'une puissance extraordinaire,' was the widow's whispered,
+eager verdict.
+
+'C'est que j'ai enormement de fluide ce soir,' declared Zizi, with
+pride and confidence, yet mystified. The other two exchanged frequent
+glances of surprise, of wonder, of keen expectancy and anticipation.
+There was certainly a new 'influence' at work to-night. They even felt
+a touch of faint dread. The widow, her ruling passion strong even
+before the altar, looked down anxiously once or twice at her
+disreputable attire. It was vivid as that--this acute sense of another
+presence that pervaded the room, not merely hung about the little
+table. She could be 'invisible' to the Pension by the magic of old-
+established habit, but she could not be so to the true Invisibles. And
+they saw her in this unbecoming costume. She forgot, too, the need of
+keeping Zizi in the dark. He must know some day. What did it matter
+when?
+
+She tidied back her wandering hair with her free hand, and drew the
+faded garment more closely round her neck.
+
+'Are you cold?' asked her sister with a hush in her voice; 'you feel
+the cold air--all of a sudden?'
+
+'I do, _maman_,' Zizi answered. 'It's blowing like a wind across my
+hand. What is it?' He was shivering. He looked over his shoulder
+nervously.
+
+There was a heavy step in the hall, and a figure darkened the doorway.
+All three gave a start.
+
+'J'ai sommeil,' announced the deep voice of the Postmaster. This meant
+that the boy must come to bed. It was the sepulchral tone that made
+them jump perhaps. Zizi got up without a murmur; he was glad to go,
+really. He slept in the room with his parents. His father, an overcoat
+thrown over his night things, led him away without another word. And
+the two women resumed their seance. The saucer moved more easily and
+swiftly now that Zizi had gone. 'C'est done _toi_ qui as le fluide,'
+each said to the other.
+
+But in the excitement caused by this queer, new element in the
+proceedings, the familiar old routine was forgotten. Napoleon and
+Marie Antoinette were brushed aside to make room for this important
+personage who suddenly descended upon the saucer from an unknown star
+with the statement--it took half an hour to spell--'Je viens d'une
+etoile tres eloignee qui n'a pas encore de nom.'
+
+'There _is_ a starry light in the room. It was above your head just
+now,' whispered the widow, enormously excited. 'I saw it plainly.' She
+was trembling.
+
+'That explains the clouds in my dream,' was the tense reply, as they
+both peered round them into the shadows with a touch of awe. 'Now,
+give all your attention. This has an importance, but, you know, an
+importance--' She could not get the degree of importance into any
+words. She looked it instead, leaving the sentence eloquently
+incomplete.
+
+For, certainly, into the quaint ritual of these two honest, troubled
+old women there crept then a hint of something that was uncommon and
+uplifting. That it came through themselves is as sure as that it spelt
+out detailed phrases of encouragement and guidance with regard to
+their coming visit to the Bank. That they both were carried away by it
+into joy and the happiness of sincere relief of mind is equally a
+fact. That their receptive mood attuned them to overhear
+subconsciously messages of thought that flashed across the night from
+another mind in sympathy with their troubles--a mind hard at work that
+very moment in the carpenter's house--was not known to them; nor would
+it have brought the least explanatory comfort even if they had been
+told of it. They picked up these starry telegrams of unselfish
+thinking that flamed towards them through the midnight sky from an
+eager mind elsewhere busily making plans for their benefit. And,
+reaching them subconsciously, their deep subconsciousness urged the
+dirty saucer to the spelling of them, word by word and letter by
+letter. The flavour of their own interpretation, of course, crept in
+to mar, and sometimes to obliterate. The instruments were gravely
+imperfect. But the messages came through. And with them came the great
+feeling that the Christian calls answered prayer. They had such
+absolute faith. They had belief.
+
+'Go to the Bank. Help awaits you there. And I shall go with you to
+direct and guide.' This was the gist of that message from 'une etoile
+tres eloignee.'
+
+They copied it out in violet ink with a pen that scratched like the
+point of a pin. And when they stole upstairs to bed, long after
+midnight, there was great joy and certainty in their fighting old
+hearts. There was a perfume of flowers, of lilacs and wistaria in the
+air, as if the whole garden had slipped in by the back door and was
+unable to find its way out again. They dreamed of stars and starlight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+    La vie est un combat qu'ils ont change en fete.
+                    _Lei Elus_, E. VERHAIREN.
+
+The excitement a few days later spread through the village like a
+flame. People came out of their way to steal a glance at the Pension
+that now, for the first time in their--memory, was free of debt. Gygi,
+tolling the bell at _midi_, forgot to stop, as he peered through the
+narrow window in the church tower and watched the Widow Jequier
+planting and digging recklessly in her garden. Several came running
+down the street, thinking it was a warning of fire.
+
+But the secret was well kept; no one discovered who had worked the
+miracle. Pride sealed the lips of the beneficiaries themselves, while
+the inhabitants of the Citadelle, who alone shared the knowledge, kept
+the facts secret, as in honour bound. Every one wondered, however, for
+every one knew the sum ran into several thousand francs; and a
+thousand francs was a fortune; the rich man in the corner house, who
+owned so many vineyards, and was reputed to enjoy an income of ten
+thousand francs a year, was always referred to as 'le million naire.'
+And so the story spread that Madame Jequier had inherited a fortune,
+none knew whence. The tradespeople treated her thereafter with a
+degree of respect that sweetened her days till the end of life.
+
+She had come back from the Bank in a fainting condition, the sudden
+joy too much for her altogether. A remote and inaccessible air
+pervaded her, for all the red of her inflamed eyes and tears. She was
+aloof from the world, freed at last from the ceaseless, gnawing
+anxiety that for years had eaten her life out. The spirits had
+justified themselves, and faith and worship had their just reward. But
+this was only the first, immediate effect: it left her greater than it
+found her, this unexpected, huge relief--brimming with new sympathy
+for others. She doubled her gifts. She planned a wonderful new garden.
+That very night she ordered such a quantity of bulbs and seedlings
+that to this day they never have been planted.
+
+Her interview with Henry Rogers, when she called at the carpenter's
+house in all her finery, cannot properly be told, for it lay beyond
+his powers of description. Her sister accompanied her; the Postmaster,
+too, snatched fifteen minutes from his duties to attend. The ancient
+tall hat, worn only at funerals as a rule, was replaced by the black
+Trilby that had been his portion from the Magic Box, as he followed
+the excited ladies at a reasonable distance. 'You had better show
+yourself,' his wife suggested; 'Monsieur Rogairs would like to see you
+with us--to know that you are there.' Which meant that he was not to
+interfere with the actual thanksgiving, but to countenance the
+occasion with his solemn presence. And, indeed, he did not go
+upstairs. He paced the road beneath the windows during the interview,
+looking exactly like a professional mourner waiting for the arrival of
+the hearse.
+
+'My dear old friend--friends, I mean,' said Rogers in his fluent and
+very dreadful French, 'if you only knew what a pleasure it is to
+_me_--It is _I_ who should thank you for giving me the opportunity,
+not you who should thank me.' The sentence broke loose utterly,
+wandering among intricacies of grammar and subjunctive moods that took
+his breath away as he poured it out. 'I was only afraid you would
+think it unwarrantable interference. I am delighted that you let me do
+it. It's such a little thing to do.'
+
+Both ladies instantly wept. The Widow came closer with a little rush.
+Whether Rogers was actually embraced, or no, it is not stated
+officially.
+
+'It is a loan, of course, it is a loan,' cried the Widow.
+
+'It is a present,' he said firmly, loathing the scene.
+
+'It's a part repayment for all the kindness you showed me here as a
+boy years and years ago.' Then, remembering that the sister was not
+known to him in those far-away days, he added clumsily, 'and since--I
+came back.... And now let's say no more, but just keep the little
+secret to ourselves. It is nobody's business but our own.'
+
+'A present!' gasped both ladies to one another, utterly overcome; and
+finding nothing else to embrace, they flung their arms about each
+other's necks and praised the Lord and wept more copiously than
+ever.... 'Grand ciel' was heard so frequently, and so loudly, that
+Madame Michaud, the carpenter's wife, listening on the stairs, made up
+her mind it was a quarrel, and wondered if she ought to knock at the
+door and interfere.
+
+'I see your husband in the road,' said Rogers, tapping at the window.
+'I think he seems waiting for you. Or perhaps he has a telegram for
+me, do you think?' He bowed and waved his hand, smiling as the
+Postmaster looked up in answer to the tapping and gravely raised his
+Trilby hat.
+
+'There now, he's calling for you. Do not keep him waiting--I'm sure--'
+he didn't know what to say or how else to get them out. He opened the
+door. The farewells took some time, though they would meet an hour
+later at _dejeuner_ as usual.
+
+'At least you shall pay us no more _pension_,' was the final sentence
+as they flounced downstairs, so happy and excited that they nearly
+tumbled over each other, and sharing one handkerchief to dry their
+tears.
+
+'Then I shall buy my own food and cook it here,' he laughed, and
+somehow managed to close his door upon the retreating storm. Out of
+the window he saw the procession go back, the sombre figure of the
+Postmaster twenty yards behind the other two.
+
+And then, with joy in his heart, though a sigh of relief upon his
+lips--there may have been traces of a lump somewhere in his throat as
+well, but if so, he did not acknowledge it--he turned to his letters,
+and found among them a communication from Herbert Montmorency Minks,
+announcing that he had found an ideal site, and that it cost so and so
+much per acre--also that the County Council had made no difficulties.
+There was a hint, moreover--a general flavour of resentment and
+neglect at his master's prolonged absence--that it would not be a bad
+thing for the great Scheme if Mr. Rogers could see his way to return
+to London 'before very long.'
+
+'Bother the fellow!' thought he; 'what a nuisance he is, to be sure!'
+
+And he answered him at once. 'Do not trouble
+ about a site just yet,' he wrote; 'there is no hurry for the moment.'
+He made a rapid calculation in his head. He had paid those mortgages
+out of capital, and the sum represented just about the cost of the
+site Minks mentioned. But results were immediate. There was no loss,
+no waste in fees and permits and taxes. Each penny did its work.
+
+'There's the site gone, anyhow,' he laughed to himself. 'The
+foundation will go next, then the walls. But, at any rate, they needed
+it. The Commune Charity would have had 'em at the end of the month.
+They're my neighbours after all. And I must find out from them who
+else in the village needs a leg up. For these people are worth
+helping, and I can see exactly where every penny goes.'
+
+Bit by bit, as it would seem, the great Scheme for Disabled
+Thingumagigs was being undermined.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+    And those who were good shall be happy.
+      They shall sit in a golden chair;
+    They shall splash at a ten-league canvas
+      With brushes of comets' hair.
+    They shall have real saints to paint from--
+      Magdalene, Peter, and Paul;
+    They shall work for an age at a sitting
+      And never get tired at all.
+
+    And only the Master shall praise them,
+      And only the Master shall blame;
+    And no one shall work for money,
+      And no one shall work for fame;
+    But each for the joy of the working,
+      And each in his separate star,
+    Shall draw the thing as he sees it
+      For the God of things as they are,
+                             R. KIPLING.
+
+And meanwhile, as May ran laughing to meet June, an air of coloured
+wonder spread itself about the entire village. Rogers had brought it
+with him from that old Kentish garden somehow. His journey there had
+opened doors into a region of imagination and belief whence fairyland
+poured back upon his inner world, transfiguring common things. And
+this transfiguration he unwittingly put into others too. Through this
+very ordinary man swept powers that usually are left behind with
+childhood. The childhood aspect of the world invaded all who came in
+contact with him, enormous, radiant, sparkling, charged with questions
+of wonder and enchantment. And every one felt it according to their
+ability of reconstruction. Yet he himself had not the least idea that
+he did it all. It was a reformation, very tender, soft, and true.
+
+For wonder, of course, is the basis of all inquiry. Interpretation
+varies, facts remain the same; and to interpret is to recreate. Wonder
+leads to worship. It insists upon recreation, prerogative of all young
+life. The Starlight Express ran regularly every night, Jimbo having
+constructed a perfect time-table that answered all requirements, and
+was sufficiently elastic to fit instantly any scale that time and
+space demanded. Rogers and the children talked of little else, and
+their adventures in the daytime seemed curiously fed by details of
+information gleaned elsewhere.
+
+But where? The details welled up in one and all, though whence they
+came remained a mystery. 'I believe we dream a lot of it,' said Jimbo.
+'It's a lot of dreams we have at night, comme fa.' He had made a
+complete map of railway lines, with stations everywhere, in forests,
+sky, and mountains. He carried stations in his pocket, and just
+dropped one out of the carriage window whenever a passenger shouted,
+'Let's stop here.' But Monkey, more intellectual, declared it was 'all
+Cousinenry's invention and make-up,' although she asked more questions
+than all the others put together. Jinny, her sister, stared and
+listened with her puzzled, moth-like expression, while Mother watched
+and marvelled cautiously from a distance. In one and all, however, the
+famished sense of wonder interpreted life anew. It named the world
+afresh--the world of common things. It subdued the earth unto itself.
+What a mind creates it understands. Through the familiar these
+adventurers trace lines of discovery into the unfamiliar. They
+understood. They were up to their waists in wonder. There was still
+disorder, of course, in their great reconstruction, but that was where
+the exciting fun came in; for disorder involves surprise. Any moment
+out might pop the unexpected--event or person.
+
+Cousin Henry was easily leader now. While Daddy remained absorbed with
+his marvellous new story, enthusiastic and invisible, they ran about
+the world at the heels of this 'busy engineer,' as Jane Ann entitled
+him. He had long ago told them, with infinite and exaccurate detail,
+of his journey to the garden and his rediscovery of the sprites,
+forgotten during his twenty years of business life. And these sprites
+were as familiar to them now as those of their own childhood. They
+little knew that at night they met and talked with them. Daddy had put
+them all into the Wumble Book, achieving mediocre success with the
+rhymes, but amply atoning with the illustrations. The Woman of the
+Haystack was evidently a monster pure and simple, till Jinny announced
+that she merely had 'elephantitis,' and thus explained her
+satisfactorily. The Lamplighter, with shining feet, taking enormous
+strides from Neuchatel to a London slum, putting fire into eyes and
+hearts _en route_, thrilled them by his radiant speed and ubiquitous
+activity, while his doggerel left them coldly questioning. For the
+rhymes did _not_ commend themselves to their sense of what was proper
+in the use of words. His natural history left them unconvinced, though
+the anatomy of the drawing fascinated them.
+
+     He walked upon his toes
+     As softly as a saying does,
+     For so the saying goes.
+
+That he 'walked upon his toes' was all right, but that he 'walked
+softly as a saying' meant nothing, even when explained that 'thus the
+saying goes.'
+
+'Poor old Daddy,' was Jinny's judgment; 'he's got to write something.
+You see, he is an author. Some day he'll get his testimonial.'
+
+It was Cousin Henry who led them with a surer, truer touch. He always
+had an adventure up his sleeve--something their imaginations could
+accept and recreate. Each in their own way, they supplied
+interpretations as they were able.
+
+Every walk they took together furnished the germ of an adventure.
+
+'But I'm not exciting to-day,' he would object thirsting for a
+convincing compliment that should  persuade him to take them out. Only
+the compliment never came quite as he hoped.
+
+'Everybody's exciting somewhere,' said Monkey, leading the way and
+knowing he would follow. 'We'll go to the Wind Wood.'
+
+Jimbo took his hand then, and they went. Corners of the forest had
+names now, born of stories and adventures he had placed there--the
+Wind Wood, the Cuckoo Wood, where Daddy could not sleep because 'the
+beastly cuckoo made such a noise'; the Wood where Mother Fell, and so
+on. No walk was wholly unproductive.
+
+And so, one evening after supper, they escaped by the garden, crossed
+the field where the standing hay came to their waists, and climbed by
+forest paths towards the Wind Wood. It was a spot where giant pines
+stood thinly, allowing a view across the lake towards the Alps. The
+moss was thick and deep. Great boulders, covered with lichen, lay
+about, and there were fallen trees to rest the back against. Here he
+had told them once his vision of seeing the wind, and the name had
+stuck; for the story had been very vivid, and every time they felt the
+wind or heard it stirring in the tree-tops, they expected to see it
+too. There were blue winds, black winds, and winds--violent these--of
+purple and flaming scarlet.
+
+They lay down, and Cousinenry made a fire. The smoke went up in thin
+straight lines of blue, melting into the sky. The sun had set half an
+hour before, and the flush of gold and pink was fading into twilight.
+The glamour of Bourcelles dropped down upon all three. They ought to
+have been in bed--hence the particular enjoyment.
+
+'Are you getting excited now?' asked Monkey, nestling in against him.
+
+'Hush!' he said, 'can't you hear it coming?'
+
+'The excitement?' she inquired under her breath.
+
+'No, the Night. Keep soft and silent--if you can.'
+
+'Tell us, please, at once,' both children begged him instantly, for
+the beauty of the place and hour demanded explanation, and
+explanation, of course, must be in story or adventure form. The fire
+crackled faintly; the smell crept out like incense; the lines of smoke
+coiled upwards, and seemed to draw the tree-stems with them. Indeed
+they formed a pattern together, big thick trunks marking the uprights
+at the corners, and wavy smoke lines weaving a delicate structure in
+between them. It was a kind of growing, moving scaffolding. Saying
+nothing, Cousin Henry pointed to it with his finger. He traced its
+general pattern for them in the air.
+
+'That's the Scaffolding of the Night beginning,' he whispered
+presently, feeling adventure press upon him.
+
+'Oh, I say,' said Jimbo, sitting up, and pretending as usual more
+comprehension than he actually possessed. But his sister instantly
+asked, 'What is it--the Scaffolding of the Night? A sort of cathedral,
+you mean?'
+
+How she divined his thought, and snatched it from his mind always,
+this nimble-witted child! His germ developed with a bound at once.
+
+'More a palace than a cathedral,' he whispered. 'Night is a palace,
+and has to be built afresh each time. Twilight rears the scaffolding
+first, then hangs the Night upon it. Otherwise the darkness would
+simply fall in lumps, and lie about in pools and blocks, unfinished--a
+ruin instead of a building. Everything must have a scaffolding first.
+Look how beautifully it's coming now,' he added, pointing, 'each
+shadow in its place, and all the lines of grey and black fitting
+exaccurately together like a skeleton. Have you never noticed it
+before?'
+
+Jimbo, of course, _had_ noticed it, his manner gave them to
+understand, but had not thought it worth while mentioning until his
+leader drew attention to it.
+
+'Just as trains must have rails to run on,' he explained across
+Cousinenry's intervening body to Monkey, 'or else there'd be accidents
+and things all the time.'
+
+'And night would be a horrid darkness like a plague in Egypt,' she
+supposed, adroitly defending herself and helping her cousin at the
+same time. 'Wouldn't it?' she added, as the shadows drew magically
+nearer from the forest and made the fire gradually grow brighter. The
+children snuggled closer to their cousin's comforting bulk, shivering
+a little. The woods went whispering together. Night shook her velvet
+skirts out.
+
+'Yes, everything has its pattern,' he answered, 'from the skeleton of
+a child or a universe to the outline of a thought. Even a dream must
+have its scaffolding,' he added, feeling their shudder and leading it
+towards fun and beauty. 'Insects, birds, and animals all make little
+scaffoldings with their wee emotions, especially kittens and
+butterflies. Engine-drivers too,' for he felt Jimbo's hand steal into
+his own and go to sleep there, 'but particularly little beasties that
+live in holes under stones and in fields.
+
+     When a little mouse in wonder
+     Flicks its whiskers at the thunder,
+
+it makes a tiny scaffolding behind which it hides in safety,
+shuddering. Same with Daddy's stories. Thinking and feeling does the
+trick. Then imagination comes and builds it up solidly with bricks and
+wall-papers....'
+
+He told them a great deal more, but it cannot be certain that they
+heard it all, for there were other Excitements about besides their
+cousin--the fire, the time, the place, and above all, this marvellous
+coming of the darkness. They caught words here and there, but Thought
+went its own independent way with each little eager mind. He had
+started the machinery going, that was all. Interpretation varied;
+facts remained the same. And meanwhile twilight brought the
+Scaffolding of Night before their eyes.
+
+'You can see the lines already,' he murmured sleepily, 'like veins
+against the sunset.... Look!'
+
+All saw the shadowy slim rafters slip across the paling sky, mapping
+its emptiness with intricate design. Like an enormous spider's web of
+fine dark silk it bulged before the wind. The trellis-work, slung from
+the sky, hung loose. It moved slowly, steadily, from east to west,
+trailing grey sheets of dusk that hung from every filament. The maze
+of lines bewildered sight. In all directions shot the threads of
+coming darkness, spun from the huge body of Night that still hid
+invisible below the horizon.
+
+'They're fastening on to everything ... look!' whispered Cousin Henry,
+kicking up a shower of sparks with his foot. 'The Pattern's being made
+before your eyes! Don't you see the guy ropes?'
+
+And they saw it actually happen. From the summits of the distant Alps
+ran filmy lines of ebony that knotted themselves on to the crests of
+the pines beside them. There were so many no eye could follow them.
+They flew and darted everywhere, dropping like needles from the sky
+itself, sewing the tent of darkness on to the main supports, and
+threading the starlight as they came. Night slowly brought her beauty
+and her mystery upon the world. The filmy pattern opened. There was a
+tautness in the lines that made one feel they would twang with
+delicate music if the wind swept its hand more rapidly across them.
+And now and again all vibrated, each line making an ellipse between
+its fastened ends, then gradually settling back to its thin, almost
+invisible bed. Cables of thick, elastic darkness steadied them.
+
+How much of it all the children realised themselves, or how much
+flashed into them from their cousin's mind, is of course a thing not
+even a bat can tell.
+
+'Is that why bats fly in such a muddle? Like a puzzle?'
+
+'Of course,' he said. The bats were at last explained.
+
+They built their little pictures for themselves. No living being can
+lie on the edge of a big pine forest when twilight brings the darkness
+without the feeling that everything becomes too wonderful for words.
+The children as ever fed his fantasy, while he thought he did it all
+himself. Dusk wore a shroud to entangle the too eager stars, and make
+them stay.
+
+'I never noticed it before,' murmured Monkey against his coat sleeve.
+'Does it happen every night like this?'
+
+'You only see it if you look very closely,' was the low reply. 'You
+must think hard, very hard. The more you think, the more you'll see.'
+
+'But really,' asked Jimbo, 'it's only--_crepuscule, comme ca,_ isn't
+it?' And his fingers tightened on his leader's hand.
+
+'Dusk, yes,' answered Cousin Henry softly, 'only dusk. But people
+everywhere are watching it like ourselves, and thinking feather
+thoughts. You can see the froth of stars flung up over the crest of
+Night. People are watching it from windows and fields and country
+roads everywhere, wondering what makes it so beautiful. It brings
+yearnings and long, long desires. Only a few like ourselves can see
+the lines of scaffolding, but everybody who thinks about it, and loves
+it, makes it more real for others to see, too. Daddy's probably
+watching it too from his window.'
+
+'I wonder if Jinny ever sees it,' Monkey asked herself.
+
+But Jimbo knew. 'She's in it,' he decided. 'She's always in places
+like that; that's where she lives.'
+
+The children went on talking to each other under their breath, and
+while they did so Cousin Henry entered their little wondering minds.
+Or, perhaps, they entered his. It is difficult to say. Not even an
+owl, who is awfully wise about everything to do with night and
+darkness, could have told for certain. But, anyhow, they all three saw
+more or less the same thing. The way they talked about it afterwards
+proves that. Their minds apparently merged, or else there was one big
+mirror and two minor side-reflections of it. It was their cousin's
+interpretation, at any rate, that they remembered later. They brought
+the material for his fashioning.
+
+'Look!' cried Monkey, sitting up, 'there are millions and millions
+now--lines everywhere--pillars and squares and towers. It's like a
+city. I can see lamps in every street----'
+
+'That's stars,' interrupted Jimbo. The stars indeed were peeping here
+and there already. 'I feel up there,' he added, 'my inside, I mean--up
+among the stars and lines and sky-things.'
+
+'That's the mind wandering,' explained the eldest child of the three.
+'Always follow a wandering mind. It's quite safe. Mine's going
+presently too. We'll all go off together.'
+
+Several little winds, released by darkness, passed them just then on
+their way out of the forest. They gathered half a dozen sparks from
+the fire to light them on their way, and brought cool odours with them
+from the deepest recesses of the trees--perfumes no sunlight ever
+finds. And just behind them came a big white moth, booming and
+whirring softly. It darted to and fro to find the trail, then
+vanished, so swiftly that no one saw it go.
+
+'He's pushing it along,' said Jimbo.
+
+'Or fastening the lines,' his sister thought, 'you see he hovers in
+one place, then darts over to another.'
+
+'That's fastening the knots,' added Jimbo.
+
+'No; he's either an Inspector or a Pathfinder,' whispered Cousin
+Henry, 'I don't know exactly which. They show the way the scaffolding
+goes. Moths, bats, and owls divide the work between them somehow.' He
+sat up suddenly to listen, and the children sat up with him. 'Hark!'
+he added, 'do you hear that?'
+
+Sighings and flutterings rose everywhere about them, and overhead the
+fluffy spires of the tree-tops all bent one way as the winds went
+foraging across the night. Majestically the scaffolding reared up and
+towered through the air, while sheets of darkness hung from every
+line, and trailed across the earth like gigantic sails from some
+invisible vessel. Loose and enormous they gradually unfolded, then
+suddenly swung free and dropped with a silent dip and rush. Night
+swooped down upon the leagues of Jura forest. She spread her tent
+across the entire range.
+
+The threads were fastened everywhere now, and the uprights all in
+place. Moths were busy in all directions, showing the way, while bats
+by the dozen darted like black lightning from corner to corner, making
+sure that every spar and beam was fixed and steady. So exquisitely
+woven was the structure that it moved past them overhead without the
+faintest sound, yet so frail and so elastic that the whirring of the
+moths sent ripples of quivering movement through the entire framework.
+
+'Hush!' murmured Rogers, 'we're properly inside it now. Don't think of
+anything in particular. Just follow your wandering minds and wait.'
+The children lay very close against him. He felt their warmth and the
+breathing of their little bosoms. All three moved sympathetically
+within the rhythm of the dusk. The 'inside' of each went floating up
+into the darkening sky.
+
+The general plan of the scaffolding they clearly made out as they
+passed among its myriad, mile-long rafters, but the completed temple,
+of course, they never saw. Black darkness hides that ever. Night's
+secret mystery lies veiled finally in its innermost chamber, whence it
+steals forth to enchant the mind of men with its strange bewilderment.
+But the Twilight Scaffolding they saw clearly enough to make a map of
+it. For Daddy afterwards drew it from their description, and gave it
+an entire page in the Wumble Book, Monkey ladling on the colour with
+her camel's-hair brush as well as she could remember.
+
+It was a page to take the breath away, the big conception blundering
+clumsily behind the crude reconstruction. Great winds formed the base,
+winds of brown and blue and purple, piled mountainously upon each
+other in motionless coils, and so soft that the upright columns of the
+structure plunged easily and deeply into them. Thus the framework
+could bend and curve and sway, moving with steady glide across the
+landscape, yet never collapsing nor losing its exquisite proportions.
+The forests shored it up, its stays and bastions were the Jura
+precipices; it rested on the shoulders of the hills. From vineyard,
+field, and lake vast droves of thick grey shadows trooped in to
+curtain the lower halls of the colossal edifice, as chamber after
+chamber disappeared from view and Night clothed the structure from the
+ground-floors upwards. And far overhead a million tiny scarves, half
+sunset and half dusk, wove into little ropes that lashed the topmost
+spars together, dovetailing them neatly, and fastening them at last
+with whole clusters of bright thin stars.
+
+'Ohhhhh!' breathed Jimbo with a delicious shudder of giddiness. 'Let's
+climb to the very tip and see all the trains and railway stations in
+the world!'
+
+'Wait till the moon comes up and puts the silver rivets in,' the
+leader whispered. 'It'll be safer then. My weight, you know--'
+
+'There she is!' interrupted Monkey with a start, 'and there's no such
+thing as weight--'
+
+For the moon that instant came up, it seemed with a rush, and the line
+of distant Alps moved forward, blocked vividly against the silvery
+curtain that she brought. Her sight ran instantly about the world.
+Between the trees shot balls of yellowish white, unfolding like ribbon
+as they rolled. They splashed the rocks and put shining pools in the
+hollows among the moss. Spangles shone on Monkey's hair and eyes;
+skins and faces all turned faintly radiant. The lake, like a huge
+reflector, flashed its light up into the heavens. The moon laid a
+coating of her ancient and transfiguring paint upon the enormous
+structure, festooning the entire sky. 'She's put the silver rivets
+in,' said Jimbo.
+
+'Now we can go,' whispered Rogers, 'only, remember, it's a giddy
+business, rather.'
+
+All three went fluttering after it, floating, rising, falling, like
+fish that explore a sunken vessel in their own transparent medium. The
+elastic structure bore them easily as it swung along. Its enormous
+rhythm lulled their senses with a deep and drowsy peace, and as they
+climbed from storey to storey it is doubtful if the children caught
+their leader's words at all. There were no echoes--the spaces were too
+vast for that--and they swung away from spar to spar, and from rafter
+to rafter, as easily as acrobats on huge trapezes. Jimbo and Monkey
+shot upwards into space.
+
+'I shall explore the lower storeys first,' he called after them, his
+words fluttering in feathers of sound far up the vault. 'Keep the fire
+in sight to guide you home again ...' and he moved slowly towards the
+vast ground-floor chambers of the Night. Each went his independent way
+along the paths of reverie and dream. He found himself alone.
+
+For he could not soar and float as they did; he kept closer to the
+earth, wandering through the under chambers of the travelling building
+that swung its way over vineyards, woods, and village roofs. He kept
+more in touch with earth than they did. The upper sections where the
+children climbed went faster than those lower halls and galleries, so
+that the entire framework bent over, breaking ever into a crest of
+foaming stars. But in these under halls where he stood and watched
+there was far less movement. From century to century these remained
+the same. Between the bases of the mighty columns he watched the wave
+of darkness drown the world, leading it with a rush of silence towards
+sleep. For the children Night meant play and mischief; for himself it
+meant graver reverie....
+
+These were the chambers, clearly, of ancestral sleep and dream: they
+seemed so familiar and well known. Behind him blinked the little
+friendly fire in the forest, link with the outer world he must not
+lose. He would find the children there when he went back, lively from
+their scamper among the stars; and, meanwhile, he was quite content to
+wander down these corridors in the floor of Night and taste their deep
+repose. For years he had not visited or known them. The children had
+led him back, although he did not realise it. He believed, on the
+contrary, that it was he who led and they who followed. For true
+leadership is ever inspired, making each follower feel that he goes
+first and of his own free will....
+
+'Jimbo, you flickery sprite, where are you now?' he called, suddenly
+noticing how faint the little fire had grown with distance.
+
+A lonely wind flew down upon him with a tiny shout:
+
+'Up here, at the very top, with Daddy. He's making notes in a tower-
+room all by himself!'
+
+Rogers could not believe his ears. Daddy indeed!
+
+'Is Monkey with you? And is she safe?'
+
+'She's helping Daddy balance. The walls aren't finished, and he's on a
+fearful ledge. He's after something or other for his story, he says.'
+
+It seemed impossible. Daddy skylarking on the roof of Night, and
+making notes! Yet with a moment's reflection the impossibility
+vanished; surprise went after it; it became natural, right, and true.
+Daddy, of course, sitting by his window in the carpenter's house, had
+seen the Twilight Scaffolding sweep past and had climbed into it. Its
+beauty had rapt him out and away. In the darkness his mind wandered,
+too, gathering notes subconsciously for his wonderful new story.
+
+'Come down here to me,' he cried, as a man cries in his sleep, making
+no audible sound. 'There's less risk among the foundations.' And down
+came Daddy with an immediate rush. He arrived in a bundle, then
+straightened up. The two men stood side by side in these subterraneans
+of the night.
+
+'You!' whispered Rogers, trying to seize his hand, while the other
+evaded him, hiding behind a shadow.
+
+'Don't touch me,' he murmured breathlessly. 'You'll scatter my train
+of thought. Think of something else at once, please....' He moved into
+thicker shadows, half disappearing. 'I'm after something that suddenly
+occurred to me for my story.'
+
+'What is it? I'll think it with you,' his cousin called after him.
+'You'll see it better if I do. Tell me.'
+
+'A train that carries Thought, as this darkness carries stars--a
+starlight express,' was the quick reply, 'and a cavern where lost
+starlight gathers till it's wanted-sort of terminus of the railway.
+They belong to the story somewhere if only I can find them and fit
+them in. Starlight binds all together as thought and sympathy bind
+minds....'
+
+Rogers thought hard about them. Instantly his cousin vanished.
+
+'Thank you,' ran a faint whisper among the pillars; 'I'm on their
+trail again now. I must go up again. I can see better from the top,'
+and the voice grew fainter and higher and further off with each word
+till it died away completely into silence. Daddy went chasing his
+inspiration through the scaffolding of reverie and dream.
+
+'We did something for him the other night after all, then,' thought
+Rogers with delight.
+
+'Of course,' dropped down a wee, faint answer from above, as the
+author heard him thinking; 'you did a lot. I'm partly out at last.
+This is where all the Patterns hide. Awake, I only get their dim
+reflections, broken and distorted. This is reality, not that. Ha, ha!
+If only I can get it through, my lovely, beautiful pattern--'
+
+'You will, you will,' cried the other, as the voice went fluttering
+through space. 'Ask the children. Jimbo and Monkey are up there
+somewhere. They're the safest guides.'
+
+Rogers gave a gulp and found that he was coughing. His feet were cold.
+A shudder ran across the feathery structure, making it tremble from
+the foundations to the forest of spires overhead. Jimbo came sliding
+down a pole of gleaming ebony. In a hammock of beams and rafters,
+swinging like a network of trapezes, Monkey swooped down after him,
+head first as usual. For the moon that moment passed behind a cloud,
+and the silver rivets started from their shadowy sockets. Clusters of
+star nails followed suit. The palace bent and tottered like a falling
+wave. Its pillars turned into trunks of pine trees; its corridors were
+spaces through the clouds; its chambers were great dips between the
+mountain summits.
+
+'It's going too fast for sight,' thought Rogers; 'I can't keep up with
+it. Even the children have toppled off.' But he still heard Daddy's
+laughter echoing down the lanes of darkness as he chased his pattern
+with yearning and enthusiasm.
+
+The huge structure with its towers and walls and platforms slid softly
+out of sight. The moonlight sponged its outlines from the sky. The
+scaffolding melted into darkness, moving further westwards as night
+advanced. Already it was over France and Italy, sweeping grandly
+across the sea, bewildering the vessels in its net of glamour, and
+filling with wonder the eyes of the look-out men at the mast heads.
+
+'The fire's going out,' a voice was saying. Rogers heard it through a
+moment's wild confusion as he fell swiftly among a forest of rafters,
+beams, and shifting uprights.
+
+'I'll get more wood.'
+
+The words seemed underground. A mountain wind rose up and brought the
+solid world about him. He felt chilly, shivered, and opened his eyes.
+There stood the solemn pine trees, thick and close; moonlight flooded
+the spaces between them and lit their crests with silver.
+
+'This is the Wind Wood,' he remarked aloud to reassure himself.
+
+Jimbo was bending over the fire, heaping on wood. Flame leaped up with
+a shower of sparks. He saw Monkey rubbing her eyes beside him.
+
+'I've had a dream of falling,' she was saying, as she snuggled down
+closer into his side.
+
+'_I_ didn't,' Jimbo said. 'I dreamed of a railway accident, and
+everybody was killed except one passenger, who was Daddy. It fell off
+a high bridge. We found Daddy in the _fourgon_ with the baggages,
+writing a story and laughing--making an awful row.'
+
+'What did _you_ dream, Cousinenry?' asked Monkey, peering into his
+eyes in the firelight.
+
+'That my feet were cold, because the fire had gone out,' he answered,
+trying in vain to remember whether he had dreamed anything at all.
+'And--that it's time to go home. I hear the curfew ringing.'
+
+Some one whistled softly. They ought to have been in bed an hour ago.
+
+It was ten o'clock, and Gygi was sounding the _couvre feu_ from the
+old church tower. They put the fire out and walked home arm in arm,
+separating with hushed good-nights in the courtyard of the Citadelle.
+But Rogers did not hear the scolding Mother gave them when they
+appeared at the Den door, for he went on at once to his own room in
+the carpenter's house, with the feeling that he had lived always in
+Bourcelles, and would never leave it again. His Scheme had moved
+bodily from London to the forest.
+
+And on the way upstairs he peeped a moment into his cousin's room,
+seeing a light beneath the door. The author was sitting beside the
+open window with the lamp behind him and a note-book on his knees.
+Moonlight fell upon his face. He was sound asleep.
+
+'I won't wake him,' thought his cousin, going out softly again. 'He's
+dreaming--dreaming of his wonderful new story probably.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+     Even as a luminous haze links star to star,
+     I would supply all chasms with music, breathing
+     Mysterious motions of the soul, no way
+     To be defined save in strange melodies.
+                  _Paracelsus_, R. BROWNING.
+
+Daddy's story, meanwhile, continued to develop itself with wonder and
+enthusiasm. It was unlike anything he had ever written. His other
+studies had the brilliance of dead precious stones, perhaps, but this
+thing moved along with a rushing life of its own. It grew, fed by
+sources he was not aware of. It developed of itself--changed and lived
+and flashed. Some creative fairy hand had touched him while he slept
+perhaps. The starry sympathy poured through him, and he thought with
+his feelings as well as with his mind.
+
+At first he was half ashamed of it; the process was so new and
+strange; he even attempted to conceal his method, because he could not
+explain or understand it. 'This is emotional, not intellectual,' he
+sighed to himself; 'it must be second childhood. I'm old. They'll call
+it decadent!' Presently, however, he resigned himself to the delicious
+flow of inspiration, and let it pour out till it flowed over into his
+daily life as well. Through his heart it welled up and bubbled forth,
+a thing of children, starlight, woods, and fairies.
+
+Yet he was shy about it. He would talk about the story, but would not
+read it out. 'It's a new _genre_ for me,' he explained shyly, 'an
+attempt merely. We'll see what comes of it. My original idea, you see,
+has grown out of hand rather. I wake every morning with something
+fresh, as though'--he hesitated a moment, glancing towards his wife--
+'as if it came to me in sleep,' he concluded. He felt her common sense
+might rather despise him for it.
+
+'Perhaps it does,' said Rogers.
+
+'Why not?' said Mother, knitting on the sofa that was her bed at
+night.
+
+She had put her needles down and was staring at her husband; he stared
+at Rogers; all three stared at each other. Something each wished to
+conceal moved towards utterance and revelation. Yet no one of them
+wished to be the first to mention it. A great change had come of late
+upon Bourcelles. It no longer seemed isolated from the big world
+outside as before; something had linked it up with the whole
+surrounding universe, and bigger, deeper currents of life flowed
+through it. And with the individual life of each it was the same. All
+dreamed the same enormous, splendid dream, yet dared not tell it--yet.
+
+Both parents realised vaguely that it was something their visitor had
+brought, but what could it be exactly? It was in his atmosphere, he
+himself least of all aware of it; it was in his thought, his attitude
+to life, yet he himself so utterly unconscious of it. It brought out
+all the best in everybody, made them feel hopeful, brighter, more
+courageous. Yes, certainly, _he,_ brought it. He believed in them, in
+the best of them--they lived up to it or tried to. Was that it? Was it
+belief and vision that he brought into their lives, though
+unconsciously, because these qualities lay so strongly in himself?
+Belief is constructive. It is what people _are_ rather than what they
+preach that affects others. Two strangers meet and bow and separate
+without a word, yet each has changed; neither leaves the other quite
+as he was before. In the society of children, moreover, one believes
+everything in the world--for the moment. Belief is constructive and
+creative; it is doubt and cynicism that destroy. In the presence of a
+child these latter are impossible. Was this the explanation of the
+effect he produced upon their little circle--the belief and wonder and
+joy of Fairyland?
+
+For a moment something of this flashed through Daddy's mind. Mother,
+in her way, was aware of something similar. But neither of them spoke
+it. The triangular staring was its only evidence. Mother resumed her
+knitting. She was not given to impulsive utterance. Her husband once
+described her as a solid piece of furniture. She was.
+
+'You see,' said Daddy bravely, as the moment's tension passed, 'my
+original idea was simply to treat Bourcelles as an epitome, a
+miniature, so to speak, of the big world, while showing how Nature
+sweetened and kept it pure as by a kind of alchemy. But that idea has
+grown. I have the feeling now that the Bourcelles we know is a mere
+shadowy projection cast by a more real Bourcelles behind. It is only
+the dream village we know in our waking life. The real one--er--we
+know only in sleep.' There!--it was partly out!
+
+Mother turned with a little start. 'You mean when we sleep?' she
+asked. She knitted vigorously again at once, as though ashamed of this
+sudden betrayal into fantasy. 'Why not?' she added, falling back upon
+her customary non-committal phrase. Yet this was not the superior
+attitude he had dreaded; she was interested. There was something she
+wanted to confess, if she only dared. Mother, too, had grown softer in
+some corner of her being. Something shone through her with a tiny
+golden radiance.
+
+'But this idea is not my own,' continued Daddy, dangerously near to
+wumbling. 'It comes _through_ me only. It develops, apparently, when
+I'm asleep,' he repeated. He sat up and leaned forward. 'And, I
+believe,' he added, as on sudden reckless impulse, 'it comes from you,
+Henry. Your mind, I feel, has brought this cargo of new suggestion and
+discharged it into me--into every one--into the whole blessed village.
+Man, I think you've bewitched us all!'
+
+Mother dropped a stitch, so keenly was she listening. A moment later
+she dropped a needle too, and the two men picked it up, and handed it
+back together as though it weighed several pounds.
+
+'Well,' said Rogers slowly, 'I suppose all minds pour into one another
+somewhere--in and out of one another, rather--and that there's a
+common stock or pool all draw upon according to their needs and power
+to assimilate. But I'm not conscious, old man, of driving anything
+deliberately into you--'
+
+'Only you think and feel these things vividly enough for me to get
+them too,' said Daddy. Luckily 'thought transference' was not actually
+mentioned, or Mother might have left the room, or at least have
+betrayed an uneasiness that must have chilled them.
+
+'As a boy I imagined pretty strongly,' in a tone of apology, 'but
+never since. I was in the City, remember, twenty years--'
+
+'It's the childhood things, then,' Daddy interrupted eagerly. 'You've
+brought the great childhood imagination with you--the sort of
+gorgeous, huge, and endless power that goes on fashioning of its own
+accord just as dreams do--'
+
+'I _did,_ indulge in that sort of thing as a boy, yes,' was the half-
+guilty reply; 'but that was years and years ago, wasn't it?'
+
+'They have survived, then,' said Daddy with decision. 'The sweetness
+of this place has stimulated them afresh. The children'--he glanced
+suspiciously at his wife for a moment--'have appropriated them too.
+It's a powerful combination. After a pause he added, 'I might develop
+that idea in my story--that you've brought back the sweet creations of
+childhood with you and captured us all--a sort of starry army.'
+
+'Why not?' interpolated Mother, as who should say there was no harm in
+_that_. 'They certainly have been full of mischief lately.'
+
+'Creation _is_ mischievous,' murmured her husband. 'But since you have
+come,' he continued aloud,--'how can I express it exactly?--the days
+have seemed larger, fuller, deeper, the forest richer and more
+mysterious, the sky much closer, and the stars more soft and intimate.
+I dream of them, and they all bring me messages that help my story. Do
+you know what I mean? There were days formerly, when life seemed
+empty, thin, peaked, impoverished, its scale of values horribly
+reduced, whereas now--since you've been up to your nonsense with the
+children--some tide stands at the full, and things are always
+happening.'
+
+'Well, really, Daddy!' said the expression on Mother's face and hands
+and knitting-needles, 'you _are_ splendid to-day'; but aloud she only
+repeated her little hold-all phrase, 'Why not?'
+
+Yet somehow he recognised that she understood him better than usual.
+Her language had not changed--things in Mother worked slowly, from
+within outwards as became her solid personality--but it held new
+meaning. He felt for the first time that he could make her understand,
+and more--that she was ready to understand. That is, he felt new
+sympathy with her. It was very delightful, stimulating; he instantly
+loved her more, and felt himself increased at the same time.
+
+'I believe a story like that might even sell,' he observed, with a
+hint of reckless optimism. 'People might recognise a touch of their
+own childhood in it, eh?'
+
+He longed for her to encourage him and pat him on the back.
+
+'True,' said Mother, smiling at him, 'for every one likes to keep in
+touch with their childhood--if they can. It makes one feel young and
+hopeful--jolly; doesn't it? Why not?'
+
+Their eyes met. Something, long put aside and buried under a burden of
+exaggerated care, flashed deliciously between them. Rogers caught it
+flying and felt happy. Bridges were being repaired, if not newly
+built.
+
+'Nature, you see, is always young really,' he said; 'it's full of
+children. The very meaning of the word, eh, John?' turning to his
+cousin as who should say, 'We knew our grammar once.'
+
+'_Natura_, yes--something about to produce.' They laughed in their
+superior knowledge of a Latin word, but Mother, stirred deeply though
+she hardly knew why, was not to be left out. Would the bridge bear
+her, was perhaps her thought.
+
+'And of the feminine gender,' she added slyly, with a touch of pride.
+The bridge creaked, but did not give way. She said it very quickly.
+She had suddenly an air of bouncing on her sofa.
+
+'Bravo, Mother,' said her husband, looking at her, and there was a
+fondness in his voice that warmed and blessed and melted down into
+her. She had missed it so long that it almost startled her. 'There's
+the eternal old magic, Mother; you're right. And if I had more of you
+in me--more of the creative feminine--I should do better work, I'm
+sure. You must give it to me.'
+
+She kept her eyes upon her needles. The others, being unobservant
+'mere men,' did not notice that the stitches she made must have
+produced queer kind of stockings if continued. 'We'll be
+collaborators,' Daddy added, in the tone of a boy building on the
+sands at Margate.
+
+'I will,' she said in a low voice, 'if only I know how.'
+
+'Well,' he answered enthusiastically, looking from one to the other,
+delighted to find an audience to whom he could talk of his new dream,
+'you see, this is really a great jolly fairy-tale I'm trying to write.
+I'm blessed if I know where the ideas come from, or how they pour into
+me like this, but--anyhow it's a new experience, and I want to make
+the most of it. I've never done imaginative work before, and--though
+it is a bit fantastical, mean to keep in touch with reality and show
+great truths that emerge from the commonest facts of life. The
+critics, of course, will blame me for not giving 'em the banal thing
+they expect from me, but what of that?' He was dreadfully reckless.
+
+'I see,' said Mother, gazing open-mindedly into his face; 'but where
+does _my_ help come in, please?'
+
+She leaned back, half-sighing, half-smiling. 'Here's my life'--she
+held up her needles--'and that's the soul of prosaic dulness, isn't
+it?'
+
+'On the contrary,' he answered eagerly, 'it's reality. It's courage,
+patience, heroism. You're a spring-board for my fairy-tale, though I'd
+never realised it before. I shall put you in, just as you are. You'll
+be one of the earlier chapters.'
+
+'Every one'll skip me, then, I'm afraid.'
+
+'Not a bit,' he laughed gaily; 'they'll feel you all through the book.
+Their minds will rest on you. You'll be a foundation. "Mother's
+there," they'll say, "so it's all right. This isn't nonsense. We'll
+read on." And they will read on.'
+
+'I'm all through it, then?'
+
+'Like the binding that mothers the whole book, you see,' put in
+Rogers, delighted to see them getting on so well, yet amazed to hear
+his cousin talk so openly with her of his idea.
+
+Daddy continued, unabashed and radiant. Hitherto, he knew, his wife's
+attitude, though never spoken, had been very different. She almost
+resented his intense preoccupation with stories that brought in so
+little cash. It would have been better if he taught English or gave
+lessons in literature for a small but regular income. He gave too much
+attention to these unremunerative studies of types she never met in
+actual life. She was proud of the reviews, and pasted them neatly in a
+big book, but his help and advice on the practical details of the
+children's clothing and education were so scanty. Hers seemed ever the
+main burden.
+
+Now, for the first time, though she distrusted fantasy and deemed it
+destructive of action, she felt something real. She listened with a
+kind of believing sympathy. She noticed, moreover, with keen pleasure,
+that her attitude fed him. He talked so freely, happily about it all.
+Already her sympathy, crudely enough expressed, brought fuel to his
+fires. Some one had put starlight into her.
+
+'He's been hungry for this all along,' she reflected; 'I never
+realised it. I've thought only of myself without knowing it.'
+
+'Yes, I'll put you in, old Mother,' he went on, 'and Rogers and the
+children too. In fact, you're in it already,' he chuckled, 'if you
+want to know. Each of you plays his part all day long without knowing
+it.' He changed his seat, going over to the window-sill, and staring
+down upon them as he talked on eagerly. 'Don't you feel,' he said,
+enthusiasm growing and streaming from him, 'how all this village life
+is a kind of dream we act out against the background of the sunshine,
+while our truer, deeper life is hidden somewhere far below in half
+unconsciousness? Our daily doings are but the little bits that emerge,
+tips of acts and speech that poke up and out, masquerading as
+complete? In that vaster sea of life we lead below the surface lies my
+big story, my fairy-tale--when we sleep.' He paused and looked down
+questioningly upon them. 'When we sleep,' he repeated impressively,
+struggling with his own thought. 'You, Mother, while you knit and sew,
+slip down into that enormous under-sea and get a glimpse of the
+coloured pictures that pass eternally behind the veil. I do the same
+when I watch the twilight from my window in reverie. Sunshine
+obliterates them, but they go just the same. _You_ call it day-
+dreaming. Our waking hours are the clothes we dress the spirit in
+after its nightly journeys and activities. Imagination does not create
+so much as remember. Then, by transforming, it reveals.'
+
+Mother sat staring blankly before her, utterly lost, while her husband
+flung these lumps of the raw material of his story at her--of its
+atmosphere, rather. Even Rogers felt puzzled, and hardly followed what
+he heard. The intricacies of an artistic mind were indeed bewildering.
+How in the world would these wild fragments weave together into any
+intelligible pattern?
+
+'You mean that we travel when we sleep,' he ventured, remembering a
+phrase that Minks had somewhere used, 'and that our real life is out
+of the body?' His cousin was taking his thought---or was it originally
+Minks's?--wholesale.
+
+Mother looked up gratefully. 'I often dream I'm flying,' she put in
+solemnly. 'Lately, in particular, I've dreamed of stars and funny
+things like that a lot.'
+
+Daddy beamed his pleasure. 'In my fairy-tale we shall all see stars,'
+he laughed, 'and we shall all get "out." For our thoughts will
+determine the kind of experience and adventure we have when the spirit
+is free and unhampered. And contrariwise, the kind of things we do at
+night--in sleep, in dream--will determine our behaviour during the
+day. There's the importance of thinking rightly, you see. Out of the
+body is eternal, and thinking is more than doing--it's more complete.
+The waking days are brief intervals of test that betray the character
+of our hidden deeper life. We are judged in sleep. We last for ever
+and ever. In the day, awake, we stand before the easel on which our
+adventures of the night have painted those patterns which are the very
+structure of our outer life's behaviour. When we sleep again we re-
+enter the main stream of our spirit's activity. In the day we forget,
+of course--as a rule, and most of us--but we follow the pattern just
+the same, unwittingly, because we can't help it. It's the mould we've
+made.'
+
+'Then your story,' Rogers interrupted, 'will show the effect in the
+daytime of what we do at night? Is that it?' It amazed him to hear his
+cousin borrowing thus the entire content of his own mind, sucking it
+out whole like a ripe plum from its skin.
+
+'Of course,' he answered; 'and won't it be a lark? We'll all get out
+in sleep and go about the village together in a bunch, helping,
+soothing, cleaning up, and putting everybody straight, so that when
+they wake up they'll wonder why in the world they feel so hopeful,
+strong, and happy all of a sudden. We'll put thoughts of beauty into
+them--beauty, you remember, which "is a promise of happiness."'
+
+'Ah!' said Mother, seizing at his comprehensible scrap with energy.
+'That _is_ a story.'
+
+'If I don't get it wumbled in the writing down,' her husband
+continued, fairly bubbling over. 'You must keep me straight, remember,
+with your needles--your practical aspirations, that is. I'll read it
+out to you bit by bit, and you'll tell me where I've dropped a stitch
+or used the wrong wool, eh?'
+
+'Mood?' she asked.
+
+'No, wool,' he said, louder.
+
+There was a pause.
+
+'But you see my main idea, don't you--that the sources of our life lie
+hid with beauty very very far away, and that our real, big, continuous
+life is spiritual--out of the body, as I shall call it. The waking-day
+life uses what it can bring over from this enormous under-running sea
+of universal consciousness where we're all together, splendid, free,
+untamed, and where thinking is creation and we feel and know each
+other face to face? See? Sympathy the great solvent? All linked
+together by thought as stars are by their rays. Ah! You get my idea--
+the great Network?'
+
+He looked straight into his wife's eyes. They were opened very wide.
+Her mouth had opened a little, too. She understood vaguely that he was
+using a kind of shorthand really. These cryptic sentences expressed in
+emotional stenography mere odds and ends that later would drop into
+their proper places, translated into the sequence of acts that are the
+scaffolding of a definite story. This she firmly grasped--but no more.
+
+'It's grand-a wonderful job,' she answered, sitting back upon the sofa
+with a sigh of relief, and again bouncing a little in the process, so
+that Rogers had a horrible temptation to giggle. The tension of
+listening had been considerable. 'People, you mean, will realise how
+important thinking is, and that sympathy---er---' and she hesitated,
+floundering.
+
+'Is the great way to grow,' Rogers quickly helped her, 'because by
+feeling with another person you add his mind to yours and so get
+bigger. And '--turning to his cousin--' you're taking starlight as the
+symbol of sympathy? You told me that the other day, I remember.' But
+the author did not hear or did not answer; his thought was far away in
+his dream again.
+
+The situation was saved. All the bridges had borne well. Daddy, having
+relieved his overcharged mind, seemed to have come to a full stop. The
+Den was full of sunlight. A delightful feeling of intimacy wove the
+three humans together. Mother caught herself thinking of the far-off
+courtship days when their love ran strong and clear. She felt at one
+with her husband, and remembered him as lover. She felt in touch with
+him all over. And Rogers was such a comfortable sort of person. Tact
+was indeed well named--sympathy so delicately adjusted that it
+involved feeling-with to the point of actual touch.
+
+Daddy came down from his perch upon the window-sill, stretched his
+arms, and drew a great happy sigh.
+
+'Mother,' he added, rising to go out, 'you shall help me, dearie.
+We'll write this great fairy-tale of mine together, eh?' He stooped
+and kissed her, feeling love and tenderness and sympathy in his heart.
+
+'You brave old Mother!' he laughed; 'we'll send Eddie to Oxford yet,
+see if we don't. A book like that might earn 100 pounds or even 200
+pounds.'
+
+Another time she would have answered, though not bitterly, 'Meanwhile
+I'll go on knitting stockings,' or 'Why not? we shall see what we
+shall see'--something, at any rate, corrective and rather sober,
+quenching. But this time she said nothing. She returned the kiss
+instead, without looking up from her needles, and a great big thing
+like an unborn child moved near her heart. He had not called her
+'dearie' for so long a time, it took her back to their earliest days
+together at a single, disconcerting bound. She merely stroked his
+shoulder as he straightened up and left the room. Her eyes then
+followed him out, and he turned at the door and waved his hand.
+Rogers, to her relief, saw him to the end of the passage, and her
+handkerchief was out of sight again before he returned. As he came in
+she realised even more clearly than before that he somehow was the
+cause of the changing relationship. He it was who brought this
+something that bridged the years--made old bridges safe to use again.
+And her love went out to him. He was a man she could open her heart to
+even.
+
+Patterns of starry beauty had found their way in and were working out
+in all of them. But Mother, of course, knew nothing of this. There was
+a tenderness in him that won her confidence. That was all she felt.
+'Oh, dear,' she thought in her odd way, 'what a grand thing a man is
+to be sure, when he's got that!' It was like one of Jane Anne's
+remarks.
+
+As he came in she had laid the stocking aside and was threading a
+needle for darning and buttons, and the like.
+
+'"Threading the eye of a yellow star," eh?' he laughed, 'and always at
+it. You've stirred old Daddy up this time. He's gone off to his story,
+simply crammed full. What a help and stimulus you must be to him!'
+
+'I,' she said, quite flabbergasted; 'I only wish it were true--again.'
+The last word slipped out by accident; she had not meant it.
+
+But Rogers ignored it, even if he noticed it.
+
+'I never can help him in his work. I don't understand it enough. I
+don't understand it at all.' She was ashamed to hedge with this man.
+She looked him straight in the eye.
+
+'But he feels your sympathy,' was his reply. 'It's not always
+necessary to understand. That might only muddle him. You help by
+wishing, feeling, sympathising--believing.'
+
+'You really think so?' she asked simply. 'What wonderful thoughts you
+have I One has read, of course, of wives who inspired their husbands'
+work; but it seemed to belong to books rather than to actual life.'
+
+Rogers looked at her thoughtful, passionate face a moment before he
+answered. He realised that his words would count with her. They
+approached delicate ground. She had an absurd idea of his importance
+in their lives; she exaggerated his influence; if he said a wrong
+thing its effect upon her would be difficult to correct.
+
+'Well,' he said, feeling mischief in him, 'I don't mind telling _you_
+that I should never have understood that confused idea of his story
+but for one thing.'
+
+'What was that?' she asked, relieved to feel more solid ground at
+last.
+
+'That I saw the thing from his own point of view,' he replied;
+'because I have had similar thoughts all my life. I mean that he's
+bagged it all unconsciously out of my own mind; though, of course,' he
+hastened to add, 'I could never, never have made use of it as he will.
+I could never give it shape and form.'
+
+Mother began to laugh too. He caught the twinkle in her eyes. She
+bounced again a little on the springy sofa as she turned towards him,
+confession on her lips at last.
+
+'And I do believe you've felt it too, haven't you?' he asked quickly,
+before she could change her mind.
+
+'I've felt something--yes,' she assented; 'odd, unsettled; new things
+rushing everywhere about us; the children mysterious and up to all
+sorts of games and wickedness; and bright light over everything, like-
+like a scene in a theatre, somehow. It's exhilarating, but I can't
+quite make it out. It can't be right to feel so frivolous and jumpy-
+about at my age, can it?'
+
+'You feel lighter, eh?
+
+She burst out laughing. Mother was a prosaic person; that is, she had
+strong common-sense; yet through her sober personality there ran like
+a streak of light some hint of fairy lightness, derived probably from
+her Celtic origin. Now, as Rogers watched her, he caught a flash of
+that raciness and swift mobility, that fluid, protean elasticity of
+temperament which belonged to the fairy kingdom. The humour and pathos
+in her had been smothered by too much care. She accepted old age
+before her time. He saw her, under other conditions, dancing, singing,
+full of Ariel tricks and mischief--instead of eternally mending
+stockings and saving centimes for peat and oil and washerwomen. He
+even saw her feeding fantasy--poetry--to Daddy like a baby with a
+spoon. The contrast made him laugh out loud.
+
+'You've lived here five years,' he went on, 'but lived too heavily.
+Care has swamped imagination. I did the same-in the City-for twenty
+years. It's all wrong. One has to learn to live carelessly as well as
+carefully. When I came here I felt all astray at first, but now I see
+more clearly. The peace and beauty have soaked into me.' He hesitated
+an instant, then continued. Even if she didn't grasp his meaning now
+with her brains, it would sink down into her and come through later.
+
+'The important things of life are very few really. They stand out
+vividly here. You've both vegetated, fossilised, atrophied a bit. I
+discovered it in my own case when I went back to Crayfield and--'
+
+He told her about his sentimental journey, and how he found all the
+creations of his childhood's imagination still so alive and kicking in
+a forgotten backwater of his mind that they all hopped out and took
+objective form--the sprites, the starlight express, the boundless
+world of laughter, fun and beauty.
+
+'And, without exactly knowing it, I suppose I've brought them all out
+here,' he continued, seeing that she drank it in thirstily, 'and--
+somehow or other--you all have felt it and responded. It's not my
+doing, of course,' he added; 'it's simply that I'm the channel as it
+were, and Daddy, with his somewhat starved artist's hunger of mind,
+was the first to fill up. It's pouring through him now in a story,
+don't you see; but we're all in it--'
+
+'In a way, yes, that's what I've felt,' Mother interrupted. 'It's all
+a kind of dream here, and I've just waked up. The unchanging village,
+the forests, the Pension with its queer people, the Magic Box--'
+
+'Like a play in a theatre,' he interrupted, 'isn't it?'
+
+'Exactly,' she laughed, yet half-seriously.
+
+'While your husband is the dramatist that writes it down in acts and
+scenes. You see, his idea is, perhaps, that life as we know it is
+never a genuine story, complete and leading to a climax. It's all in
+disconnected fragments apparently. It goes backwards and forwards, up
+and down, in and out in a wumbled muddle, just anyhow, as it were. The
+fragments seem out of their proper place, the first ones often last,
+and _vice versa_. It seems inconsequential, because we only see the
+scraps that break through from below, from the true inner, deeper life
+that flows on steadily and dramatically out of sight. That's what he
+means by "out of the body" and "sleep" and "dreaming." The great
+pattern is too big and hidden for us to see it whole, just as when you
+knit I only see the stitches as you make them, although the entire
+pattern is in your mind complete. Our daily, external acts are the
+stitches we show to others and that everybody sees. A spiritual person
+sees the whole.'
+
+'Ah!' Mother interrupted, 'I understand now. To know the whole pattern
+in my mind you'd have to get in sympathy with my thought below. Is
+that it?'
+
+'Sometimes we look over the fence of mystery, yes, and see inside--see
+the entire stage as it were.'
+
+'It _is_ like a great play, isn't it?' she repeated, grasping again at
+the analogy with relief. 'We give one another cues, and so on---'
+
+'While each must know the whole play complete in order to act his part
+properly--be in sympathy, that is, with all the others. The tiniest
+details so important, too,' he added, glancing significantly at the
+needles on her lap. 'To act your own part faithfully you must carry
+all the others in your mind, or else--er--get your own part out of
+proportion.'
+
+'It will be a wonderful story, won't it?' she said, after a pause in
+which her eyes travelled across the sunshine towards the carpenter's
+house where her husband, seen now in a high new light, laboured
+steadily.
+
+There was a clatter in the corridor before he could reply, and Jimbo
+and Monkey flew in with a rush of wings and voices from school. They
+were upon him in an instant, smelling of childhood, copy-books, ink,
+and rampagious with hunger. Their skins and hair were warm with
+sunlight. 'After tea we'll go out,' they cried, 'and show you
+something in the forest---oh, an enormous and wonderful thing that
+nobody knows of but me and Jimbo, and comes over every night from
+France and hides inside a cave, and goes back just before sunrise with
+a sack full of thinkings---'
+
+'Thoughts,' corrected Jimbo.
+
+'---that haven't reached the people they were meant for, and then---'
+
+'Go into the next room, wash yourselves and tidy up,' said Mother
+sternly, 'and then lay the table for tea. Jinny isn't in yet. Put the
+charcoal in the samovar. I'll come and light it in a moment.'
+
+They disappeared obediently, though once behind the door there were
+sounds that resembled a pillow-fight rather than tidying-up; and when
+Mother presently went after them to superintend, Rogers sat by the
+window and stared across the vineyards and blue expanse of lake at the
+distant Alps. It was curious. This vague, disconnected, rambling talk
+with Mother had helped to clear his own mind as well. In trying to
+explain to her something he hardly understood himself, his own
+thinking had clarified. All these trivial scenes were little bits of
+rehearsal. The Company was still waiting for the arrival of the Star
+Player who should announce the beginning of the real performance. It
+was a woman's role, yet Mother certainly could not play it. To get the
+family really straight was equally beyond his powers. 'I really must
+have more common-sense,' he reflected uneasily; 'I am getting out of
+touch with reality somewhere. I'll write to Minks again.'
+
+Minks, at the moment, was the only definite, positive object in the
+outer world he could recall. 'I'll write to him about---' His thought
+went wumbling. He quite forgot what it was he had to say to him--'Oh,
+about lots of things,' he concluded, 'his wife and children and--and
+his own future and so on.'
+
+The Scheme had melted into air, it seemed. People lost in Fairyland,
+they say, always forget the outer world of unimportant happenings.
+They live too close to the source of things to recognise their
+clownish reflections in the distorted mirrors of the week-day level.
+
+Yes, it was curious, very curious. Did Thought, then, issue primarily
+from some single source and pass thence along the channels of men's
+minds, each receiving and interpreting according to his needs and
+powers? Was the Message--the Prophet's Vision---merely the more
+receipt of it than most? Had, perhaps, this whole wonderful story his
+cousin wrote originated, not in his, Rogers's mind, nor in that of
+Minks, but in another's altogether--the mind of her who was destined
+for the principal role? Thrills of absurd, electric anticipation
+rushed through him--very boyish, wildly impossible, yet utterly
+delicious.
+
+Two doors opened suddenly--one from the kitchen, admitting Monkey with
+a tray of cups and saucers, steam from the hissing samovar wrapping
+her in a cloud, the other from the corridor, letting in
+ Jane Anne, her arms full of packages. She had been shopping for the
+family in Neuchatel, and was arrayed in garments from the latest Magic
+Box. She was eager and excited.
+
+'Cousinenry,' she cried, dropping half the parcels in her fluster,
+'I've had a letter!' It was in her hand, whereas the parcels had been
+merely under her arms. 'The postman gave it me himself as I came up
+the steps. I'm a great correspondencer, you know.' And she darted
+through the steam to tell her mother. Jimbo passed her, carrying the
+tea-pot, the sugar-basin dangerously balanced upon spoons and knives
+and butter-dish. He said nothing, but glanced at his younger sister
+significantly. Rogers saw the entire picture through the cloud of
+steam, shot through with sunlight from the window. It was like a
+picture in the clouds. But he intercepted that glance and knew then
+the writer of the letter.
+
+'But did you get the mauve ribbon, child?' asked Mother.
+
+Instead of answer, the letter was torn noisily open. Jinny never had
+letters. It was far more important than ribbons.
+
+'And how much change have you left out of the five francs? Daddy will
+want to know.'
+
+Jimbo and Monkey were listening carefully, while pretending to lay the
+table. Mother's silence betrayed that she was reading the letter with
+interest and curiosity equal to those of its recipient. 'Who wrote it?
+Who's it from? I must answer it at once,' Jinny was saying with great
+importance. 'What time does the post go, I wonder? I mustn't miss it.'
+
+'The post-mark,' announced Mother, 'is Bourcelles. It's very
+mysterious.' She tapped the letter with one hand, like the villain in
+the theatre. Rogers heard her and easily imagined the accompanying
+stage gesture. 'The handwriting on the envelope is like Tante Anna,'
+he heard, 'but the letter itself is different. It's all capitals, and
+wrongly spelt.' Mlle. Lemaire was certainly not the writer.
+
+Jimbo and Monkey were busy hanging the towel out of the window, signal
+to Daddy that tea was ready. But as Daddy was already coming down the
+street at a great pace, apparently excited too, they waved it instead.
+Rogers suddenly remembered that Jimbo that morning had asked him for a
+two-centime stamp. He made no remark, however, merely wondering what
+was in the letter itself.
+
+'It's a joke, of course,' Mother was heard to say in an odd voice.
+
+'Oh no, Mother, for how could anybody know? It's what I've been
+dreaming about for nights and nights. It's so aromantic, isn't it?'
+
+The louder hissing of the samovar buried the next words, and at that
+moment Daddy came into the room. He was smiling and his eyes were
+bright. He glanced at the table and sat down by his cousin on the
+sofa.
+
+'I've done a lot of work since you saw me,' he said happily, patting
+him on the knee, 'although in so short a time. And I want my cup of
+tea. It came so easily and fluently for a wonder; I don't believe I
+shall have to change a word--though usually I distrust this sort of
+rapid composition.'
+
+'Where are you at now?' asked Rogers. 'We're all "out,"' was the
+reply, 'and the Starlight Express is just about to start and--Mother,
+let me carry that for you,' he exclaimed, turning round as his wife
+appeared in the doorway with more tea-things. He got up quickly, but
+before he could reach her side Jinny flew into his arms and kissed
+him.
+
+'Did you get my tobacco, Jinny?' he asked. She thrust the letter under
+his nose. What was tobacco, indeed, compared to an important letter!
+'You can keep the change for yourself.'
+
+He read it slowly with a puzzled expression, while Mother and the
+children watched him. Riquette jumped down from her chair and rubbed
+herself against his leg while he scratched himself with his boot,
+thinking it was the rough stocking that tickled him.
+
+'Eh? This is very queer,' he muttered, slapping the open sheet just as
+his wife had done, and reading it again at arm's-length. 'Somebody'--
+he looked suspiciously round the room--'has been reading my notes or
+picking out my thoughts while I'm asleep, eh?'
+
+'But it's a real letter,' objected Jinny; 'it's correspondence, isn't
+it, Daddy?'
+
+'It is certainly a correspondence,' he comforted her, and then,
+reading it aloud, he proceeded to pin it on the wall above the
+mantelpiece:--
+
+'The Starlight Xpress starts to-night, Be reddy and punctuel. Sleep
+titely and get out.'
+
+That was all. But everybody exchanged glances.
+
+'Odd,' thought Mother, again remembering her dreams.
+
+Jimbo upset the milk-jug. Usually there would have been a rumpus over
+this. To-day it seemed like something happening far away--something
+that had not really happened at all.
+
+'We must all be ready then,' said Rogers, noticing vaguely that
+Mother's sleeve had smeared the butter as she mopped up the mess.
+
+Daddy was making a note on his shirt sleeve:--
+
+    The Sweep, the Laugher and the Tramp,
+    The running man who lights the lamp,
+    The Woman of the Haystack, too,
+    The Gardener and Man of Dust
+    Are passengers because they must
+    Follow the Guard with eyes of blue.
+    Over the forests and into the Cave
+    That is the way we must all behave---
+
+'Please, Daddy, will you move? It's dripping on to your boot.'
+
+They all looked down; the milk had splashed from the cloth and fallen
+upon the toe of his big mountain boots. It made a pretty, white star.
+Riquette was daintily lapping it up with her long pink Tongue. Ray by
+ray the star set in her mysterious interior.
+
+'Riquette must come too,' said Rogers gravely. 'She's full of white
+starlight now.'
+
+And Jimbo left his chair and went seriously over to the book-shelf
+above Mother's sofa-bed to arrange the signals. For between the
+tightly-wedged books he had inserted all the available paper-knives
+and book-markers he could find to represent railway-signals. They
+stuck out at different angles. He altered several, putting some up,
+some down, and some at right angles.
+
+'The line's all clear for to-night,' he announced to Daddy with a
+covert significance he hardly grasped himself, then coming back to
+home-made jam and crusty village bread.
+
+Jane Anne caught her father's answering glance-mysterious, full of
+unguessed meanings. 'Oh, excuse me, Mother,' she said, feeling the
+same thing in herself and a little frightened; 'but I do believe
+they're conspiring, aren't they?'
+
+And Mother gave a sudden start, whose cause she equally failed to
+analyse. 'Hush, dear,' she said. 'Don't criticise your elders, and
+when you do, don't use long words you cannot possibly understand.'
+
+And everybody understood something none of them understood-while tea
+went on as usual to the chatter of daily details of external life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+    All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist;
+    Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power
+    Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist
+    When eternity affirms the conception of an hour.
+    The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,
+    The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,
+    Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;
+    Enough that he heard it once: we shall hear it by and by.
+                          _Abt Vogler_, R. BROWNING.
+
+Some hours later, as Rogers undressed for bed in his room beneath the
+roof, he realised abruptly that the time had come for him to leave.
+The weeks had flown; Minks and the Scheme required him; other matters
+needed attention too. What brought him to the sudden decision was the
+fact that he had done for the moment all he could find to do,
+beginning with the Pension mortgages and ending with little Edouard
+Tissot, the _vigneron's_ boy who had curvature of the spine and could
+not afford proper treatment. It was a long list. He was far from
+satisfied with results, yet he had done his best, in spite of many
+clumsy mistakes. In the autumn he might return and have a further try.
+Finances were getting muddled, too, and he realised how small his
+capital actually was when the needs of others made claims upon it.
+Neighbours were as plentiful as insects.
+
+He had made all manner of schemes for his cousin's family as well, yet
+seemed to have accomplished little. Their muddled life defied
+disentanglement, their difficulties were inextricable. With one son at
+a costly tutor, another girl in a Geneva school, the younger children
+just outgrowing the local education, the family's mode of living so
+scattered, meals in one place, rooms in several others,--it was all
+too unmethodical and dispersed to be covered by their small uncertain
+income. Concentration was badly needed. The endless talks and
+confabulations, which have not been reported here because their
+confusion was interminable and unreportable, landed every one in a
+mass of complicated jumbles. The solution lay beyond his power, as
+equally beyond the powers of the obfuscated parents. He would return
+to England, settle his own affairs, concoct some practical scheme with
+the aid of Minks, and return later to discuss its working out. The
+time had come for him to leave.
+
+And, oddly enough, what made him see it were things the children had
+said that very evening when he kissed them all good-night. England had
+been mentioned.
+
+'You're here for always now,' whispered Monkey, 'because you love me
+and can't get away. I've tied you with my hair, you know.'
+
+'You'll have no sekrity in London,' said Jimbo. 'Who'll stick your
+stamps on?'
+
+'The place will seem quite empty if you go,' Jane Anne contributed,
+not wishing to make her contribution too personal, lest she should
+appear immodest. 'You've made a memorandum of agreement.' This meant
+he had promised rashly once to stay for ever. The phrase lent an
+official tone besides.
+
+He fell asleep, devising wonderful plans, as usual, for the entire
+world, not merely a tiny section of it. The saviour spirit was ever in
+his heart. It failed to realise itself because the mind was unequal to
+the strain of wise construction; but it was there, as the old vicar
+had divined. He had that indestructible pity to which no living thing
+is outcast.
+
+But to-night he fell asleep so slowly, gradually, that he almost
+watched the dissolving of consciousness in himself. He hovered a long
+time about the strange, soft frontiers. He saw the barriers lower
+themselves into the great dim plains. Inch by inch the outer world
+became remote, obscure, lit dubiously by some forgotten sun, and inch
+by inch the profound recesses of nightly adventure coaxed him down. He
+realised that he swung in space between the two. The room and house
+were a speck in the universe above him, his brain the mere outlet of a
+tunnel up which he climbed every morning to put his horns out like a
+snail, and sniff the outer world. Here, in the depths, was the
+workroom where his life was fashioned. Here glowed the mighty, hidden
+furnaces that shaped his tools. Drifting, glimmering figures streamed
+up round him from the vast under-world of sleep, called unconscious.
+'I _am_ a spirit,' he heard, not said or thought, 'and no spirit can
+be unconscious for eight hours out of every twenty-four...!'
+
+Slowly the sea of dreamless sleep, so-called, flowed in upon him,
+down, round, and over; it submerged the senses one by one, beginning
+with hearing and ending with sight. But, as each physical sense was
+closed, its spiritual counterpart--the power that exists apart from
+its limited organ-opened into clear, divine activity, free as life
+itself....
+
+How ceaseless was this movement of Dreams, never still, always
+changing and on the dance, incessantly renewing itself in
+kaleidoscopic patterns. There was perpetual metamorphosis and rich
+transformation; many became one, one many; the universe was a single
+thing, charged with stimulating emotional shocks as each scrap of
+interpretation passed in and across the mind....
+
+He was falling into deeper and deeper sleep, into that eternal region
+where he no longer thought, but knew... Immense processions of
+shifting imagery absorbed him into themselves, spontaneous,
+unfamiliar, self-multiplying, and as exquisitely baffling as God and
+all His angels....
+
+The subsidence of the external world seemed suddenly complete.
+
+So deeply was he sunk that he reached that common pool of fluid
+essence upon which all minds draw according to their needs and powers.
+Relations were established, wires everywhere connected. The central
+switchboard clicked all round him; brains linked with brains, asleep
+or not asleep. He was so deep within himself that, as the children and
+the Story phrased it, he was 'out.' The air grew light and radiant.
+
+'Hooray! I'm out!' and he instantly thought of his cousin.
+
+'So am I!' That wumbled author shot immediately into connection with
+him. 'And so is Mother--for the first time. Come on: we'll all go
+together.'
+
+It was unnecessary to specify where, for that same second they found
+themselves in the room of Mlle. Lemaire. At this hour of the night it
+was usually dark, except for the glimmer of the low-turned lamp the
+sufferer never quite extinguished.
+
+From dusk till dawn her windows in La Citadelle shone faintly for all
+to see who chanced to pass along the village street. 'There she lies,
+poor aching soul, as she has lain for twenty years, thinking good of
+some one, or maybe praying!' For the glimmer was visible from very
+far, and familiar as a lighthouse to wandering ships at sea. But, had
+they known her inner happiness, they would not have said 'poor soul!'
+They would have marvelled. In a Catholic canton, perhaps, they would
+have crossed themselves and prayed. Just now they certainly would have
+known a singular, exalted joy. Caught in fairyland, they would have
+wondered and felt happy.
+
+For the room was crowded to the doors. Walls, windows, ceiling, had
+melted into transparency to let in the light of stars; and, caught
+like gold-fish in the great network of the rays, shone familiar
+outlines everywhere--Jimbo, Monkey, Jinny, the Sweep, the Tramp, the
+Gypsy, the Laugher up against the cupboard, the Gardener by the window
+where the flower-pots stood, the Woman of the Haystack in the
+corridor, too extensive to slip across the threshold, and, in the
+middle of the room, motionless with pleasure-Mother!
+
+'Like gorgeous southern butterflies in a net, I do declare!' gasped
+Daddy, as he swept in silently with his companion, their colours
+mingling harmoniously at once with the rest.
+
+And Mother turned.
+
+'You're out, old girl, at last!' he cried.
+
+'God bless my soul, I am!' she answered. Their sentences came both
+together, and their blues and yellows swam into each other and made a
+lovely green. 'It's what I've been trying to do all these years
+without knowing it. What a glory! I understand now--understand myself
+and you. I see life clearly as a whole. Hooray, hooray!' She glided
+nearer to him, her face was beaming.
+
+'Mother's going to explode,' said Monkey in a whisper. But, of course,
+everybody 'heard' it; for the faintest whisper of thought sent a
+ripple through that sea of delicate colour. The Laugher bent behind
+the cupboard to hide her face, and the Gardener by the window stooped
+to examine his flower-pots. The Woman of the Haystack drew back a
+little into the corridor again, preparatory to another effort to
+squeeze through. But Mother, regardless of them all, swam on towards
+her husband, wrapped in joy and light as in a garment. Hitherto, in
+her body, the nearest she had come to coruscating was once when she
+had taken a course of sulphur baths. This was a very different matter.
+She fairly glittered.
+
+'We'll never go apart again,' Daddy was telling her. 'This inner
+sympathy will last, you know. _He_ did it. It's him we have to thank,'
+and he pointed at his cousin. 'It's starlight, of course, he has
+brought down into us.'
+
+But Rogers missed the compliment, being busy in a corner with Monkey
+and Jimbo, playing at mixing colours with startling results. Mother
+swam across to her old friend, Mile. Lemaire. For a quarter of a
+century these two had understood one another, though never consciously
+been 'out' together. She moved like a frigate still, gliding and
+stately, but a frigate that has snapped its hawsers and meant to sail
+the skies.
+
+'Our poor, stupid, sleeping old bodies,' she smiled.
+
+But the radiant form of the other turned to her motionless cage upon
+the bed behind her. 'Don't despise them,' she replied, looking down
+upon the worn-out prison-house, while a little dazzle of brilliance
+flashed through her atmosphere. 'They are our means of spreading this
+starlight about the world and giving it to others. Our brains transmit
+it cunningly; it flashes from our eyes, and the touch of our fingers
+passes it on. We gather it here, when we are "out," but we can
+communicate it best to others when we are "in."'
+
+There was sound of confusion and uproar in the room behind as some one
+came tumbling in with a rush, scattering the figures in all directions
+as when a gust of wind descends upon a bed of flowers.
+
+'In at last!' cried a muffled voice that sounded as though a tarpaulin
+smothered it, and the Woman of the Haystack swept into the room with a
+kind of clumsy majesty. The Tramp and Gypsy, whose efforts had at
+length dislodged her awkward bulk, came rolling after. They had been
+pushing steadily from behind all this time, though no one had noticed
+them slip out.
+
+'_We_ can do more than the smaller folk,' she said proudly, sailing up
+to Mother. 'We can't be overlooked, for one thing'; and arm-in-arm,
+like a pair of frigates then, they sailed about the room, magnificent
+as whales that swim in a phosphorescent sea. The Laugher straightened
+up to watch them, the Gardener turned his head, and Rogers and the
+children paused a moment in their artificial mixing, to stare with
+wonder.
+
+'I'm in!' said the Woman.
+
+'I'm out!' said Mother.
+
+And the children felt a trifle envious. Instantly their brilliance
+dimmed a little. The entire room was aware of it.
+
+'Think always of the world in gold and silver,' shot from Mile.
+Lemaire. The dimness passed as she said it.
+
+'It was my doing,' laughed Monkey, turning round to acknowledge her
+wickedness lest some one else should do it for her and thus increase
+her shame.
+
+'Sweep! Sweep!' cried Rogers.
+
+But this thought-created sprite was there before the message flashed.
+With his sack wide open, he stood by Monkey, full of importance. A
+moment he examined her. Then, his long black fingers darting like a
+shuttle, he discovered the false colouring that envy had caused,
+picked it neatly out--a thread of dirty grey--and, winding it into a
+tiny ball, tossed it with contempt into his sack.
+
+    'Over the edge of the world you go,
+     With the mud and the leaves and the dirty snow!'
+
+he sang, skipping off towards the door. The child's star-body glowed
+and shone again, pulsing all over with a shimmering, dancing light
+that was like moonshine upon running water.
+
+'Isn't it time to start now?' inquired Jinny; and as she said it all
+turned instinctively towards the corner of the room where they were
+assembled. They gathered round Mlle. Lemaire. It was quite clear who
+was leader now. The crystal brilliance of her whiteness shone like a
+little oval sun. So sparkling was her atmosphere, that its purity
+scarcely knew a hint of colour even. Her stream of thought seemed
+undiluted, emitting rays in all directions till it resembled a wheel
+of sheer white fire. The others fluttered round her as lustrous moths
+about an electric light.
+
+'Start where?' asked Mother, new to this great adventure.
+
+Her old friend looked at her, so that she caught a darting ray full in
+the face, and instantly understood.
+
+'First to the Cave to load up,' flashed the answer; 'and then over the
+sleeping world to mix the light with everybody's dreams. Then back
+again before the morning spiders are abroad with the interfering sun.'
+
+She floated out into the corridor, and all the others fell into line
+as she went. The draught of her going drew Mother into place
+immediately behind her. Daddy followed close, their respective colours
+making it inevitable, and Jinny swept in after him, bright and eager
+as a little angel. She tripped on the edge of something he held
+tightly in one hand, a woven maze of tiny glittering lines,
+exquisitely inter-threaded--a skeleton of beauty, waiting to be filled
+in and clothed, yet already alive with spontaneous fire of its own. It
+was the Pattern of his story he had been busy with in the corner.
+
+'I won't step on it, Daddy,' she said gravely.
+
+'It doesn't matter if you do. You're in it,' he answered, yet lifted
+it higher so that it flew behind him like a banner in the night.
+
+The procession was formed now. Rogers and the younger children came
+after their sister at a little distance, and then, flitting to and fro
+in darker shades, like a fringe of rich embroidery that framed the
+moving picture, came the figures of the sprites, born by Imagination
+out of Love in an old Kentish garden years and years ago. They rose
+from the tangle of the ancient building. Climbing the shoulder of a
+big, blue wind, they were off and away!
+
+It was a jolly night, a windy night, a night without clouds, when all
+the lanes of the sky were smooth and swept, and the interstellar
+spaces seemed close down upon the earth.
+
+    'Kind thoughts, like fine weather,
+     Link sweetly together God's stars
+     With the heart of a boy,'
+
+sang Rogers, following swiftly with Jimbo and his sister. For all
+moved along as easily as light across the surfaces of polished glass.
+And the sound of Rogers's voice seemed to bring singing from every
+side, as the gay procession swept onwards. Every one contributed lines
+of their own, it seemed, though there was a tiny little distant voice,
+soft and silvery, that intruded from time to time and made all wonder
+where it came from. No one could see the singer. At first very far
+away, it came nearer and nearer.
+
+DADDY.             'The Interfering Sun has set!
+GARDENER.           Now Sirius flings down the Net!
+LAMPLIGHTER.           See, the meshes flash and quiver,
+                       As the golden, silent river
+
+SWEEP.              Clears the dark world's troubled dream.
+DUSTMAN.              Takes it sleeping,
+                      Gilds its weeping
+                    With a star's mysterious beam.
+Tiny, distant Voice.  Oh, think Beauty!
+                      It's your duty!
+                    In the Cave you work for others,
+                    All the stars are little brothers;
+
+ROGERS.               Think their splendour,
+
+                      Strong and tender;
+DADDY.                Think their glory
+                      In the Story
+MOTHER.             Of each day your nights redeem?
+Voice (nearer).     Every loving, gentle thought
+                        Of this fairy brilliance wrought,
+JANE ANNE.           Every wish that you surrender,
+MONKEY.              Every little impulse tender,
+JIMBO.               Every service that you render
+TANTE ANNA.         Brings its tributary stream!
+TRAMP AND GYFSY.     In the fretwork
+                            Of the network
+                        Hearts lie patterned and a-gleam!
+
+WOMAN OF THE         Think with passion
+      HAYSTACK.      That shall fashion
+                        Life's entire design well-planned;
+Voice (still nearer). While the busy Pleiades,
+ROGERS.               Sisters to the Hyades,
+Voice (quite close).  Seven by seven,
+                             Across the heaven,
+ROGERS.               Light desire
+                             With their fire!
+Voice (in his ear). Working cunningly together in a soft and
+                                tireless band,
+                             Sweetly linking
+                             All our thinking,
+                       In the Net of Sympathy that brings back
+                              Fairyland!'
+
+Mother kept close to her husband; she felt a little bewildered, and
+uncertain in her movements; it was her first conscious experience of
+being out. She wanted to go in every direction at once; for she knew
+everybody in the village, knew all their troubles and perplexities,
+and felt the call from every house.
+
+'Steady,' he told her; 'one thing at a time, you know.' Her thoughts,
+he saw, had turned across the sea to Ireland where her strongest ties
+were. Ireland seemed close, and quite as accessible as the village.
+Her friend of the Haystack, on the other hand, seemed a long way off
+by comparison.
+
+'That's because Henry never realised her personality very clearly,'
+said Daddy, seeing by her colour that she needed explanation. 'When
+creating all these Garden Sprites, he didn't _think_ her sharply,
+vividly enough to make her effective. He just felt that a haystack
+suggested the elderly spread of a bulky and untidy old woman whose
+frame had settled beneath too many clothes, till she had collapsed
+into a field and stuck there. But he left her where he found her. He
+assigned no duties to her. She's only half alive. As a rule, she
+merely sits--just "stays put"--until some one moves her.'
+
+Mother turned and saw her far in the rear, settling down comfortably
+upon a flat roof near the church. She rather envied her amiable
+disposition. It seemed so safe. Every one else was alive with such
+dangerous activity.
+
+'Are we going _much_ further--?' she began, when Monkey rushed by,
+caught up the sentence, and discharged herself with impudence into
+Daddy.
+
+'Which is right, "further" or "farther"?' she asked with a flash of
+light.
+
+'Further, of course,' said unsuspecting Mother.
+
+'But "further" sounds "farther," she cried, with a burst of laughter
+that died away with her passage of meteoric brilliance--into the body
+of the woods beyond.
+
+'But the other Sprites, you see, are real and active,' continued
+Daddy, ignoring the interruption as though accustomed to it, because
+he thought out clearly every detail. 'They're alive enough to haunt a
+house or garden till sensitive people become aware of them and declare
+they've seen a ghost.'
+
+'And _we_?' she asked. 'Who thought us out so wonderfully?'
+
+'That's more than I can tell,' he answered after a little pause. 'God
+knows that, for He thought out the entire universe to which we belong.
+I only know that we're real, and all part of the same huge, single
+thing.' He shone with increased brightness as he said it. 'There's no
+question about _our_ personalities and duties and the rest. Don't you
+feel it too?'
+
+He looked at her as he spoke. Her outline had grown more definite. As
+she began to understand, and her bewilderment lessened, he noted that
+her flashing lines burned more steadily, falling into a more regular,
+harmonious pattern. They combined, moreover, with his own, and with
+the starlight too, in some exquisite fashion he could not describe.
+She put a hand out, catching at the flying banner of his Story that he
+trailed behind him in the air. They formed a single design, all three.
+His happiness became enormous.
+
+'I feel joined on to everything,' she replied, half singing it in her
+joy. 'I feel tucked into the universe everywhere, and into you, dear.
+These rays of starlight have sewn us together.' She began to tremble,
+but it was the trembling of pure joy and not of alarm....
+
+'Yes,' he said, 'I'm learning it too. The moment thought gets away
+from self it lets in starlight and makes room for happiness. To think
+with sympathy of others is to grow: you take in their experience and
+add it to your own--development; the heart gets soft and deep and wide
+till you feel the entire universe buttoning its jacket round you. To
+think of self means friction and hence reduction.'
+
+'And your Story,' she added, glancing up proudly at the banner that
+they trailed. 'I have helped a little, haven't I?'
+
+'It's nearly finished,' he flashed back; 'you've been its inspiration
+and its climax. All these years, when we thought ourselves apart,
+you've been helping really underground--that's true collaboration.'
+
+'Our little separation was but a _reculer pour mieux sauter_. See how
+we've rushed together again!'
+
+A strange soft singing, like the wind in firs, or like shallow water
+flowing over pebbles, interrupted them. The sweetness of it turned the
+night alive.
+
+'Come on, old Mother. Our Leader is calling to us. We must work.'
+
+They slid from the blue wind into a current of paler air that happened
+to slip swiftly past them, and went towards the forest where Mlle.
+Lemaire waited for them. Mother waved her hand to her friend, settled
+comfortably upon the flat roof in the village in their rear. 'We'll
+come back to lean upon you when we're tired,' she signalled. But she
+felt no envy now. In future she would certainly never 'stay put.' Work
+beckoned to her--and such endless, glorious work: the whole Universe.
+
+'What life! What a rush of splendour!' she exclaimed as they reached
+the great woods and heard them shouting below in the winds. 'I see now
+why the forest always comforted me. There's strength here I can take
+back into my body with me when I go.'
+
+'The trees, yes, express visibly only a portion of their life,' he
+told her. 'There is an overflow we can appropriate.'
+
+Yet their conversation was never audibly uttered. It flashed
+instantaneously from one to the other. All they had exchanged since
+leaving La Citadelle had taken place at once, it seemed. They were
+awake in the region of naked thought and feeling. The dictum of the
+materialists that thought and feeling cannot exist apart from matter
+did not trouble them. Matter, they saw, was everywhere, though too
+tenuous for any measuring instrument man's brain had yet invented.
+
+'Come on!' he repeated; 'the Starlight Express is waiting. It will
+take you anywhere you please--Ireland if you like!'
+
+They found the others waiting on the smooth layer of soft purple air
+that spread just below the level of the tree-tops. The crests
+themselves tossed wildly in the wind, but at a depth of a few feet
+there was peace and stillness, and upon this platform the band was
+grouped. 'The stars are caught in the branches to-night,' a sensitive
+walker on the ground might have exclaimed. The spires rose about them
+like little garden trees of a few years' growth, and between them ran
+lanes and intricate, winding thoroughfares Mother saw long, dark
+things like thick bodies of snakes converging down these passage-ways,
+filling them, all running towards the centre where the group had
+established itself. There were lines of dotted lights along them. They
+did not move with the waving of the tree-tops. They looked uncommonly
+familiar.
+
+'The trains,' Jimbo was crying. He darted to and fro, superintending
+the embarking of the passengers.
+
+All the sidings of the sky were full of Starlight Expresses.
+
+The loading-up was so quickly accomplished that Mother hardly realised
+what was happening. Everybody carried sacks overflowing with dripping
+gold and bursting at the seams. As each train filled, it shot away
+across the starry heavens; for everyone had been to the Cave and
+gathered their material even before she reached the scene of action.
+And with every train went a _mecanicien_ and a _conducteur_ created by
+Jimbo's vivid and believing thought; a Sweep, a Lamplighter, and a
+Head Gardener went, too, for the children's thinking multiplied these,
+too, according to their needs. They realised the meaning of these
+Sprites so clearly now--their duties, appearance, laws of behaviour,
+and the rest-that their awakened imaginations thought them instantly
+into existence, as many as were necessary. Train after train, each
+with its full complement of passengers, flashed forth across that
+summer sky, till the people in the Observatories must have thought
+they had miscalculated strangely and the Earth was passing amid the
+showering Leonids before her appointed time.
+
+'Where would you like to go first?' Mother heard her friend ask
+softly. 'It's not possible to follow all the trains at once, you
+know.'
+
+'So I see,' she gasped. 'I'll just sit still a moment, and think.'
+
+The size and freedom of existence, as she now saw it, suddenly
+overwhelmed her. Accustomed too long to narrow channels, she found
+space without railings and notice-boards bewildering. She had never
+dreamed before that thinking can open the gates to heaven and bring
+the Milky Way down into the heart. She had merely knitted stockings.
+She had been practical. At last the key to her husband's being was in
+her hand. That key at the same time opened a door through him, into
+her own. Hitherto she had merely criticised. Oh dear! Criticism, when
+she might have created!
+
+She turned to seek him. But only her old friend was there, floating
+beside her in a brilliant mist of gold and white that turned the tree-
+tops into rows of Burning Bushes.
+
+'Where is he?' she asked quickly.
+
+'Hush!' was the instant reply; 'don't disturb him. Don't think, or
+you'll bring him back. He's filling his sack in the Star Cave. Men
+have to gather it,--the little store they possess is soon crystallised
+into hardness by Reason,--but women have enough in themselves usually
+to last a lifetime. They are born with it.'
+
+'Mine crystallised long ago, I fear.'
+
+'Care and anxiety did that. You neglected it a little. But your
+husband's cousin has cleaned the channels out. He does it
+unconsciously, but he does it. He has belief and vision like a child,
+and therefore turns instinctively to children because they keep it
+alive in him, though he hardly knows why he seeks them. The world,
+too, is a great big child that is crying for its Fairyland....'
+
+'But the practical--' objected Mother, true to her type of mind-an
+echo rather than an effort.
+
+'--is important, yes, only it has been exaggerated out of all sane
+proportion in most people's lives. So little is needed, though that
+little of fine quality, and ever fed by starlight. Obeyed exclusively,
+it destroys life. It bricks you up alive. But now tell me,' she added,
+'where would you like to go first? Whom will you help? There is time
+enough to cover .the world if you want to, before the interfering sun
+gets up.'
+
+'_You_!' cried Mother, impulsively, then realised instantly that her
+friend was already developed far beyond any help that she could give.
+It was the light streaming from the older, suffering woman that was
+stimulating her own sympathies so vehemently. For years the process
+had gone on. It was at last effective.
+
+'There are others, perhaps, who need it more than I,' flashed forth a
+lovely ray.
+
+'But I would repay,' Mother cried eagerly, 'I would repay.' Gratitude
+for life rushed through her, and her friend must share it.
+
+'Pass it on to others,' was the shining answer. 'That's the best
+repayment after all.' The stars themselves turned brighter as the
+thought flashed from her.
+
+Then Ireland vanished utterly, for it had been mixed, Mother now
+perceived, with personal longings that were at bottom selfish. There
+were indeed many there, in the scenes of her home and childhood, whose
+lives she might ease and glorify by letting in the starlight while
+they slept; but her motive, she discerned, was not wholly pure. There
+was a trace in it, almost a little stain, of personal gratification--
+she could not analyse it quite--that dimmed the picture in her
+thought. The brilliance of her companion made it stand out clearly.
+Nearer home was a less heroic object, a more difficult case, some one
+less likely to reward her efforts with results. And she turned instead
+to this.
+
+'You're right,' smiled the other, following her thought; 'and you
+couldn't begin with a better bit of work than that. Your old mother
+has cut herself off so long from giving sympathy to her kind that now
+she cannot accept it from others without feeling suspicion and
+distrust. Ease and soften her outlook if you can. Pour through her
+gloom the sympathy of stars. And remember,' she added, as Mother rose
+softly out of the trees and hovered a moment overhead, 'that if you
+need the Sweep or the Lamplighter, or the Gardener to burn away her
+dead leaves, you have only to summon them. Think hard, and they'll be
+instantly beside you.'
+
+Upon an eddy of glowing wind Mother drifted across the fields to the
+corner of the village where her mother occupied a large single room in
+solitude upon the top floor, a solitude self-imposed and rigorously
+enforced.
+
+'Use the finest quality,' she heard her friend thinking far behind
+her, 'for you have plenty of it. The Dustman gave it to you when you
+were not looking, gathered from the entire Zodiac... and from the
+careless meteor's track....'
+
+The words died off into the forest.
+
+     _That_ he keeps only
+     For the old and lonely,
+     (And is very strict about it)
+     Who sleep so little that they need the best--'
+
+The words came floating behind her. She felt herself brimful--charged
+with loving sympathy of the sweetest and most understanding quality.
+She looked down a moment upon her mother's roof. Then she descended.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+    And also there's a little star--
+     So white, a virgin's it must be;--
+     Perhaps the lamp my love in heaven
+     Hangs out to light the way for me.
+             _Song_, THEOPHILE MARZIALS.
+
+In this corner of Bourcelles the houses lie huddled together with an
+air of something shamefaced; they dare not look straight at the
+mountains or at the lake; they turn their eyes away even from the
+orchards at the back. They wear a mysterious and secret look, and
+their shoulders have a sly turn, as though they hid their heads in the
+daytime and stirred about their business only after dark.
+
+They lie grouped about a cobbled courtyard that has no fountain in it.
+The fair white road goes quickly by outside, afraid to look in
+frankly; and the entrance to the yard is narrow. Nor does a single
+tree grow in it. If Bourcelles could have a slum, this would be it.
+
+Why the old lady had left her cosy quarters in Les Glycines and
+settled down in this unpleasant corner of the village was a puzzle to
+everybody. With a shrug of the shoulders the problem was generally
+left unsolved. Madame Jequier discussed it volubly a year ago when the
+move took place, then dismissed it as one of those mysteries of old
+people no one can understand. To the son-in-law and the daughter, who
+got nearer the truth, it was a source of pain and sadness beyond their
+means of relief. Mrs. 'Plume'--it was a play in French upon her real
+name,--had been four years in the Pension, induced to come from a
+lonely existence in Ireland by her daughter and throw in her lot with
+the family, and at first had settled down comfortably enough. She was
+over seventy, and possessed 80 pounds a year--a dainty, witty, amusing
+Irish lady, with twinkling eyes and a pernicketty strong will, and a
+brogue she transferred deliciously into her broken French. She loved
+the children, yet did not win their love in return, because they stood
+in awe of her sarcastic criticisms. Life had gone hardly with her; she
+had lost her fortune and her children, all but this daughter, with
+whose marriage she was keenly disappointed. An aristocrat to the
+finger-tips, she could not accept the change of circumstances;
+distress had soured her; the transplanting hastened her decline; there
+was no sweetness left in her. She turned her heart steadily against
+the world.
+
+The ostensible cause of this hiding herself away with her sorrow and
+disappointment was the presence of Miss Waghorn, with whom she
+disagreed, and even quarrelled, from morning till night. They formed a
+storm-centre that moved from salon to dining-room, and they squabbled
+acutely about everything--the weather, the heating, the opening or
+shutting of windows, the details of the food, the arrangement of the
+furniture, even the character of the cat. Miss Waghorn loved. The
+bickerings were incessant. They only had to meet for hot disagreement
+to break out. Mrs. Plume, already bent with age, would strike the
+floor with the ebony stick she always carried, and glare at the erect,
+defiant spinster--'That horrud, dirrty cat; its always in the room!'
+Then Miss Waghorn: 'It's a very nice cat, Madame'--she always called
+her Madame--'and when _I_ was a young girl I was taught to be kind to
+animals.'--'The drawing-room is _not_ the place for animals,' came the
+pricking answer. And then the scuffle began in earnest.
+
+Miss Waghorn, owing to her want of memory, forgot the squabble five
+minutes afterwards, and even forgot that she knew her antagonist at
+all. She would ask to be introduced, or even come up sweetly and
+introduce herself within half an hour of the battle. But Madame Plume
+forgot nothing; her memory was keen and accurate. She did not believe
+in the other's failing. 'That common old woman!' she exclaimed with
+angry scorn to her daughter.
+
+'It's deliberate offensiveness, that's all it is at all!' And she left
+the Pension.
+
+But her attitude to the harmless old Quaker lady was really in small
+her attitude to humanity at large. She drew away in disgust from a
+world that had treated her so badly. Into herself she drew, growing
+smaller every day, more sour, more suspicious, and more averse to her
+own kind. Within the restricted orbit of her own bitter thoughts she
+revolved towards the vanishing point of life which is the total loss
+of sympathy. She felt _with_ no one but herself. She belonged to that,
+alas, numerous type which, with large expectations unrealised, cannot
+accept disillusionment with the gentle laughter it deserves. She
+resented the universe. Sympathy was dead.
+
+And she had chosen this unsavoury corner to dwell in because 'the
+poor' of the village lived there, and she wished to count herself
+among them. It emphasised the spite, the grudge, she felt against
+humanity. At first she came into _dejeuner_ and _souper_, but
+afterwards her meals were sent over twice a day from the Pension. She
+discovered so many reasons for not making the little journey of a
+hundred yards. On Sunday the 'common people' were in the streets; on
+Saturday it was cleaning-day and the Pension smelt of turpentine;
+Monday was for letter-writing, and other days were too hot or too
+cold, too windy or too wet. In the end she accomplished her heart's
+desire. Madame Cornu, who kept the grocer's shop, and lived on the
+floor below with her husband, prepared the two principal meals and
+brought them up to her on a tray. She ate them alone. Her breakfast
+cup of tea she made herself, Mme. Cornu putting the jug of milk
+outside the door. She nursed her bitter grievance against life in
+utter solitude. Acidity ate its ugly pattern into her heart.
+
+The children, as in duty bound, made dolorous pilgrimages to that
+upper floor from time to time, returning frightened, and Mother went
+regularly twice a week, coming home saddened and distressed. Her
+husband rarely went at all now, since the time when she told him to
+his face he came to taunt her. She spent her time, heaven only knows
+how, for she never left the building. According to Mother she was
+exceedingly busy doing nothing. She packed, unpacked, and then
+repacked all her few belongings. In summer she chased bees in her room
+with a wet towel; but with venom, not with humour. The Morning Post
+came daily from London. 'I read my paper, write a letter, and the
+morning's gone,' she told her daughter, by way of complaint that time
+was so scanty. Mme. Cornu often heard her walking up and down the
+floor, tapping her ebony stick and talking softly to herself. Yet she
+was as sane as any old body living in solitude with evil thinking well
+can be. She starved-because she neither gave nor _asked_.
+
+As Mother thought of her, thus finding the way in instantly, the
+church clock sounded midnight. She entered a room that was black as
+coal and unsweetened as an airless cellar. The fair rays that had been
+pouring out of her returned with a little shock upon themselves--
+repulsed. She felt herself reduced, and the sensation was so
+unpleasant at first that she almost gasped. It was like suffocation.
+She felt enclosed with Death. That her own radiance dimmed a moment
+was undeniable, but it was for a moment only, for, thinking instantly
+of her friend, she drew upon that woman's inexhaustible abundance, and
+found her own stores replenished.
+
+Slowly, as a wintry sun pierces the mist in some damp hollow of the
+woods, her supply of starlight lit up little pathways all about her,
+and she saw the familiar figure standing by the window. The figure was
+also black; it stood like an ebony statue in an atmosphere that was
+thick with gloom, turgid, sinister, and wholly rayless. It was like a
+lantern in a London fog. A few dim lines of sombre grey issued heavily
+from it, but got no farther than its outer surface, then doubled back
+and plunged in again. They coiled and twisted into ugly knots. Her
+mother's atmosphere was opaque, and as dismal as a November fog. There
+was a speck of light in the room, however, and it came, the visitor
+then perceived, from a single candle that stood beside the bed. The
+old lady had been reading; she rarely slept before two o'clock in the
+morning.
+
+And at first, so disheartening, so hopeless seemed the task, that
+Mother wavered in her mission; a choking, suffocating sensation
+blocked all her channels of delivery. The very flowers on the window-
+sill, she noted, drooped in a languishing decline; they had a lifeless
+air as of flowers that struggle for existence in deep shadow and have
+never known the kiss of sunshine. Through the inch of opened window
+stole a soft breath of the night air, but it turned black and sluggish
+the moment it came in. And just then, as Mother hovered there in
+hesitating doubt, the figure turned and moved across to the bed,
+supporting herself with the ebony cane she always used. Stiffly she
+sank upon her knees. The habit was as strong as putting her shoes
+outside the door at night to be cleaned,-those shoes that never knew
+the stain of roadway dust-and equally devoid of spiritual
+significance. Yet, for a moment, as the embittered mind gabbled
+through the string of words that long habit had crystallised into an
+empty formula, Mother noticed that the lines of grey grew slightly
+clearer; the coil and tangle ceased; they even made an effort to
+emerge and leave the muddy cloud that obscured their knotted,
+intricate disorder.
+
+The formula Mother recognised; it had hardly changed, indeed, since
+she herself had learned it at those very knees when days were
+brighter; it began with wholesale and audacious requests for self,
+then towards the end passed into vague generalities for the welfare of
+others. And just here it was that the lines of grey turned brighter
+and tried to struggle out of the murky atmosphere. The sight was
+pathetic, yet deeply significant. Mother understood its meaning. There
+was hope. Behind the prayer for others still shone at least an echo of
+past meaning.
+
+'I believe in you, old, broken, disappointed heart,' flashed through
+her own bright atmosphere, 'and, believing, I can help you!'
+
+Her skill, however, was slight, owing to lack of practice and
+experience. She moved over to the bed, trying first to force her own
+darting rays into the opaque, dull cloud surrounding the other; then
+seeking a better way-for this had no results---she slipped somehow
+inside the mist, getting behind it, down at the very source. From here
+she forced her own light through, mixing her beams of coloured
+radiance with the thick grey lines themselves. She tried to feel and
+think as her mother felt and thought, moving beside her mind's initial
+working, changing the gloom into something brighter as she moved
+along. This was the proper way, she felt-to clean the source itself,
+rather than merely untie knots at the outer surface. It was a stifling
+business, but she persisted. Tiny channels cleared and opened. A
+little light shone through. She felt-with her mother, instead of
+arguing, as it were...
+
+The old lady presently blew the candle out and composed herself to
+sleep. Mother laboured on....
+
+'Oh dear,' she sighed, 'oh dear!' as she emerged from the gloom a
+moment to survey her patient and note results. To her amazement she
+saw that there was a change indeed, though a very curious one. The
+entire outer surface of the cloud seemed in commotion, with here and
+there a glimmering lustre as if a tiny lamp was at last alight within.
+She felt herself swell with happiness. Instantly, then, the grey lines
+shot out, fastening with wee loops and curves among her own. Some
+links evidently had been established. She had imparted something.
+
+'She's dreaming! I do believe I've sown some dream of beauty in her!'
+she beamed to herself.
+
+Some golden, unaccustomed sleep had fallen over the old lady. Stray
+shreds of darkness loosened from the general mass and floated off, yet
+did not melt entirely from sight. She was shedding some of her evil
+thoughts.
+
+'The Sweep!' thought Mother, and turning, found him beside her in the
+room. Her husband, to her astonishment, was also there.
+
+'But I didn't think of _you_!' she exclaimed.
+
+'Not a definite thought,' he answered, 'but you needed me. I felt it.
+We're so close together now that we're practically one, you see.' He
+trailed his Pattern behind him, clothed now with all manner of rich
+new colouring, 'I've collected such heaps of new ideas,' he went on,
+'and now I want her too. She's in the Story. I'll transfigure her as
+well.' He was bright as paint, and happy as a sand-boy. 'Well done,
+old Mother,' he added, 'you've done a lot already. See, she's dreaming
+small, soft, tender things of beauty that your efforts have let
+through.'
+
+He glided across and poured from his own store of sympathy into that
+dry, atrophied soul upon the bed. 'It's a question how much she will
+be able to transmit, though,' he said doubtfully. 'The spiritual
+machinery is so stiff and out of gear from long disuse. In Miss
+Waghorn's case it's only physical--I've just been there--but this is
+spiritual blackness. We shall see to-morrow. Something will get
+through at any rate, and we must do this every night, you know.'
+
+'Rather!' echoed Mother.
+
+'Her actual self, you see, has dwindled so that one can hardly find
+it. It's smaller than a flea, and as hard and black.' They smiled a
+little sadly.
+
+The Sweep, rushing out of the window with his heavy sack loaded to the
+brim, interrupted their low laughter. He was no talker, but a man of
+action. Busily all this time he had been gathering up the loose, stray
+fragments that floated off from the cloud, and stuffing them into the
+sack. He now flew, singing, into the night, and they barely caught the
+last words of his eternal song:--
+
+     '... a tremendously busy Sweep,
+      Tossing the blacks in the Rubbish Heap
+      Over the edge of the world.'
+
+'Come,' whispered Daddy. 'It's getting late. The interfering sun is on
+the way, and you've been hours here already. All the trains are back,
+and every one is waiting for us.' Yet it had seemed so short a time
+really.
+
+Wrapped together in the beauty of his Pattern, they left the old lady
+peacefully asleep, and sped across the roofs towards the forest.
+
+But neither of them noticed, it seemed, the lovely little shining
+figure that hovered far in the air above and watched them go. It
+followed them all the way, catching even at the skirts of the flying
+Pattern as they went. Was it the Spirit of some unknown Star they had
+attracted from beyond the Milky Way? Or was it, perhaps, a Thought
+from some fair, exquisite heart that had been wakened by the rushing
+of the Expresses, and had flashed in to take a place in the wonderful
+story Daddy wove?
+
+It had little twinkling feet, and its eyes were of brown flame and
+amber.
+
+'No, they did not notice the starry, fluttering figure. It overtook
+them none the less, and with a flying leap was into the Pattern of his
+story--in the very centre, too!--as quickly as lightning passes
+through the foliage of the tree it strikes. Only the lightning stayed.
+The figure remained caught. The entire Pattern shivered to its outer
+fringes, then began to glow and shine all over. As the high harmonic
+crowns the end of a long cadenza on a violin, fulfilling bars of
+difficult effort, this point of exquisite beauty flashed life into the
+Pattern of the story, consummating the labour of construction with the
+true, inevitable climax. There was something of fairy insolence, both
+cheeky and delicious, in the proprietary way it chose the principal
+place, yet the only place still unoccupied, and sang 'I'm here. I've
+come!' It calmly fashioned itself a nest, as it were, curled up and
+made itself at home. It _was_ at home. The audacity was justified. The
+Pattern seemed at last complete. Beauty and Truth shone at its centre.
+And the tiny voice continued singing, though no one seemed to know
+exactly whence the sound proceeded:---
+
+    'While the busy Pleiades,
+    Sisters to the Hyades,
+    Seven by seven,
+    Across the heaven,
+    Light desire
+    With their fire,
+
+    Flung from huge Orion's hand,
+    Sweetly linking
+    All our thinking
+    In the Net of Sympathy that brings back Fairyland!'
+
+No--neither Mother nor Daddy were aware of what had happened thus in
+the twinkling of an eye. Certainly neither guessed that another heart,
+far distant as the crow flies, had felt the stream of his vital,
+creative thinking, and had thus delicately responded and sent out a
+sympathetic message of belief. But neither did Adams and Leverrier,
+measuring the heavens, and calculating through years of labour the
+delicate interstellar forces, know that each had simultaneously caught
+Neptune in their net of stars--three thousand million miles away. Had
+they been 'out,' these two big, patient astronomers, they might have
+realised that they really worked in concert every night. But history
+does not relate that they slept well or ill; their biographies make no
+mention of what their 'Underneaths' were up to while their brains lay
+resting on the pillow; and private confession, if such exists, has
+never seen the light of print as yet. In that region, however, where
+Thinking runs and plays, thought dancing hand in hand with thought
+that is akin to it, the fact must surely have been known and
+recognised. They, too, travelled in the Starlight Express.
+
+Mother and Daddy realised it just then as little as children are aware
+of the loving thoughts of the parent that hovers protectingly about
+them all day long. They merely acknowledged that a prodigious thrill
+of happiness pulsed through both of them at once, feeling proud as the
+group in the tree-tops praised their increased brightness and admired
+the marvellous shining of the completed Pattern they trailed above
+their heads. But more than that they did not grasp. Nor have they ever
+grasped it perhaps. That the result came through later is proved,
+however, by the published story, and by the strange, sweet beauty its
+readers felt all over the world. But this belongs to the private
+working of inspiration which can never be explained, not even by the
+artist it has set on fire. He, indeed, probably understands it least
+of all.
+
+'Where are the trains, the Starlight Expresses?' asked Mother.
+
+'Gone!' answered Jimbo. 'Gone to Australia where they're wanted. It's
+evening now down there.'
+
+He pointed down, then up. 'Don't you see? We must hurry.' She looked
+across the lake where the monstrous wall of Alps was dimly visible.
+The sky was brightening behind them. Long strata of thin cloud
+glimmered with faintest pink. The stars were rapidly fading. 'What
+ages you've been!' he added.
+
+'And where's Tante Anna?' she inquired quickly, looking for her
+brilliant friend.
+
+'She's come and gone a dozen times while you've been skylarking
+somewhere else,' explained Monkey with her usual exaggeration. 'She's
+gone for good now. She sleeps so badly. She's always waking up, you
+know.' Mother understood. Only too well she knew that her friend
+snatched sleep in briefest intervals, incessantly disturbed by racking
+pain.
+
+A stream of light flashed past her, dashing like a meteor towards the
+village and disappearing before she could see the figure.
+
+'There goes Jinny,' cried some one, 'always working to the very last.
+The interfering sun'll catch her if she doesn't look out!'
+
+There was movement and hurry everywhere. Already the world ran loose
+and soft in colour. Birds, just awake, were singing in the trees
+below. Several passed swiftly overhead, raking the sky with a whirring
+rush of wings. Everybody was asking questions, urging return, yet
+lingering as long as possible, each according to his courage. To be
+caught 'out' by the sun meant waking with a sudden start that made
+getting out of bed very difficult and might even cause a headache.
+
+Rogers alone seemed unperturbed, unhurried, for he was absorbed in a
+discovery that made him tremble. Noting the sudden perfection of his
+cousin's Pattern, he had gone closer to examine it, and had--seen the
+starry figure. Instantly he forgot everything else in the world. It
+seemed to him that he had suddenly found all he had ever sought. He
+gazed into those gentle eyes of amber and felt that he gazed into the
+eyes of the Universe that had taken shape in front of him. Floating up
+as near as he could, he spoke--
+
+'Where do you come from--from what star?' he asked softly in an
+ecstasy of wonder.
+
+The tiny face looked straight at him and smiled.
+
+'From the Pleiades, of course,--that little group of star-babies as
+yet unborn.'
+
+'I've been looking for you for ever,' he answered.
+
+'You've found me,' sang the tiny voice. 'This is our introduction.
+Now, don't forget. There was a lost Pleiad, you know. Try to remember
+me when you wake.'
+
+'Then why are you here?' He meant in the Pattern.
+
+The star-face rippled with laughter.
+
+'It's yours--your Scheme. He's given it perfect shape for you, that's
+all. Don't you recognise it? But it's my Story as well. ...'
+
+A ray with crimson in it shot out just then across the shoulder of the
+Blumlisalp, and, falling full upon the tiny face, it faded out; the
+Pattern faded with it; Daddy vanished too. On the little azure winds
+of dawn they flashed away. Jimbo, Monkey, and certain of the Sprites
+alone held on, but the tree-tops to which they clung were growing more
+and more slippery every minute. Mother, loth to return, balanced
+bravely on the waving spires of a larch. Her sleep that night had been
+so deep and splendid, she struggled to prolong it. She hated waking up
+too early.
+
+'The Morning Spiders! Look out!' cried a Sprite, as a tiny spider on
+its thread of gossamer floated by. It was the Dustman's voice.
+Catching the Gypsy with one arm and the Tramp with the other, all
+three instantly disappeared.
+
+'But where's my Haystack friend?' called Mother faintly, almost losing
+her balance in the attempt to turn round quickly.
+
+'Oh, she's all right,' the Head Gardener answered from a little
+distance where he was burning something. 'She just "stays put" and
+flirts with every wind that comes near her. She loves the winds. They
+know her little ways.' He went on busily burning up dead leaves he had
+been collecting all night long--dead, useless thoughts he had found
+clogging a hundred hearts and stopping outlets.
+
+'Look sharp!' cried a voice that fell from the sky above them.
+
+    'Here come the Morning Spiders,
+     On their gossamer outriders!'
+
+This time it was the Lamplighter flashing to and fro as he put the
+stars out one by one. He was in a frantic hurry; he extinguished whole
+groups of them at once. The Pleiades were the last to fade.
+
+Rogers heard him and came back into himself. For his ecstasy had
+carried him even beyond the region of the freest 'thinking.' He could
+give no account or explanation of it at all. Monkey, Jimbo, Mother,
+and he raced in a line together for home and safety. Above the fields
+they met the spiders everywhere, the spiders that bring the dawn and
+ride off into the Star Cave on lost rays and stray thoughts that
+careless minds have left scattered about the world.
+
+And the children, as they raced and told their mother to 'please move
+a little more easily and slipperily,' sang together in chorus:--
+
+    'We shall meet the Morning Spiders,
+     The fairy-cotton riders,
+     Each mounted on a star's rejected ray;
+     With their tiny nets of feather
+
+     They collect our thoughts together,
+     And on strips of windy weather
+     Bring the Day. ...'
+
+'That's stolen from you or Daddy,' Mother began to say to Rogers--but
+was unable to complete the flash. The thought lay loose behind her in
+the air.
+
+A spider instantly mounted it and rode it off.
+
+Something brushed her cheek. Riquette stood rover her, fingering her
+face with a soft extended paw.
+
+'But it surely can't be time yet to get up!' she murmured. 'I've only
+just fallen asleep, it seems.' She glanced at her watch upon the chair
+beside the bed, saw that it was only four o'clock, and then turned
+over, making a space for the cat behind her shoulder. A tremendous
+host of dreams caught at her sliding mind. She tried to follow them.
+They vanished. 'Oh dear!' she sighed, and promptly fell asleep again.
+But this time she slept lightly. No more adventures came. She did not
+dream. And later, when Riquette woke her a second time because it was
+half-past six, she remembered as little of having been 'out' as though
+such a thing had never taken place at all.
+
+She lit the fire and put the porridge saucepan on the stove. It was a
+glorious July morning. She felt glad to be alive, and full of happy,
+singing thoughts. 'I wish I could always sleep like that!' she said.
+'But what a pity one has to wake up in the end!'
+
+And then, as she turned her mind toward the coming duties of the day,
+another thought came to her. It was a very ordinary, almost a daily
+thought, but there seemed more behind it than usual. Her whole heart
+was in it this time--
+
+'As soon as the children are off to school I'll pop over to mother,
+and see if I can't cheer her up a bit and make her feel more happy. Oh
+dear!' she added, 'life is a bag of duties, whichever way one looks at
+it!' But she felt a great power in her that she could face them easily
+and turn each one into joy. She could take life more bigly,
+carelessly, more as a whole somehow. She was aware of some huge
+directing power in her 'underneath.' Moreover, the 'underneath' of a
+woman like Mother was not a trifle that could be easily ignored. That
+great Under Self, resting in the abysses of being, rose and led. The
+pettier Upper Self withdrew ashamed, passing over the reins of conduct
+into those mighty, shadowy hands.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+     Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades,
+       Or loose the bands of Orion?
+                          _Book of Job_.
+
+The feeling that something was going to happen--that odd sense of
+anticipation--which all had experienced the evening before at tea-time
+had entirely vanished, of course, next morning. It was a mood, and it
+had passed away. Every one had slept it off. They little realised how
+it had justified itself. Jane Anne, tidying the Den soon after seven
+o'clock, noticed the slip of paper above the mantelpiece, read it
+over--'The Starlight Express will start to-night. Be reddy!'--and tore
+it down. 'How could that. have amused us!' she said aloud, as she
+tossed it into the waste-paper basket. Yet, even while she did so,
+some stray sensation of delight clutched at her funny little heart, a
+touch of emotion she could not understand that was wild and very
+sweet. She went singing about her work. She felt important and grown-
+up, extraordinarily light-hearted too. The things she sang made up
+their own words--such odd snatches that came she knew not whence. An
+insect clung to her duster, and she shook it out of the window with
+the crumbs and bits of cotton gathered from the table-cloth.
+
+    'Get out, you Morning Spider,
+     You fairy-cotton rider!'
+
+she sang, and at the same minute Mother opened the bedroom door and
+peeped in, astonished at the unaccustomed music. In her voluminous
+dressing-gown, her hair caught untidily in a loose net, her face
+flushed from stooping over the porridge saucepan, she looked, thought
+Jinny, 'like a haystack somehow.' Of course she did not say it. The
+draught, flapping at her ample skirts, added the idea of a covering
+tarpaulin to the child's mental picture. She went on dusting with a
+half-offended air, as though Mother had no right to interrupt her with
+a superintending glance like this.
+
+'You won't forget the sweeping too, Jinny?' said Mother, retiring
+again majestically with that gliding motion her abundant proportions
+achieved so gracefully.
+
+'Of course I won't, Mother,' and the instant the door was closed she
+fell into another snatch of song, the words of which flowed
+unconsciously into her mind, it seemed--
+
+    'For I'm a tremendously busy Sweep,
+     Dusting the room while you're all asleep,
+     And shoving you all in the rubbish heap,
+     Over the edge of the tiles'
+
+--a little wumbled, it is true, but its source unmistakable.
+
+And all day long, with every one, it was similar, this curious
+intrusion of the night into the day, the sub-conscious into the
+conscious--a kind of subtle trespassing. The flower of forgotten
+dreams rose so softly to the surface of consciousness that they had an
+air of sneaking in, anxious to be regarded as an integral part of
+normal waking life. Like bubbles in water they rose, discharged their
+puff of fragrant air, and disappeared again. Jane Anne, in particular,
+was simply radiant all day long, and more than usually clear-headed.
+Once or twice she wumbled, but there was big sense in her even then.
+It was only the expression that evaded her. Her little brain was a
+poor transmitter somehow.
+
+'I feel all endowed to-day,' she informed Rogers, when he
+congratulated her later in the day on some cunning act of attention
+she bestowed upon him. It was in the courtyard where they all sat
+sunning themselves after _dejeuner_, and before the younger children
+returned to afternoon school.
+
+'I feel emaciated, you know,' she added, uncertain whether emancipated
+was the word she really sought.
+
+'You'll be quite grown-up,' he told her, 'by the time I come back to
+little Bourcelles in the autumn.' Little Bourcelles! It sounded, the
+caressing way he said it, as if it lay in the palm of his big brown
+hand.
+
+'But you'll never come back, because you'll never go,' Monkey chimed
+in. 'My hair, remember---'
+
+'_My_ trains won't take you,' said Jimbo gravely.
+
+'Oh, a train may _take_ you,' continued Monkey, 'but you can't leave.
+Going away by train isn't leaving.'
+
+'It's only like going to sleep,' explained her brother. You'll come
+back every night in a Starlight Express---'
+
+'Because a Starlight Express takes passengers--whether they like it or
+not. You take an ordinary train, but a starlight train takes you!'
+added Monkey.
+
+Mother heard the words and looked up sharply from her knitting.
+Something, it seemed, had caught her attention vividly, though until
+now her thoughts had been busy with practical things of quite another
+order. She glanced keenly round at the faces, where all sat grouped
+upon the stone steps of La Citadelle. Then she smiled curiously, half
+to herself. What she said was clearly not what she had first meant to
+say.
+
+'Children, you're not sitting on the cold stone, are you?' she
+inquired, but a little absent-mindedly.
+
+'We're quite warm; we've got our thick under-neathies on,' was the
+reply. They realised that only part of her mind was in the, question,
+and that any ordinary answer would satisfy her.
+
+Mother resumed her knitting, apparently satisfied.
+
+But Jinny, meanwhile, had been following her own train of thought,
+started by her cousin's description of her as 'grown-up.' The picture
+grew big and gracious in her mind.
+
+'I wonder what I shall do when my hair goes up?' she observed,
+apparently _a propos de bottes_. It was the day, of course, eagerly,
+almost feverishly, looked forward to.
+
+'Hide your head in a bag probably,' laughed her sister. Jinny flushed;
+her hair was not abundant. Yet she seemed puzzled rather than
+offended.
+
+'Never mind,' Rogers soothed her. 'The day a girl puts up her hair, a
+thousand young men are aware of it,--and one among them trembles.' The
+idea of romance seemed somehow in the air.
+
+'Oh, Cousinenry!' She was delighted, comforted, impressed; but
+perplexity was uppermost. Something in his tone of voice prevented
+impudent comment from the others.
+
+'And all the stars grow a little brighter,' he added. 'The entire
+universe is glad.'
+
+'I shall be a regular company promoter!' she exclaimed, nearer to wit
+than she knew, yet with only the vaguest inkling of what he really
+meant.
+
+'And draw up a Memorandum of Agreement with the Milky Way,' he added,
+gravely smiling.
+
+He had just been going to say 'with the Pleiades,' when something
+checked him. A wave of strange emotion swept him. It rose from the
+depths within, then died away as mysteriously as it came. Like
+exquisite music heard from very far away, it left its thrill of beauty
+and of wonder, then hid behind the breath of wind that brought it.
+'The whole world, you see, will know,' he added under his breath to
+the delighted child. He looked into her queer, flushed face. The blue
+eyes for a moment had, he thought, an amber tinge. It was a mere
+effect of light, of course; the sun had passed behind a cloud.
+Something that he ought to have known, ought to have remembered,
+flashed mockingly before him and was gone. 'One among them trembles,'
+he repeated in his mind. He himself was trembling.
+
+'The Morning Spiders,' said some one quietly and softly, 'are standing
+at their stable doors, making faces at the hidden sun.'
+
+But he never knew who said it, or if it was not his own voice speaking
+below his breath. He glanced at Jimbo. The small grave face wore an
+air of man-like preoccupation, as was always the case when he felt a
+little out of his depth in general conversation. He assumed it in
+self-protection. He never exposed himself by asking questions. The
+music of that under-voice ran on:--
+
+    'Sweet thoughts, like fine weather,
+     Bind closely together
+     God's stars with the heart of a boy.'
+
+But he said it aloud apparently this time, for the others looked up
+with surprise. Monkey inquired what in the world he was talking about,
+only, not quite knowing himself, he could not answer her. Jimbo then,
+silent and preoccupied, found his thoughts still running on marriage.
+The talk about his sister's hair going up no doubt had caused it.
+ He remembered the young schoolmistress who had her meals at the
+Pension, and the Armenian student who had fallen in love with, and
+eventually married, her. It was the only courtship he had ever
+witnessed. Marriage and courtship seemed everywhere this morning.
+
+'I saw it all with Mlle. Perette,' he informed the party. 'It began
+already by his pouring out water for her and passing the salt and
+things. It _always_ begins like that. He got shawls even when she was
+hot.'
+
+He looked so wise and grave that nobody laughed, and his sisters even
+seemed impressed rather. Jinny waited anxiously for more. If Mother
+did make an odd grimace, it was not noticed, and anyhow was cleverly
+converted into the swallowing of a yawn. There was a moment's silence.
+Jimbo, proudly conscious that more was expected of him, provided it in
+his solemn little voice.
+
+'But it must be horrid,' he announced, 'to be married--always sticked
+to the same woman, like that.' No sentence was complete without the
+inevitable 'already' or 'like that,' translated from the language he
+was more at home in. He thought in French. 'I shall never marry myself
+(_me marier_) he decided, seeing his older sister's eyes upon him
+wonderingly. Then, uncertain whether he had said an awfully wise or an
+awfully foolish thing, he added no more. Anyhow, it was the way a man
+should talk--with decision.
+
+'It's bad enough to be a wife,' put in Monkey, 'but it must be worse
+still to have one!'
+
+But Jane Anne seemed shocked. A man, Jimbo reflected, can never be
+sure how his wisdom may affect the other sex; women are not meant to
+know everything. She rose with dignity and went upstairs towards the
+door, and Monkey, rippling with laughter, smacked her as she went.
+This only shocked her more.
+
+'That was a slight mistake behind,' she said reprovingly, looking
+back; 'you should have more reserve, I think,' then firmly shut the
+door.
+
+All of which meant--so far as Jane Anne was concerned--that an
+important standard of conduct--grown-up, dignified, stately in a
+spiritual sense--was being transferred to her present behaviour, but
+transferred ineffectively. Elsewhere Jane Anne lived it, _was_ it. She
+knew it, but could not get at the part of her that knew it. The
+transmitting machinery was imperfect. Connecting links and switches
+were somehow missing. Yearning was strong in her, that yearning which
+is common to all the world, though so variously translated. Once out
+of the others' sight, she made a curious face. She went into her room
+between the kitchen and the Den, flung herself on the bed, and burst
+into tears. And the fears brought relief. They oiled the machinery
+perhaps. At any rate, she soon felt better.
+
+'I felt so enormous and unsettled,' she informed Mother later, when
+the redness of her eyes was noticed and she received breathlessly a
+great comforting hug. I never get anything right.'
+
+'But you _are_ right, darling,' Mother soothed her, little guessing
+that she told the perfect truth. 'You are all right, only you don't
+know it. Everybody's wumbled somewhere.' And she advised her--ah,
+Mother was profoundly wise instinctively--not to think so much, but
+just go ahead as usual and do her work.
+
+For Mother herself felt a little queer that day, as though something
+very big and splendid lay hiding just beyond her reach. It surged up,
+vanished, then surged up again, and it came closest when she was not
+thinking of it. The least effort of the mind to capture it merely
+plunged her into an empty gulf where she could not touch bottom. The
+glorious thing ran instantly underground. She never ceased to be aware
+of it, but any attempt to focus resulted in confusion. Analysis was
+beyond her powers, yet the matter was very simple really, for only
+when thought is blank, and when the mind has forgotten to think, can
+inspiration come through into the heart. The intellect interprets
+afterwards, sets in order, regulates, examines the wonder and beauty
+the heart distils alchemically out of the eternal stream in which life
+everywhere dips its feet. If Reason interferes too soon, or during
+transmission, it only muddles and destroys. And Mother, hitherto, had
+always been so proud of being practical, prosaic, reasonable. She had
+deliberately suppressed the other. She could not change in a single
+day just because she had been 'out' and made discoveries last night.
+Oh, how simple it all was really, and yet how utterly most folk
+convert the wonder of it into wumbling!
+
+Like Jane Anne, her miniature, she felt splendid all day long, but
+puzzled too. It was almost like those religious attacks she had
+experienced in early youth. She had no definite creed by which she
+could explain it. Though nominally Christian, like her husband, she
+could not ascribe her joy to a 'Holy Spirit,' or to a 'God' working in
+her. But she was reminded of her early 'religious attacks' because she
+now experienced that large sensation of glorious peace and certainty
+which usually accompanies the phenomenon in the heart called
+'conversion.' She saw life whole. She rested upon some unfailing
+central Joy. Come what might, she felt secure and 'saved.' Something
+everlasting lay within call, an ever-ready help in trouble; and all
+day she was vaguely conscious that her life lay hid with--with what?
+She never found the word exactly, for 'Joy' was but one aspect of it.
+She fell back upon the teachings of the big religions which are the
+police regulations of the world. Yet all creeds shared these, and her
+feeling was far deeper than mere moral teachings. And then she gave up
+thinking about it. Besides, she had much knitting to do.
+
+'It's come to stay anyhow; I feel in sympathy with everybody,' she
+said, and so dismissed vain introspection, keeping the simple
+happiness and peace. That was her strength, as it was also Jinny's. A
+re-formation had begun.
+
+Jimbo, too, felt something in his microcosmic way, only he said little
+and asked no single question. It betrayed itself, however, to his
+Mother's widened vision. He was all stirred up. He came back again
+from school at three o'clock--for it was Thursday and he did not take
+the singing lesson from three to four--put down his books with a very
+business-like air, forgot to kiss his Mother--and went out.
+
+'Where are you off to, Jimbo?' She scented mischief. He was so
+_affaire_.
+
+He turned obediently at once, the face grave and puckered.
+
+'Going over to the carpenter's house, Mummy.'
+
+'What for, dear? Why don't you stay and play here?' She had the
+feeling that her husband was absorbed in his work and would not like
+to be disturbed.
+
+The boy's reply was evasive too. 'I want to have a long discuss with
+Daddy,' he said.
+
+'Can't you have your long discuss with me instead?' she asked.
+
+He shook his head. 'You see,' he answered solemnly, 'it's about
+things.'
+
+'But Daddy's working just now; he'll be over to tea at four. Can't it
+wait till then?'
+
+She understood too well to inquire what 'things' might be. The boy
+wished to speak with one of his own sex--as one man to another man.
+
+'When a man's at work,' she added, 'he doesn't like to be disturbed.'
+
+'All right,' was the reply. 'We can wait a little,' and he settled
+down to other things in a corner by himself. His mind, clearly, was
+occupied with grave considerations he could not discuss with anybody,
+least of all with women and children. But, of course, busy men must
+not be interrupted. For a whole hour in his corner he made no sound,
+and hardly any movement.
+
+But Daddy did not come at four o'clock. He was evidently deep in work.
+And Mother did not send for him. The carpenter's wife, she knew, would
+provide a cup of tea.
+
+He came late to supper, too, at the Pension, nodded to Mother with an
+expression which plainly said, 'I've finished the story at last';
+winked to his cousin, meaning, 'It came out all right, I'm satisfied,'
+and took his seat between Jinny and Mlle. Vuillemot, the governess who
+had earned her meal by giving a music lesson that afternoon to a
+_pensionnaire_. Jinny looked sideways at him in a spirit of
+examination, and picked the inevitable crumb deftly from his beard.
+
+'Reminiscences!' she observed slyly. 'You did have some tea, then.'
+Her long word was well chosen for once; her mind unusually logical,
+too.
+
+But Daddy made no reply; he went on eating whatever was set before him
+with an air of complete detachment; he devoured cold ham and salad
+automatically; and the children, accustomed to this absorption,
+ignored his presence. He was still in the atmosphere of his work,
+abstracted, lost to the outer world. They knew they would only, get
+wumbled answers to their questions and remarks, and they did not dare
+to tease him. From time to time he lifted his eyes--very bright they
+were--and glanced round the table, dimly aware that he was in the
+midst of a stream of noisy chatter, but unable to enter it
+successfully at any point. Mother, watching him, thought, 'He's
+sitting on air, he's wrapped in light, he's very happy'; and ate an
+enormous supper, as though an insatiable hunger was in her.
+
+The governess, Mlle. Vuillemot, who stood in awe of the 'author' in
+him, seized her opportunity. She loved to exchange a _mot_ with a real
+writer, reading all kinds of unintended subtlety into his brief
+replies in dreadful French. To-night she asked him the meaning of a
+word, title of a Tauchnitz novel she had been reading--Juggernaut;
+but, being on his deaf side, he caught 'Huguenot' instead, and gave
+her a laboured explanation, strangled by appalling grammar.
+
+The historical allusions dazed her; the explanation ended on a date.
+She was sorry she had ventured, for it made her feel so ignorant.
+
+'Shuggairnort,' she repeated bravely. She had a vague idea he had not
+properly heard before.
+
+But this time he caught 'Argonaut,' and swamped her then with
+classical exposition, during which she never took her eyes off him,
+and decided that he was far more wonderful than she had ever dreamed.
+He was; but not for the reasons she supposed.
+
+'Thank you,' she said with meek gratitude at the end, 'I thank you.'
+
+'Il n'y a pas de quar,' replied Daddy, bowing; and the adventure came
+to an end. The others luckily had not heard it in full swing; they
+only caught the final phrase with which he said adieu. But it served
+its unwitting purpose admirably. It brought him back to the world
+about him. The spell was broken. All turned upon him instantly.
+
+'Snay pas un morsow de bong.' Monkey copied his accent, using a
+sentence from a schoolboy's letter in _Punch_. 'It's not a bit of
+good.' Mother squelched her with a look, but Daddy, even if he noticed
+it, was not offended. Nothing could offend him to-night. Impertinence
+turned silvery owing to the way he took it. There was a marvellous
+light and sweetness about him. 'He _is_ on air,' decided Mother
+finally. 'He's written his great Story--our story. It's finished!'
+
+'I don't know,' he said casually to the others, as they stood talking
+a few minutes in the salon before going over to the Den, 'if you'd
+like to hear it; but I've got a new creature for the Wumble Book. It
+came to me while I was thinking of something else---'
+
+'Thinking of one thing while you were thinking of another!' cried
+Monkey. It described exaccurately his state of mind sometimes.
+
+'---and I jotted down the lines on my cuff. So it's not very perfect
+yet.'
+
+Mother had him by the arm quickly. Mlle. Vuillemot was hovering in his
+neighbourhood, for one thing. It seemed to her they floated over,
+almost flew.
+
+'It's a Haystack Woman,' he explained, once they were safely in the
+Den grouped about him. 'A Woman of the Haystack who is loved by the
+Wind. That is to say, the big Wind loves her, but she prefers the
+younger, handsomer little Winds, and---'
+
+He was not allowed to finish. The children laid his cuff back in a
+twinkling, drawing up the coat sleeve.
+
+'But surely I know that,' Mother was saying. 'I've heard of her before
+somewhere. I wonder where?' Others were saying the same thing. 'It's
+not new.'
+
+'Impossible,' said Daddy, 'for the idea only came to me this morning
+while I was---'
+
+'Thinking of something else,' Monkey again finished the sentence for
+him.
+
+Mother felt that things were rushing about her from another world. She
+was vaguely conscious--deliciously, bewilderingly--of having heard
+this all before. Imaginative folk have built the certainty of a
+previous existence upon evidence as slight; for actual scenery came
+with it, and she saw dim forest trees, and figures hovering in the
+background, and bright atmosphere, and fields of brilliant stars. She
+felt happy and shining, light as a feather, too. It all was just
+beyond her reach, though; she could not recover it properly. 'It must
+have been a dream _she_ told me,' was her conclusion, referring to
+Mlle. Lemaire. Her old friend was in it somewhere or other. She felt
+sure of that.
+
+She hardly heard, indeed, the silly lines her husband read aloud to
+the children. She liked the sound of his voice, though; it suggested
+music she had known far away--in her childhood.
+
+'It's high spirits really,' whispered Rogers, sitting beside her in
+the window. 'It's a sort of overflow from his story. He can't do that
+kind of rhyme a bit, but it's an indication---'
+
+'You think he's got a fine big story this time?' she asked under her
+breath; and Cousin Henry's eyes twinkled keenly as he gave a
+significant nod and answered: 'Rather! Can't you feel the splendour
+all about him, the strength, the harmony!'
+
+
+She leaped at the word. Harmony exactly described this huge new thing
+that had come into the family, into the village, into the world. The
+feeling that they all were separate items, struggling for existence
+one against the other, had gone for ever. Life seemed now a single
+whole, an enormous pattern. Every one fitted in. There was effort--
+wholesome jolly effort, but no longer the struggle or fighting that
+were ugly. To 'live carelessly' was possible and right because the
+pattern was seen entire. It was to live in the whole.
+
+'Harmony,' she repeated to herself, with a great swelling happiness in
+her heart, 'that's the nunculus of the matter.'
+
+'The what?' he asked, overhearing her.
+
+'The nunculus,' she repeated bravely, seeing the word in her mind, yet
+unable to get it quite. Rogers did not correct her.
+
+'Rather,' was all he said. 'Of course it is.' What did the
+pronunciation of a word matter at such a time? Her version even
+sounded better than the original. Mother saw things bigger! Already
+she was becoming creative!
+
+'And you're the one who brought it,' she continued, but this time so
+low that he did not catch the words. 'It's you, your personality, your
+thinking, your atmosphere somehow that have brought this gigantic
+sense of peace and calm security which are _au fond_ nothing but the
+consciousness of harmony and the power of seeing ugly details in their
+proper place--in a single _coup d'oeil_--and understanding them as
+parts of a perfect whole.'
+
+It was her thought really running on; she never could have found the
+words like that. She thought in French, too, for one thing. And, in
+any case, Rogers could not have heard her, for he was listening now to
+the uproar of the children as they criticised Daddy's ridiculous
+effusion. A haystack, courted in vain by zephyrs, but finally taken
+captive by an equinoctial gale, strained nonsense too finely for their
+sense of what was right and funny. It was the pictures he now drew in
+the book that woke their laughter. He gave the stack a physiognomy
+that they recognised.
+
+'But, Mother, he's making it look like you!' cried Monkey--only Mother
+was too far away in her magnificent reverie to reply intelligently.
+
+I know her; she's my friend,' she answered vaguely. 'So it's all
+right.'
+
+'Majestic Haystack'--it was the voice of the wind addressing her:--
+
+    'Majestic Haystack, Empress of my life,
+    Your ample waist
+    Just fits the gown I fancy for my wife,
+    And suits my taste;
+    Yet there you stand, flat-footed, square and deep,
+    An unresponsive, elephantine heap,
+    Coquetting with the stars while I'm asleep,
+    O cruel Stack!
+
+    Coy, silent Monster, Matron of the fields,
+    I sing to you;
+    And all the fondest love that summer yields
+    I bring to you;
+    Yet there you squat, immense in your disdain,
+    Heedless of all the tears of streaming rain
+    My eyes drip over you--your breathless swain;
+    O stony Stack!
+
+    Stupendous Maiden, sweetest when oblong,
+    Does inner flame
+    Now smoulder in thy soul to hear my song
+    Repeat thy name?
+    Or does thy huge and ponderous heart object
+    The advances of my passion, and reject
+    My love because it's airy and elect?
+    O wily Stack!
+
+    O crested goddess, thatched and top-knotted,
+    O reckless Stack!
+    Of wives that to the Wind have been allotted
+    There is no lack;
+    You've spurned my love as though I were a worm;
+    But next September when I see thy form,
+    I'll woo thee with an equinoctial storm!
+    I have that knack!'
+
+'Far less wumbled than usual,' thought Rogers, as the children danced
+about the room, making up new ridiculous rhymes, of which 'I'll give
+you a whack' seemed the most popular. Only Jane Anne was quiet. A
+courtship even so remote and improbable as between the Wind and a
+Haystack sent her thoughts inevitably in the dominant direction.
+
+'It must be nice when one is two,' she whispered ambiguously to Mother
+with a very anxious face, 'but I'm sure that if a woman can't cook,
+love flies out of the window. It's a positive calamity, you know.'
+
+But it was Cousin Henry's last night in Bourcelles, and the spirit of
+pandemonium was abroad. Neither parent could say no to anything, and
+mere conversation  in corners was out of the question. The door was
+opened into the corridor, and while Mother played her only waltz,
+Jimbo and Monkey danced on the splintery boards as though it were a
+parquet floor, and Rogers pirouetted somewhat solemnly with Jane Anne.
+She enjoyed it immensely, yet rested her hand very gingerly upon his
+shoulder. 'Please don't hold me _quite_ so tight,' she ventured. 'I've
+never danced with a strange man before, you see'; and he no more
+laughed at her than he had laughed at Mother's 'nunculus.' Even Jane
+Anne, he knew, would settle down comfortably before long into the
+great big pattern where a particular nook awaited--aye, needed--her
+bizarre, odd brilliance. The most angular fragments would nest softly,
+neatly in. A little filing, a little polishing, and all would fit
+together. To force would only be to break. Hurry was of the devil. And
+later, while Daddy played an ancient tune that was written originally
+as a mazurka yet did duty now for a two-step, he danced with Mother
+too, and the children paused to watch out of sheer admiration.
+
+'Fancy, Mother dancing!' they exclaimed with glee--except Jinny, who
+was just a little offended and went to stand by the piano till it was
+over. For Mother danced as lightly as a child for all her pride of
+measurement, and no frigate ever skimmed the waves more gracefully
+than Mother glided over those uneven boards.
+
+'The Wind and the Haystack' of course, was Monkey's description.
+
+'You'll wind and haystack to bed now,' was the reply, as Mother sat
+and fanned herself in the corner. The 'bed-sentence' as the children
+called it, was always formed in this way. Whatever the child was
+saying when the moment came, Mother adopted as her verb. 'Shall I put
+some peat on, Mother?' became 'Peat yourself off to bed-it's nine
+o'clock'--and the child was sorry it had spoken.
+
+Good-byes had really been said at intervals all day long, and so to-
+night were slight enough; the children, besides, were so 'excitey-
+tired,' as Monkey put it, that they possessed no more emotion of any
+kind. There were various disagreeable things in the immediate future
+of To-morrow--getting up early, school, and so forth; and Cousin
+Henry's departure they lumped in generally with the mass, accepted but
+unrealised. Jimbo could hardly keep his eyes alight, and Monkey's hair
+was like a baby haystack the wind had treated to an equinoctial storm.
+Jinny, stiff, perplexed, and solemn with exhaustion, yet dared not
+betray it because she was older, in measurable distance of her hair
+going up.
+
+'Why don't you play with the others, child?' asked Mother, finding her
+upright on a sofa while the romp went on.
+
+'Oh, to-night,' Jinny explained, 'I sit indifferent and look on. I
+don't always feel like skedivvying about!'
+
+To skedivvy was to chivvy and skedaddle--its authority not difficult
+to guess.
+
+'Good-bye, Cousinenry,' each gasped, as his big arms went round them
+and squeezed out the exclamation. 'Oh, thank you most awfully,' came
+next, with another kiss, produced by his pressing something hard and
+round and yellow into each dirty little hand. 'It's only a bit of
+crystallised starlight,' he explained, 'that escaped long ago from the
+Cave. And starlight, remember, shines for everybody as well as for
+yourselves. You can buy a stamp with it occasionally, too,' he added,
+'and write to me.'
+
+'We will. Of course!'
+
+Jimbo straightened up a moment before the final collapse of sleep.
+
+'Your train leaves at 6.23,' he said, with the authority of exclusive
+information. 'You must be at the station at six to get the _bagages
+enregistrees_. It's a slow train to Pontarlier, but you'll find a
+_wagon direct_ for Paris in front, next to the engine. I shall be
+at the station to see you off.'
+
+'_I_ shan't,' said Monkey.
+
+Rogers realised with delight the true meaning of these brief and
+unemotional good-byes. 'They know I'm coming back; they feel that the
+important part of me is not going away at all. My thinking stays here
+with them.'
+
+Jinny lingered another ten minutes for appearance's sake. It was long
+past her bed-time, too, but dignity forbade her retiring with the
+others. Standing by the window she made conversation a moment, feeling
+it was the proper, grown-up thing to do. It was even expected of her.
+
+'Look! It's full moon,' she observed gravely, as though suggesting
+that she could, if she liked, go out and enjoy the air. 'Isn't it
+lovely?'
+
+'No, yesterday was full moon,' Rogers corrected her, joining her and
+looking out. 'Two nights ago, to be exact, I think.'
+
+'Oh,' she replied, as solemnly as though politics or finance were
+under discussion, 'then it's bigger than full moon now. It goes on,
+does it, getting fuller and fuller, till--'
+
+'Now, Jinny dear, it's very late, and you'd better full-moon off to
+bed,' Mother interrupted gently.
+
+'Yes, Mother; I'm just saying good-night.' She held her hand out, as
+though she was afraid he might kiss her, yet feared he would not.
+'Good-bye, Mr. Cousin Henry, and I hope you'll have an exceedingly
+happy time in the train and soon come back and visit us again.'
+
+'Thank you,' he said, 'I'm sure I shall.' He gave her a bit of solid
+starlight as he said it, then suddenly leaned forward and kissed her
+on the cheek. Making a violent movement like an experienced boxer who
+dodges an upper cut, Jinny turned and fled precipitately from the
+room, forgetting her parents altogether. That kiss, she felt, consumed
+her childhood in a flash of fiery flame. In bed she decided that she
+must lengthen her skirts the very next day, and put her hair up too.
+She must do something that should give her protection and yet freedom.
+For a long time she did not sleep. She lay thinking it over. She felt
+supremely happy--wild, excited, naughty. 'A man has kissed me; it was
+a man; it was Mr. Rogers, Daddy's cousin.... He's not _my_ cousin
+exactly, but just "a man."' And she fell asleep, wondering how she
+ought to begin her letter to him when she wrote, but, more perplexing
+still, how she ought to--end it! That little backward brain sought the
+solution of the problem all night long in dreams. She felt a criminal,
+a dare-devil caught in the act, awaiting execution. Light had been
+flashed cruelly upon her dark, careful secret--the greatest and finest
+secret in the world. The child lay under sentence indeed, only it was
+a sentence of life, and not of death.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+_Asia_.                             ... I feel, I see
+     Those eyes which burn through smiles that fade in tears,
+     Like stars half quenched in mists of silver dew.
+                          Prometheus Unbound, SHELLEY.
+
+It was only ten o'clock, really, and the curfew was ringing from every
+village on the mountain-side. The sound of the bells, half musical,
+half ominous, was borne by the bise across the vineyards, for the
+easterly wind that brings fine weather was blowing over lake and
+forest, and seemed to drive before it thin sheets of moonlight that
+turned the whole world soft. The village lay cosily dreaming beneath
+the sky. Once the curfew died away there was only the rustling of the
+plane trees in the old courtyard. The great Citadelle loomed above the
+smaller houses, half in shadow half in silver, nodding heavily to the
+spire of the Church, and well within sight of the sentinelle poplar
+that guarded the village from the forest and the mountains. Far away,
+these mountains now lowered their enormous shoulders to let night flow
+down upon the sleeping world. The Scaffolding that brought it had long
+since sailed over France towards the sea....
+
+Mother, still panting from the ritual of fastening the younger
+children into bed, had gone a moment down the passage to say good-
+night to Mlle. Lemaire, and when she returned, the three of them--
+herself, her husband, and Cousin Henry--dropped into chairs beside the
+window and watched the silvery world in silence for a time. None felt
+inclined to speak. There was drama somehow in that interval of
+silence--that drama which lurks everywhere and always behind life's
+commonest, most ordinary moments. Actions reveal it--sometimes--but it
+mostly lies concealed, and especially in deep silences like this, when
+the ticking of a cuckoo clock upon the wall may be the sole hint of
+its presence.
+
+It was not the good-byes that made all three realise it so near,
+though good-byes are always solemn and momentous things; it was
+something that stirred and rose upon them from a far deeper strata of
+emotion than that caused by apparent separation. For no pain lay in
+it, but a power much more difficult to express in the sounds and
+syllables of speech--Joy. A great joy, creative and of big
+significance, had known accomplishment. Each felt it, knew it,
+realised it. The moonlit night was aware of it. The entire universe
+knew it, too. The drama lay in that. There had been creation--of more
+light.... The world was richer than it had been. Some one had caught
+Beauty in a net, and to catch Beauty is to transform and recreate all
+common things. It is revelation.
+
+Through the mind of each of these three flowed the stream of casual
+thinking--images, reflections, and the shadowy scaffoldings of many
+new emotions--sweeping along between the banks of speech and silence.
+And this stream, though in flood, did not overflow into words for a
+long time. With eyes turned inwards, each watched the current pass.
+Clear and deep, it quietly reflected--stars. Each watched the same
+stream, the same calm depths, the same delicate reflections. They were
+in harmony with themselves, and therefore with the universe....
+
+Then, suddenly, one of the reflections--it was the Pleiades--rose to
+the surface to clasp its lovely original. It was the woman who netted
+the golden thought and drew it forth for all to see.
+
+'Couldn't you read it to us, Daddy?' she whispered softly across the
+silence.
+
+'If it's not too long for you.' He was so eager, so willing to comply.
+
+'We will listen till the Morning Spiders take us home,' his cousin
+said.
+
+'It's only the shorter version,' Daddy agreed shiningly, 'a sketch for
+the book which, of course, will take a year to write. I might read
+_that_, perhaps.'
+
+'Do,' urged Mother. 'We are all in it, aren't we? It's our story as
+well as yours.'
+
+He rose to get the portfolio from the shelf where he had laid it, and
+while Rogers lit the lamp, Riquette stole in at the window, picking
+her way daintily across the wet tiles. She stood a moment, silhouetted
+against the sky; then shaking her feet rapidly each in turn like bits
+of quivering wire, she stepped precisely into the room. 'I am in it
+too,' she plainly said, curling herself up on the chair Daddy had just
+vacated, but resigning herself placidly enough to his scanty lap when
+he came back again and began to read. Her deep purring, while he
+stroked her absent-mindedly, became an undercurrent in the sound of
+his voice, then presently ceased altogether....
+
+On and on he read, while the moon sailed over La Citadelle, bidding
+the stars hush to listen too. She put her silvery soft hands across
+their eyes that they might hear the better. The blue wind of night
+gathered up the meaning and spread it everywhere. The forest caught
+the tale from the low laughter in the crest of the poplar, and passed
+it on to the leagues of forest that bore it in turn across the
+frontiers into France. Thence snowy Altels and the giant Blumlisalp
+flashed it south along the crowding peaks and down among the Italian
+chestnut woods, who next sent it coursing over the rustling waves of
+the Adriatic and mixed it everywhere with the Mediterranean foam. In
+the morning the shadows upon bare Grecian hills would whisper it among
+the ancient islands, and the East catch echoes of it in the winds of
+dawn. The forests of the North would open their great gloomy eyes with
+wonder, as though strange new wild-flowers had come among them in the
+night. All across the world, indeed, wherever there were gardened
+minds tender enough to grow fairy seed, these flakes of thought would
+settle down in sleep, and blossom in due season into a crop of magic
+beauty.
+
+He read on and on.... The village listened too, the little shadowy
+street, the familiar pine woods, the troubled Pension, each, as its
+image was evoked in the story, knew its soul discovered, and stirred
+in its sleep towards the little room to hear. And the desolate ridges
+of La Tourne and Boudry, the clefts where the wild lily of the valley
+grew unknown, high nooks and corners where the buzzards nested, these
+also knew and answered to the trumpet summons of the Thought that made
+them live. A fire of creation ran pulsing from this centre. All were
+in the Pattern of the Story.
+
+To the two human listeners it seemed as familiar as a tale read, in
+childhood long ago, and only half forgotten. They always knew a little
+of what was coming next. Yet it spread so much further than mere
+childhood memories, for its golden atmosphere included all countries
+and all times. It rose and sang and sparkled, lighting up strange deep
+recesses of their unconscious and half-realised life, and almost
+revealing the tiny silver links that joined them on to the universe at
+large. The golden ladders from the Milky Way were all let down. They
+climbed up silvery ropes into the Moon....
+
+'It's not my own idea,' he said; 'I'm convinced of that. It's all
+flocked into me from some other mind that thought it long ago, but
+could not write it, perhaps. No thought is lost, you see--never can be
+lost. Like this, somehow, I feel it:--
+
+    Now sinks to sleep the clamour of the day,
+    And, million-footed, from the Milky Way,
+    Falls shyly on my heart the world's lost Thought--
+    Shower of primrose dust the stars have taught
+    To haunt each sleeping mind,
+    Till it may find
+
+    A garden in some eager, passionate brain
+    That, rich in loving-kindness as in pain,
+    Shall harvest it, then scatter forth again
+    It's garnered loveliness from heaven caught.
+
+    Oh, every yearning thought that holds a tear,
+    Yet finds no mission,
+    And lies untold,
+
+    Waits, guarded in that labyrinth of gold,--
+    To reappear
+    Upon some perfect night,
+    Deathless--not old--
+    But sweet with time and distance,
+    And clothed as in a vision
+    Of starry brilliance
+    For the world's delight.'
+
+In the pauses, from time to time, they heard the distant thunder of
+the Areuse as it churned and tumbled over the Val de Travers boulders.
+The Colombier bells, as the hours passed, strung the sentences
+together; moonlight wove in and out of every adventure as they
+listened; stars threaded little chapters each to each with their
+eternal golden fastenings. The words seemed written down in dew, but
+the dew crystallised into fairy patterns that instantly flew about the
+world upon their mission of deliverance. In this ancient Network of
+the Stars the universe lay fluttering; and they lay with it, all
+prisoners in Fairyland.
+
+For the key of it all was sympathy, and the' delicate soul of it was
+tender human love. Bourcelles, in this magic tale, was the starting-
+point whence the Starlight Expresses flashed into all the world, even
+unto unvisited, forgotten corners that had known no service hitherto.
+It was so adaptable and searching, and knew such tiny, secret ways of
+entrance. The thought was so penetrating, true, and simple. Even old
+Mother Plume would wake to the recovery of some hitherto forgotten
+fragrance in her daily life... just as those Northern forests would
+wake to find new wild-flowers. For all fairytales issue first from the
+primeval forest, thence undergoing their protean transformation; and
+in similar fashion this story, so slight but so tremendous, issued
+from the forest of one man's underthinking--one deep, pure mind,
+wumbled badly as far as external things were concerned, yet realising
+that Bourcelles contained the Universe, and that he, in turn contained
+Bourcelles. Another, it is true, had shown it to him, though all
+unwittingly, and had cleaned in his atmosphere the channels for the
+entrance of the glorious pattern. But the result was the same. In his
+brain--perhaps by Chance, perhaps by God--lay the machinery which
+enabled him to give it out to others--the power and ability to
+transmit. It was a fairy-tale of the world, only the world had
+forgotten it. He brought back its fairyland again.
+
+And this fairyland, what and where was it? And how could this tale of
+its recovery bring into his listeners' hearts such a sense of peace
+and joy that they felt suddenly secure in the world and safe mid all
+the confusion of their muddled lives? That there were tears in
+Mother's eyes seems beyond question, because the moonlight, reflected
+faintly from a wet cobble in the yard below, glistened like a tiny
+silver lantern there. They betrayed the fact that something in her had
+melted and flowed free. Yet there was no sadness in the fairy-tale to
+cause it; they were tears of joy.
+
+Surely it was that this tale of Starlight, Starlight Expresses and
+Star Caves, told as simply as running water, revealed the entire
+Universe--as One, and that in this mighty, splendid thing each of them
+nested safe and comfortable. The world was really _thinking_, and all
+lay fluttering in the grand, magnificent old Net of Stars. What people
+think, they are. All can think Beauty. And sympathy--to feel with
+everything--was the clue; for sympathy is love, and to love a star was
+to love a neighbour. To be without sympathy was to feel apart, and to
+think apart was to cut oneself off from life, from the Whole, from God
+and joy--it was Death. To work at commonplace duties because they were
+duties to the Universe at large, this was the way to find courage,
+peace, and happiness, because this was genuine and successful work, no
+effort lost, and the most distant star aware of it. Thinking was
+living, whether material results were visible or not; yearning was
+action, even though no accomplishment was apparent; thought and
+sympathy, though felt but for a passing moment, sweetened the Pleiades
+and flashed along the Milky Way, and so-called tangible results that
+could prove it to the senses provided no adequate test of
+accomplishment or success. In the knowledge of belonging to this vast
+underlying unity was the liberation that brings courage, carelessness,
+and joy, and to admit failure in anything, by thinking it, was to
+weaken the entire structure which binds together the planets and the
+heart of a boy. Thoughts were the fairies that the world believed in
+when it was younger, simpler, less involved in separation; and the
+golden Fairyland recovered in this story was the Fairyland of lovely
+thinking....
+
+In this little lamp-lit room of the Citadelle, the two listeners were
+conscious of this giant, delicate network that captured every flying
+thought and carried it streaming through the world. God became a
+simple thing: He fashioned Rogers's Scheme, even though it never
+materialised in bricks and mortar. God was behind Mother, even when
+she knitted or lit the fire in the Den. All were prisoners in His
+eternal Fairyland....
+
+And the symbolism of the story, the so-called fantasy, they also
+easily understood, because they felt it true. To be 'out' of the body
+was merely to think and feel away from self. As they listened they
+realised themselves in touch with every nation and with every time,
+with all possible beliefs and disbeliefs, with every conceivable kind
+of thinking, that is, which ever has existed or ever shall exist....
+
+The heat and radiance given out by the clear delivery of this
+'inspirational' fairy-tale must have been very strong; far-reaching it
+certainly was....
+
+'Ah!' sighed Rogers to himself, 'if only I could be like that!' not
+realising that he was so.
+
+'Oh dear!' felt the Woman, 'that's what I've felt sometimes. I only
+wish it were true of me!' unaware that it could be, and even by the
+fact of her yearning, _was_ so.
+
+'If only I could get up and help the world!' passed like a flame
+across the heart of the sufferer who lay on her sleepless bed next
+door, listening to the sound of the droning voice that reached her
+through the wall, yet curiously ignorant that this very longing was
+already majestically effective in the world of definite action.
+
+And even Mother Plume, pacing her airless room at the further end of
+the village and tapping her ebony stick upon the floor, turned
+suspiciously, as at a passing flash of light that warmed her for a
+sudden instant as it went.
+
+'Perhaps, after all, they don't mean all these unkind things they do
+to me!' she thought; 'I live so much alone. Possibly I see things less
+clearly than I used to do!'
+
+The spell was certainly very potent, though Daddy himself, reading out
+the little shining chapters, guessed as little as the rest of them how
+strong. So small a part of what he meant to say, it seemed, had been
+transferred to the paper. More than he realised, far, far more, lay
+between the lines, of course. There was conviction in it, because
+there was vision and belief.  Not much was said when he put his roll
+of paper down and leaned back in his chair. Riquette opened her eyes
+and blinked narrowly, then closed them again and began to purr. The
+ticking of the cuckoo clock seemed suddenly very loud and noticeable.
+
+'Thank you,' said Mother quietly in an uncertain kind of voice. 'The
+world seems very wonderful now--quite different.'
+
+She moved in her chair--the first movement she had made for over two
+hours. Daddy rubbed his eyes, stroked his beard, and lit a cigarette;
+it went out almost immediately, but he puffed on at it just the same,
+till his cousin struck a match and stood over him to see it properly
+alight.
+
+'You have caught Beauty naked in your net of stars,' he murmured; 'but
+you have left her as you found her--shining, silvery, unclothed.
+Others will see her, too. You have taken us all back into Fairyland,
+and I, for one, shall never get out again.'
+
+'Nor I,' breathed some one in the shadows by the window....
+
+The clock struck two. 'Odd,' said Mother, softly, 'but I never heard
+it strike once while you were reading!'
+
+'We've all been out,' Rogers laughed significantly, 'just as you make
+them get out in the story'; and then, while Riquette yawned and turned
+a moment from the window-sill to say thank you for her long, warm
+sleep, Mother lit the spirit-lamp and brewed the cups of chocolate.
+She tiptoed in next door, and as she entered the sick-room she saw
+through the steam rising from the cup she carried a curious thing--an
+impression of brilliance about the bed, as though shafts of light
+issued from it. Rays pulsed and trembled in the air. There was a
+perfume of flowers. It seemed she stepped back into the atmosphere of
+the story for an instant.
+
+'Ah, you're not asleep,' she whispered. 'We've brewed some chocolate,
+and I thought you might like a cup.'
+
+'No, I'm not asleep,' answered the other woman from the bed she never
+would leave until she was carried from it, 'but I have been dreaming.
+It seemed the stars came down into my room and sang to me; this bed
+became a throne; and some power was in me by which I could send my
+thoughts out to help the world. I sent them out as a king sends
+messengers--to people everywhere--even to people I've never heard of.
+Isn't it wonderful?'
+
+'You've had no pain?' For Mother knew that these sleepless hours at
+night brought usually intense suffering. She stared at her, noting how
+the eyes shone and glistened with unshed moisture.
+
+'None,' was the answer, 'but only the greatest joy and peace I've ever
+known.' The little glass of _calmant_ was untouched; it was not a drug
+that had soothed the exhausted nerves. In this room at any rate the
+spell was working still. 'I was carried through the air by stars, as
+though my ceaseless yearning to get up and work in the world for once
+was realised.'
+
+'You can do everything from your bed,' her friend murmured, sitting
+down beside her. 'You do. Your thoughts go out so strongly. I've often
+felt them myself. Perhaps that's why God put you here in bed like
+this,' she added, surprised at the power in herself that made her say
+such things--'just to think and pray for the world.'
+
+'I do pray sometimes for others,' the tortured woman answered
+modestly, 'but this time I was not conscious of praying at all. It all
+swept out of me of its own accord. The force in me seemed so free and
+inexhaustible that it overflowed. It was irresistible. I felt able to
+save the world.'
+
+'You were out,' said Mother softly, 'out of yourself, I mean,' she
+corrected it. 'And your lovely thoughts go everywhere. You do save the
+world.'
+
+There fell a long silence then between them.
+
+'You've been reading aloud,' Mlle. Lemaire said presently. 'I heard
+the drone of the voice through the wall---'
+
+'Daddy was reading his new story to us,' the other said. 'It didn't
+disturb you?'
+
+'On the contrary. I think it was the voice somehow that brought the
+vision. I listened vaguely at first, trying to sleep; then, opening my
+eyes suddenly, the room, as I told you, was full of stars. Their rays
+caught hold of me and drew these forces out of my very heart. I
+yielded, giving and giving and giving ... such life flowed from me,
+and they carried it away in streams.... Oh, it was really like a
+divine sensation.' 'It was divine,' said Mother, but whether she meant
+the story or her friend's experience, she hardly knew herself.
+
+'And the story--was it not about our little Bourcelles?' asked the
+other.
+
+Mother held her hands up as though words failed her. She opened her
+arms wide. She was not quite sure of her voice.
+
+'It was,' she said at length, 'but Bourcelles had grown into the
+universe. It's a fairy-tale, but it's like a great golden fire. It
+warmed my heart till my whole body seemed all heart, and I didn't know
+whether to laugh or cry. It makes you see that the whole world is
+_one_, and that the sun and moon and stars lie in so small and
+unimportant a thing as, say, Jimbo's mischief, or Monkey's impudence,
+or Jinny's backwardness and absurdity. All are in sympathy together,
+as in a network, and to feel sympathy with anything, even the most
+insignificant, connects you instantly with the Whole. Thought and
+sympathy _are_ the Universe--they are life.'
+
+While Mother paused for breath, her old friend smiled a curious,
+meaning smile, as though she heard a thing that she had always known.
+
+'And all of us are in the story, and all the things we _think_ are
+alive and active too, because we have created them. Our thoughts
+populate the world, flying everywhere to help or hinder others, you
+see.'
+
+The sound of a door opening was heard. Mother got up to go. Shafts of
+light again seemed to follow her from the figure in the bed.
+
+'Good-night,' she whispered with a full heart, while her thought ran
+suddenly--'You possess the secret of life and of creation, for
+suffering has taught it to you, and you have really known it always.
+But Daddy has put it into words for everybody.' She felt proud as a
+queen.
+
+There were whispered good-nights then in the corridor, for Rogers and
+her husband were on their way home to bed.
+
+'Your chocolate is getting cold,' said Daddy kindly.
+
+'We thought you would probably stay in there. We're going over now.
+It's very late,' Rogers added. They said good-night again.
+
+She closed and locked the great door of the Citadelle behind them,
+hearing their steps upon the cobbles in the yard, and for some time
+afterwards upon the road. But their going away seemed the same as
+coming nearer. She felt so close to everything that lived. Everything
+did live. Her heart included all that existed, that ever had existed,
+that ever could exist. Mother was alive all over. 'I have just been
+created,' she laughed, and went back into the Den to drink her cup of
+tepid chocolate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+    See, the busy Pleiades,
+    Sisters to the Hyades,
+    Seven by seven
+    Across the heaven,
+    Light desire
+    With their fire,
+    Working cunningly together in a soft and tireless band,
+
+    Sweetly linking
+    All our thinking
+    In the Net of Sympathy that brings back Fairyland.
+                             _A Voice_.
+
+The prophecy of the children that Bourcelles was a difficult place to
+get away from found its justification next morning, for Rogers slept
+so heavily that he nearly missed his train. It was six o'clock when he
+tumbled downstairs, too late for a real breakfast, and only just in
+time to get his luggage upon the little char that did duty for all
+transport in this unsophisticated village. The carpenter pulled it for
+him to the station.
+
+'If I've forgotten anything, my cousin will send it after me,' he told
+Mme. Michaud, as he gulped down hot coffee on the steps.
+
+'Or we can keep it for you,' was the answer. 'You'll be coming back
+soon.' She knew, like the others, that one always came back to
+Bourcelles. She shook hands with him as if he were going away for a
+night or two. 'Your room will always be ready,' she added. 'Ayez la
+bonte seulement de m'envoyer une petite ligne d'avance.'
+
+'There's only fifteen minutes,' interrupted her husband, 'and it's
+uphill all the way.'
+
+They trundled off along the dusty road, already hot in the early July
+sun. There was no breath of wind; swallows darted in the blue air; the
+perfume of the forests was everywhere; the mountains rose soft and
+clear into the cloudless sky. They passed the Citadelle, where the
+awning was already being lowered over the balcony for Mlle. Lemaire's
+bed to be wheeled out a little later. Rogers waved his handkerchief,
+and saw the answering flutter inside the window. Riquette, on her way
+in, watched him from the tiles. The orchards then hid the lower
+floors; he passed the tinkling fountain; to the left he saw the church
+and the old Pension, the wistaria blossoms falling down its walls in a
+cascade of beauty.
+
+The Postmaster put his head out and waved his Trilby hat with a solemn
+smile. 'Le barometre est tres haut...' floated down the village
+street, instead of the sentence of good-bye. Even the Postmaster took
+it for granted that he was not leaving. Gygi, standing in the door of
+his barn, raised his peaked hat and smiled. 'Fait beau, ce matin,' he
+said, 'plus tard il fera rudement chaud.' He spoke as if Rogers were
+off for a walk or climb. It was the same everywhere. The entire
+village saw him go, yet behaved as if he was not really leaving. How
+fresh and sweet the morning air was, keen mountain fragrance in it,
+and all the delicious, delicate sharpness of wet moss and dewy fields.
+
+As he passed the courtyard near the Guillaume Tell, and glanced up at
+the closed windows of Mother Plume's apartment, a pattering step
+startled him behind, and Jimbo came scurrying up. Rogers kissed him
+and lifted him bodily upon the top of his portmanteau, then helped the
+carpenter to drag it up the hill. 'The barriers at the level crossing
+are down, the warning gongs are ringing. It's signalled from
+Auvernier.' They were only just in time. The luggage was registered
+and the train panting up the steep incline, when Monkey, sleep still
+thick in her eyes, appeared rolling along the white road. She was too
+breathless to speak; she stood and stared like a stuffed creature in a
+Museum. Jimbo was beside the engine, having a word with the
+_mecanicien_.
+
+'Send a telegram, you know--like that,' he shouted, as the carriage
+slid past him, 'and we'll bring the _char_.' He knew his leader would
+come back. He took his cap off politely, as a man does to a lady--the
+Bourcelles custom. He did not wave his handkerchief or make
+undignified signs. He stood there, watching his cousin to the last,
+and trying to see the working of the engine at the same time. He had
+already told him the times and stopping places, and where he had to
+change; there was nothing more for a man to say.
+
+Monkey, her breath recovered now, shouted something impudent from the
+road. 'The train will break down with you in it before it gets to
+Pontarlier, and you'll be back for tea--worse luck!' He heard it
+faintly, above the grinding of the wheels. She blew him a kiss; her
+hair flew out in a cloud of brown the sunshine turned half golden. He
+almost saw the shining of her eyes. And then the belt of the forest
+hid her from view, hid Jimbo and the village too. The last thing he
+saw of Bourcelles was the top of the church spire and the red roof of
+the towering Citadelle. The crest of the sentinel poplar topped them
+both for a minute longer, waved a slight and stately farewell, then
+lowered itself into the forest and vanished in its turn.
+
+And Rogers came back with a start and a bump to what is called real
+life.
+
+He closed his eyes and leaned back in his corner, feeling he had
+suddenly left his childhood behind him for the second time, not
+gradually as it ought to happen, but all in one dreadful moment. A
+great ache lay in his heart. The perfect book of fairy-tales he had
+been reading was closed and finished. Weeks had passed in the
+delicious reading, but now the last page was turned; he came back to
+duty--duty in London--great, noisy, overwhelming London, with its
+disturbing bustle, its feverish activities, its complex, artificial,
+unsatisfying amusements, and its hosts of frantic people. He grew
+older in a moment; he was forty again now; an instant ago, just on the
+further side of those blue woods, he had been fifteen. Life shrank and
+dwindled in him to a little, ugly, unattractive thing. He was
+returning to a flat in the dolorous edifice of civilisation. A great
+practical Scheme, rising in sombre bricks and mortar through a
+disfiguring fog, blocked all the avenues of the future.
+
+The picture seemed sordid somewhere, the contrast was so striking. In
+a great city was no softness; hard, sharp angles everywhere, or at
+best an artificial smoothness that veiled ugliness and squalor very
+thinly. Human relationship worked like parts of a machine, cramped
+into definite orbits, each wheel, each pulley, the smallest deviation
+deemed erratic. In Bourcelles, the mountain village, there was more
+latitude, room for expansion, space. The heart leaped up spontaneously
+like a spring released. In the city this spring was held down rigidly
+in place, pressed under as by a weight; and the weight, surely, was
+that one for ever felt compelled to think of self--self in a rather
+petty, shameful way--personal safety. In the streets, in the houses,
+in public buildings, shops, and railway stations, even where people
+met to eat and drink in order to keep alive, were Notice Boards of
+caution and warning against their fellow kind. Instead of the kindly
+and unnecessary, even ridiculous little Gygi, there were big, grave
+policemen by the score, a whole army of them; and everywhere grinned
+the Notice Boards, like automatic, dummy policemen, mocking joy with
+their insulting warnings. The heart was oppressed with this constant
+reminder that safety could only be secured by great care and trouble--
+safety for the little personal self; protection from all kinds of
+robbery, depredation, and attack; beware of pickpockets, the
+proprietor is not responsible for overcoats and umbrellas even! And
+burglar alarms and doors of steel and iron everywhere--an organised
+defence from morning till night--against one's own kind.
+
+He had lived among these terrible conditions all his life, proud of
+the personal security that civilisation provided, but he had never
+before viewed it from outside, as now he suddenly did. A spiritual
+being, a man, lives in a city as in a state of siege among his own
+kind. It was deplorable, it was incredible. In little Bourcelles, a
+mountain village most would describe pityingly as half civilised and
+out of the world, there was safety and joy and freedom as of the
+universe.... His heart contracted as he thus abruptly realised the
+distressing contrast. Although a city is a unit, all classes neatly
+linked together by laws and by-laws, by County Councils, Parliaments,
+and the like, the spirit of brotherhood was a mockery and a sham.
+There is organised charity, but there is not--Charity. In a London
+Square he could not ring the bell and ask for a glass of milk.... In
+Bourcelles he would walk into any house, since there were no bells,
+and sit down to an entire meal!
+
+He laughed as the absurd comparison darted across his mind, for he
+recognised the foolish exaggeration in it; but behind the laughter
+flamed the astonishing truth. In Bourcelles, in a few weeks, he had
+found a bigger, richer life than all London had supplied to him in
+twenty years; he had found wings, inspiration, love, and happiness; he
+had found the universe. The truth of his cousin's story blazed upon
+him like an inner sun. In this new perspective he saw that it was a
+grander fairy-tale than he had guessed even when close to it. What was
+a Scheme for Disabled Thingumabobs compared to the endless, far-
+reaching schemes that life in Bourcelles suggested to him! There was
+the true centre of life; cities were accretions of disease upon the
+surface merely! He was leaving Fairyland behind him.
+
+In sudden moments like this, with their synthetic bird's-eye view, the
+mind sometimes sees more clearly than in hours of careful reflection
+and analysis. And the first thing he saw now was Minks, his friendly,
+ridiculous little confidential secretary. From all the crowds of men
+and women he knew, respected, and enjoyed in London, as from the vast
+deluge of human mediocrity which for him _was_ London, he picked out
+suddenly--little Minks--Herbert Montmorency Minks. His mind, that is,
+darting forward in swift, comprehensive survey, and searching
+automatically for some means whereby it might continue the happiness
+and sweetness recently enjoyed, selected Minks. Minks was a clue.
+Minks possessed--no matter how absurd the proportions of their mixing
+--three things just left behind: Vision, Belief, Simplicity, all
+products of a spiritual imagination.
+
+And at first this was the single thought sent forward into the future.
+Rogers saw the fact, flash-like and true-then let it go, yielding to
+the greater pull that drew reflection back into the past.
+
+And he found it rather dislocating, this abrupt stepping out of his
+delightful forest Fairyland.... Equilibrium was not recovered for a
+long time, as the train went thundering over the Jura Mountains into
+France, Only on the other side of Pontarlier, when the country grew
+unfamiliar and different, did harmony return. Among the deep blue
+forests he was still in Fairyland, but at Mouchard the scenery was
+already changing, and by the time Dole was reached it had completely
+changed. The train ran on among the plains and vineyards of the
+Burgundy country towards Laroche and Dijon. The abrupt alteration,
+however, was pain. His thoughts streamed all backwards now to
+counteract it. He roamed again among the star fields above the
+Bourcelles woods. It was true--he had not really left Bourcelles. His
+body was bumping into Dijon, but the important part of him--thought,
+emotion, love--lingered with the children, hovered above the
+Citadelle, floated through the dusky, scented forests.
+
+And the haunting picture was ever set in its framework of old burning
+stars. He could not get the Pleiades in particular out of his mind.
+The pictures swarmed past him as upon a boy returning to school after
+the holidays, and each one had a background of sky with stars behind
+it; the faces that he knew so well had starry eyes; Jimbo flung
+handfuls of stars loose across the air, and Monkey caught them,
+fastening them like golden pins into her hair. Glancing down, he saw a
+long brown hair upon his sleeve. He picked it off and held his finger
+and thumb outside the window till the wind took it away. Some Morning
+Spider would ride it home--perhaps past his cousin's window while he
+copied out that wonderful, great tale. But, instead--how in the world
+could it happen in clear daylight?--a little hand shot down from above
+and gathered it in towards the Pleiades.
+
+The Pleiades--the Seven Sisters--that most exquisite cluster of the
+eastern sky, soft, tender, lovely, clinging close together always like
+a group of timid children, who hide a little dimly for fear of being
+surprised by bolder stars upon their enormous journey--they now shone
+down upon all he thought and remembered. They seemed always above the
+horizon of his mind. They never set. In them lay souls of unborn
+children, children waiting to be born. He could not imagine why this
+particular constellation clung with such a haunting touch of beauty
+about his mind, or why some passion of  yearning unconfessed and
+throbbing hid behind the musical name. Stars and unborn children had
+got strangely mixed!
+
+He tried to recall the origin of the name--he had learned it once in
+the old Vicar's study. The Pleiades were attendants upon Artemis, the
+huntress moon, he recalled vaguely, and, being pursued by Orion, were
+set for safety among the stars. He even remembered the names of some
+of them; there was Maia, Tagete, Alcyone, but the other four lay in
+his mental lumber room, whence they could not be evoked, although
+Merope, he felt sure, was one of them. Of Maia, however, he felt
+positive.... How beautiful the names were!
+
+Then, midway, in thinking about them, he found himself, as Monkey
+said, thinking of something else: of his weeks at Bourcelles again and
+what a long holiday it had been, and whether it was wasted time or
+well-used time-a kind of general stock-taking, as it were, but chiefly
+of how little he had accomplished after all, set down in black and
+white. He had enjoyed himself and let himself go, rather foolishly
+perhaps, but how much after all had he actually accomplished? He
+remembered pleasant conversations with Mother that possibly cheered
+and helped her--or possibly were forgotten as soon as ended. He
+remembered his cousin's passing words of gratitude--that he had helped
+him somehow with his great new story: and he remembered--this least of
+all-that his money had done something to relieve a case or two of
+suffering. And this was all! The net result so insignificant! He felt
+dissatisfied, eager already to make new plans, something definite and
+thorough that should retrieve the wasted opportunities. With a little
+thought and trouble, how easily he might have straightened out the
+tangle of his cousin's family, helped with the education of the
+growing children, set them all upon a more substantial footing
+generally. It was possible still, of course, but such things are done
+best on the spot, the personal touch and presence of value; arranged
+by correspondence it becomes another thing at once and loses
+spontaneity. The accent lies on the wrong details. Sympathy is watered
+by the post.... Importance lodges in angles not intended for it.
+Master of his time, with certain means at his disposal, a modicum of
+ability as well, he was free to work hard on the side of the angels
+wherever opportunity might offer; yet he had wasted all these weeks
+upon an unnecessary holiday, frittering the time away in enjoyment
+with the children. He felt ashamed and mortified as the meagre record
+stared him in the face.
+
+Yet, curiously enough, when Reason had set down the figures
+accurately, as he fancied, and totted up the trifling totals, there
+flitted before him something more that refused to be set down upon the
+paper. The Ledger had no lines for it. What was it? Why was it
+pleasant, even flattering? Why did it mitigate his discontent and
+lessen the dissatisfied feeling? It passed hovering in and about his
+thoughts, though uncaught by actual words; and as his mind played with
+it, he felt more hopeful. He searched in vain for a definition, but,
+though fruitless, the search brought comfort somehow. Something _had_
+been accomplished and it was due to himself, because without his
+presence it would never have been done. This hint slipped into desire,
+yearning, hope--that, after all, a result _had_ perhaps been achieved,
+a result he himself was not properly aware of--a result of that
+incalculable spiritual kind that escapes the chains of definite
+description. For he recalled--yet mortified a little the memory should
+flatter--that his cousin had netted Beauty in his story, and that
+Mother had spoken of living with greater carelessness and peace, and
+that each had thanked him as though he were the cause.
+
+And these memories, half thought, half feeling, were comforting and
+delicious, so that he revelled in them lingeringly, and wished that
+they were really true. For, if true, they were immensely significant.
+Any one with a purse could build a hospital or pay an education fee,
+but to be helpful because of being oneself was a vast, incalculable
+power, something direct from God... and his thoughts, wandering on
+thus between fact and fantasy, led him back with a deep inexplicable
+thrill again to--the Pleiades, whose beauty, without their being aware
+of it, shines nightly for all who can accept it. Here was the old, old
+truth once more-that the left hand must not know what the right is
+doing, and that to be is of greater importance than to do. Here was
+Fairyland once more, the Fairyland he had just left. To think beauty
+and love is to become them, to shed them forth without realising it. A
+Fairy blesses because she is a Fairy, not because she turns a pumpkin
+into a coach and four.... The Pleiades do not realise how their
+loveliness may....
+
+Rogers started. For the thought had borrowed a tune from the rhythm of
+the wheels and sleepers, and he had uttered the words aloud in his
+corner. Luckily he had the carriage to himself. He flushed. Again a
+tender and very exquisite thing had touched him somewhere.... It was
+in that involuntary connection his dreaming had found between a Fairy
+and the Pleiades. Wings of gauzy gold shone fluttering a moment before
+his inner sight, then vanished. He was aware of some one very dear and
+wild and tender, with amber eyes and little twinkling feet--some one
+whom the Great Tale brought almost within his reach.... He literally
+had seen stars for an instant--_a_ star! Its beauty brimmed him up. He
+laughed in his corner. This thing, whatever it was, had been coming
+nearer for some time. These hints of sudden joy that breathe upon a
+sensitive nature, how mysterious, how wildly beautiful, how
+stimulating they are! But whence, in the name of all the stars, do
+they come? A great happiness passed flaming through his heart, an
+extraordinary sense of anticipation in it--as though he were going to
+meet some one who--who--well, what?--who was a necessity and a delight
+to him, the complement needed to make his life effective--some one he
+loved abundantly--who would love him abundantly in return. He recalled
+those foolish lines he had written on sudden impulse once, then thrown
+away....
+
+Thought fluttered and went out. He could not seize the elusive cause
+of this delicious joy. It was connected with the Pleiades, but how,
+where, why? Above the horizon of his life a new star was swimming into
+glory. It was rising. The inexplicable emotion thrilled tumultuously,
+then dived back again whence it came... It had to do with children and
+with a woman, it seemed, for the next thing he knew was that he was
+thinking of children, children of his own, and of the deep yearning
+Bourcelles had stirred again in him to find their Mother... and, next,
+of his cousin's story and that wonderful detail in it that the
+principal role was filled at last, the role in the great Children's
+Play he himself had felt was vacant. It was to be filled by that
+childless Mother the writer's imagination had discovered or created.
+And again the Pleiades lit up his inner world and beckoned to him with
+their little fingers of spun gold; their eyes of clouded amber smiled
+into his own. It was most extraordinary and delightful. There was
+something--come much closer this time, almost within reach of
+discovery--something he ought to remember about them, something he had
+promised to remember, then stupidly forgotten. The lost, hidden joy
+was a torture. Yet, try as he would, no revelation came to clear the
+matter up. Had he read it somewhere perhaps? Or was it part of the
+Story his cousin had wumbled into his ear when he only partly
+listened?
+
+'I believe I dreamed it,' he smiled to himself at last in despair. 'I
+do believe it was a dream--a fragment of some jolly dream I had in my
+Fairyland of little Bourcelles!'
+
+Children, stars, Fairyland, dreams--these brought it somehow. His
+cousin's story also had to do with it, chiefly perhaps after all--this
+great story.
+
+'I shall have to go back there to get hold of it completely,' he added
+with conviction. He almost felt as if some one were thinking hard
+about him--one of the characters in the story, it seemed. The mind of
+some one far away, as yet unknown, was searching for him in thought,
+sending forth strong definite yearnings which came to rest of their
+own accord in his own being, a garden naturally suited to their
+growth. The creations of his boyhood's imagination had survived, the
+Sweep, the Dustman, and the Lamplighter, then why not the far more
+powerful creations in the story...? Thought was never lost!
+
+'But no man in his senses can believe such a thing!' he exclaimed, as
+the train ran booming through the tunnel.
+
+'That's the point,' whispered a voice beside him. 'You are _out_ of
+your senses. Otherwise you could not feel it!'
+
+He turned sharply. The carriage was empty; there was no one there. It
+was, of course, another part of himself that supplied the answer; yet
+it startled him. The blurred reflection of the lamp, he noticed, cast
+a picture against the black tunnel wall that was like a constellation.
+The Pleiades again! It almost seemed as if the voice had issued from
+that false reflection in the shaking window-pane....
+
+The train emerged from the tunnel. He rushed out into the blaze of the
+Interfering Sun. The lovely cluster vanished like a dream, and with it
+the hint of explanation melted down in dew. Fields sped past with a
+group of haystacks whose tarpaulin skirts spread and lifted in the
+gust of wind the train made. He thought abruptly of Mother....
+Perhaps, after all, he had taught her something, shown her Existence
+as a big, streaming, endless thing in which months and years, possibly
+even life itself, were merely little sections, each unintelligible
+unless viewed as portions of the Whole, and not as separate,
+difficult, puzzling items set apart. Possibly he had drawn her map to
+bigger scale, increased her faith, given her more sense of repose and
+peace, more courage therefore. She thought formerly of a day, but not
+of its relation to all days before and behind. She stuck her husband's
+'reviews' in the big book, afflicted by the poor financial results
+they represented, but was unable to think of his work as a stage in a
+long series of development and progress, no effort lost, no single
+hope mislaid. And that was something--_if_ he had accomplished it.
+Only, he feared he had not. There was the trouble. There lay the
+secret of a certain ineffectiveness in his character. For he did not
+realise that fear is simply suppressed desire, vivid signs of life,
+and that desire is the ultimate causative agent everywhere and always.
+'Behind Will stands Desire,' and Desire is Action.
+
+And if he _had_ accomplished this, how was it done? Not by preaching,
+certainly. Was it, then, simply by being, thinking, feeling it? A
+glorious thought, if true! For assuredly he had this faculty of seeing
+life whole, and even in boyhood he had looked ahead over its entire
+map. He had, indeed, this way of relating all its people, and all its
+parts together, instead of seeing them separate, unintelligible
+because the context was left out. He lived intensely in the present,
+yet looked backwards and forwards too at the same time. This large
+sympathy, this big comforting vision was his gift. Consequently he
+believed in Life. Had he also, then, the gift of making others feel
+and believe it too...?
+
+There he was again, thinking in a circle, as Laroche flew past with
+its empty platforms, and warned him that Paris was getting close. He
+bumped out of Fairyland, yet tumbled back once more for a final
+reverie before the long ugly arms of the city snatched him finally
+out. 'To see life whole,' he reflected, 'is to see it glorious. To
+think one's self part of humanity at large is to bring the universe
+down into the heart. But to see life whole, a whole heart is
+necessary.... He's done it in that splendid story, and he bagged the
+raw idea somehow from me. That's something at any rate. ... So few
+think Beaaty.... But will others see it? That's the point!'
+
+'No, it isn't,' answered the voice beside him. 'The point is that he
+has thought it, and the universe is richer. Even if others do not read
+or understand, what he has thought _is there now_, for ever and ever.'
+
+'True,' he reflected, 'for that Beauty may float down and settle in
+other minds when they least are looking for it, and ignoring utterly
+whence comes the fairy touch. Divine! Delicious! Heavenly!'
+
+'The Beauty he has written came through you, yet was not yours,' the
+voice continued very faintly. 'A far more beautiful mind first
+projected it into that network which binds all minds together. 'Twas
+thence you caught it flying, and, knowing not how to give it shape,
+transferred it to another--who could use it--for others.... Thought is
+Life, and Sympathy is living....'
+
+The voice died away; he could not hear the remainder clearly; the
+passing scenery caught his attention again; during his reverie it had
+been unnoticed utterly. 'Thought is Life, but Sympathy is living---'
+it rolled and poured through him as he repeated it. Snatches of
+another sentence then came rising into him from an immense distance,
+falling upon him from immeasurable heights--barely audible:-
+
+'... from a mind that so loved the Pleiades she made their loveliness
+and joy her own... Alcyone, Merope, Maia...' It dipped away into
+silence like a flower closing for the night, and the train, he
+realised, was slackening speed as it drew into the hideous Gare de
+Lyon.
+
+'I'll talk to Minks about it, perhaps,' he thought, as he stood
+telling the Customs official that he had no brandy, cigarettes, or
+lace. 'He knows about things like that. At any rate, he'll
+sympathise.'
+
+He went across Paris to the Gare du Nord, and caught the afternoon
+boat train to London. The sunshine glared up from the baking streets,
+but he never forgot that overhead, though invisible, the stars were
+shining all the time--Starlight, the most tender and least suspected
+light in all the world, shining bravely even when obscured by the
+Interfering Sun, and the Pleiades, softest, sweetest little group
+among them all.
+
+And when at eleven o'clock he entered his St. James's flat, he took a
+store of it shining in his heart, and therefore in his eyes. Only that
+was no difficult matter, for all the lamps far up the heights were lit
+and gleaming, and caught old mighty London in their gorgeous net.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+     Think with passion
+     That shall fashion
+     Life's entire design, well planned.
+                  _Woman of the Haystack_.
+
+'You are looking so wonderfully well, Mr. Rogers,' Minks observed at
+Charing Cross Station, 'the passage across the Channel, I trust, was
+calm.'
+
+'And yourself and Mrs. Minks?' asked Rogers, looking into the equally
+sunburned face of his secretary, remembering suddenly that he had been
+to the sea with his family; 'Frank, too, and the other children? All
+well, I hope?'
+
+'All in excellent health, Mr. Rogers, thanks to your generous thought.
+My wife---'
+
+'These are the small bags,' the other interrupted, 'and here are the
+keys for my portmanteaux. There's nothing dutiable. You might bring
+them on to the flat while I run over to the Club for a bit of supper,
+Minks.'
+
+'Certainly, with pleasure, Mr. Rogers,' was the beaming reply. 'And
+Mrs. Minks begged me to tell you---'
+
+Only Rogers was already in his taxi-cab and out of ear-shot.
+
+'How well he looks!' reflected Minks, dangling the keys, accustomed to
+these abrupt interruptions, and knowing that his message had been
+understood and therefore duly delivered. These cut-off sentences were
+like a secret code between them. 'And ten years younger! Almost like a
+boy again. I wonder if---' He did not permit himself to finish the
+thought. He tried to remember if he himself had looked like that
+perhaps in the days of long ago when he courted Albinia Lucy--an air
+of joy and secrecy and an absent-minded manner that might any moment
+flame into vehement, concentrated action. For this was the impression
+his employer had made upon him. Only he could not quite remember those
+far-off, happy days. There was ecstasy in them; that he knew. And
+there was ecstasy in Henry Rogers now; that he divined.
+
+'He oughtn't to,' he reflected, as he hurried in another taxi with the
+luggage. 'All his yearnings would be satisfied if he did, his life
+flow into a single channel instead of into many.'
+
+He did not think about his own position and his salary.
+
+'He won't,' he decided as the cab stopped at the door; 'he's not that
+kind of man.' Minks had insight; he knew men. 'No artist ever ought
+to. We are so few, and the world has need of us.' His own case was an
+exception that had justified itself, for he was but a man of talent,
+and talent did not need an exclusive asceticism; whereas his employer
+was a man of genius, and no one woman had the right to monopolise what
+was intended to sweeten the entire universe.
+
+By the time the luggage had been taken up, he had missed the last tram
+home, and his sleep that night must in any case be short. Yet he took
+no note of that. One must live largely. A small sacrifice for such a
+master was nothing at all. He lingered, glancing now and again at the
+heap of correspondence that would occupy them next morning, and
+sorting once more the little pile that would need immediate personal
+attention. He was picking a bit of disfiguring fluff from his coat
+sleeve when the door opened and Henry Rogers came upon him.
+
+'Ah! I waited a moment, Mr. Rogers. I thought you might have something
+to say before I went, perhaps.'
+
+'I hoped you would, Minks. I have a great deal to say. It can wait
+till to-morrow, really--only I wanted--but, there now, I forgot; you
+have to get down to Sydenham, haven't you? And it's late already---'
+
+'That's nothing, Mr. Rogers. I can easily sleep in town. I came
+prepared, indeed, to do so---' as though he, too, had his Club and
+would take a bedroom in it.
+
+'Clever and thoughtful of you, Minks!'
+
+'Only you must be tired after your journey,' suggested the secretary.
+
+'Tired!' exclaimed the other vigorously, 'not a bit! I'm as fresh as a
+st--a daisy, I mean. Come, draw your chair up; we'll have a smoke and
+a little chat. I'm delighted to see you again. How are you? And how's
+everything?'
+
+Goodness! How bright his eyes were, how alert his manner! He looked so
+young, almost springy, thought Minks, as he obeyed decorously, feeling
+flattered and pleased, yet at the same time uneasy a little. Such
+spirits could only proceed, he feared, from one cause. He was a close
+observer, as all poets had need to be. He would discover some clue
+before he went to bed, something that should betray the true state of
+affairs. In any case sleep would be impossible unless he did.
+
+'You stayed away somewhat longer than you originally intended,' he
+ventured at length, having briefly satisfied his employer's question.
+'You found genuine recreation. You needed it, I'm sure.' He glanced
+with one eye at the letters.
+
+'Re-creation, yes; the very word. It was difficult to leave. The place
+was so delightful,' said Rogers simply, filling his pipe and lighting
+it. 'A wonderful mountain village, Minks,' he added, between puffs of
+smoke, while the secretary, who had been waiting for the sign, then
+lit his own Virginian and smoked it diffidently, and with just the
+degree of respect he felt was becoming. He never presumed upon his
+master's genial way of treating him. He made little puffs and was very
+careful with the ashes.
+
+'Ah, yes,' he said; 'I am sure it must have been--both delightful and
+--er--difficult to leave.' He recalled the Margate sands, bathing with
+Albinia and digging trenches with the children. He had written many
+lyrics during those happy weeks of holiday.
+
+'Gave one, in fact, quite a new view of life--and work. There was such
+space and beauty everywhere. And my cousin's children simply would not
+let me go.'
+
+There was a hint of apology and excuse in the tone and words--the
+merest hint, but Minks noticed it and liked the enthusiasm. 'He's been
+up to some mischief; he feels a little ashamed; his work--his Scheme--
+has been so long neglected; conscience pricks him. Ha, ha!' The
+secretary felt his first suspicion confirmed. 'Cousin's children,'
+perhaps! But who else?
+
+'He made a tactful reference--oh, very slight and tentative--to the
+data he had collected for the Scheme, but the other either did not
+hear it, or did not wish to hear it. He brushed it aside, speaking
+through clouds of tobacco smoke. Minks enjoyed a bigger, braver puff
+at his own. Excitement grew in him.
+
+'Just the kind of place you would have loved, Minks,' Rogers went on
+with zeal. 'I think you really must go there some day; cart your
+family over, teach the children French, you know, and cultivate a bit
+of vineyard. Such fine big forests, too, full of wild flowers and
+things--O such lovely hand-made things--why, you could almost see the
+hand that made 'em.' The phrase had slipped suddenly into his mind.
+
+'Really, really, Mr. Rogers, but how very jo--delightful it sounds.'
+He thought of the stubble fields and treeless sea-coast where he had
+been. The language, however, astonished him. Enthusiasm like this
+could only spring from a big emotion. His heart sank a little.
+
+'And the people all so friendly and hospitable and simple that you
+could go climbing with your bootmaker or ask your baker in to dine and
+sleep. No snobbery! Sympathy everywhere and a big free life flowing in
+your veins.'  This settled it. Only a lover finds the whole world
+lovable.
+
+'One must know the language, though,' said Minks, 'in order to enjoy
+the people and understand them, I suppose?'
+
+'Not a bit, not a bit! One _feels_ it all, you see; somehow one feels
+it and understands. A few words useful here and there, but one gets
+along without even these. I never knew such a place. Every one seemed
+to be in sympathy together. They think it, as it were. It was regular
+fairyland, I tell you.'
+
+'Which means that _you_ felt and thought it,' said Minks to himself.
+Aloud he merely remarked, though with conviction, for he was getting
+interested, 'Thinking is important, I know.'
+
+Rogers laid his pipe aside and suddenly turned upon him--so abruptly
+that Minks started. Was this the confession coming? Would he hear now
+that his chief was going to be married? His wandering eyes almost drew
+level in the excitement that he felt. He knocked a tiny ash from his
+cigarette and waited. But the expected bomb did not explode. He heard
+instead this curious question:--
+
+'And that's something--it reminds me now--something I particularly
+wanted to ask you about, my dear fellow. You are familiar, I know,
+with such things and theories--er--speculations, as it were. You read
+that sort of stuff. You are in touch with the latest ideas, I mean,
+and up-to-date. You can tell me, if any one can.'
+
+He paused, hesitating a moment, as Minks, listening in some
+bewilderment, gazed into his eager face. He said nothing. He only
+committed himself to a deprecating gesture with his hands, letting his
+cigarette slip from his fingers on to the carpet.
+
+'About _thought_,' continued Rogers, keeping his eyes fixed upon him
+while he rose with flushed face from the search to find the stump.
+'What do you know about thought? Tell me what you hear about _that_--
+what theories are held--what people believe about it. I mean thought-
+transference, telepathy, or whatever it is called. Is it proved? Is it
+a fact?'
+
+His voice had lowered. There was mystery in his manner. He sat back in
+his chair, picked up his pipe, replaced it in his mouth unlighted, and
+waited.
+
+Minks pulled himself together. His admirable qualities as a private
+secretary now came in. Putting excitement and private speculations of
+his own aside, he concentrated his orderly mind upon replies that
+should be models of succinct statement. He had practised thought-
+control, and prided himself upon the fact. He could switch attention
+instantly from one subject to another without confusion. The replies,
+however, were, of course, drawn from his own reading. He neither
+argued nor explained. He merely stated.
+
+'Those who have taken the trouble to study the evidence believe,' he
+began, 'that it is established, though its laws are as yet unknown.
+Personally, if I may quote myself, I do believe it.'
+
+'Quite so, quite so. Do quote yourself--that's what I want--facts. But
+you refer to deliberate experiments, don't you?'
+
+'In my own case, yes, Mr. Rogers, although the most successful
+thought-transference is probably unconscious and not deliberate---'
+
+'Such as, for instance---'
+
+'Public opinion,' replied Minks, after a moment's search, 'which is
+the result of waves of thought sent out by everybody--by a community;
+or by the joint thinking of a nation, again, which modifies every mind
+born into that nation, the result of' centuries of common thinking
+along definite familiar channels. Thought-currents rush everywhere
+about the world, affecting every one more or less, and--er--
+particularly lodging in minds receptive to them.'
+
+'Thought is dynamic, then, they hold?'
+
+'An actual force, yes; as actual as electricity, and as little
+understood,' returned the secretary, proud that he had read these
+theories and remembered them. 'With every real thought a definite
+force goes forth from you that modifies every single person, and
+probably every single object as well, in the entire world. Thought is
+creative according to its intensity. It links everybody in the world
+with everybody else---'
+
+'Objects too, you say?' Rogers questioned.
+
+Minks glanced up to make sure there was no levity in the question, but
+only desire for knowledge.
+
+'Objects too,' he replied, apparently satisfied, 'for science tells us
+that the movement of a body here affects the farthest star. A
+continuous medium--ether--transmits the vibrations without friction--
+and thought-force is doubtless similarly transmitted--er---'
+
+'So that if I think of a flower or a star, my thought leaps into them
+and affects them?' the other interrupted again.
+
+'More, Mr. Rogers,' was the reply, 'for your thought, being creative,
+enriches the world with images of beauty which may float into another
+mind across the sea, distance no obstacle at all. You make a mental
+image when you think. There's imagination in all real thinking--if I
+make myself clear. "Our most elaborate thoughts," to quote for a
+moment, "are often, as I think, not really ours, but have on a sudden
+come up, as it were, out of hell or down out of heaven." So what one
+thinks affects everybody in the world. The noble thinkers lift
+humanity, though they may never tell their thoughts in speech or
+writing.'
+
+His employer stared at him in silence through the cloud of smoke. The
+clock on the mantelpiece struck half-past twelve.
+
+'That is where the inspiration of the artist comes in,' continued the
+secretary after a moment's hesitation whether he should say it or not,
+'for his sensitive soul collects them and gives them form. They lodge
+in him and grow, and every passionate longing for spiritual growth
+sets the whole world growing too. Your Scheme for Disabled---'
+
+'Even if it never materialises---' Rogers brusquely interposed.
+
+'Sweetens the world--yes--according to this theory,' continued Minks,
+wondering what in the world had come over his chief, yet so pleased to
+state his own views that he forgot to analyse. 'A man in a dungeon
+earnestly praying would accomplish more than an active man outside who
+merely lived thoughtlessly, even though beneficently--if I make myself
+clear.'
+
+'Yes, yes; you make yourself admirably clear, Minks, as I knew you
+would.' Rogers lit his pipe again and puffed hard through a minute's
+silence. The secretary held his peace, realising from the tone of the
+last sentence that he had said enough. Mr. Rogers was leading up to
+other questions. Hitherto he had been clearing the ground.
+
+It came then, through the clouds of smoke, though Minks failed to
+realise exactly why it was--so important:
+
+'So that if I thought vividly of anything, I should. actually create a
+mental picture which in turn might slip into another's mind, while
+that other would naturally suppose it was his own?'
+
+'Exactly, Mr. Rogers; exactly so.' Minks contrived to make the
+impatience in his voice sound like appreciation of his master's
+quickness. 'Distance no obstacle either,' he repeated, as though fond
+of the phrase.
+
+'And, similarly, the thought I deemed my own might have come in its
+turn from the mind of some one else?'
+
+'Precisely; for thought binds us all together like a network, and to
+think of others is to spread oneself about the universe. When we think
+thus we get out--as it were--into that medium common to all of us
+where spirit meets spirit---'
+
+'Out!' exclaimed Rogers, putting down his pipe and staring keenly,
+first into one eye, then into the other. 'Out?'
+
+'Out--yes,' Minks echoed faintly, wondering why that particular word
+was chosen. He felt a little startled. This earnest talk, moreover,
+stirred the subconsciousness in him, so that he remembered that
+unfinished sonnet he had begun weeks ago at Charing Cross. If he were
+alone now he could complete it. Lines rose and offered themselves by
+the dozen. His master's emotion had communicated itself to him. A
+breath of that ecstasy he had already divined passed through the air
+between them.
+
+'It's what the Contemplative Orders attempt---' he continued, yet half
+to himself, as though a little bemused.
+
+'Out, by George! Out!' Rogers said again.
+
+So emphatic was the tone that Minks half rose from his chair to go.
+
+'No, no,' laughed his chief; 'I don't mean that you're to get out.
+Forgive my abruptness. The fact is I was thinking aloud a moment. I
+meant--I mean that you've explained a lot to me I didn't understand
+before--had never thought about, rather. And it's rather wonderful,
+you see. In fact, it's _very_ wonderful. Minks,' he added, with the
+grave enthusiasm of one who has made a big discovery, 'this world _is_
+a very wonderful place.'
+
+'It is simply astonishing, Mr. Rogers,' Minks answered with
+conviction, 'astonishingly beautiful.'
+
+'That's what I mean,' he went on. 'If I think beauty, that beauty may
+materialise---'
+
+'Must, will, does materialise, Mr. Rogers, just as your improvements
+in machinery did. You first thought them out!'
+
+'Then put them into words; yes, and afterwards into metal. Strong
+thought is bound to realise itself sooner or later, eh? Isn't it all
+grand and splendid?'
+
+They stared at one another across the smoky atmosphere of the London
+flat at the hour of one in the morning in the twentieth century.
+
+'And when I think of a Scaffolding of Dusk that builds the Night,'
+Rogers went on in a lower tone to himself, yet not so low that Minks,
+listening in amazement, did not catch every syllable, 'or of a
+Dustman, Sweep, and Lamplighter, of a Starlight Express, or a vast
+Star Net that binds the world in sympathy together, and when I weave
+all these into a story, whose centre somehow is the Pleiades--all this
+is real and actual, and--and---'
+
+'May have been projected by another mind before it floated into your
+own,' Minks suddenly interposed almost in a whisper, charmed wholly
+into the poet's region by these suggestive phrases, yet wondering a
+little why he said it, and particularly how he dared to say it.
+
+His chief turned sharply upon him.
+
+'My own thought exactly!' he exclaimed; 'but how the devil did you
+guess it?'
+
+Minks returned the stare with triumph.
+
+'Unconscious transference!' he said.
+
+'You really think _that_?' his master asked, yet not mockingly.
+
+Minks turned a shade pinker.
+
+'I do, indeed, sir,' he replied warmly. 'I think it probable that the
+thoughts of people you have never seen or heard of drop into your mind
+and colour it. They lodge there, or are rejected, according to your
+mood and the texture of your longings--what you want to be, that is.
+What you want, if I may say so, is emptiness, and that emptiness
+invites. The flying thought flits in and makes itself at home. Some
+people overflow with thoughts of kindness and beauty that radiate from
+them, of love and tenderness and desire to help. These thoughts, it
+may be, find no immediate object; but they are not lost. They pour
+loose about the world of men and women, and sooner or later find the
+empty heart that needs them. I believe, sir, that to sit in a chair
+and think such things strongly brings comfort to thousands who have
+little idea whence comes the sudden peace and happiness. And any one
+who happens to be praying for these things at the moment attracts them
+instantly. The comfort, the joy, the relief come---'
+
+'What a good idea, Minks,' said Rogers gently, 'and how helpful if we
+all believed it. No one's life need be a failure then. Those who want
+love, for instance, need it, crave it, just think what an army they
+are!'
+
+He stared thoughtfully a moment at his little secretary.
+
+'You might write a book about it, you know--try and make people
+believe it--convince them. Eh? Only, you'd have to give your proofs,
+you know. People want proofs.'
+
+Minks, pinker than before, hesitated a moment. He was not sure how far
+he ought to, indulge his private theories in words. The expression in
+his chief's blue eyes apparently encouraged him.
+
+'But, indeed, Mr. Rogers, the proofs are there. Those moments of
+sudden strength and joy that visit a man, catching him unawares and
+unexplained--every solitary man and woman knows them, for every
+solitary man and woman in the world craves first of all--to _be_
+loved. To love another, others, an impersonal Cause, is not enough. It
+is only half of life; to _be_ loved is the other half. If every single
+person--I trust, sir, I do not tire you?--was loved by some one, the
+happiness of life would be enormously greater than it is, for each one
+loved would automatically then give out from his own store, and to
+receive love makes one overflow with love for every one else. It is
+so, is it not, sir?'
+
+Rogers, an odd thrill catching him unawares, nodded. 'It is, Minks, it
+is,' he agreed. 'To love one person makes one half prepared to love
+all, and to be loved in turn may have a similar effect. It is nice to
+think so anyhow.'
+
+'It is true, sir----' and Minks sat up, ready with another deluge.
+
+'But you were saying something just now,' interrupted the other,
+'about these sudden glimpses of joy and beauty that--er--come to one--
+er--inexplicably. What d'ye mean by that precisely?'
+
+Minks glowed. He was being listened to, and understood by his honoured
+chief, too!
+
+'Simply that some one, perhaps far away--some sweet woman probably--
+has been thinking love,' he replied with enthusiasm, yet in a low and
+measured voice, 'and that the burning thoughts have rushed into the
+emptiness of a heart that needs them. Like water, thought finds its
+level. The sudden gush--all feel it more or less at times, surely!--
+may rise first from her mind as she walks lonely upon the shore,
+pacing the decks at sea, or in her hillside rambles, thinking,
+dreaming, hoping, yearning--to pour out and find the heart that needs
+these very things, perhaps far across the world. Who knows? Heart
+thrills in response to heart secretly in every corner of the globe,
+and when these tides flood unexplained into your soul---'
+
+'Into _my_ soul---!' exclaimed his chief.
+
+'I beg your pardon, sir,' Minks hurried to explain; 'I mean to any
+lonely soul that happens to crave such comfort with real longing--it
+implies, to my mind at least, that these two are destined to give and
+take from one another, and that, should they happen to meet in actual
+life, they will rush together instantly like a pair of flames---'
+
+'And if they never--meet?' asked Rogers slowly, turning to the mantel-
+piece for the matches.
+
+'They will continue to feed each other in this delicious spiritual way
+from a distance, sir. Only--the chances are--that they will meet, for
+their thought already connects them vitally, though as yet
+unrealised.'
+
+There was a considerable pause. Rogers lit his pipe. Minks, feeling he
+ought to stand while his master did so, also rose from his chair. The
+older man turned; they faced each other for a moment, Rogers putting
+smoke violently into the air between them.
+
+'Minks, my dear fellow,' he observed, 'you are, as I have always
+thought, a poet. You have ideas, and, whether true or not, they are
+rather lovely. Write them out for others to read. Use your spare time
+writing them out. I'll see to it that you have more leisure.'
+
+With a laugh the big man moved abruptly past his chair and knocked his
+pipe on the edge of the ash-bowl. His eye, as he did so, fell upon the
+pile of letters and papers arranged so neatly on the table. He
+remembered the lateness of the hour--and other things besides.
+
+'Well, well,' he said vaguely with a sigh; 'so here we are again back
+at work in London.'
+
+Minks had turned, too, realising that the surprising conversation was
+over. A great excitement was in him. He did not feel in the least
+tired. An unusual sense of anticipation was in the air. He could not
+make it out at all. Reviewing a dozen possibilities at once, he
+finally rejected the romantic one he had first suspected, and decided
+that the right moment had at last come to say something of the Scheme.
+He had worked so hard to collect data. All was in perfect order. His
+chief could not feel otherwise than pleased.
+
+'Then I'll be saying good-night, Mr. Rogers,' he began, 'for you must
+be very tired, and I trust you will enjoy a long night's rest. Perhaps
+you would like me to come a little later in the morning than usual.'
+
+He stood looking affectionately at the formidable pile of
+correspondence, and, as his chief made no immediate reply, he went on,
+with more decision in his voice:
+
+'Here,' he said, touching the papers he had carefully set on one side,
+'are all the facts you wanted referring to your great Scheme---'
+
+He jumped. His master's fist had come down with a bang upon the table.
+He stepped back a pace. They stared at one another.
+
+'Damn the Scheme!' cried Rogers. 'have done and finished with it. Tear
+up the papers. Cancel any arrangements already made. And never mention
+the thing again in my hearing. It's all unreal and wrong and
+unnecessary!'
+
+Minks gasped. The man was so in earnest. What could it mean?
+
+'Wrong--unnecessary--done with!' he faltered. Then, noticing the
+flashing eyes that yet betrayed a hint of merriment in their fire, he
+added quickly, 'Quite so, Mr. Rogers; I understand. You've got an
+improvement, you mean?'
+
+It was not his place to ask questions, but he could not contain
+himself. Curiosity and disappointment rushed over him.
+
+'A bigger and a better one altogether, Minks,' was the vehement reply.
+He pushed the heap of papers towards the secretary. Minks took them
+gingerly, reluctantly.
+
+'Burn 'em up,' Rogers went on, 'and never speak to me again about the
+blessed thing. I've got a far bigger Scheme than that.'
+
+Minks slowly gathered the papers together and put them in his biggest
+pocket. He knew not what to think. The suddenness of the affair dazed
+him. Thought-transference failed this time; he was too perturbed,
+indeed, to be in a receptive state at all. It seemed a catastrophe, a
+most undesirable and unexpected climax. The romantic solution revived
+in him--but only for a passing moment. He rejected it. Some big
+discovery was in the air. He felt that extraordinary sense of
+anticipation once again.
+
+'Look here, my dear fellow, Minks,' said Rogers, who had been watching
+his discomfiture with amusement, 'you may be surprised, but you need
+not be alarmed. The fact is, this has been coming for a long time;
+it's not an impulsive decision. You must have felt it--from my
+letters. That Scheme was all right enough, only I am not the right man
+for it. See? And our work,' he added laughingly, 'won't go for nothing
+either, because our thought will drop into another mind somewhere that
+will accomplish the thing far better than I could have accomplished
+it.'
+
+Minks made an odd gesture, as who should say this might not be true.
+He did not venture upon speech, however. This new plan must be very
+wonderful, was all he thought just then. His faith in his employer's
+genius was complete.
+
+'And in due time you shall hear all about it. Have a little patience.
+Perhaps you'll get it out of my thoughts before I tell it to you,' he
+smiled, 'but perhaps you won't. I can only tell you just now that it
+has beauty in it---a beauty of the stars.'
+
+Yet what his bigger Scheme was he really had no clear idea. He felt it
+coming-that was all!
+
+And with that Minks had to be content. This was dismissal. Good-nights
+were said, and the secretary went out into the street.
+
+'Go to a comfortable hotel,' was the last thing he heard, 'and put it
+down to me, of course. Sleep well, sleep well. To-morrow at two
+o'clock will do.'
+
+Minks strolled home, walking upon air. The sky was brilliant with its
+gorgeous constellations--the beauty of the stars. Poems blazed upon
+him. But he was too excited to compose. Even first lines evaded
+capture. 'Stars,' besides, was a dreadful word to rhyme with, for all
+its charm and loveliness. He knew of old that the only word was
+'wars,' most difficult to bring in naturally and spontaneously, and
+with the wrong sound in any case.
+
+'He must have been writing poetry out there,' he reflected finally,
+'or else living it. Living it, probably. He's a grand fellow anyhow,
+grand as a king.' Stars, wars, kings, thrones-=the words flew in and
+out among a maze of unaccomplished lines.
+
+But the last thing in his mind as he curled up to sleep in the strange
+bed was that he had delivered his wife's message, but that he could
+not tell her about this sudden collapse of the great, long-talked-of
+Scheme. Albinia would hardly understand. She might think less of his
+chief. He would wait until the new one dawned upon the horizon with
+its beauty of the stars. Then he would simply overwhelm her with it,
+as his temperament loved to do.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+    Lo, every yearning thought that holds a tear,
+    Yet finds no mission
+    And lies untold,
+    Waits, guarded in that labyrinth of gold,--
+    To reappear
+    Upon some perfect night,
+    Deathless--not old--
+    But sweet with time and distance,
+    And clothed as in a vision
+    Of starry brilliance
+    For the world's delight.
+                        JOHN HENRY CAMPDEN.
+
+Then, as the days passed, practical life again caught Henry Rogers in
+its wholesome grip. Fairyland did not fade exactly, but it dipped a
+little below the horizon. Like hell and heaven, it was a state of
+mind, open potentially to all, but not to be enjoyed merely for the
+asking. Like other desirable things, it was to be 'attained.' Its
+remoteness and difficulty of access lent to it a haunting charm; for
+though its glory dimmed a little, there was a soft afterglow that shed
+its radiance even down Piccadilly and St. James's Street. He was
+always conscious of this land beyond the sunset; the stars shone
+brightly, though clouds or sunlight interfered to blur their message.
+
+London life, however, by the sheer weight of its grinding daily
+machinery, worked its slow effect upon him. He became less sensitive
+to impressions. These duller periods were interrupted sometimes by
+states of brilliant receptiveness, as at Bourcelles; but there was a
+fence between the two--a rather prickly frontier, and the secret of
+combining them lay just beyond his reach. For his London mind, guided
+by reason, acted in a logical plane of two dimensions, while
+imagination, captained by childhood's fairy longings, cantered loose
+in all directions at once--impossibly. The first was the world; the
+second was the universe. As yet, he was unable to co-ordinate them.
+Minks, he was certain, could--and did, sailing therefore upon an even
+keel. There was this big harmony in little Minks that he envied. Minks
+had an outlet. Sydenham, and even the City, for him were fairyland; a
+motor-bus fed his inspiration as surely as a starlit sky; moon always
+rhymed with June, and forget with regret. But the inner world of Henry
+Rogers was not yet properly connected with the outer. Passage from one
+to the other was due to chance, it seemed, not to be effected at will.
+Moods determined the sudden journey. He rocked. But for his talks with
+little Minks, he might have wrecked.
+
+And the talks with Minks were about--well, he hardly knew what, but
+they all played round this map of fairyland he sought to reduce to the
+scale of everyday life. They discussed thought, dreams, the
+possibility of leaving the body in sleep, the artist temperament, the
+source of inspiration as well as the process of the imaginative
+faculty that created. They talked even of astronomy. Minks held that
+the life of practical, daily work was the bed-rock of all sane
+production, yet while preaching this he bubbled over with all the
+wild, entrancing theories that were in the air to-day. They were
+comical, but never dangerous--did not upset him. They were almost a
+form of play.
+
+And his master, listening, found these conversations an outlet somehow
+for emotions in himself he could not manage--a scaffolding that
+provided outlines for his awakening dreams to build upon. He found
+relief. For Minks, with his delightful tact, asked no awkward
+questions. He referred neither to the defunct Scheme, nor mentioned
+the new one that held 'a beauty of the stars.' He waited. Rogers also
+waited.
+
+And, while he waited, he grew conscious more and more of an enormous
+thing that passed, driving behind, _below_, his daily external life.
+He could never quite get at it. In there, down out of sight somewhere,
+he knew everything. His waking existence was fed invisibly from below.
+In the daytime he now frequently caught himself attempting to recover
+the memory of things that went on elsewhere, things he was personally
+involved in, vital things. This daylight effort to recover them was as
+irksome as the attempt to draw a loose hair that has wound about the
+tongue. He spoke at length to Minks about it.
+
+'Some part of you,' replied the imperturbable secretary, after
+listening carefully to his master's vague description of the symptoms,
+'is being engaged elsewhere--very actively engaged---'
+
+'Eh?' asked Rogers, puzzled.
+
+'Probably at night, sir, while your brain and body sleep,' Minks
+elaborated, 'your energetic spirit is out--on the plane of causes---'
+
+The other gasped slightly, 'While my body lies unconscious?'
+
+'Your spirit may be busy at all kinds of things. _That_ can never be
+unconscious,' was the respectful answer. 'They say---'
+
+'Yes, what do they say?' He recognised a fairy theory, and jumped at
+it.
+
+'That in sleep,' continued the other, encouraged, 'the spirit knows a
+far more concentrated life--dips down into the deep sea of being--our
+waking life merely the froth upon the shore.'
+
+Rogers stared at him. 'Yes, yes,' he answered slowly, 'that's very
+pretty, very charming; it's quite delightful. What ideas you have, my
+dear Minks! What jolly, helpful ideas!'
+
+Minks beamed with pleasure.
+
+'Not my own, Mr. Rogers, not my own,' he said, with as much pride as
+if they _were_ his own, 'but some of the oldest in the world, just
+coming into fashion again with the turn of the tide, it seems. Our
+daily life--even the most ordinary--is immensely haunted, girdled
+about with a wonder of incredible things. There are hints everywhere
+to-day, though few can read the enormous script complete. Here and
+there one reads a letter or a word, that's all. Yet the best minds
+refuse to know the language, not even the ABC of it; they read another
+language altogether---'
+
+'The best minds!' repeated Rogers. 'What d'you mean by that!' It
+sounded, as Minks said it, so absurdly like best families.
+
+'The scientific and philosophical minds, sir. They think it's not
+worth learning, this language. That's the pity of it--ah, the great
+pity of it!' And he looked both eager and resentful--his expression
+almost pathetic. He turned half beseechingly to his employer, as
+though _he_ might alter the sad state of things. 'As with an iceberg,
+Mr. Rogers,' he added, 'the greater part of everything--of ourselves
+especially--is invisible; we merely know the detail banked against an
+important grand Unseen.'
+
+The long sentence had been suffered to its close because the audience
+was busy with thoughts of his own instead of listening carefully.
+Behind the wild language stirred some hint of meaning that, he felt,
+held truth. For a moment, it seemed, his daylight searching was
+explained--almost.
+
+'Well and good, my dear fellow, and very picturesque,' he said
+presently, gazing with admiration at his secretary's neat blue tie and
+immaculate linen; 'but thinking, you know, is not possible without
+matter.' This in a tone of '_Do_ talk a little sense.' 'Even if the
+spirit does go out, it couldn't think apart from the brain, could it
+now, eh?'
+
+Minks took a deep breath and relieved himself of the following:
+
+'Ah, Mr. Rogers'--as much as to say 'Fancy _you_ believing that!'--
+'but it can experience and know _direct_, since it passes into the
+region whence the material that feeds thought issues in the first
+instance--causes, Mr. Rogers, causes.'
+
+'Oho!' said his master, 'oho!'
+
+'There is no true memory afterwards,' continued the little dreamer,
+'because memory depends upon how much the spirit can bring back into
+the brain, you see. We have vague feelings, rather than actual
+recollection--feelings such as you were kind enough to confess to me
+you had been haunted by yourself---'
+
+'All-overish feelings,' Rogers helped him, seeing that he was losing
+confidence a little, 'vague sensations of joy and wonder and--well--in
+a word, strength.'
+
+'Faith,' said Minks, with a decision of renewed conviction, 'which is
+really nothing but unconscious knowledge--knowledge unremembered. And
+it's the half-memory of what you do at night that causes
+ this sense of anticipation you now experience; for what is
+anticipation, after all, but memory thrown forward?'
+
+There was a pause then, during which Rogers lit a cigarette, while
+Minks straightened his tie several times in succession.
+
+'You are a greater reader than I, of course,' resumed his employer
+presently; 'still, I have come across one or two stories which deal
+with this kind of thing. Only, in the books, the people always
+remember what they've done at night, out of the body, in the spirit,
+or whatever you like to call it. Now, _I_ remember nothing whatever.
+How d'you account for that, pray?'
+
+Minks smiled a little sadly. 'The books,' he answered very softly,
+'are wrong there--mere inventions--not written from personal
+experience. There can be no detailed memory unless the brain has been
+'out' too--which it hasn't. That's where inaccuracy and looseness of
+thought come in. If only the best minds would take the matter up, you
+see, we might---'
+
+Rogers interrupted him. 'We shall miss the post, Minks, if we go on
+dreaming and talking like this,' he exclaimed, looking at his watch
+and then at the pile of letters waiting to be finished. 'It is very
+delightful indeed, very--but we mustn't forget to be practical, too.'
+
+And the secretary, not sorry perhaps to be rescued in time from the
+depths he had floundered in, switched his mind in concentration upon
+the work in hand again. The conversation had arisen from a chance
+coincidence in this very correspondence--two letters that had crossed
+after weeks of silence.
+
+Work was instantly resumed. It went on as though it had never been
+interrupted. Pride and admiration stirred the heart of Minks as he
+noticed how keenly and accurately his master's brain took up the lost
+threads again. 'A grand fellow!' he thought to himself, 'a splendid
+man! He lives in both worlds at once, yet never gets confused, nor
+lets one usurp his powers to the detriment of the other. If only I
+were equally balanced and effective. Oh dear!' And he sighed.
+
+And there were many similar conversations of this kind. London seemed
+different, almost transfigured sometimes. Was this the beginning of
+that glory which should prove it a suburb of Bourcelles?
+
+Rogers found his thoughts were much in that cosy mountain village: the
+children capered by his side all day; he smelt the woods and flowers;
+he heard the leaves rustle on the poplar's crest; and had merely to
+think of a certain room in the tumble-down old Citadelle for a wave of
+courage and high anticipation to sweep over him like a sea. A new
+feeling of harmony was taking him in hand. It was very delightful; and
+though he felt explanation beyond his reach still, his talks with
+Minks provided peep-holes through which he peered at the enormous
+thing that brushed him day and night.
+
+A great settling was taking place inside him. Thoughts certainly began
+to settle. He realised, for one thing, that he had left the theatre
+where the marvellous Play had been enacted. He stood outside now, able
+to review and form a judgment. His mind loved order. Undue
+introspection he disliked, as a form of undesirable familiarity; a
+balanced man must not be too familiar with himself; it endangered
+self-respect.
+
+He had been floundering rather. After years of methodical labour the
+freedom of too long a holiday was disorganising. He tried to steady
+himself. And the Plan of Life, answering to control, grew smaller
+instantly, reduced to proportions he could examine reasonably. This
+was the beginning of success. The bewildering light of fairyland still
+glimmered, but no longer so diffused. It focused into little definite
+kernels he could hold steady while he scrutinised them.
+
+And these kernels he examined carefully as might be: in the quiet,
+starry evenings usually, while walking alone in St. James's Park after
+his day of board meetings, practical work with Minks, and the like.
+
+Gradually then, out of the close survey, emerged certain things that
+seemed linked together in an intelligible sequence of cause and
+effect. There was still mystery, for subconscious investigation ever
+involves this background of shadow. Question and Wonder watched him.
+But the facts emerged.
+
+He jotted them down on paper as best he could. The result looked like
+a Report drawn up by Minks, only less concise and--he was bound to
+admit it--less intelligible. He smiled as he read them over....
+
+'My thoughts and longings, awakened that night in the little Crayfield
+garden,' he summed it up to himself, having read the Report so far,
+'went forth upon their journey of realisation. I projected them--
+according to Minks--vividly enough for that! I thought Beauty--and
+this glorious result materialised! More--my deepest, oldest craving of
+all has come to life again--the cry of loneliness that yearns to--that
+seeks--er---'
+
+At this point, however, his analysis grew wumbled; the transference of
+thought and emotion seemed comprehensible enough; though magical, it
+was not more so than wireless telegraphy, or that a jet of steam
+should drive an express for a hundred miles. It was conceivable that
+Daddy had drawn thence the inspiration for his wonderful story. What
+baffled him was the curious feeling that another was mixed up in the
+whole, delightful business, and that neither he nor his cousin were
+the true sponsors of the fairy fabric. He never forgot the description
+his cousin read aloud that night in the Den--how the Pattern of his
+Story reached its climax and completeness when a little starry figure
+with twinkling feet and amber eyes had leaped into the centre and made
+itself at home there. From the Pleiades it came. The lost Pleiad was
+found. The network of thought and sympathy that contained the universe
+had trembled to its uttermost fastenings. The principal role was
+filled at last.
+
+It was here came in the perplexing thing that baffled him. His mind
+sat down and stared at an enormous, shadowy possibility that he was
+unable to grasp. It brushed past him overhead, beneath, on all sides.
+He peered up at it and marvelled, unconvinced, yet knowing himself a
+prisoner. Something he could not understand was coming, was already
+close, was watching him, waiting the moment to pounce out, like an
+invisible cat upon a bewildered mouse. The question he flung out
+brought no response, and he recalled with a smile the verse that
+described his absurd position:--
+
+     Like a mouse who, lost in wonder,
+     Flicks its whiskers at the thunder!
+
+For, while sprites and yearning were decidedly his own, the
+interpretation of them, if not their actual origin, seemed another's.
+This other, like some dear ideal on the way to realisation, had taken
+him prisoner. The queer sense of anticipation Bourcelles had fostered
+was now actual expectation, as though some Morning Spider had borne
+his master-longing, exquisitely fashioned by the Story, across the
+Universe, and the summons had been answered-from the Pleiades. The
+indestructible threads of thought and feeling tightened. The more he
+thought about his cousin's interpretation the more he found in it a
+loveliness and purity, a crystal spiritual quality, that he could
+credit neither to the author's mind nor to his own. This soft and
+starry brilliance was another's. Up to a point the interpretation came
+through Daddy's brain, just as the raw material came through his own;
+but there-after this other had appropriated both, as their original
+creator and proprietor. Some shining, delicate hand reached down from
+its starry home and gathered in this exquisite form built up from the
+medley of fairy thought and beauty that were first its own. The owner
+of that little hand would presently appear to claim it.
+
+'We were but channels after all then--both of us,' was the idea that
+lay so insistently in him. 'The sea of thought sends waves in all
+directions. They roll into different harbours. I caught the feeling,
+he supplied the form, but this other lit the original fire!'
+
+And further than this wumbled conclusion he could not get. He went
+about his daily work. however, with a secret happiness tugging at his
+mind all day, and a sense of expectant wonder glancing brightly over
+everything he thought or did. He was a prisoner in fairyland, and what
+he called his outer and his inner world were, after all, but different
+ways of looking at one and the same thing. Life everywhere was one.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+
+    Es stehen unbeweglich
+    Die Sterne in der Hoh'
+    Viel tausend Jahr', und schauen
+    Sich an mit Liebesweh.
+
+    Sie sprechen eine Sprache,
+    Die ist so reich, so schon;
+    Doch keiner der Philologen
+    Kann diese Sprache verstehen.
+
+    Ich aber hab' sie gelernet,
+    Und ich vergesse sie nicht;
+    Mir diente als Grammatik
+    Der Herzallerliebsten Gesicht.
+                            HEINE.
+
+One evening in particular the sense of expectation in him felt very
+close upon delivery. All day he had been aware of it, and a letter
+received that morning from his cousin seemed the cause. The story, in
+its shorter version, had been accepted. Its reality, therefore, had
+already spread; one other mind, at least, had judged it with
+understanding. Two months from now, when it appeared in print,
+hundreds more would read it. Its beauty would run loose in many
+hearts. And Rogers went about his work that day as though the pleasure
+was his own. The world felt very sweet. He saw the good in every one
+with whom he came in contact. And the inner excitement due to
+something going to happen was continuous and cumulative.
+
+Yet London just then--it was August--was dull and empty, dusty, and
+badly frayed at the edges. It needed a great cleaning; he would have
+liked to pour sea water over all its streets and houses, bathed its
+panting parks in the crystal fountains of Bourcelles. All day long his
+thoughts, indeed, left London for holidays in little Bourcelles. He
+was profoundly conscious that the Anticipation he first recognised in
+that forest village was close upon accomplishment now. On the journey
+back to England he recalled how urgent it had been. In London, ever
+since, it had never really left him. But to-day it now suddenly became
+more than expectation--he felt it in him as a certainty that
+approached fulfilment. It was strange, it was bewildering; it seemed
+to him as though something from that under-self he could never
+properly reach within him, pushed upwards with a kind of aggressive
+violence towards the surface. It was both sweet and vital. Behind the
+'something' was the 'some one' who led it into action.
+
+At half-past six he strolled down a deserted St. James's Street,
+passed the door of his club with no temptation to go in, and climbed
+the stairs slowly to his rooms. His body was languid though his mind
+alert. He sank into an arm-chair beside the open window. 'I must
+_do_ something to-night,' he thought eagerly; 'mere reading at the
+club is out of the question. I'll go to a theatre or--or--.' He
+considered various alternatives, deciding finally upon Richmond Park.
+He loved long walks at night when his mind was restless thus; the air
+in Richmond Park was peculiarly fresh and scented after dark. He knew
+the little gate that was never closed. He would dine lightly, and go
+for a ten-mile stretch among the oaks, surprise the deer asleep,
+listen to the hum of distant London, and watch the fairy battle
+between the lurid reflection of its million lights and the little
+stars.... There were places in the bracken where....
+
+The rumbling clatter of a railway van disturbed the picture. His mind
+followed the noise instead. Thought flashed along the street to a
+station. He saw trains...
+
+'Come at once! You're wanted here--some one calls you!' sounded a
+breathless merry voice beside him. 'Come quickly; aussi schnell que
+moglich!'
+
+There was a great gulp of happiness in him; his spirit plunged in joy.
+He turned and looked about him swiftly. That singing voice, with its
+impudent mingling of languages was unmistakable.
+
+'From the Pleiades. Look sharp! You've been further off than ever
+lately, and further is further than farther--much! Over the forests
+and into the cave, that is the way we must all behave---!'
+
+He opened an eye.
+
+Between him and a great gold sunset ran the wind. It was a slender
+violet wind. The sunset, however, was in the act of disappearing for
+the Scaffolding of Dusk was passing through the air--he saw the slung
+trellis-work about him, the tracery of a million lines, the guy-ropes,
+uprights, and the feathery threads of ebony that trailed the Night
+behind them like a mighty cloth. There was a fluttering as of
+innumerable wings.
+
+'You needn't tug like that,' he gasped. 'I'm coming all right. I'm
+out!'
+
+'But you're so slow and sticky,' she insisted. 'You've been sticky
+like this for weeks now!'
+
+
+He saw the bright brown eyes and felt the hair all over his face like
+a bath of perfume. They rushed together. His heart beat faster....
+
+'Who wants me in such a hurry?' he cried, the moment he was
+disentangled. Laughter ran past him on every side from the world of
+trees.
+
+'As if you didn't know! What _is_ the good of pretending any longer!
+You're both together in the Network, and you know it just as well as
+she does!'
+
+Pretending! Just as well as _she_ does!
+
+As though he had eyes all over his body he saw the Net of Stars above
+him. Below were forests, vineyards, meadows, and the tiny lights of
+houses. In the distance shimmered the waters of a familiar lake. Great
+purple mountains rolled against the sky line. But immediately over his
+head, close yet also distant, filling the entire heavens, there hung a
+glittering Pattern that he knew, grown now so vast that at first he
+scarcely recognised its dazzling loveliness. From the painted western
+horizon it stretched to other fastenings that dipped below the world,
+where the East laid its gulfs of darkness to surprise the sun. It
+swung proudly down, as though hung from the Pole Star towards the
+north, and while the Great Bear 'pointers' tossed its embroidery
+across Cassiopeia, the Pleiades, just rising, flung its further
+fringes down to Orion, waiting in wonder to receive them far below the
+horizon. Old Sirius wore one breadth of it across his stupendous
+shoulder, and Aldebaran, with fingers of bronze and fire, drew it
+delicately as with golden leashes over the sleeping world.
+
+When first he saw it, there was this gentle fluttering as of wings
+through all its intricate parts, but the same moment four shooting
+stars pierced its outlying edges with flying nails of gold. It
+steadied and grew taut.
+
+'There she is!' cried Monkey, flashing away like a comet towards the
+Cave. 'You'll catch it now--and you deserve to!' She turned a
+brilliant somersault and vanished.
+
+Then, somehow, the vast Pattern settled into a smaller scale, so that
+he saw it closer, clearer, and without confusion. Beauty and wonder
+focused for his sight. The perfected design of Daddy's fairy story
+floated down into his heart without a hint of wumbling. Never had he
+seen it so luminous and simple. For others, of course, meanwhile had
+known and understood it. Others believed. Its reality was more
+intense, thus, than before.
+
+He rose from the maze of tree-tops where he floated, and stretched his
+arms out, no fear or hesitation in him anywhere. Perched in the very
+centre of the Pattern, seated like a new-born star upon its throne, he
+saw that tiny figure who had thrilled him months ago when he caught it
+in a passing instant, fluttering in the web of Daddy's story,--both
+its climax and its inspiration. The twinkling feet were folded now. He
+saw the soft little eyes that shone like starlight through clear
+amber. The hands, palms upwards, were stretched to meet his own.
+
+'You, of course, must come up--to me,' he heard.
+
+And climbing the lace-like tracery of the golden web, he knelt before
+her. But, almost before both knees were bent, her hands had caught
+him--the touch ran like a sheath of fire through every nerve--and he
+was seated beside her in that shining centre.
+
+'But why did it suddenly grow small?' he asked at once. He felt
+absolutely at home. It was like speaking to a child who loved him
+utterly, and whom he, in his turn, knew intimately inside out.
+
+'Because you suddenly understood,' was the silvery, tiny answer. 'When
+you understand, you bring everything into yourself, small as a toy. It
+is size that bewilders. Men make size. Fairy things, like stars and
+tenderness, are always small.'
+
+'Of course,' he said; 'as if I didn't know it already!'
+
+'Besides,' she laughed, half closing her brilliant eyes and peering at
+him mischievously, 'I like everything so tiny that you can find it
+inside a shell. That makes it possible to do big things.'
+
+'Am _I_ too big---?' he exclaimed, aware of clumsiness before this
+exquisite daintiness.
+
+'A little confused, that's all,' her laughter rippled. 'You want
+smoothing down. I'll see to that.'
+
+He had the feeling, as she said it, that his being included the entire
+Pattern, even to its most distant edges where it fastened on to the
+rim of the universe. From this huge sensation, he came back swiftly to
+its tiny correspondence again. His eyes turned to study her. But she
+seemed transparent somehow, so that he saw the sky behind her, and in
+it, strangely enough--just behind her face--the distant Pleiades,
+shining faintly with their tender lustre. They reached down into her
+little being, it seemed, as though she emanated from them. Big
+Aldebaran guided strongly from behind. For an instant he lost sight of
+the actual figure, seeing in its place a radiant efflorescence,
+purified as by some spiritual fire--the Spirit of a Star.
+
+'I'm here, quite close beside you,' whispered the tiny voice. 'Don't
+let your sight get troublesome like your size. Inside-sight, remember,
+is the thing!'
+
+He turned, or rather he focused sight again to find her. He was
+startled a little. For a moment it seemed like his own voice speaking
+deep down within himself.
+
+'Make yourself at home,' it continued, 'you belong here--almost as
+much as I do.' And at the sound of her voice all the perplexities of
+his life lay down. It brushed him smooth, like a wind that sets rough
+feathers all one way,
+
+He remembered again where he was, and what was going on.
+
+'I do,' he answered, happy as a boy. 'I am at home. It is perfect.'
+
+'Do you, indeed! You speak as though this story were your own!'
+
+And her laugh was like the tinkle of hare-bells in the wind.
+
+'It is,' he said; 'at least I had--I _have_, rather, a considerable
+hand in the making of it.'
+
+'Possibly,' she answered, 'but the story belongs to the person who
+first started it. And that person is myself. The story is mine
+really!'
+
+'Yours!' he gasped.
+
+'Because--I am the story!'
+
+He stared hard to find the face that said this thing. Thought stopped
+dead a moment, blocked by a marvel that was impossible, yet true.
+
+'You mean---?' he stammered.
+
+'You heard perfectly what I said; you understood it, too. There's no
+good pretending,' impatience as well as laughter in the little voice.
+'I am the story,--the story that you love.'
+
+A sudden joy burst over him in a flood. Struggle and search folded
+their wings and slept. An immense happiness wrapped him into the very
+woof of the pattern wherein they sat. A thousand loose and ineffective
+moods of his life found coherence, as a thousand rambling strands were
+gathered home and fastened into place.
+
+And the Pattern quivered and grew brighter.
+
+'I am the story because I thought of it first. You, as a version of
+its beauty--a channel for its delivery--belong utterly to me. You can
+no more resist me than a puddle can resist the stars' reflection. You
+increase me. We increase each other.'
+
+'You say you thought it first,' he cried, feeling the light he
+radiated flow in and mingle with her own. 'But who are you? Where do
+you come from?'
+
+'Over there somewhere, I think,' she laughed, while a ray like fire
+flashed out in the direction of the Pleiades that climbed the sky
+towards the East. 'You ought to know. You've been hunting for me long
+enough!'
+
+'But who _are_ you?' he insisted again, 'for I feel it's you that have
+been looking for me--I've so often heard you calling!'
+
+She laughed again till the whole web quivered. Through her eyes the
+softness of all the seven Pleiades poured deliciously into him.
+
+'It's absurd that such a big thing as you could hide so easily,' she
+said. 'But you'll never hide again. I've got you fast now. And you've
+got me! It's like being reflected together in the same puddle, you
+see!'
+
+The dazzling radiance passed as she said it into a clearer glow, and
+across the fire of it he caught her eyes steadily a moment, though he
+could not see the face complete. Two brilliant points of amber shone
+up at him, as stars that peep from the mirror of a forest pool. That
+mental daylight-searching seemed all explained, only he could not
+remember now that there was any such thing at all as either searching
+or daylight. When 'out' like this, waking was the dream---the sunlight
+world forgotten.
+
+'This Pattern has always been my own,' she continued with infinite
+softness, yet so clearly that his whole body seemed a single ear
+against her lips, 'for I've thought it ever since I can remember. I've
+lived it. This Network of Stars I made ages ago in a garden among far
+bigger mountains than these hills, a garden I knew vividly, yet could
+not always find--almost as though I dreamed it. The Net included the--
+oh, included everything there is, and I fastened it to four big pines
+that grew on the further side of the torrent in that mountain garden
+of my dream--fastened it with nails of falling stars. And I made the
+Pleiades its centre because I loved them best of all. Oh! Orion,
+Orion, how big and comforting your arms are! Please hold me tight for
+ever and ever!'
+
+'But I know it, too, that lovely dream,' he cried. 'It all comes back
+to me. I, too, have dreamed it with you then somewhere--somewhere---!'
+His voice choked. He had never known that life could hold such
+sweetness, wonder, joy. The universe lay within his arms.
+
+'All the people I wanted to help I used to catch in my Net of Stars,'
+she went on. 'There was a train that brought them up to its edges, and
+once I got the passengers into the web, and hung them loose in it till
+they were soaked with starlight, I could send them back happier and
+braver than they came. It's been my story ever since I can remember
+anything--my adventure, my dream, my life. And when the great Net
+faded a little and wanted brightening, we knew an enormous cavern in
+the mountains where lost starlight collected, and we used to gather
+this in thousands of sacks, and wash and paint the entire web afresh.
+That made it sticky, so that the passengers hung in it longer. Don't
+you remember?
+
+They came back with starlight in their hair and eyes and voices--and
+in their hearts.'
+
+'And the way you--_we_ got them into the Net,' he interrupted
+excitedly, 'was by understanding them--by feeling with them---'
+
+'Sympathy,' she laughed, 'of course! Only there were so many I could
+not reach and could not understand, and so could never get in. In
+particular there was some one who ought to have been there to help me.
+If I could find that some one I could do twice as much. I searched and
+searched. I hunted through every corner of the garden, through forest,
+cavern, sky, but never with success. Orion never overtook me! My
+longing cried every where, but in vain. Oh, Orion, my lost Orion, I
+have found you now at last!... The Net flashed messages in all
+directions, but without response. This some one who could make my work
+complete existed--that I _knew_--only he was hidden somewhere out of
+sight--concealed in some corner or other, veiled by a darkness that he
+wove about himself--as though by some funny kind of wrong thinking
+that obscured the light I searched for and made it too dim to reach me
+properly. His life or mind--his thought and feeling, that is--were
+wumbled---'
+
+'_Wumbled!_' he cried, as the certainty burst upon him with the
+password. He stood close to her, opening his arms.
+
+Instantly she placed her golden palm upon his mouth, with fingers that
+were like soft star-rays. Her words, as she continued, were sweeter
+than the footfalls of the Pleiades when they rise above the sea.
+
+'Yet there were times when we were so close that we could feel each
+other, and each wondered why the other did not actually appear. I have
+been trying,' she whispered, oh so dearly, 'to find you always. And
+you knew it, too, for I've felt you searching too....'
+
+The outlying skirts of the Pattern closed in a little, till the edges
+gathered over them like a tent of stars. Alone in the heart of the
+universe they told their secret very softly....
+
+'There are twin-stars, you know,' she whispered, when he released her,
+'that circle so close about each other that they look like one. I
+wonder, oh, I wonder, do they ever touch!'
+
+'They are apart in order to see one another better,' he murmured.
+'They watch one another more sweetly so. They play at separation for
+the joy of coming together again.'
+
+And once more the golden Pattern hid them for a moment from the other
+stars.... The shafts of night-fire played round and above their secret
+tent in space.... Most marvellously their beings found each other in
+the great whispering galleries of the world where Thought and Yearning
+know that first fulfilment which is the source of action later....
+
+'So, now that I have found you,' her voice presently
+ went on, 'our Network shall catch everybody everywhere. For the
+Pattern of my story, woven so long ago, has passed through you as
+through a channel--to another who can give it forth. It will spread
+across every sky. All, all will see it and climb up.'
+
+'My scheme---' he cried, with eager delight, yet not quite certain
+what he meant, nor whence the phrase proceeded.
+
+'Was my thought first,' she laughed, 'when you were a little boy and I
+was a little girl--somewhere in a garden very long ago. A ray from its
+pattern touched you into beauty. Though I could do nothing with it
+myself, one little ray shot into the mirror of your mind and instantly
+increased itself. But then, you hid yourself; the channel closed---'
+
+'It never died, though,' he interrupted; 'the ray, I mean.'
+
+'It waited,' she went on, 'until you found children somewhere, and the
+channel cleared instantly. Through you, opened up and cleaned by them,
+my pattern rushed headlong into another who can use it. It could never
+die, of course. And the long repression--I never ceased to live it--
+made its power irresistible.'
+
+'Your story!' he cried. 'It _is_ indeed your story.'
+
+The eyes were so close against his own that he made a movement that
+was like diving into a deep and shining sea to reach them.... The
+Pleiades rushed instantly past his face.... Soft filaments of golden
+texture stroked his very cheeks. That slender violet wind rose into
+his hair. He saw other larger winds behind it, deeply coloured....
+Something made him tremble all over like a leaf in a storm. He saw,
+then, the crest of the sentinel poplar tossing between him and the
+earth far, far below. A mist of confusion caught him, so that he knew
+not where he was.... He made an effort to remember... a violent
+effort.... Some strange sense of heaviness oppressed him.... He was
+leaving her.
+
+'Quick!' he tried to cry; 'be quick! I am changing. I am drowsy with
+your voice and beauty. Your eyes have touched me, and I am--falling
+asleep!' His voice grew weaker as he said it.
+
+Her answer sounded faint, and far above him:
+
+'Give me... your... hand. Touch me. Come away with me... to... my ...
+garden ... in the mountains.... We may wake together ... You are
+waking now...!'
+
+He made an effort to find her little palm. But the wind swept coldly
+between his opened fingers.
+
+'Waking!--what is it?' he cried thinly. He thought swiftly of
+something vague and muddy--something dull, disordered, incomplete.
+Here it was all glass-clear. 'Where are you? I can't find you. I can't
+see!'
+
+A dreadful, searching pain shot through him. He was losing her, just
+when he had found her. He struggled, clung, fought frantically to hold
+her. But his fingers seized the air.
+
+'Oh, I shall find you--even when you wake,' he heard far away among
+the stars. 'Try and remember me--when I come. _Try and remember_....'
+
+It dipped into the distance. He had lost her. He caught a glimpse of
+the Pleiades as he fell at a fearful speed. Some one behind them
+picked up stars and tossed them after him. They dimmed as they shot
+by--from gold to white, from white to something very pale. Behind them
+rose a wave of light that hurt his eyes.
+
+'Look out! The Interfering Sun!' came a disappearing voice that was
+followed by a peal of laughter. 'I hope you found her, and I hope you
+caught it well. You deserved to....'
+
+There was a scent of hair that he loved, a vision of mischievous brown
+eyes, an idea that somebody was turning a somersault beside him--and
+then he landed upon the solid earth with a noise like thunder.
+
+The room was dark. At first he did not recognise it. Through the open
+window came the clatter of lumbering traffic that passed heavily down
+St. James's Street. He rose stiffly from his chair, vexed with himself
+for having dozed. It was more than a doze, though; he had slept some
+thirty minutes by his watch. No memory of any dreams was in him--
+nothing but a feeling of great refreshing lightness and peace....
+
+It was wonderful, he reflected, as he changed into country clothes for
+his walk in Richmond Park, how even the shortest nap revives the brain
+and body. There was a sense that an immense interval had elapsed, and
+that something very big had happened or was going to happen to him
+very soon....
+
+And an hour later he passed through the Richmond Gate and found the
+open spaces of the Park deserted, as they always were. The oaks and
+bracken rustled in a gentle breeze. The swishing of his boots through
+the wet grass was the only sound he heard, for the boom and purr of
+distant London reached him more as touch than as something audible.
+Seated on a fallen tree, he watched the stars and listened to the
+wind. That hum and boom of the city seemed underground, the flare it
+tossed into the sky rose from vast furnaces below the world. The stars
+danced lightly far beyond its reach, secure and unafraid. He thought
+of children dancing with twinkling feet upon the mountains....
+
+And in himself there was hum and light as well. Too deep, too far
+below the horizon for full discovery, he caught the echo, the faint,
+dim flashings of reflection that are called by men a Mood. These,
+rising to the surface, swept over him with the queer joy of
+intoxicating wonder that only children know. Some great Secret he had
+to tell himself, only he had kept it so long and so well that he could
+not find it quite. He felt the thrill, yet had forgotten what it was.
+
+Something was going to happen. A new footfall was coming across the
+world towards him. He could almost hear its delicate, swift tread.
+Life was about to offer him this delicious, thrilling secret--very
+soon. Looking up he saw the Pleiades, and the single footfall became
+many. He remembered that former curious obsession of the Pleiades...
+and as Thought and Yearning went roaming into space, they met
+Anticipation, who took them by the hand. It seemed, then, that
+children came flocking down upon him from the sky, led by a little
+figure with starry eyes of clearest amber, a pair of tiny twinkling
+feet, and a voice quite absurdly soft and tender.
+
+'Your time is coming,' he heard behind the rustling of the oak leaves
+overhead, 'for the children are calling to you--children of your own.
+And this is the bravest Scheme in all the world. There is no bigger.
+How can there be? For all the world is a child that goes past your
+windows crying for its lost Fairyland...!'
+
+It was after midnight when at length he slipped through the Robin Hood
+Gate, passed up Priory Lane, and walked rapidly by the shuttered
+houses of Roehampton. And, looking a moment over Putney Bridge; he saw
+the reflections of the stars in the muddy, dawdling Thames. Nothing
+anywhere was thick enough to hide them. The Net of Stars, being in his
+heart, was everywhere. No prisoner could be more securely caught than
+he was.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+
+_Asia_. The point of one white star is quivering still
+    Deep in the orange light of widening morn
+    Beyond the purple mountains: through a chasm
+    Of wind-divided mist the darker lake
+    Reflects it: now it wanes: it gleams again
+    As the waves fade, and as the burning threads
+    Of woven cloud unravel in the pale air:
+    'Tis lost! and through yon peaks of cloud-like snow
+    The roseate sunlight quivers: hear I not
+    The AEolian music of her sea-green plumes
+    Winnowing the crimson dawn?
+               _Prometheus Unbound_, SHELLEY.
+
+August had blazed its path into September, and September had already
+trimmed her successor's gown with gold and russet before Henry Rogers
+found himself free again to think of holidays. London had kept its
+grip upon him all these weeks while the rest of the world was gay and
+irresponsible. He was so absurdly conscientious. One of his Companies
+had got into difficulties, and he was the only man who could save the
+shareholders' money. The Patent Coal Dust Fuel Company, Ltd., had
+bought his invention for blowing fine coal dust into a furnace whereby
+an intense heat was obtainable in a few minutes. The saving in
+material, time, and labour was revolutionary. Rogers had received a
+large sum in cash, though merely a nominal number of the common
+shares. It meant little to him if the Company collapsed, and an
+ordinary Director would have been content with sending counsel through
+the post in the intervals of fishing and shooting. But Henry Rogers
+was of a different calibre. The invention was his child, born by hard
+labour out of loving thought. The several thousand shareholders
+believed in him: they were his neighbours. Incompetence and
+extravagance threatened failure. He took a room in the village near
+the Essex factories, and gave his personal energy and attention to
+restoring economical working of every detail. He wore overalls. He put
+intelligence into hired men and foremen; he spent his summer holiday
+turning a system of waste into the basis of a lucrative industry. The
+shareholders would never know whose faithfulness had saved them loss,
+and at the most his thanks would be a formal paragraph in the Report
+at the end of the year. Yet he was satisfied, and worked as though his
+own income depended on success. For he knew--of late this certainty
+had established itself in him, influencing all he did--that faithful
+labour, backed by steady thinking, must reach ten thousand wavering
+characters, merge with awakening tendencies in them, and slip thence
+into definite daily action. Action was thought materialised. He helped
+the world. A copybook maxim thus became a weapon of tempered steel.
+His Scheme was bigger than any hospital for disabled bodies. It would
+still be cumulative when bodies and bricks were dust upon the wind. It
+must increase by geometrical progression through all time.
+
+It was largely to little Minks that he owed this positive conviction
+and belief, to that ridiculous, high-souled Montmorency Minks, who,
+while his master worked in overalls, took the air himself on Clapham
+Common, or pored with a wet towel round his brow beneath the oleograph
+of Napoleon in the attempt to squeeze his exuberant emotion into
+tripping verse. For Minks admired intensely from a distance. He
+attended to the correspondence in the flat, and made occasional visits
+down to Essex, but otherwise enjoyed a kind of extra holiday of his
+own. For Minks was not learned in coal dust. The combustion was in his
+eager brain. He produced an amazing series of lyrics and sonnets,
+though too high-flown, alas, to win a place in print. Love and
+unselfishness, as usual, were his theme, with a steady sprinkling of
+'the ministry of Thought,' 'true success, unrecognised by men, yet
+noted by the Angels,' and so forth. His master's labour seemed to him
+a 'brilliant form of purity,' and 'the soul's security' came in
+admirably to close the crowded, tortuous line. 'Beauty' and 'Duty'
+were also thickly present, both with capitals, but the verse that
+pleased him most, and even thrilled Albinia to a word of praise, was
+one that ended--'Those active powers which are the Doves of Thought.'
+It followed 'neither can be sold or bought,' and Mrs. Minks approved,
+because, as she put it, 'there, now, is something you can _sell_; it's
+striking and original; no editor could fail to think so.' The
+necessities of Frank and Ronald were ever her standard of praise or
+blame.
+
+Thus, it was the first week in October before Rogers found himself
+free to leave London behind him and think of a change of scene. No
+planning was necessary.... Bourcelles was too constantly in his mind
+all these weary weeks to admit of alternatives. Only a few days ago a
+letter had come from Jinny, saying she was going to a Pension in
+Geneva after Christmas, and that unless he appeared soon he would not
+see her again as she 'was,' a qualification explained by the
+postscript, 'My hair will be up by that time. Mother says I can put it
+up on Xmas Day. So please hurry up, Mr. Henry Rogers, if you want to
+see me as I am.'
+
+But another thing that decided him was that the great story was at
+last in print. It was published in the October number of the Review,
+and the press had already paid considerable attention to it. Indeed,
+there was a notice at the railway bookstall on the day he left, to the
+effect that the first edition was exhausted, and that a large second
+edition would be available almost immediately. 'Place your orders at
+once' was added in bold red letters. Rogers bought one of these
+placards for his cousin.
+
+'It just shows,' observed Minks, whom he was taking out with him.
+
+'Shows what?' inquired his master.
+
+'How many more thoughtful people there are about, sir, than one had
+any idea of,' was the reply. 'The public mind is looking for something
+of that kind, expecting it even, though it hardly knows what it really
+wants. That's a story, Mr. Rogers, that must change the point of view
+of all who read it--with understanding. It makes the commonest man
+feel he is a hero.'
+
+'You've put our things into a non-smoker, Minks,' the other
+interrupted him. 'What in the world are you thinking about?'
+
+'I beg your pardon, I'm sure, sir; so I have,' said Minks, blushing,
+and bundling the bags along the platform to another empty carriage,
+'but that story has got into my head. I sat up reading it aloud to
+Mrs. Minks all night. For it says the very things I have always longed
+to say. Sympathy and the transference of thought--to say nothing of
+the soul's activity when the body is asleep--have always seemed to
+me---'
+
+He wandered on while his companion made himself comfortable in a
+corner with his pipe and newspaper. But the first thing Rogers read,
+as the train went scurrying through Kent, was a summary of the
+contents of this very Review. Two-thirds of the article was devoted to
+the 'Star Story' of John Henry Campden, whose name 'entitled his work
+to a high standard of criticism.' The notice was well written by some
+one evidently of intelligence and knowledge; sound judgment was
+expressed on style and form and general execution, but when it came to
+the matter itself the criticism was deplorably misunderstanding. The
+writer had entirely missed the meaning. While praising the
+'cleverness' he asked plainly between the lines of his notice 'What
+does it mean?' This unconscious exposure of his own ignorance amused
+his reader while it also piqued him. The critic, expert in dealing
+with a political article, was lamentably at sea over an imaginative
+story.
+
+'Inadequate receiving instrument,' thought Rogers, smiling audibly.
+
+Minks, deep in a mysterious looking tome in the opposite corner,
+looked up over his cigarette and wondered why his employer laughed. He
+read the article the other handed to him, thinking how much better he
+could have done it himself. Encouraged by the expression in Mr.
+Rogers's eyes, he then imparted what the papers call 'a genuine
+contribution to the thought upon the subject.'
+
+'The writer quarrels with him,' he observed, 'for not giving what is
+expected of him. What he has thought he must go on thinking, or be
+condemned. He must repeat himself or be uncomprehended.
+
+Hitherto'--Minks prided himself upon the knowledge--'he has written
+studies of uncommon temperaments. Therefore to indulge in fantasy now
+is wrong.'
+
+'Ah, you take it that way, do you?'
+
+'Experience justifies me, Mr. Rogers,' the secretary continued. 'A
+friend of mine, or rather of Mrs. Minks's, once wrote a volume of
+ghost stories that, of course, were meant to thrill. His subsequent
+book, with no such intention, was judged by the object of the first--
+as a failure. It must make the flesh creep. Everything he wrote must
+make the flesh creep. One of the papers, the best--a real thunderer,
+in fact--said "Once or twice the desired thrill comes close, but
+never, alas, quite comes off."'
+
+'How wumbled,' exclaimed his listener.
+
+'It is indeed,' said Minks, 'in fact, one of the thorns in the path of
+literature. The ordinary clever mind is indeed a desolate phenomenon.
+And how often behind the "Oxford manner" lurks the cultured prig, if I
+may put it so.'
+
+'Indeed you may,' was the other's rejoinder, 'for you put it
+admirably.'
+
+They laughed a little and went on with their reading in their
+respective corners. The journey to Paris was enlivened by many similar
+discussions, Minks dividing his attentions between his master, his
+volume of philosophy, and the needs of various old ladies, to whom
+such men attach themselves as by a kind of generous, manly instinct.
+Minks was always popular and inoffensive. He had such tact.
+
+'Ah! and that reminds me, Minks,' said Rogers, as they paced the banks
+of the Seine that evening, looking at the starry sky over Paris. 'What
+do you know about the Pleiades? Anything--eh?'
+
+Minks drew with pride upon his classical reading.
+
+'The seven daughters of Atlas, Mr. Rogers, if I remember correctly,
+called therefore the Atlantides. They were the virgin companions of
+Artemis. Orion, the great hunter, pursued them in Boeotia, and they
+called upon the gods for help.'
+
+'And the gods turned 'em into stars, wasn't it?'
+
+'First into doves, sir--Peleiades means doves--and then set them among
+the Constellations, where big Orion still pursues, yet never overtakes
+them.'
+
+'Beautiful, isn't it? What a memory you've got, Minks. And isn't one
+of 'em lost or something?'
+
+'Merope, yes,' the delighted Minks went on. He knew it because he had
+looked it up recently for his lyric about 'the Doves of Thought.' 'She
+married a mortal, Sisyphus, the son of Aeolus, and so shines more
+dimly than the rest. For her sisters married gods. But there is one
+who is more luminous than the others---'
+
+'Ah! and which was that?' interrupted Rogers.
+
+'Maia,' Minks told him pat. 'She is the most beautiful of the seven.
+She was the Mother, too, of Mercury, the Messenger of the gods. She
+gave birth to him in a cave on Mount Cyllene in Arcadia. Zeus was the
+father---'
+
+'Take care; you'll get run over,' and Rogers pulled him from the path
+of an advancing taxi-cab, whose driver swore furiously at the pair of
+them. 'Charming, all that, isn't it?'
+
+'It is lovely, sir. It haunts the mind. I suppose,' he added, 'that's
+why your cousin, Mr. Campden, made the Pleiades the centre of his Star
+Net in the story--a cluster of beautiful thoughts as it were.'
+
+'No doubt, no doubt,' his tone so brusque suddenly that Minks decided
+after all not to mention his poem where the Pleiades made their
+appearance as the 'doves of thought.'
+
+'What a strange coincidence,' Rogers said as they turned towards the
+hotel again.
+
+'Subconscious knowledge, probably, sir,' suggested the secretary,
+scarcely following his meaning, if meaning indeed there was.
+
+'Possibly! One never knows, does one?'
+
+'Never, Mr. Rogers. It's all very wonderful.'
+
+And so, towards six o'clock in the evening of the following day,
+having passed the time pleasantly in Paris, the train bore them
+swiftly beyond Pontarlier and down the steep gradient of the Gorges de
+l'Areuse towards Neuchatel. The Val de Travers, through which the
+railway slips across the wooded Jura into Switzerland, is like a
+winding corridor cleft deep between savage and precipitous walls.
+There are dizzy glimpses into the gulf below. With steam shut off and
+brakes partly on, the train curves sharply, hiding its eyes in many
+tunnels lest the passengers turn giddy. Strips of bright green meadow-
+land, where the Areuse flows calmly, alternate with places where the
+ravine plunges into bottomless depths that have been chiselled out as
+by a giant ploughshare. Rogers pointed out the chosen views, while his
+secretary ran from window to window, excited as a happy child. Such
+scenery he had never known. It changed the entire content of his mind.
+Poetry he renounced finally before the first ten minutes were past.
+The descriptions that flooded his brain could be rendered only
+ by the most dignified and stately prose, and he floundered among a
+welter of sonorous openings that later Albinia would read in Sydenham
+and retail judiciously to the elder children from 'Father's foreign
+letters.'
+
+'We shall pass Bourcelles in a moment now! Look out! Be ready with
+your handkerchief!' Rogers warned him, as the train emerged from the
+final tunnel and scampered between thick pine woods, emblazoned here
+and there with golden beeches. The air was crystal, sparkling. They
+could smell the forests.
+
+They took their places side by side at the windows. The heights of
+Boudry and La Tourne, that stand like guardian sentries on either side
+of the mountain gateway, were already cantering by. The precipices
+flew past. Beyond lay the smiling slopes of vineyard, field, and
+orchard, sprinkled with farms and villages, of which Bourcelles came
+first. The Areuse flowed peacefully towards the lake. The panorama of
+the snowy Alps rolled into view along the farther horizon, and the
+slanting autumn sunshine bathed the entire scene with a soft and ruddy
+light. They entered the Fairyland of Daddy's story.
+
+'Voila la sentinelle deja!' exclaimed Rogers, putting his head out to
+see the village poplar. 'We run through the field that borders the
+garden of the Pension. They'll come out to wave to us. Be ready.'
+
+'Ah, oui,' said Minks, who had been studying phrase books, 'je vwa.'
+But in reality he saw with difficulty, for a spark had got into his
+eye, and its companion optic, wandering as usual, was suffused with
+water too.
+
+The news of their arrival had, of course, preceded them, and the row
+of waving figures in the field gave them a welcome that went straight
+to Minks's heart. He felt proud for his grand employer. Here was a
+human touch that would modify the majesty of the impersonal mountain
+scenery in his description. He waved his handkerchief frantically as
+the train shot past, and he hardly knew which attracted him most--the
+expression of happiness on Mr. Rogers's face, or the line of
+nondescript humanity that gesticulated in the field as though they
+wished to stop the Paris 'Rapide.'
+
+For it was a _very_ human touch; and either Barnum's Circus or the
+byeways and hedges of Fairyland had sent their picked representatives
+with a dance seen usually only in shy moonlit glades. His master named
+them as the carriage rattled by. The Paris Express, of course, did not
+stop at little Bourcelles. Minks recognised each one easily from the
+descriptions in the story.
+
+The Widow Jequier, with garden skirts tucked high, and wearing big
+gauntlet gloves, waved above her head a Union Jack that knocked her
+bonnet sideways at every stroke, and even enveloped the black triangle
+of a Trilby hat that her brother-in-law held motionless aloft as
+though to test the wind for his daily report upon the condition of le
+barometre. The Postmaster never waved. He looked steadily before him
+at the passing train, his small, black figure more than usually
+dwarfed by a stately outline that rose above the landscape by his
+side, and was undoubtedly the Woman of the Haystack. Telling lines
+from the story's rhymes flashed through Minks's memory as, chuckling
+with pleasure, he watched the magnificent, ample gestures of Mother's
+waving arms. She seemed to brush aside the winds who came a-courting,
+although wide strokes of swimming really described her movements best.
+A little farther back, in the middle distance, he recognised by his
+peaked cap the gendarme, Gygi, as he paused in his digging and looked
+up to watch the fun; and beyond him again, solid in figure as she was
+unchanging in her affections, he saw Mrs. Postmaster, struggling with
+a bed sheet the _pensionnaires des Glycines_ helped her shake in the
+evening breeze. It was too close upon the hour of _souper_ for her to
+travel farther from the kitchen. And beside her stood Miss Waghorn,
+waving an umbrella. She was hatless. Her tall, thin figure, dressed in
+black, against the washing hung out to dry, looked like a note of
+exclamation, or, when she held the umbrella up at right angles, like a
+capital L the fairies had set in the ground upon its head.
+
+And the fairies themselves, the sprites, the children! They were
+everywhere and anywhere. Jimbo flickered, went out, reappeared, then
+flickered again; he held a towel in one hand and a table napkin in the
+other. Monkey seemed more in the air than on the solid earth, for one
+minute she was obviously a ball, and the next, with a motion like a
+somersault, her hair shot loose across the sunlight as though she
+flew. Both had their mouths wide open, shouting, though the wind
+carried their words all away unheard. And Jane Anne stood apart. Her
+welcome, if the gesture is capable of being described at all, was a
+bow. She moved at the same time sedately across the field, as though
+she intended to be seen separately from the rest. She wore hat and
+gloves. She was evidently in earnest with her welcome. But Mr. John
+Henry Campden, the author and discoverer of them all, Minks did not
+see.
+
+'But I don't see the writer himself!' he cried. 'I don't see Mr.
+Campden.'
+
+'You can't,' explained Rogers, 'he's standing behind his wife.'
+
+And the little detail pleased the secretary hugely. The true artist,
+he reflected, is never seen in his work.
+
+It all was past and over--in thirty seconds. The spire of the church,
+rising against a crimson sky, with fruit trees in the foreground and a
+line of distant summits across the shining lake, replaced the row of
+wonderful dancing figures. Rogers sank back in his corner, laughing,
+and Minks, saying nothing, went across to his own at the other end of
+the compartment. It all had been so swift and momentary that it seemed
+like the flash of a remembered dream, a strip of memory's pictures, a
+vivid picture of some dazzling cinematograph. Minks felt as if he had
+just read the entire story again from one end to the other--in thirty
+seconds. He felt different, though wherein exactly the difference lay
+was beyond him to discover. 'It must be the spell of Bourcelles,' he
+murmured to himself. 'Mr. Rogers warned me about it. It is a Fairyland
+that thought has created out of common things. It is quite wonderful!'
+He felt a glow all over him. His mind ran on for a moment to another
+picture his master had painted for him, and he imagined Albinia and
+the family out here, living in a little house on the borders of the
+forest, a strip of vineyards, sunlight, mountains, happy scented
+winds, and himself with a writing-table before a window overlooking
+the lake... writing down Beauty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+
+    We never meet; yet we meet day by day
+    Upon those hills of life, dim and immense:
+    The good we love, and sleep-our innocence.
+    O hills of life, high hills! And higher than they,
+
+    Our guardian spirits meet at prayer and play.
+    Beyond pain, joy, and hope, and long suspense,
+    Above the summits of our souls, far hence,
+    An angel meets an angel on the way.
+
+    Beyond all good I ever believed of thee
+    Or thou of me, these always love and live.
+    And though I fail of thy ideal of me,
+
+    My angel falls not short. They greet each other.
+    Who knows, they may exchange the kiss we give,
+    Thou to thy crucifix, I to my mother.
+                                    ALICE MCYNELL.
+
+The arrival at the station interrupted the reverie in which the
+secretary and his chief both were plunged.
+
+'How odd,' exclaimed Minks, ever observant, as he leaped from the
+carriage, 'there are no platforms. Everything in Switzerland seems on
+one level, even the people--everything, that is, except the
+mountains.'
+
+'Switzerland _is_ the mountains,' laughed his chief.
+
+Minks laughed too. 'What delicious air!' he added, filling his lungs
+audibly. He felt half intoxicated with it.
+
+After some delay they discovered a taxi-cab, piled the luggage on to
+it, and were whirled away towards a little cluster of lights that
+twinkled beneath the shadows of La Tourne and Boudry. Bourcelles lay
+five miles out.
+
+'Remember, you're not my secretary here,' said Rogers presently, as
+the forests sped by them. 'You're just a travelling companion.'
+
+'I understand,' he replied after a moment's perplexity. 'You have a
+secretary here already.'
+
+'His name is Jimbo.'
+
+The motor grunted its way up the steep hill above Colombier. Below
+them spread the vines towards the lake, sprinkled with lights of farms
+and villages. As the keen evening air stole down from forest and
+mountain to greet them, the vehicle turned into the quiet village
+street. Minks saw the big humped shoulders of La Citadelle, the
+tapering church spire, the trees in the orchard of the Pension.
+Cudrefin, smoking a cigar at the door of his grocery shop, recognised
+them and waved his hand. A moment later Gygi lifted his peaked hat and
+called 'bon soir, bonne nuit,' just as though Rogers had never gone
+away at all. Michaud, the carpenter, shouted his welcome as he
+strolled towards the Post Office farther down to post a letter, and
+then the motor stopped with a jerk outside the courtyard where the
+fountain sang and gurgled in its big stone basin. Minks saw the plane
+tree. He glanced up at the ridged backbone of the building. What a
+portentous looking erection it was. It seemed to have no windows. He
+wondered where the famous Den was. The roof overlapped like a giant
+hood, casting a deep shadow upon the cobbled yard. Overhead the stars
+shone faintly.
+
+Instantly a troop of figures shot from the shadow and surrounded them.
+There was a babel of laughter, exclamations, questions. Minks thought
+the stars had fallen. Children and constellations were mingled all
+together, it seemed. Both were too numerous to count. All were rushing
+with the sun towards Hercules at a dizzy speed.
+
+'And this is my friend, Mr. Minks,' he heard repeated from time to
+time, feeling his hand seized and shaken before he knew what he was
+about. Mother loomed up and gave him a stately welcome too.
+
+'He wears gloves in Bourcelles!' some one observed audibly to some one
+else.
+
+'Excuse me! This is Riquette!' announced a big girl, hatless like the
+rest, with shining eyes. 'It's a she.'
+
+'And this is my secretary, Mr. Jimbo,' said Rogers, breathlessly,
+emerging from a struggling mass. Minks and Jimbo shook hands with
+dignity.
+
+'Your room is over at the Michauds, as before.'
+
+'And Mr. Mix is at the Pension--there was no other room to be had---'
+
+'Supper's at seven---'
+
+'Tante Jeanne's been _grand-cieling_ all day with excitement. She'll
+burst when she sees you!'
+
+'She's read the story, too. Elle dit que c'est le bouquet!'
+
+'There's new furniture in the salon, and they've cleaned the sink
+while you've been away!...'
+
+The author moved forward out of the crowd. At the same moment another
+figure, slight and shadowy, revealed itself, outlined against the
+white of the gleaming street. It had been hidden in the tangle of the
+stars. It kept so quiet.
+
+'Countess, may I introduce him to you,' he said, seizing the momentary
+pause. There was little ceremony in Bourcelles. 'This is my cousin I
+told you about--Mr. Henry Rogers. You must know one another at once.
+He's Orion in the story.'
+
+He dragged up his big friend, who seemed suddenly awkward, difficult
+to move. The children ran in and out between them like playing
+puppies, tumbling against each in turn.
+
+'They don't know which is which,' observed Jinny, watching the
+introduction. Her voice ran past him like the whir of a shooting star
+through space--far, far away. 'Excuse me!' she cried, as she cannoned
+off Monkey against Cousinenry. 'I'm not a terminus! This is a regular
+shipwreck!'
+
+The three elder ones drew aside a little from the confusion.
+
+'The Countess,' resumed Daddy, as soon as they were safe from
+immediate destruction, 'has come all the way from Austria to see us.
+She is staying with us for a few days. Isn't it delightful? We call
+her the little Grafin.' His voice wumbled a trifle thickly in his
+beard. 'She was good enough to like the story--our story, you know--
+and wrote to me---'
+
+'My story,' said a silvery, laughing voice.
+
+And Rogers bowed politely, and with a moment's dizziness, at two
+bright smiling eyes that watched him out of the little shadow standing
+between him and the children. He was aware of grandeur.
+
+He stood there, first startled, then dazed. She was so small. But
+something about her was so enormous. His inner universe turned over
+and showed its under side. The hidden thing that so long had brushed
+his daily life came up utterly close and took him in its gigantic
+arms. He stared like an unmannered child.
+
+_Something had lit the world_....
+
+'This _is_ delicious air,' he heard Minks saying to his cousin in the
+distance--to his deaf side judging by the answer:
+
+'Delicious here--yes, isn't it?'
+
+_Something had lit the stars._...
+
+Minks and his cousin continued idly talking. Their voices twittered
+like birds in empty space. The children had scattered like marbles
+from a spinning-top. Their voices and footsteps sounded in the cobbled
+yard of La Citadelle, as they scampered up to prepare for supper.
+Mother sailed solemnly after them, more like a frigate than ever. The
+world, on fire, turned like a monstrous Catherine wheel within his
+brain.
+
+
+_Something had lit the universe._...
+
+He stood there in the dusk beneath the peeping stars, facing the
+slender little shadow. It was all he saw at first--this tiny figure.
+Demure and soft, it remained motionless before him, a hint of
+childhood's wonder in its graceful attitude. He was aware of something
+mischievous as well--that laughed at him.... He realised then that she
+waited for him to speak. Yet, for the life of him, he could find no
+words, because the eyes, beneath the big-brimmed hat with its
+fluttering veil, looked out at him as though some formidable wild
+creature watched him from the opening of its cave. There was a glint
+of amber in them. The heart in him went thumping. He caught his
+breath. Out, jerked, then, certain words that he tried hard to make
+ordinary---
+
+'But surely--we have met before--I think I know you---'
+
+He just said it, swallowing his breath with a gulp upon the unfinished
+sentence. But he said it--somewhere else, and not here in the twilight
+street of little Bourcelles. For his sight swam somehow far away, and
+he was giddy with the height. The roofs of the houses lay in a sea of
+shadow below him, and the street wound through them like a ribbon of
+thin lace. The tree-tops waved very softly in a  wind that purred and
+sighed beneath his feet, and this wind was a violet little wind, that
+bent them all one way and set the lines and threads of gold a-quiver
+to their fastenings. For the fastenings were not secure; any minute he
+might fall. And the threads, he saw, all issued like rays from two
+central shining points of delicate, transparent amber, radiating forth
+into an exquisite design that caught the stars. Yet the stars were not
+reflected in them. It was they who lit the stars....
+
+He _was_ dizzy. He tried speech again.
+
+'I told you I _should_--' But it was not said aloud apparently.
+
+Two little twinkling feet were folded. Two hands, he saw, stretched
+down to draw him close. These very stars ran loose about him in a
+cloud of fiery sand. Their pattern danced in flame. He picked out
+Sirius, Aldebaran--the Pleiades! There was tumult in his blood, a wild
+and exquisite confusion. What in the world had happened to him that he
+should behave in this ridiculous fashion? Yet he was doing nothing. It
+was only that, for a passing instant, the enormous thing his life had
+been dimly conscious of so long, rose at last from its subterranean
+hiding-place and overwhelmed him. This picture that came with it was
+like some far-off dream he suddenly recovered. A glorious excitement
+caught him. He felt utterly bewildered.
+
+'Have we?' he heard close in front of him. 'I do not think I have had
+the pleasure'--it was with a slightly foreign accent--'but it is so
+dim here, and one cannot see very well, perhaps.'
+
+And a ripple of laughter passed round some gigantic whispering gallery
+in the sky. It set the trellis-work of golden threads all trembling.
+He felt himself perched dizzily in this shaking web that swung through
+space. And with him was some one whom he knew.... He heard the words
+of a song:
+
+'Light desire With their fire.'
+
+_Something had lit his heart._...
+
+He lost himself again, disgracefully. A mist obscured his sight,
+though with the eyes of his mind he still saw crystal-clear. Across
+this mist fled droves and droves of stars. They carried him out of
+himself--out, out, out!... His upper mind then made a vehement effort
+to recover equilibrium. An idea was in him that some one would
+presently turn a somersault and disappear. The effort had a result, it
+seemed, for the enormous thing passed slowly away again into the
+caverns of his under-self, ... and he realised that he was conducting
+himself in a foolish and irresponsible manner, which Minks, in
+particular, would disapprove. He was staring rudely--at a shadow, or
+rather, at two eyes in a shadow. With another effort--oh, how it
+hurt!--he focused sight again upon surface things. It seemed his turn
+to say something.
+
+'I beg your pardon,' he stammered, 'but I thought--it seemed to me for
+a moment--that I--remembered.'
+
+The face came close as he said it. He saw it clear a moment. The
+figure grew defined against the big stone fountain--the little hands
+in summer cotton gloves, the eyes beneath the big brimmed hat, the
+streaming veil. Then he went lost again--more gloriously than before.
+Instead of the human outline in the dusky street of Bourcelles, he
+stared at the host of stars, at the shimmering design of gold, at the
+Pleiades, whose fingers of spun lustre swung the Net loose across the
+world....
+
+    'Flung from huge Orion's hand...'
+
+he caught in a golden whisper,
+
+    'Sweetly linking
+     All our thinking....'
+
+His cousin and Minks, he was aware vaguely, had left him. He was alone
+with her. A little way down the hill they turned and called to him. He
+made a frantic effort--there seemed just time--to plunge away into
+space and seize the cluster of lovely stars with both his hands.
+Headlong, he dived off recklessly... driving at a fearful speed, ...
+when--the whole thing vanished into a gulf of empty blue, and he found
+himself running, not through the sky to clutch the Pleiades, but
+heavily downhill towards his cousin and Minks.
+
+It was a most abrupt departure. There was a curious choking in his
+throat. His heart ran all over his body. Something white and sparkling
+danced madly through his brain. What must she think of him?
+
+'We've just time to wash ourselves and hurry over to supper,' his
+cousin said, as he overtook them, flustered and very breathless. Minks
+looked at him--regarded him, rather--astonishment, almost disapproval,
+in one eye, and in the other, apparently observing the vineyards, a
+mild rebuke.
+
+He walked beside them in a dream. The sound of Colombier's bells
+across Planeyse, men's voices singing fragments of a Dalcroze song
+floated to him, and with them all the dear familiar smells:--
+
+     Le coeur de ma mie
+     Est petit, tout petit petit,
+     J'en ai l'ame ravie....
+
+It was Minks, drawing the keen air noisily into his lungs in great
+draughts, who recalled him to himself.
+
+'I could find my way here without a guide, Mr. Campden,' he was saying
+diffidently, burning to tell how the Story had moved him. 'It's all so
+vivid, I can almost see the Net. I feel in it,' and he waved one hand
+towards the sky.
+
+The other thanked him modestly. 'That's your power of visualising
+then,' he added. 'My idea was, of course, that every mind in the world
+is related with every other mind, and that there's no escape--we are
+all prisoners. The responsibility is vast.'
+
+'Perfectly. I've always believed it. Ah! if only one could _live_ it!'
+
+Rogers heard this clearly. But it seemed that another heard it with
+him. Some one very close beside him shared the hearing. He had
+recovered from his temporary shock. Only the wonder remained. Life was
+sheer dazzling glory. The talk continued as they hurried along the
+road together. Rogers became aware then that his cousin was giving
+information--meant for himself.
+
+'... A most charming little lady, indeed. She comes from over there,'
+and he pointed to where the Pleiades were climbing the sky towards the
+East, 'in Austria somewhere. She owns a big estate among the
+mountains. She wrote to me--I've had _such_ encouraging letters, you
+know, from all sorts of folk--and when I replied, she telegraphed to
+ask if she might come and see me. She seems fond of telegraphing,
+rather.' And he laughed as though he were speaking of an ordinary
+acquaintance.
+
+'Charming little lady!' The phrase was like the flick of a lash.
+Rogers had known it applied to such commonplace women.
+
+'A most intelligent face,' he heard Minks saying, 'quite beautiful,
+_I_ thought--the beauty of mind and soul.'
+
+'... Mother and the children took to her at once,' his cousin's voice
+went on. 'She and her maid have got rooms over at the Beguins. And, do
+you know, a most singular coincidence,' he added with some excitement,
+'she tells me that ever since childhood she's had an idea like this--
+like the story, I mean--an idea of her own she always wanted to write
+but couldn't-----'
+
+'Of course, of course,' interrupted Rogers impatiently; and then he
+added quickly, 'but how _very_ extraordinary!'
+
+'The idea that Thought makes a network everywhere about the world in
+which we all are caught, and that it's a positive duty, therefore, to
+think beauty--as much a duty as washing one's face and hands, because
+what you think _touches_ others all day long, and all night long too--
+in sleep.'
+
+'Only she couldn't write it?' asked Rogers. His tongue was like a
+thick wedge of unmanageable wood in his mouth. He felt like a man who
+hears another spoil an old, old beautiful story that he knows himself
+with intimate accuracy.
+
+'She can telegraph, she says, but she can't write!'
+
+'An expensive talent,' thought the practical Minks.
+
+'Oh, she's very rich, apparently. But isn't it odd? You see, she
+thought it vividly, played it, lived it. Why, she tells me she even
+had a Cave in her mountains where lost thoughts and lost starlight
+collected, and that she made a kind of Pattern with them to represent
+the Net. She showed me a drawing of it, for though she can't write,
+she paints quite well. But the odd thing is that she claims to have
+thought out the main idea of my own story years and years ago with the
+feeling that some day her idea was bound to reach some one who
+_would_ write it---'
+
+'Almost a case of transference,' put in Minks.
+
+
+'A fairy tale, yes, isn't it!'
+
+'Married?' asked Rogers, with a gulp, as they reached the door. But
+apparently he had not said it out loud, for there was no reply.
+
+He tried again less abruptly. It required almost a physical effort to
+drive his tongue and frame the tremendous question.
+
+'What a fairy story for her children! How _they_ must love it!' This
+time he spoke so loud that Minks started and looked up at him.
+
+'Ah, but she has no children,' his cousin said.
+
+They went upstairs, and the introductions to Monsieur and Madame
+Michaud began, with talk about rooms and luggage. The mist was over
+him once more. He heard Minks saying:--
+
+'Oui, je comprongs un poo,' and the clatter of heavy boots up and down
+the stairs, ... and then found himself washing his hands in stinging
+hot water in his cousin's room.
+
+'The children simply adore her already,' he heard, 'and she won
+Mother's confidence at the very start. They can't manage her long
+name. They just call her the Little Countess--die kleine Grafin. She's
+doing a most astonishing work in Austria, it seems, with children...
+the Montessori method, and all that....'
+
+'By George, now; is it possible? Bourcelles accepted her at once
+then?'
+
+'She accepted Bourcelles rather--took it bodily into herself--our
+poverty, our magic boxes, our democratic intimacy, and all the rest;
+it was just as though she had lived here with us always. And she kept
+asking who Orion was--that's you, of course--and why you weren't
+here---'
+
+'And the Den too?' asked Rogers, with a sudden trembling in his heart,
+yet knowing well the answer.
+
+'Simply appropriated it--came in naturally without being asked; Jimbo
+opened the door and Monkey pushed her in. She said it was her Star
+Cave. Oh, she's a remarkable being, you know, rather,' he went on more
+gravely, 'with unusual powers of sympathy. She seems to feel at once
+what you are feeling. Takes everything for granted as though she knew.
+I think she _does_ know, if you ask me---'
+
+'Lives the story in fact,' the other interrupted, hiding his face
+rather in the towel, 'lives her belief instead of dreaming it, eh?'
+
+'And, fancy this!' His voice had a glow and softness in it as he said
+it, coming closer, and almost whispering, 'she wants to take Jinny and
+Monkey for a bit and educate them.' He stood away to watch the effect
+of the announcement. 'She even talks of sending Edward to Oxford,
+too!' He cut a kind of wumbled caper in his pleasure and excitement.
+
+'She loves children then, evidently?' asked the other, with a coolness
+that was calculated to hide other feelings. He rubbed his face in the
+rough towel as though the skin must come off. Then, suddenly dropping
+the towel, he looked into his cousin's eyes a moment to ensure a
+proper answer.
+
+'Longs for children of her own, I think,' replied the author; 'one
+sees it, feels it in all she says and does. Rather sad, you know,
+that! An unmarried mother---'
+
+'In fact,' put in Rogers lightly, 'the very character you needed to
+play the principal role in your story. When you write the longer
+version in book form you'll have to put her in.'
+
+'And find her a husband too--which is a bore. I never write love
+stories, you see. She's finer as she is at present--mothering the
+world.'
+
+Rogers's face, as he brushed his hair carefully before the twisted
+mirror, was not visible.
+
+There came a timid knock at the door.
+
+'I'm ready, gentlemen, when you are,' answered the voice of Minks
+outside.
+
+They went downstairs together, and walked quickly over to the Pension
+for supper. Rogers moved sedately enough so far as the others saw, yet
+inwardly he pranced like a fiery colt in harness. There were golden
+reins about his neck. Two tiny hands directed him from the Pleiades.
+In this leash of sidereal fire he felt as though he flew. Swift
+thought, flashing like a fairy whip, cut through the air from an
+immense distance, and urged him forwards. Some one expected him and he
+was late--years and years late. Goodness, how his companions crawled
+and dawdled!
+
+'... she doesn't come over for her meals,' he heard, 'but she'll join
+us afterwards at the Den. You'll come too, won't you, Mr. Minks?'
+
+'Thank you, I shall be most happy--if I'm not intruding,' was the
+reply as they passed the fountain near the courtyard of the Citadelle.
+The musical gurgle of its splashing water sounded to Rogers like a
+voice that sang over and over again, 'Come up, come up, come up! You
+must come up to me!'
+
+'How brilliant your stars are out here, Mr. Campden,' Minks was saying
+when they reached the door of La Poste. He stood aside to let the
+others pass before him. He held the door open politely. 'No wonder you
+chose them as the symbol for thought and sympathy in your story.' And
+they climbed the narrow, creaking stairs and entered the little hall
+where the entire population of the Pension des Glycines awaited them
+with impatience.
+
+The meal dragged out interminably. Everybody had so much to say.
+Minks, placed between Mother and Miss Waghorn, talked volubly to the
+latter and listened sweetly to all her stories. The excitement of the
+Big Story, however, was in the air, and when she mentioned that she
+looked forward to reading it, he had no idea, of course, that she had
+already done so at least three times. The Review had replaced her
+customary Novel. She went about with it beneath her arm. Minks,
+feeling friendly and confidential, informed her that he, too,
+sometimes wrote, and when she noted the fact with a deferential phrase
+ about 'you men of letters,' he rose abruptly to the seventh heaven of
+contentment. Mother meanwhile, on the other side, took him bodily into
+her great wumbled heart. 'Poor little chap,' her attitude said
+plainly, 'I don't believe his wife half looks after him.' Before the
+end of supper she knew all about Frank and Ronald, the laburnum tree
+in the front garden, what tea they bought, and Albinia's plan for
+making coal last longer by mixing it with coke.
+
+Tante Jeanne talked furiously and incessantly, her sister-in-law told
+her latest dream, and the Postmaster occasionally cracked a solemn
+joke, laughing uproariously long before the point appeared. It was a
+merry, noisy meal, and Henry Rogers sat through it upon a throne that
+was slung with golden ropes from the stars. He was in Fairyland again.
+Outside, the Pleiades were rising in the sky, and somewhere in
+Bourcelles--in the rooms above Beguin's shop, to be exact--some one
+was waiting, ready to come over to the Den. His thoughts flew wildly.
+Passionate longing drove behind them. 'You must come up to me,' he
+heard. They all were Kings and Queens.
+
+He played his part, however; no one seemed to notice his
+preoccupation. The voices sounded now far, now near, as though some
+wind made sport with them; the faces round him vanished and
+reappeared; but he contrived cleverly, so that none remarked upon his
+absent-mindedness. Constellations do not stare at one another much.
+
+'Does your Mother know you're "out"?' asked Monkey once beside him--it
+was the great joke now, since the Story had been read--and as soon as
+she was temporarily disposed of, Jimbo had serious information to
+impart from the other side. 'She's a real Countess,' he said, speaking
+as man to man. 'I suppose if she went to London she'd know the King--
+visit him, like that?'
+
+Bless his little heart! Jimbo always knew the important things to talk
+about.
+
+There were bursts of laughter sometimes, due usually to statements
+made abruptly by Jane Anne--as when Mother, discussing the garden with
+Minks, reviled the mischievous birds:--
+
+'They want thinning badly,' she said.
+
+'Why don't they take more exercise, then?' inquired Jinny gravely.
+
+And in these gusts of laughter Rogers joined heartily, as though he
+knew exactly what the fun was all about. In this way he deceived
+everybody and protected himself from discovery. And yet it seemed to
+him that he shouted his secret aloud, not with his lips indeed, but
+with his entire person. Surely everybody knew it...! He was self-
+conscious as a schoolgirl.
+
+'You must come up--to me,' rang continuously through his head like
+bells. 'You must come up to me.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+
+   How many times do I love thee, dear?
+     Tell me how many thoughts there be
+       In the atmosphere
+       Of a new fall'n year,
+   Whose white and sable hours appear
+     The latest flake of Eternity:--
+   So many times do I love thee, dear.
+
+   How many times do I love again?
+     Tell me how many beads there are
+       In a silver chain
+       Of evening rain,
+   Unravelled from the tumbling main,
+     And threading the eye of a yellow star:--
+   So many times do I love again.
+                           THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES.
+
+A curious deep shyness settled upon Henry Rogers as they all trooped
+over to the Den. The others gabbled noisily, but to him words came
+with difficulty. He felt like a boy going up for some great test,
+examination, almost for judgment. There was an idea in him that he
+must run and hide somewhere. He saw the huge outline of Orion tilting
+up above the Alps, slanting with the speed of his eternal hunt to
+seize the Pleiades who sailed ever calmly just beyond his giant arms.
+Yet what that old Hunter sought was at last within his reach. He knew
+it, and felt the awe of capture rise upon him.
+
+'You've eaten so much supper you can't speak,' said Monkey, whose hand
+was in his coat-pocket for loose chicken-feed, as she called centimes.
+'The Little Countess will _regler ton affaire_ all right. Just wait
+till she gets at you.'
+
+'You love her?' he asked gently, feeling little disposed to play.
+
+The child's reply was cryptic, yet uncommonly revealing:--
+
+'She's just like a relation. It's so funny she didn't know us long,
+long ago--find us out, I mean.'
+
+'Mother likes her awfully,' added Jimbo, as though that established
+the matter of her charm for ever. 'It's a pity she's not a man'--just
+to show that Cousinenry's position was not endangered.
+
+They chattered on. Rogers hardly remembers how he climbed the long
+stone steps. He found himself in the Den. It came about with a sudden
+jump as in dreams. _She_ was among them before the courtyard was
+crossed; she had gone up the steps immediately in front of him....
+Jinny was bringing in the lamp, while Daddy struggled with a load of
+peat for the fire, getting in everybody's way. Riquette stood
+silhouetted against the sky upon the window sill. Jimbo used the
+bellows. A glow spread softly through the room. He caught sight of
+Minks standing rather helplessly beside the sofa talking to Jane Anne,
+and picking at his ear as he always did when nervous or slightly ill
+at ease. He wondered vaguely what she was saying to him. He looked
+everywhere but at the one person for whose comfort the others were so
+energetic.
+
+His eyes did not once turn in her direction, yet he knew exactly how
+she was dressed, what movements she made, where she stood, the very
+words, indeed, she used, and in particular the expression of her face
+to each in turn. For he was guilty of a searching inner scrutiny he
+could not control. And, above all, he was aware, with a divine,
+tumultuous thrill, that she, for her part, also neither looked at him
+nor uttered one sentence that he could take as intended for himself.
+
+Because, of course, all she said and did and looked _were_ meant for
+him, and her scrutiny was even closer and more searching than his own.
+
+In the Den that evening there was one world within another, though
+only these two, and probably the intuitive and diabolically observant
+Minks, perceived it. The deep furnaces of this man's inner being,
+banked now so long that mere little flames had forgotten their way
+out, lay open at last to that mighty draught before whose fusing power
+the molten, fluid state becomes inevitable.
+
+'You must come up to me' rang on in his head like a chime of bells. 'O
+think Beauty: it's your duty....'
+
+The chairs were already round the open fireplace, when Monkey pushed
+him into the big one with the broken springs he always used, and
+established herself upon his knee. Jimbo was on the other in a
+twinkling. Jane Anne plumped down upon the floor against him. Her hair
+was up, and grown-ups might sit as they pleased. Minks in a hard,
+straight-backed chair, firmly assured everybody that he was
+exceedingly comfortable and really preferred stiff chairs. He found
+safety next to Mother who, pleased and contented, filled one corner of
+the sofa and looked as though she occupied a pedestal. Beyond her
+perched Daddy, on the music stool, leaning his back against the
+unlighted fourneau. The Wumble Book was balanced on his knees, and
+beside him sat the little figure of the visitor who, though at the
+end, was yet somehow the true centre of the circle. Rogers saw her
+slip into her unimportant place. She took her seat, he thought, as
+softly as a mouse. For no one seemed to notice her. She was so
+perfectly at home among them. In her little folded hands the Den and
+all its occupants seemed cared for beyond the need of words or
+definite action. And, although her place was the furthest possible
+remove from his own, he felt her closer to him than the very children
+who nestled upon his knees.
+
+Riquette then finally, when all were settled, stole in to complete the
+circle. She planted herself in the middle of the hearth before them
+all, looked up into their faces, decided that all was well, and began
+placidly to wash her face and back. A leg shot up, from the middle of
+her back apparently, as a signal that they might talk. A moment later
+she composed herself into that attitude of dignified security possible
+only to the feline species. She made the fourth that inhabited this
+world within a world. Rogers, glancing up suddenly from observing her,
+caught---for the merest fraction of an instant--a flash of starfire in
+the air. It darted across to him from the opposite end of the horse-
+shoe. Behind it flickered the tiniest smile a human countenance could
+possibly produce.
+
+    'Little mouse who, lost in wonder,
+     Flicks its whiskers at the thunder.'
+
+It was Jane Anne repeating the rhyme for Minks's benefit. How
+appropriately it came in, he thought. And voices were set instantly in
+motion; it seemed that every one began to speak at once.
+
+Who finally led the conversation, or what was actually said at first,
+he has no more recollection than the man in the moon, for he only
+heard the silvery music of a single voice. And that came rarely. He
+felt washed in glory from head to foot. In a dream of happy starlight
+he swam and floated. He hid his face behind the chair of Monkey, and
+his eyes were screened below the welcome shelter of Jimbo's shoulder.
+
+The talk meanwhile flowed round the horse-shoe like a river that
+curves downhill. Life ran past him, while he stood on the banks and
+watched. He reconstructed all that happened, all that was said and
+done, each little movement, every little glance of the eye. These
+common things he recreated. For, while his body sat in the Den before
+a fire of peat, with children, a cat, a private secretary, three very
+ordinary people and a little foreign visitor, his spirit floated high
+above the world among the immensities of suns and starfields. He was
+in the Den, but the Den was in the universe, and to the scale of the
+universe he set the little homely, commonplace picture. Life, he
+realised, _is_ thought and feeling; and just then he thought and felt
+like a god. He was Orion, and Orion had at last overtaken the
+Pleiades. The fairest of the cluster lay caught within his giant arms.
+The Enormous Thing that so long had haunted him with hints of its
+approach, rose up from his under-self, and possessed him utterly. And,
+oh, the glory of it, the splendour, the intoxication!
+
+In the dim corner where _she_ sat, the firelight scarcely showed her
+face, yet every shade of expression that flitted across her features
+he saw unobscured. The sparkling, silvery sentences she spoke from
+time to time were volumes that interpreted life anew. For years he had
+pored over these thick tomes, but heavily and without understanding.
+The little things she said now supplied the key. Mind and brain played
+no part in this. It was simply that he heard--and knew. He re-
+discovered her from their fragments, piece by piece....
+
+The general talk flowed past him in a stream of sound, cut up into
+lengths by interrupting consonants, and half ruined by this arbitrary
+division; but what _she_ said always seemed the living idea that lay
+behind the sound. He could not explain it otherwise. With herself,
+and with Riquette, and possibly with little, dreaming Minks, he sat
+firmly at the centre of this inner world. The others, even the
+children, hovered about its edges, trying to get in. That tiny smile
+had flashed its secret, ineffable explanation into him. Starlight was
+in his blood....
+
+Mother, for instance, he vaguely knew, was speaking of the years they
+all had lived in Bourcelles, of the exquisite springs, of the fairy,
+gorgeous summers. It was the most ordinary talk imaginable, though it
+came sincerely from her heart.
+
+'If only you had come here earlier,' she said, 'when the forest was so
+thick with flowers.' She enumerated them one by one. 'Now, in the
+autumn, there are so few!'
+
+The little sparkling answer lit the forest glades afresh with colour,
+perfume, wonder:--
+
+'But the autumn flowers, I think, are the sweetest; for they have the
+beauty of all the summer in them.'
+
+A slight pause followed, and then all fell to explaining the shining
+little sentence until its lustre dimmed and disappeared beneath the
+smother of their words. In himself, however, who heard them not, a new
+constellation swam above the horizon of his inner world. Riquette
+looked slyly up and blinked. She purred more deeply, but she made no
+stupid sign....
+
+And Daddy mentioned then the forest spell that captured the entire
+village with its peace and softness--'all so rough and big and
+tumbled, and yet every detail so exquisitely finished and thought out,
+you know.'
+
+Out slipped the softest little fairy phrase imaginable from her dim
+corner then:--
+
+'Yes, like hand-made things--you can almost see the hand that made
+them.'
+
+And Rogers started so perceptibly that Jimbo shifted his weight a
+little, thinking he must be uncomfortable. He had surely used that
+very phrase himself! It was familiar. Even when using it he remembered
+wondering whence its sweetness had dropped into his clumsier mind.
+Minks uncrossed his legs, glanced up at him a moment, then crossed
+them again. He made this sign, but, like Riquette, he said nothing....
+
+The stream flowed on and on. Some one told a story. There was hushed
+attentive listening, followed suddenly by bursts of laughter and
+delight. Who told it, or what it was about, Rogers had no notion.
+Monkey dug him in the ribs once because apparently he grunted at the
+wrong moment, and Jimbo chided her beneath his breath--'Let him have a
+nap if he wants to; a man's always tired after a long journey like
+that...!' Some one followed with another story--Minks, was it, this
+time?--for Rogers caught his face, as through a mist, turning
+constantly to Mother for approval. It had to do with a vision of great
+things that had come to a little insignificant woman on a bed of
+sickness. He recognised the teller because he knew the tale of old.
+The woman, he remembered, was Albinia's grandmother, and Minks was
+very proud of it.
+
+'That's a _very_ nice story,' rippled from the dim corner when it was
+over. 'For I like everything so tiny that you can find it inside a
+shell. That's the way to understand big things and to do them.'
+
+And again the phrase was as familiar to him as though he had said it
+himself--heard it, read it, dreamed it, even. Whatever its fairy
+source, he knew it. His bewilderment increased absurdly. The things
+she said were so ordinary, yet so illuminating, though never quite
+betraying their secret source. Where had he heard them? Where had he
+met this little foreign visitor? Whence came the singular certainty
+that she shared this knowledge with him, and might presently explain
+it, all clear as daylight and as simple? He had the odd impression
+that she played with him, delayed purposely the moment of revelation,
+even expected that _he_ would be the first to make it known. The
+disclosure was to come from himself! She provided him with
+opportunities--these little sparkling sentences! But he hid in his
+corner, silent and magically excited, afraid to take the lead. These
+sentences were addressed to him. There was conversation thus between
+the two of them; but his replies remained inaudible. Thought makes no
+sound; its complete delivery is ever wordless.... He felt very big,
+and absurdly shy.
+
+It was gesture, however, that infallible shorthand of the mind, which
+seemed the surest medium of this mute delightful intercourse. For each
+little gesture that she made--unconsciously, of course--expressed more
+than the swiftest language could have compassed in an hour. And he
+noted every one: the occasional flourish of the little hands, the
+bending of the graceful neck, the shadowy head turned sideways, the
+lift of one shoulder, almost imperceptible, and sometimes the attitude
+of the entire body. To him they were, one and all, eloquently
+revealing. Behind each little gesture loomed a yet larger one, the
+scale increasing strangely, till his thoughts climbed up them as up a
+ladder into the region where her ideas lay naked before casual
+interpretation clothed them. Those, he reflected, who are rich in
+ideas, but find words difficult, may reveal themselves prodigally in
+gesture. Expression of one kind or another there must be; yet lavish
+action, the language of big souls, seems a man's expression rather
+than a woman's.... He built up swiftly, surely, solidly his
+interpretation of this little foreign visitor who came to him thus
+suddenly from the stars, whispering to his inmost thought, 'You must
+come up to me.' The whole experience dazed him. He sat in utter
+dumbness, shyer than a boy, but happier than a singing star!... The
+Joy in his heart was marvellous.
+
+Yet how could he know all this?
+
+In the intervals that came to him like breathing spaces he asked
+himself this childish question. How could he tell that this little
+soft being with the quiet unobtrusive manners had noble and great
+beauty of action in her anywhere? A few pretty phrases, a few
+significant gestures, these were surely a slight foundation to build
+so much upon! Was there, then, some absolute communion of thought
+between the two of them such as his cousin's story tried to show? And
+had their intercourse been running on for years, neither of them aware
+of it in the daytime? Was this intimate knowledge due to long
+acquaintance? Had her thought been feeding him perhaps since childhood
+even?
+
+In the pause of his temporary lunacy he asked himself a dozen similar
+questions, but before the sign of any answer came he was off again,
+sweeping on outstretched wings among the stars. He drank her in. He
+knew. What was the good of questions? A thirsty man does not stop
+midway in his draught to ask when his thirst began, its cause, or why
+the rush of liquid down his throat is satisfying. He knows, and
+drinks. It seemed to Henry Rogers, ordinary man of business and
+practical affairs, that some deep river which so long had flowed deep
+out of sight, hidden below his daily existence, rose now grandly at
+the flood. He had heard its subterranean murmurs often. Here, in the
+Den, it had reached his lips at last. And he quenched his thirst....
+His thought played round her without ceasing, like flowing water....
+
+This idea of flux grew everywhere about him. There was fluid movement
+in this world within a world. All life was a flowing past of ceaseless
+beauty, wonder, splendour; it was doubt and question that dammed the
+rush, causing that stoppage which is ugly, petty, rigid. His being
+flowed out to mingle with her own. It was all inevitable, and he never
+really doubted once. Only before long he would be compelled to act--to
+speak--to tell her what he felt, and hear her dear, dear answer....
+The excitement in him became more and more difficult to control.
+Already there was strain and tension below his apparent outer
+calmness. Life in him burst forward to a yet greater life than he had
+ever known....
+
+The others--it was his cousin's voice this time--were speaking of the
+Story, and of his proposed treatment of it in its larger version as a
+book. Daddy was saying, apparently, that it must fail because he saw
+no climax for it. The public demanded a cumulative interest that
+worked up to some kind of thrilling denouement that they called a
+climax, whereas his tale was but a stretch of life, and of very
+ordinary life. And Life, for the majority, knew no such climax. How
+could he manage one without inventing something artificial?
+
+'But the climax of life comes every day and every minute,' he heard
+her answer--and how her little voice rang out above the others like a
+bell!--'when you deny yourself for another, and that other does not
+even know it. A day is lost that does not pin at least one sweet
+thought against each passing hour.'
+
+And his inner construction took a further prodigious leap, as the
+sentence showed him the grand and simple motive of her being. It had
+been his own as well, though he had stupidly bungled it in his search
+to find something big enough to seem worth doing. She, he divined,
+found neighbours everywhere, losing no time. He had known a few rare,
+exquisite souls who lived for others, but here, close beside him at
+last, was one of those still rarer souls who seem born to--die for
+others.... They give so unsparingly of their best.... To his
+imaginative interpretation of her he gave full rein.... And it was
+instantaneous as creation....
+
+The voices of Minks and Mother renewed the stream of sound that swept
+by him then, though he caught no words that were comparable in value
+to these little singing phrases that she used from time to time.
+Jimbo, bored by the grown-up talk that took the place of expected
+stories, had fallen asleep upon his shoulder; Monkey's hair, as usual,
+was in his eyes; he sat there listening and waiting with a heart that
+beat so loudly he thought the children must feel it and ask him what
+was the matter. Jinny stirred the peat from time to time. The room was
+full of shadows. But, for him, the air grew brighter every minute, and
+in this steady brilliance he saw the little figure rise and grow in
+grandeur till she filled all space.
+
+'You called it "getting out" while the body is asleep,' came floating
+through the air through the sound of Jimbo's breathing, 'whereas
+_I_ called it getting away from self while personal desire is asleep.
+But the idea is the same....'
+
+His cousin's words that called forth this criticism he had not heard.
+It was only her sentence that seemed to reach him.
+
+From the river of words and actions men call life she detained, it
+seemed to him, certain that were vital and important in some
+symbolical sense; she italicised them, made them her own--then let
+them go to join the main stream again. This selection was a kind of
+genius. The river did not overwhelm her as it overwhelms most, because
+the part of it she did not need for present action she ignored, while
+yet she swam in the whole of it, shirking nothing.
+
+This was the way he saw her--immediately. And, whether it was his own
+invention, or whether it was the divination of a man in the ecstasy of
+sudden love, it was vital because he felt it, and it was real because
+he believed it. Then why seek to explain the amazing sense of
+intimacy, the certainty that he had known her always? The thing was
+_there_; explanation could bring it no nearer. He let the explanations
+go their way; they floated everywhere within reach; he had only to
+pocket them and take them home for study at his leisure afterwards--
+with her.
+
+'But, we _shall_ come to it in time,' he caught another flying
+sentence that reached him through the brown tangle of Monkey's hair.
+It was spoken with eager emphasis. 'Does not every letter you write
+begin with _dear_?....'
+
+All that she said added something to life, it seemed, like poetry
+which, he remembered, 'enriches the blood of the world.' The
+selections were not idle, due to chance, but belonged to some great
+Scheme, some fairy edifice she built out of the very stuff of her own
+life. Oh, how utterly he understood and knew her. The poison of
+intellectuality, thank heaven, was not in her, yet she created
+somehow; for all she touched, with word or thought or gesture, turned
+suddenly alive in a way he had never known before. The world turned
+beautiful and simple at her touch....
+
+Even the commonest things! It was miraculous, at least in its effect
+upon himself. Her simplicity escaped all signs of wumbling. She had no
+favourite and particular Scheme for doing good, but did merely what
+was next her at the moment to be done. She _was_ good. In her little
+person glowed a great enthusiasm for life. She created neighbours.
+And, as the grandeur of her insignificance rose before him, his own
+great Scheme for Disabled Thingumabobs that once had filled the
+heavens, shrank down into the size of a mere mouse-trap that would go
+into his pocket. In its place loomed up another that held the beauty
+of the Stars. How little, when announcing it to Minks weeks and weeks
+ago, had he dreamed the form it was to take!
+
+And so, wrapped in this glory of the stars, he dreamed on in his
+corner, fashioning this marvellous interpretation of a woman he had
+never seen before, and never spoken with. It was all so different to
+ordinary falling in love at sight, that the phrase never once occurred
+to him. It was consummated in a moment--out there, beside the fountain
+when he saw her first, shadowy, with brilliant, peering eyes. It
+seemed perfect instantly, a recovery of something he had always known.
+And who shall challenge the accuracy of his vision, or call its sudden
+maturity impossible? For where one sees the surface only, another sees
+the potentialities below. To believe in these is to summon them into
+activity, just as to think the best of a person ever brings out that
+best. Are we not all potential splendours?
+
+Swiftly, in a second, he reviewed the shining sentences that revealed
+her to him: The 'autumn flowers'--she lived, then, in the Present,
+without that waste of energy which is regret! In 'a little shell' lay
+the pattern of all life,--she saw the universe in herself and lived,
+thus, in the Whole! To be 'out' meant forgetting self; and life's
+climax is at every minute of the day--she understood, that is, the
+growth of the soul, due to acceptance of what every minute brings,
+however practical, dull, uninteresting. By recreating the commonest
+things, she found a star in each. And her world was made up of
+neighbours--for 'every letter that one writes begins with
+_dear_!'
+
+The Pattern matured marvellously before his eyes; and its delicate
+embroideries, far out of sight, seemed the arabesques that yearnings,
+hitherto unfulfilled, had traced long long ago with the brush of
+tender thinking. Together, though at opposite ends of the world, these
+two had woven the great Net of sympathy, thought, and longing in which
+at last they both were prisoners ... and with them all the earth.
+
+The figure of Jane Anne loomed before him like an ogress suddenly.
+
+'Cousinenry, _will_ you answer or will you _not_? Daddy's already
+asked you twenty times at least!' Then, below her breath, as she bent
+over him, 'The Little Countess will think you awf'ly rude if you go to
+sleep and snore like this.'
+
+He looked up. He felt a trifle dazed. For a moment he had forgotten
+where he was. How dark the room had grown! Only--he was sure he had
+not snored.
+
+'I beg your pardon,' he stammered, 'but I was only thinking--how
+wonderful you--how wonderful it all is, isn't it? I was listening. I
+heard perfectly.'
+
+'You were dozing,' whispered Monkey. 'Daddy wants the Countess to tell
+you how she knew the story long ago, or something. _Ecoute un peu, man
+vieux_!'
+
+'I should love to hear it,' he said, louder, sitting up so abruptly in
+his chair that Jimbo tilted at a dangerous angle, though still without
+waking. 'Please, please go on.'
+
+And he listened then to the quiet, silvery language in which the
+little visitor described the scenery of her childhood, when, without
+brothers or sisters, she was forced to play alone, and had amused
+herself by imagining a Net of Constellations which she nailed by
+shooting stars to four enormous pine trees that grew across the
+torrent. She described the great mountains that enclosed her father's
+estate, her loneliness in this giant garden, due to his morose
+severity of character, her yearnings to escape and see the big world
+beyond the ridges. All her thought and longing went to the fashioning
+of this Net, and every night she flung it far across the peaks and
+valleys to catch companions with whom she might play. The characters
+in her fairy books came out of the pages to help her, and sometimes
+when they drew it in, it was so heavy with the people entangled in its
+meshes that they could scarcely move it. But the moment all were out,
+the giant Net, relieved of their weight, flew back into the sky. The
+Pleiades were its centre, because she loved the Pleiades best of all,
+and Orion pursued its bright shape with passion, yet could never quite
+come up with it.
+
+'And these people whom you caught,' whispered Rogers from his corner,
+listening to a tale he knew as well as she did, 'you kept them
+prisoners?'
+
+'I first put into them all the things I longed to do myself in the big
+world, and then flung them back again into their homes and towns and
+villages---'
+
+'Excepting one,' he murmured.
+
+'Who was so big and clumsy that he broke the meshes and so never got
+away.' She laughed, while the children stared at their cousin,
+wondering how he knew as much as she did. 'He stayed with me, and
+showed me how to make our prisoners useful afterwards by painting them
+all over with starlight which we collected in a cave. Then they went
+back and dazzled others everywhere by their strange, alluring
+brilliance. We made the whole world over in this way---'
+
+'Until you lost him.'
+
+'One cloudy night he disappeared, yes, and I never found him again.
+There was a big gap between the Pleiades and Orion where he had
+tumbled through. I named him Orion after that; and I would stand at
+night beneath the four great pine trees and call and call, but in
+vain. "You must come up to me! You must come up to me!" I called, but
+got no answer---'
+
+'Though you knew quite well where he had fallen to, and that he was
+only hiding---'
+
+'Excuse me, but _how_ did she know?' inquired Jinny abruptly.
+
+The Little Countess laughed. 'I suppose--because the threads of the
+Net were so sensitive that they went on quivering long after he
+tumbled out, and so betrayed the direction---'
+
+'And afterwards, when you got older, Grafin,' interrupted Daddy, who
+wished his cousin to hear the details of the extraordinary
+coincidence, 'you elaborated your idea---'
+
+'Yes, that thought and yearning always fulfil themselves somewhere,
+somehow, sooner or later,' she continued. 'But I kept the imagery of
+my Star Net in which all the world lies caught, and I used starlight
+as the symbol of that sympathy which binds every heart to every other
+heart. At my father's death, you see, I inherited his property. I
+escaped from the garden which had been so long my prison, and I tried
+to carry out in practical life what I had dreamed there as a child. I
+got people together, where I could, and formed Thinkers' Guilds--
+people, that is, who agreed to think beauty, love, and tolerance at
+given hours in the day, until the habit, once formed, would run
+through all their lives, and they should go about as centres of light,
+sweetening the world. Few have riches, fewer still have talent, but
+all can think. At least, one would _think_ so, wouldn't one?'--with a
+smile and a fling of her little hands.
+
+She paused a moment, and then went on to describe her failure. She
+told it to them with laughter between her sentences, but among her
+listeners was one at least who caught the undertone of sadness in the
+voice.
+
+'For, you see, that was where I made my mistake. People would do
+anything in the world rather than think. They would work, give money,
+build schools and hospitals, make all manner of sacrifices--only--they
+would not think; because, they said, there was no visible result.' She
+burst out laughing, and the children all laughed too.
+
+'I should think not indeed,' ventured Monkey, but so low that no one
+heard her.
+
+'And so you went on thinking it all alone,' said Rogers in a low
+voice.
+
+'I tried to write it first as a story,' she answered softly, 'but
+found that was beyond me; so I went on thinking it all alone, as you
+say---'
+
+'Until the Pattern of your thought floated across the world to me,'
+said Daddy proudly. 'I imagined I was inspired; instead I was a
+common, unoriginal plagiarist!'
+
+'Like all the rest of us,' she laughed.
+
+'Mummie, what _is_ a plagiarist?' asked Jinny instantly; and as
+Rogers, her husband, and even Minks came hurriedly to her aid, the
+spell of the strange recital was broken, and out of the turmoil of
+voices the only thing distinctly heard was Mother exclaiming with
+shocked surprise:--
+
+'Why, it's ten o'clock! Jimbo, Monkey, please plagiarise off to bed at
+once!'--in a tone that admitted of no rejoinder or excuses.
+
+'A most singular thing, isn't it, Henry?' remarked the author, coming
+across to his side when the lamp was lit and the children had said
+their good-nights.
+
+'I really think we ought to report it to the Psychical Society as a
+genuine case of thought-transference. You see, what people never
+properly realise is---'
+
+But Henry Rogers lost the remainder of the sentence even if he heard
+the beginning, for his world was in a state of indescribable turmoil,
+one emotion tumbling wildly upon the heels of another. He was elated
+to intoxication. The room spun round him. The next second his heart
+sank down into his boots. He only caught the end of the words she was
+saying to Mother across the room:--
+
+'... but I must positively go to-morrow, I've already stayed too long.
+So many things are waiting at home for me to do. I must send a
+telegram and....'
+
+His cousin's wumbling drowned the rest. He was quite aware that Rogers
+was not listening to him.
+
+'... your great kindness in writing to him, and then coming yourself,'
+Mother was saying. 'It's such an encouragement. I can't tell you how
+much he--we---'
+
+'And you'll let me write to you about the children,' she interrupted,
+'the plans we discussed, you know....'
+
+Rogers broke away from his cousin with a leap. It felt at least like a
+leap. But he knew not where to go or what to say. He saw Minks
+standing with Jane Anne again by the fourneau, picking at his ear. By
+the open window with Mother stood the little visitor. She was leaving
+to-morrow. A torturing pain like twisting knives went through him. The
+universe was going out!... He saw the starry sky behind her. Daddy
+went up and joined them, and he was aware that the three of them
+talked all at once for what seemed an interminable time, though all he
+heard was his cousin's voice repeating at intervals, 'But you _can't_
+send a telegram before eight o'clock to-morrow morning in any case;
+the post is closed....'
+
+And then, suddenly, the puzzle reeled and danced before his eyes. It
+dissolved into a new and startling shape that brought him to his
+senses with a shock. There had been a swift shuffling of the figures.
+
+Minks and his cousin were helping her into her cloak. She _was_ going.
+
+One of them--he knew not which--was offering politely to escort her
+through the village.
+
+It sounded like his own sentence of exile, almost of death. Was he
+forty years of age, or only fifteen? He felt awkward, tongue-tied,
+terrified.
+
+They were already in the passage. Mother had opened the door into the
+yard.
+
+'But your way home lies down the hill,' he heard the silver voice,
+'and to go with me you must come up. I can easily---'
+
+Above the leaves of the plane tree he saw the stars. He saw Orion and
+the Pleiades. The Fairy Net flung in and caught him. He found his
+voice.
+
+In a single stride he was beside her. Minks started at his sudden
+vehemence and stepped aside.
+
+'_I_ will take you home, Countess, if I may,' and his tone was so
+unnecessarily loud and commanding that Mother turned and stared. 'Our
+direction lies together. I will come up--with you.'
+
+She did not even look at him. He saw that tiny smile that was like the
+flicker of a star--no more. But he heard her answer. It seemed to fill
+the sky.
+
+'Thank you. I might lose my way alone.'
+
+And, before he realised how she managed it, they had crossed the
+cobbled yard, Daddy was swinging away downhill towards the
+carpenter's, and Minks behind them, at the top of the stone steps, was
+saying his last good-night to Mother. With the little visitor beside
+him, he passed the singing fountain and led her down the deserted
+village street beneath the autumn stars.
+
+Three minutes later they were out of sight... when Minks came down the
+steps and picked his way among the shadows after Daddy, who had the
+latch-key of the carpenter's house. He ran to overtake him.
+
+     And he ran upon his toes
+     As softly as a saying does,
+     For so the saying goes!
+
+His thoughts were very active, but as clear as day. He was thinking
+whether German was a difficult language to acquire, and wondering
+whether a best man at a wedding ought to wear white gloves or not. He
+decided to ask Albinia. He wrote the letter that very night before he
+went to sleep.
+
+And, while he slept, Orion pursued the Pleiades across the sky, and
+numerous shooting stars fastened the great Net of thought and sympathy
+close over little Bourcelles.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's A Prisoner in Fairyland, by Algernon Blackwood
+
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