_And a little child shall lead them._
A week passed quickly away and found Paul still in his sister’s house.
The country air agreed with him, and he went for long walks over the
heathery hills and down to the sea. The little private study provided
for him,—remembering Mrs. Tompkyns’ example, he made a brave pretence of
having reports to write to his lumber Company—was admirable for his
work. As a place of retreat when he felt temptation too strong upon him,
or danger was near at hand, he used it constantly. He scented conditions
in advance very often, though no one probably would have suspected it of
him.
Once or twice he lunched out with neighbours, and sometimes people
motored over to tea; companionship and society were at hand if he wanted
them. And books of the kind he loved stood in precious rows upon the
shelves of Dick’s well-stored library. Here he browsed voraciously.
His sister, meanwhile, showed tact hardly to be expected of her. She
tried him tentatively with many things to see if he liked them, but she
made no conspicuous plans for him, and took good care that he was left
entirely to his own devices. A kind of intelligent truce had established
itself between them—these two persons who lived in different worlds and
stared at one another with something like astonishment over the top of a
high wall. Moreover, her languid interest in life made no claims upon
him; there was pleasant companionship, gentle talks, and genuine, if
thinly coloured, affection. He felt absolutely free, yet was conscious
of being looked after with kindness and discretion. She managed him so
well, in fact, that he hardly realised he was being managed at all.
He fell more easily than he had thought possible into the routine of the
uneventful country life. From feeling ‘caged’ he came to feel
‘comfortable.’ June, and the soft forces of the summer, purred about
him, and almost without knowing it he began to purr with them.
For his superabundant energy he found relief in huge walks, early and
late, and in all manner of unnecessary and invented labours of Hercules
about the place. Thus, he dammed up the little stream that trickled
harmlessly through the Gwyle pine-wood, making a series of deep pools in
which he bathed when the spirit moved him; he erected a gigantic and
very dangerous see-saw for the children (and himself) across a fallen
trunk; and, by means of canvas, boards, and steps, he constructed a
series of rooms and staircases in a spreading ilex tree, with rope
railings and bells at each ‘floor’ for visitors, so that even the
gardeners admitted it was the most wonderful thing they had ever set
eyes upon in a tree.
With the children he was, however, careful to play the part he had
decided to play. He was kind and good-natured; he spent a good deal of
time with them daily; he even submitted periodically to be introduced
all over again to the out-of-door animals, but he went through it all
soberly and deliberately, and flattered himself that he was quite
successful in presenting to them the ‘Uncle Paul’ whom it was best for
his safety they should know.
Heart-searchings and temptations he had in plenty, but came through the
ordeal with flying colours, and by the end of the first week he was
satisfied that they accepted him as he wished—sedate, stolid, dull, and
‘grown up.’
Yet, all the time, there was something that puzzled him. Under the
leadership of Nixie the children played up almost too admirably. It was
almost as though he had called them and explained everything in detail.
In spite of himself, they seemed somehow or other to have got into his
confidence, so that he felt his pretence was after all not so effective
as he meant it to be.
Even—nay, especially—the way he was ‘accepted’ by the animals was
suspicious—for nothing can be more eloquent of the true relations
between children and a grown-up than the terms they permit their animals
to have towards him—and this easy acceptance of himself as he pretended
to be constituted the most wearing and subtle kind of attack he could
possibly conceive. He felt as if the steel casings of his armour were
changing into cardboard; soon they would become mere tissue-paper, and
then turn transparent and melt away altogether.
‘They seem to think it’s all put on, this stiffness of mine,’ he thought
more than once. ‘Perhaps they’re playing a sort of game with me. If once
they find out I’m only acting—whew!’ he whistled low—‘the game is up at
once! I must keep an eye peeled!’
Consequently he kept that eye peeled; he made more use of his private
study, and so often gave the excuse of having reports to write that, had
it been true, his lumber Company would have been obliged to double its
staff in order to read them.
Yet, even in the study, he was not absolutely safe.
The children penetrated there too. They knocked elaborately—always; but
with the knock he invariably realised a roguish pair of eyes and a sly
laugh on the other side of the door. It was like knocking on his heart
direct. He always said—in a bored, unnatural tone:
‘Oh, come in, whoever it is!’ knowing quite well who it was. And, then,
in they would come—one or the other of them.
They slipped in softly as shadows, like the coming of dusk, like stray
puffs of wind, fragrant and summery, or like unexpected rays of light as
the sun walked round the house in the afternoon. And when they were
gone—swiftly, like the sun dipping behind a cloud—lo, the room seemed
cold and empty again.
‘Oh, they’re up to something, they’re up to something,’ he said wisely
to himself with a sigh. ‘They’re laying traps for me, bless their little
insolences!’
And the more he thought about it, the more certain he felt that Nixie,
Jonah, and Toby were simply playing the Cat Game—pretending to accept
his attitude because they saw he wished it. Only, less occult and
intelligent than the cat, they sometimes made odd little slips that
betrayed them.
For instance, one evening Jonah penetrated into the study to say
good-night, and brought the Chow puppies, China and Japan, with him.
Their tails curled over their backs like wire brushes; their vigorous
round bodies, for ever on the move, were all he could manage. Having
been duly kissed, the child waited, however, for something else, and at
length, receiving no assistance from his uncle, he lifted each puppy in
turn on to the table.
‘You, Uncle, please hold them; I can’t,’ he explained.
And, rather grimly, Paul tried to keep the two wriggling bodies still,
while Jonah then came up a little closer to his chair.
‘_They_ have reports to write too, to their lumber-kings,’ he said, his
face solemn as a gong—using a phrase culled heaven knows where. ‘So will
you please see that they don’t make blots either.’
‘But how did you know there were such things as lumber-kings?’ Paul
asked, surprised.
‘I didn’t know. They knew,’ with a jerk of his head toward the
struggling puppies, who hated the elevation of the table and the
proximity of Paul’s bearded face. ‘They said you told them.’
There was no trace of a smile in his eyes; nothing but the earnest
expression of the child taking part in the ponderous make-believe of the
grown-up. Paul felt that by this simple expedient his reports and the
safety they represented had been reduced in a single moment to the level
of a paltry pretence.
He blushed. ‘Well, tell them to run after their tails more, and think
less,’ he said.
‘All right, Uncle Paul,’ and the boy was gone, grave as any judge.
And Toby, her small round face still shining like an onion skin, had a
different but equally effective method of showing him that he belonged
to their world in spite of his clumsy pretence. She gave him lessons in
Natural History. One afternoon when a brightly-coloured creature darted
across the page of his book, and he referred to it as a ‘beetle,’ she
very smartly rebuked him.
‘Not beetle, but beetie, _that_ one,’ she corrected him.
He thought at first this was merely a child’s abbreviation, but she went
on to instruct him fully, and he discovered that the ordinary
coleopterist has a great deal yet to learn in the proper classification
of his species.
‘There are beetles, and beedles, and beeties,’ she explained standing by
his chair on the lawn, and twiddling with his watch-chain. ‘Beeties are
all bright-coloured and little and very pretty—like ladybirds.’
‘And beedles?’
‘Oh, b-e-e-e-d-d-dles,’ pronouncing the word heavily and slowly, ‘are
the stupid fat ones in the road that always get run over. They’re always
sleepy, you see, but quite nice, oh, quite nice;’ she hastened to add
lest Paul should dislike them from her description.
‘And all the rest are beetles, I suppose, just ordinary beetles?’ he
asked.
‘Beetles,’ she said, with the calmness of superior knowledge, ‘are fast,
black things that scuttle about kitchens. Horrid and crawly! _Now_ you
know them all!’
She ran off with a burst of laughter upon that face of polished onion
skin, and left her uncle to reflect deeply upon this new world of
beetles.
The lesson was instructive and symbolic, though the choice of subject
was not as poetic as might have been. With this new classification as a
starting-point, the child, no doubt, had erected a vast superstructure
of wonder, fun, beauty, and—why not?—truth! For children, he mused, are
ever the true idealists. In their games of make-believe they create the
world anew—in six minutes. They scorn measurements, and deal directly
with the eternal principles behind things. With a little mud on the end
of a stick they trace the course of the angels, and with the
wooden-blocks of their building-boxes they erect the towering palaces of
a universe that shall never pass away.
Yet what they did, surely he also did! His world of imagination was
identical with theirs of make-believe. Was, then, the difference between
them one of expression merely?...
Toby came thundering up and fell upon him from nowhere.
‘Uncle Paul,’ she said rather breathlessly.
‘Yes, dear,’ he made answer, still thinking upon beedles and beeties.
‘On the path down there by the rosydandrums there’s a beedle now—a big
one with horns—if you’d like to see it.’
‘Oh! By the rhododendrons, you mean?’
‘Yes, by the rosydandrums,’ she repeated. ‘Only we must be quick or
he’ll get home before we come.’
He was far more keen to see that “beedle” than she was. Yet for the
immediate safety of his soul he refused.
Nixie it was, however, who penetrated furthest into the fortress. She
came with a fearless audacity that fairly made him tremble. She had only
to approach for him to become aware how poorly his suit of armour
fitted.
But she was so gentle and polite about it that she was harder to
withstand than all the others put together. She was slim and insinuating
in body, mind and soul. Often, before he realised what she was talking
about, her slender little fingers were between the cracks of his
breast-plate. For instance, after leaving Toby and her “beedle,” he
strolled down to the pine-wood and stood upon the rustic bridge watching
the play of sunlight and shadow, when suddenly, out of the very water it
seemed, up rose a veritable water-sprite—hatless and stockingless—Nixie,
the ubiquitous.
She scrambled lightly along the steep bank to his side, and leaned over
the railing with him, staring at their reflections in the stream.
‘I declare you startled me, child!’ Paul exclaimed.
Her eyes met his in the running reflection beneath them. Of course, it
may have been merely the trick of the glancing water, but to him it
seemed that her expression was elfin and mischievous.
‘Did I—_really_, Uncle Paul?’ she said after a long silence, and without
looking up. But woven through the simple words, as sunlight is woven
through clearing mist, he divined all the other meanings of the child’s
subtle and curious personality. It amounted to this—she at once invited,
nay included, him in her own particular tree and water world: included
him because he belonged there with her, and she simply couldn’t help
herself. There was no favour about it one way or the other.
The compliment—the temptation—was overwhelming. Paul shivered a little,
actually shivered, as he stood beside her in the sunshine. For several
minutes they leaned there in silence, gazing at the flowing water.
‘The woods are _very_ busy—this evening,’ she said at length.
‘I’m sure they are,’ he answered, before he quite realised what he was
saying. Then he pulled himself together with an effort.
‘But does Mlle. Fleury know, and approve—?’ he asked a little stiffly,
glancing down at her bare legs and splashed white frock.
‘Oh, no,’ she laughed wickedly, ‘but then Mlle. only understands what
she sees with her eyes! She is much too mixed up and educated to know
all _this_ kind of thing!’ She made a gesture to include the woods about
them. ‘Her sort of knowledge is so stuffing, you know.’
‘Rather,’ he exclaimed. ‘I would far sooner know the trees themselves
than know their Latin names.’
It slipped out in spite of himself. The next minute he could have bitten
his tongue off. But Nixie took no advantage of him. She let his words
pass as something taken for granted.
‘I mean—it’s better to learn useful things while you can,’ he said
hurriedly, blushing in his confusion like a child.
Nixie peered steadily down into the water for several minutes before she
said anything more.
‘Either she’s found me out and knows everything,’ thought Paul; ‘or she
hasn’t found me out and knows nothing.’ But which it was, for the life
of him, he couldn’t be certain.
‘Oh,’ she cried suddenly, looking up into his face, her eyes, to Paul’s
utter amazement, wet with tears, ‘Oh! how Daddy must have loved you!’
And, before he could think of a word to say, she was gone! Gone into the
woods with a fluttering as of white wings.
‘So apparently I am not too mixed up and educated for their exquisite
little world,’ he reflected, as soon as the emotion caused by her last
words had subsided a little; ‘and the things I know are not of the
“stuffing” kind!’
It all made him think a good deal—this attitude the children adopted
towards _his_ attitude, this unhesitating acceptance of him in spite of
all his pretence. But he still valiantly maintained his studied
aloofness of manner, and never allowed himself to overstep the danger
line. He never forgot himself when he played with them, and the stories
he told were just what they called “ornary” stories, and not tales of
pure imagination and fantasy. The rules of the game, finely balanced,
were observed between them just as between himself and Mrs. Tompkyns.
Yet somehow, by unregistered degrees and secretly, they loosened the
joints of his armour day by day and hour by hour.