All the Powers that vivify nature must be children, for all the
fairies, and gnomes, the goblins, yes, and the great giants too, are
only different sizes and shapes and characters of children.—_George
MacDonald._
It was a week later, and Paul was smoking his evening pipe on the lawn
before dinner. His sister was in London for a couple of days. Mlle.
Fleury had gone to the dentist in the neighbouring town and had not yet
returned. The children, consequently, had been running rather wild.
The sun had barely disappeared, when the full moon, rising huge and
faint in the east, cast a silvery veil over the gardens and the wood.
The night came treading softly down the sky, passing with an almost
visible presence from the hills to the motionless trees in the valley,
and then sinking gently and mysteriously down into the very roots of the
grass and flowers.
During the day there had been rain—warm showers alternating with
dazzling sunshine as in April—and now the earth, before going to sleep,
was sending out great wafts of incense. Paul sniffed it in with keen
enjoyment.
The odour of burning wood floated to him over the tree-tops, hanging a
little heavily in the moist atmosphere; he thought of a hundred fires of
his own making—elsewhere, far away! ‘And grey dawns saw his camp-fires
in the rain,’ he murmured.
He wandered down to the Larch Gate, so called by the children because
the larches stood there about the entrance of the wood like the porch of
some forest temple. He halted, listening to the faint drip-drip of the
trees, and as he listened, he thought; and his thoughts, like stones
falling through a deep sea, sank down into the depths of him where so
little light was that no words came to give them form or substance.
Overhead, the blue lanes of the sky down which the sunlight had poured
all day were slowly softening for the coming of the stars; and in
himself the plastic depths, he felt, were a-stirring, as though some
great change that he could not alter or control were about to take place
in him. He was aware of an unwonted undercurrent of excitement in his
blood. It seemed to him that there was ‘something afoot,’ although he
had no evidence to warrant the suspicion.
‘Something’s up to-night,’ he murmured between the puffs of his pipe.
‘There’s something in the air!’
He blew a long whiff of smoke and watched it melt away over a bed of
mignonette among the blue shadows where the dusk gathered beneath the
ilex trees. There, for a moment, his eye followed it, and just as it
sifted off into transparency he became aware with a start of surprise
that behind the bushes something was moving. He looked closer.
‘It’s stopped,’ he muttered; ‘but only a second ago it was moving—moving
parallel with myself.’
Paul was well accustomed to watching the motions of wild creatures in
the forest; his eye was trained like the eye of an Indian. The gloom at
first was too dense for anything to differentiate itself from their
general mass, but after a short inspection his sight detected little
bits of shadow that were lighter or darker than other little bits. The
moving thing began to assume outline.
‘It’s a person!’ he decided. ‘It’s somebody watching—watching _me_!’
He took a step forward, and the figure likewise advanced, keeping even
pace with him. He went faster, and the figure also went faster; it moved
very silently, very softly, ‘like an Indian,’ he thought with
admiration. Behind the Blue Summer-house, where they sometimes had tea
on wet days, it disappeared.
‘There are no cattle-stealers, or timber-sneaks in this country,’ he
reflected, ‘but there are burglars. Perhaps this is a burglar who knows
Margaret is away and thinks—’
He had not time to finish what the burglar thought, for at that moment,
at the top of the Long Walk, where the moonlight already lay in a patch,
the figure suddenly dashed out at full speed from the cover of the
bushes, and he beheld, not a burglar, but—a little girl in a blue frock
with a broad white collar, and long, black spindle legs.
‘Nixie, my dear child!’ he exclaimed. ‘But aren’t you in bed?’
It was a stupid question of course, and she did not attempt to answer
it, but came up close to him, picking her way neatly between the
flower-beds. The moon gleamed on her shiny black shoes and on her shiny
yellow hair; over her summer dress she wore a red cloak, but it was open
and only held to her by two thin bands about the neck. Under the hood he
saw her elf-like face, the expression grave, but the eyes bright with
excitement, and she moved softly over the grass like a shadow, timidly,
yet without hesitation. A small, warm hand stole into his.
Paul put his pipe, still alight, into his pocket like a naughty boy
caught smoking, and turned to face her.
‘’Pon my soul, Nixie, I believe you really _are_ a sprite!’
She let go his hand and sprang away lightly over the lawn, laughing
silently, her hood dropping off so that her hair flew out in a net to
catch the moonlight, and for an instant he imagined he was looking at
running water, swift and dancing; but the very next second she was back
at his side again, the red hood replaced, the cloak gathered tightly
about her slim person, feeling for his big hand again with both of her
own.
‘At night I _am_ a sprite,’ she whispered laughing, ‘and mind I don’t
bewitch you altogether!’
She drew him gently across the lawn, choosing the direction with evident
purpose, and he, curiously and suddenly bereft of all initiative,
allowed her to do as she would.
‘But, please, Uncle Paul,’ she went on with vast gravity,’ I want you to
be serious now. I’ve something to say to you, and that’s why I’m not in
bed when I ought to be. All the other Sprites are about too, you know,
so be very careful how you answer.’
The big man allowed himself to be led away. He felt his armour dropping
off in great flakes as he went. No light is so magical as in that
mingled hour of sun and moon when the west is still burning and the east
just a-glimmer with the glory that is to come. Paul felt it strongly. He
was half with the sun and half with the moon, and the gates of fantasy
seemed somewhere close at hand. Curtains were being drawn aside, veils
lifting, doors softly opening. He almost heard the rush of the wind
behind, and tasted the keen, sweet excitement of another world.
He turned sharply to look at his companion. But first he put the hood
back, for she seemed more human that way.
‘Well, child!’ he said, as gruffly as he could manage, ‘and what is it
you have stayed up so late to ask me?’
‘It’s something I have to say to you, not to _ask_,’ she replied at once
demurely. There was a delicious severity about her.
After a pause of twenty seconds she tripped round in front of him and
stared full into his face. He felt as though she cried ‘Hands up’ and
held a six-shooter to his head. She pulled the trigger that same moment.
‘Isn’t it time now to stop writing all those Reports, and to take off
your dressing-up things?’ she asked with decision.
Paul stopped abruptly and tried to disengage his hand, but she held him
so tightly that he could not escape without violence.
‘What dressing-up things are you talking about?’ he asked, forcing a
laugh which, he admitted himself, sounded quite absurd.
‘All this pretending that you’re so old, and don’t know about things—I
mean _real_ things—_our_ things.’
He searched as in a fever for the right words—words that should be true
and wise, and safe—but before he could pick them out of the torrent of
sentences that streamed through his mind, she had gone on again. She
spoke calmly, but very gravely.
‘We are _so_ tired of helping to pretend with you; and we’ve been
waiting patiently _so_ long. Even Toby knows it’s only ’sguise you put
on to tease us.’
‘Even Toby?’ he repeated foolishly, avoiding her brilliant eyes.
‘And it really isn’t quite fair, you know. There are so very few that
care—and understand—’
There came a little quaver in her voice. She hardly came up to his
shoulder. He felt as though a whole bathful of happiness had suddenly
been upset inside him, and was running about deliciously through his
whole being—as though he wanted to run and dance and sing. It was like
the reaction after tight boots—collars—or tight armour—and the blood was
beginning to flow again mightily. Nothing could stop it. Some keystone
in the fabric of his being dropped or shifted. His whole inner world
fell into a new pattern. Resistance was no longer possible or desirable.
He had done his best. Now he would give in and enjoy himself at last.
‘But, my dear child—my dear little Nixie—’
‘No, really, Uncle, there’s no good talking like that,’ she interrupted,
her voice under command again, though still aggrieved, ‘because you know
quite well we’re all waiting for you to join us properly—our Society, I
mean—and have our a’ventures with us—’
She called it ‘aventures.’ She left out all consonants when excited. The
word caught him sharply. Nixie had wounded him better than she knew.
‘Er—then do you have adventures?’ he asked.
‘Of course—wonderful.’
‘But not—er—the sort—er—I could join in?’
‘Of course; very wonderfulindeedaventures. That’s what Daddy used to
call them—before he went away.’
It was Dick himself speaking. Paul imagined he could hear the very
voice. Another, and deeper, emotion surged through him, making all the
heartstrings quiver.
He turned and looked about him, still holding the child tightly by the
hand....
Behind him he heard the air moving in the larches, combing out their
long green hair; the pampas grass rustled faintly on the lawn just
beyond; and from the wood, now darkening, came the murmur of the brook.
On his right, the old house looked shadowy and unreal. There stood the
chimneys, like draped figures watching him, with the first stars peeping
over their hunched shoulders. Dew glistened on the slates of the roof;
beyond them he saw the clean outline of the hill, darkly sweeping up
into the pallor of the sunset. There, too, past the wall of the house,
he saw the great distances of heathland moving down through crowds of
shadows to the sea. And the moon was higher.
‘There’s seats in the Blue Summer-house,’ the voice beside him said,
with insinuation as well as command.
He found it impossible to resist; indeed, the very desire to resist had
been spirited away. Slowly they made their way across the silvery
patchwork of the lawn to the door of the Blue Summer-house. This was a
tumble-down structure with a thatched roof; it had once been blue, but
was now no colour at all. Low seats ran round the inside walls, and as
Paul stood at the dark entrance he perceived that these seats were
already occupied; and he hesitated. But Nixie pulled him gently in.
‘This is a regular Meeting,’ she said, as naturally as though she had
been wholly innocent of a part in the plot. ‘They’ve only been waiting
for us. Please come in.’ She even pushed him.
‘It may be regular, but it is most unexpected,’ he said, breathless
rather, and curiously shy as he crossed the threshold and peered round
at the silent faces about him. Eyes, he saw, were big and round and
serious, shining with excitement. Clearly it was a very important
occasion. He wondered what an ‘irregular’ meeting would be like.
‘We waited till mother was away,’ explained a candid voice, speaking
with solemnity from the recesses.
‘And till Madmerzelle had to go to the dentist and stay to tea,’ added
another.
‘So that it would be easier for _you_ to come,’ concluded Nixie, lest he
should think all these excuses were only on their own account.
She led him across the cobbled floor to a wooden arm-chair with crooked
and shattered legs, and persuaded him to sit down. He did so.
‘There was some sense in that, at any rate,’ he remarked irrelevantly,
not quite sure whether he referred to the children, or Mademoiselle, or
the chair, and landing at the same instant with a crash upon the rickety
support which was much lower than he thought it was. The joints and
angles of the wood entered his ribs. He lost all memory of how to be
sedate after that. He began to enjoy himself absurdly.
Silvery laughter was heard, followed immediately by the sound of rushing
little feet as a dozen small shadows shot out into the moonlight and
tore across the lawn at top speed. China and Japan he recognised, and a
cohort of furry creatures in their rear.
‘Now you’ve frightened them _all_ away,’ exclaimed the voice that had
spoken first.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ replied the other, who evidently spoke with authority;
‘Uncle Paul was in before they left. They saw the introduction. That’s
enough. So now,’ it added with decision, ‘if you’re quite ready we’d
better begin.’
Paul grasped by this time that he was the central figure in some secret
ceremony of the children, that it was of vital importance to them, as
well as a profound compliment to himself. The animals formed part of it
so long as they could be persuaded to stay. Their own rituals, however,
were so vastly more wonderful and dignified—especially the Ritual of the
Cats—that they were somewhat contemptuous, and had escaped at the
earliest opportunity. It was, of course, his formal initiation into
their world of make-believe and imagination. He stood before them on the
floor of this tumbled-down Blue Summer-house in the capacity of the
Candidate. Strange chills began to chase one another down his long
spine. A shy happiness swept through him and made him shiver. ‘Can they
possibly guess,’ he wondered, ‘how far more important this is to me than
to them?’
‘Are you ready then?’ Nixie asked again.
‘Quite ready,’ he replied in a deep and tremulous voice.
‘Go ahead then,’ said the voice of decision.
A little bell rang, manipulated by some invisible hand in the darkness,
and Nixie darted forward and drew a curtain that bore a close
resemblance to a carriage rug across the doorway, so that only the
faintest gleam of moonlight filtered through the cracks on either side.
Then the owner of the voice of authority left his throne on the back
wall and stepped solemnly forward in the direction of the candidate.
Paul recognised Jonah with some difficulty. He tripped twice on the way.
The stumbling was comprehensible. On his head he wore a sort of mitre
that on ordinary occasions was evidently used to keep the tea hot on the
schoolroom table; for it was beyond question a tea-cosy. A garment of
variegated colours wrapped his figure down to the heels and trailed away
some distance behind him. It was either a table-cloth or a housemaid’s
Sunday dress, and it invested him with a peculiar air of quaint majesty.
He might have been King of the Gnomes. On his hands were large leathern
gauntlets—very large indeed; and with loose fingers whose movements were
clearly difficult to control, he grasped a stick that once may have been
a hunting crop, but now was certainly a wand of office.
In front of Paul he came to a full stop, gathering his robes about him.
He made a little bow, during which the mitre shifted dangerously to one
side, and then tapped the candidate lightly with the wand on the head,
shoulders, and breast.
‘Please answer now,’ he said in a low tone, and then went backwards to
his seat against the wall. His robe of office so impeded him that he was
obliged to use the wand as a common walking-stick. Once or twice, too,
he hopped.
‘But you’ve forgotten to ask it,’ whispered Nixie from the door where
she was holding up the curtains with both hands. ‘He’s got nothing to
answer.’
Quickly correcting his mistake, Jonah then stood up on his seat and
said, rather shyly, the following lines, evidently learned by heart with
a good deal of trouble:—
You’ve applied to our Secret Society,
Which is full of unusual variety,
And, in spite of your past,
We admit you at last,
But—we hope you’ll behave with propriety.
‘Now, stand up and answer, please,’ whispered Nixie. ‘Daddy made all
this up, you know. It’s your turn to answer now.’
Paul rose with difficulty. At first it seemed as if the chair meant to
rise with him, so tightly did it fit; but in the end he stood erect
without it, and bowing to the President, he said in solemn tones—and the
words came genuinely from his heart:
‘I appreciate the honour done to me. I am very grateful indeed.’
‘That’s very good, I think,’ Nixie whispered under her breath to him.
Then Toby advanced, climbing down laboriously from her perch on the
broken bench, and stalked up to the spot just vacated by her brother.
She, too, was suitably dressed for the occasion, but owing to her
diminutive size, and the fact that she did not reach up to the patch of
moonlight, it was not possible to distinguish more than the white cap
pinned on to her hair. It looked like a housekeeper’s cap. She, too,
carried a wand of office. Was it a hunting crop or poker, Paul wondered?
Toby, then, with much more effort than Jonah, repeated the formula of
admission. She got the lines a little mixed, however:—
You’ve applied to our Secret Society,
Which is full of unusual propriety,
And, in spite of your past,
We admit you at last,
But we hope you’ll _behave with variety_.
‘I will endeavour to do so,’ said Paul, replying with a low bow.
When he rose again to an upright position, Nixie was standing close in
front of him. One arm still held up the curtains, but the other pointed
directly into his face.
‘Your ’ficial position in the Society,’ she said in her thin, musical
little voice, also repeating words learned by heart, ‘will be that of
Recording Secretary, and your principal duties to keep a record of all
the Aventures and to read them aloud at Regular Meetings. Any Meeting
anywhere is a Regular Meeting. You must further promise on your living
oath not to reveal the existence of the Society, or any detail of its
proceedings, to any person not approved of by the Society as a whole.’
She paused for his reply.
‘I promise,’ he said.
‘He promises,’ repeated three voices together.
There was a general clatter and movement in the summer-house. He was
forced down again into the rickety chair and the three little officials
were clambering upon his knees before he knew where he was. All talked
breathlessly at once.
‘Now you’re in properly—at last!’
‘You needn’t pretend any more——’
‘But we knew all along you were really trying hard to get in?’
‘I really believe I was,’ said he, getting in a chance remark.
They covered him with kisses.
‘We never thought you were as important as you pretended,’ Jonah said;
‘and your being so big made no difference.’
‘Or your beard, Uncle Paul,’ added Toby.
‘And we never think people old till they’re married,’ Jonah explained,
putting the mitre on his uncle’s head.
‘So now we can have our aventures all together,’ exclaimed Nixie,
kissing him swiftly, and leaping off his knee. The other two followed
her example, and suddenly—he never quite understood how it happened so
quickly—the summer-house was empty, and he was alone with the moonlight.
A flash of white petticoats and slender black legs on the lawn, and lo,
they were gone!
On the gravel path outside sounded a quick step. Paul started with
surprise. The very next minute Mlle. Fleury, in her town clothes and
hat, appeared round the corner.
‘’Ow then!’ she exclaimed sharply, ‘the little ones zey are no more
’ere? Mr Rivairs...!’ She shook her finger at him.
Paul tried to look dignified. For the moment, however, he quite forgot
the tea-cosy still balanced on his head.
‘Mademoiselle Fleury,’ he said politely, ‘the children have gone to
bed.’
‘It is ’igh time that they are already in bed, only I hear their voices
now this minute,’ she went on excitedly. ‘They ’ide here, do they not?’
‘I assure you, Mademoiselle, they have gone to bed,’ Paul said. The
woman stared at him with amazement in her eyes. He wondered why. Then,
with a crash, something fell from the skies, hitting his nose on the way
down, and bounding on to the ground.
‘Oh, the mitre!’ he cried with a laugh, ‘I clean forgot it was there.’
He kicked it aside and stared with confusion at his companion. She
looked very neat and trim in her smart town frock. He understood now why
she stared so, and his cheeks flamed crimson, though it was too dark for
them to be seen.
‘Meester Reevairs,’ she said at length, the desire to laugh and the
desire to scold having fought themselves to a standstill, so that her
face betrayed no expression at all, ‘you lead zem astray, I think.’
‘On the contrary, it is they who lead me,’ he said self-consciously. ‘In
fact, they have just deprived me of my very best armour——’
‘Armour!’ she interrupted, ‘_Armoire_! Ah! They ’ide upstairs in the
cupboard,’—and she turned to run.
‘Do not be harsh with them,’ he cried after her, ‘it is all my fault
really. I am to blame, not they.’
‘’Arsh! Oh no!’ she called back to him. ‘Only, you know, if your seester
find them at this hour not in bed——’
Paul lost the end of the sentence as she turned the corner of the house.
He gathered up the remnants of the ceremony and followed slowly in her
footsteps.
‘Now, really,’ he thought, ‘what a simple and charming woman! How her
eyes twinkled! And how awfully nice her voice was!’ He flung down the
rugs and wands and tea-cosy in the hall. ‘Out there,’ with a jerk in the
direction of the Atlantic Ocean, ‘the whole camp would make her a
Queen.’
Altogether the excitement of the last hour had been considerable. He
felt that something must happen to him unless he could calm down a bit.
‘I know,’ he exclaimed aloud, ‘I’ll go and have a hot bath. There’s just
time before dinner. That’ll take it out of me.’ And he went up the front
stairs, singing like a boy.