But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you.
YEATS.
Thus, led delicately by the animals and the children, and guided to a
certain extent, too, by the curious poesy of his own soul, Paul Rivers
came gradually into his own. Once made free of their world, he would
learn next that the process automatically made him free of his own. This
simple expedient of having found an audience did wonders for him, for it
not only loosened his tongue and his pen, but set all the deeper parts
of him running into speech, and the natural love and poetry of the man
began to produce a delightful, if somewhat extraordinary, harvest.
He understood—none better—that fantasy, unless rooted in reality, leads
away from action and tends to weakness and insipidity; but that,
grounded in the common facts of life, and content with idealising the
actual, it might become an important factor for good, lending wings to
the feet and lifting the soul over difficult places. His education
advanced by leaps and bounds.
And in some respects he showed himself possessed of a wisdom that could
only have belonged to him because at heart he was still a child, and the
ordinary ‘knowledge of the world’ had not come to spoil him in his life
of solitude among the trees.
For instance, that ‘Between Yesterday and To-morrow’ bore some curious
relation to reverie and dreams, he dimly discerned, yet, with this
simple and profound wisdom of his, he refused to pry too closely into
the nature of such relationship. He did not seek to reduce the
delightful experience to the little hard pellet of an exact fact. For
that, he felt, would be to lose it. Exact knowledge, he knew, was often
merely a great treachery, and ‘fact’ a dangerous weapon that deceived,
and might even destroy, its owner. If he analysed too carefully, he
might analyse the whole thing out of existence altogether, and such a
contingency was not to be thought of for a single moment.
Moreover, the attitude of the children confirmed his own. They never
referred to their adventures until he had given them form and substance
in his reports as recording secretary of the society. No word passed
their lips until they had heard them read out, and _then_ they talked of
nothing else. During the day they maintained a sublime ignorance of his
‘aventures of the night,’ as though nothing of the kind had ever
happened; and this tended still further to relegate it all to a region
untouched by time, beyond the reach of chance, beyond the destruction of
mere talk, eternal and real in the great sense.
Meanwhile, as this hidden country he had discovered yielded to
exploration, becoming more and more mapped out, and its springs of water
tapped, Paul was conscious that the power from these vital sources began
to modify his character, and to enlarge his outlook upon life.
Imagination, released and singing, provides the greatest of all
magics—belief in one’s self. The rivers of feeling carve their own
channels, which are ever the shortest way to the ocean of fulfilment.
The effects spread gradually to the remotest corner of his being.
One rainy day he found himself alone in the schoolroom with Nixie, for
it was Saturday afternoon, and Mlle. Fleury had carried off Jonah and
Toby in their best clothes, and to their acute dismay, to have tea with
the children—they were dull children—at the vicarage.
Dressed in blue serge, with a broad white collar over her shoulders and
a band of gold about her waist that matched the colour of her hair, she
darted about the room with her usual effect of brightness, so that he
found himself continually thinking the sun had burst through the clouds.
She was busily arranging cats and kittens in various positions in which
they showed no inclination to remain, till the performance had somewhat
the air of the old-fashioned game of ‘general post.’ Paul sat lazily at
the ink-stained table, dividing his attentions between watching the
child’s fascinating movements and pecking idly into the soft wood with
his little gold penknife.
‘Aren’t you _very_ glad we found you out so soon, Uncle Paul?’ she asked
suddenly, looking up at him over a back of glossy and wriggling yellow
fur. ‘Aren’t you very glad _indeed_, I mean?’
He went on picking at the soft ditches between the ridges of dirty brown
without answering for a moment.
‘Yes,’ he said presently, in the slow manner of a man who weighs his
words; ‘very glad indeed. It’s increased my interest in life. It’s made
me happier, and healthier, and wealthier, and all the rest of it—and
wiser too.’ He bent, frowning, over the ditches.
‘It was all your own fault, you know, that we didn’t get you sooner. Oh,
years ago—ever so many.’
‘But I was in the backwoods, Nixie.’
‘That made no difference,’ she answered promptly. ‘If you had written to
us, as mother often asked, we should have noticed at once what you
were.’
‘How could that possibly be?’ he objected, still without looking up.
‘Of course!’ was the overwhelming reply.
‘Oh, come now,’ he said, staring at her solemnly over the table; ‘I
admit your penetration is pretty keen, but I doubt _that_.’
She returned his gaze with an expression of grave, almost contemptuous
surprise, tossing her hair back impatiently with a jerk from her face.
She had finally established the kittens, Zezette and Sambo, in a sleepy
heap just where she wanted them on the top of the squirrel’s cage.
‘But, Uncle,’ she exclaimed, ‘between yesserdayantomorrow you can meet
people even after they’ve gone altogether. So America wouldn’t have been
difficult. How can you think such things?’
Not knowing exactly how it was he could think such things, Paul made no
immediate reply.
‘Anyhow,’ she resumed, ‘it didn’t take long once you were here. We saw
in a second in the drawinroom what you were—the day you arrived.’
‘But I acted so well! I’m sure now I behaved—’
‘You behaved just like Jonah,’ she interrupted him with swift decision,
‘—only bigger!’
Paul laughed to himself. His inquisitor shot across the room to
establish Pouf, another kitten, on the piano top. She moved lightly,
with a dancing motion that flung her hair behind her through the air,
again producing the effect of a sunlight gleam. Paul continued to
destroy the table with his blunt penknife, chuckling inwardly at the
figure he must have cut that summer afternoon in the ‘drawinroom’ before
these mercilessly observant eyes.
‘You stood about shyly just like him and Toby—in lumps,’ she went on
presently, ‘saying things in a sudden, jerky way—’
‘In lumps!’ cried Paul. ‘That’s a nice way to talk to your Uncle!’
Nixie burst out laughing. ‘Oh, I don’t mean that quite,’ she explained;
‘but you stood about as if you found it hard to balance, and were afraid
to move off the mat. Just as Jonah does at a party when he’s shy. I
copied you _exactly_ when I got upstairs.’
‘Did I indeed? Did you indeed, I mean?’ said he, wondering whether he
ought to feel offended or pleased at the picture.
‘Yes, rather,’ declared the child emphatically, darting up with Pouf who
had definitely rejected the top of the piano, and planting it on the
table under his nose, where it immediately sat down, purring loudly and
staring into his face. ‘I should think you did! You see, Pouf says so
too; he’s purring his agreement. Listen to him! That’s fur language.’
He listened as he was bid, gazing first into the green eyes of the
kitten that opened so wide they seemed to have no lids at all, and then
into the mischievous blue eyes of his other tormentor. He decided that
on the whole he felt pleased.
‘Then I wasted a lot of time,’ he observed presently, ‘about joining, I
mean—coming into your world.’
‘H’mmmm, you did.’
‘Only, remember, you were all very young when I was in America, weren’t
you?’ he added by way of excuse.
Nixie nodded her head approvingly.
‘And you, I expect,’ she replied thoughtfully, ‘were too hard then. I
hadn’t thought of that. You might never have squeezed through the Crack,
mightn’t you? You’re much softer now,’ she decided after a second’s
reflection, ‘ever so much softer!’
‘I _have_ improved, I think,’ he admitted, blushing like a pleased
schoolboy. ‘I am decidedly softer!’
He made a violent dig with his penknife, breaking down the hard barrier
between two ditches, whereupon Pouf, thinking the resultant splinter was
a plaything specially contrived for its happiness, opened its eyes wider
than ever, and stretched out a paw that looked huge compared with the
splinter and the penknife. Paul put the weapon away, and Pouf fixed its
eyes intently on the pocket where it had vanished, leaving its paw
absent-mindedly lying on the splinter which it had already wholly
forgotten. It purred louder than ever, trying to give the impression
that it was really a big cat.
Outside the rain fell softly. A blue-bottle buzzed noisily about the
room, banging the ceiling and the walls as though it were exceedingly
angry. Through the open window floated the smell of the English garden
soaked in rain, odours of soused trees and lawns, and wet
air—exquisitely fragrant.
A hush fell over the room; only the purring of the kittens broke it.
Paul thought it was the most soothing sound in the whole world;
something began to purr within himself. His head, and Nixie’s head, and
little Pouf’s head—all lay very close together over that schoolroom
table, each full of its own busy dreams. These queer, gentle talks with
the child were very delightful to him, all his shyness and
self-consciousness gone, and the spirit of true wonder, simple and
profound, awake in his heart.
Together, for a long time, they listened in silence to these sounds of
purring and breathing and the murmur of rain falling outside: deep,
velvety breathing it was, almost inaudible. Everything in life, Paul
caught himself reflecting, tragedy or comedy, goes on against a
background of this deep, hidden, purring sound of life. Breathing is the
first manifestation of life; it is the music of the world, the soft,
continuous hum of existence. His thoughts travelled far....
‘Yes, on the whole,’ he muttered at length inconsequently, ‘I think I
may consider myself softer than before—kinder, gentler, more alive!’
But neither Nixie, nor Pouf, nor, for that matter, Sambo and Zezette
either, paid the smallest attention to his remark; he was soon lost
again in further reflections.
It was the child’s voice that presently recalled him.
‘Uncle Paul,’ she said very softly, her mind still busy with thoughts of
her own, ‘do you know that sometimes I have heard the earth breathing
too—akchilly breathing?’
Paul, coming back from a long journey, turned and gazed at the eager
little face beside him in silence.
‘The earth is alive, I’m sure,’ she went on with an air of great
mystery. ‘It breathes and whispers, and even purrs; sometimes it cries.
It’s a great body, alive—just like you and the other stars——’
‘Nixie!’
‘They are all bodies, though; heavenly bodies, Daddy called them. Only
we, I suppose, are too small to see it that way perhaps.’
Paul listened, stroking Pouf slowly. The child’s voice was low and
somewhat breathless with the excitement of what she was saying. She
believed every word of it intensely. Only a very small part of what she
was thinking found expression in her words. Her ideas beckoned her
beyond; and mere words could not overtake them at her age.
‘The earth,’ she went on, seeing that he did not laugh, ‘is somebody’s
big round body rolling down the sky. It simply must be. Daddy always
said that a fly settling on our bodies didn’t know we were, alive, so we
can’t understand that the earth is alive either. Only _I know it_. Oh!’
she cried out with sudden enthusiasm, ‘how I would love to hear its real
out-loud voice. What a t’riffic roar it must be. I only wish my ears
were further——’
‘Sharper, you mean.’
‘But, all the same, I _have_ heard it breathing,’ she added more
quietly, lifting Pouf suddenly and wrapping its sleeping body round her
neck like a boa, ‘just like this.’ She put her head on one side, so that
her cheek was against the kitten’s lips, and the faint stream of its
breathing tickled her ear. ‘Only the breathing of the earth is much,
ever so much, longer and deeper. It’s whole months long.’
Paul was listening now with his undivided attention. He was being
admitted to the very heart of an imaginative child’s world, and the
knowledge of it charmed him inexpressibly. His eyes were almost as
bright, his cheeks as pink with excitement, as her own. Only he must be
very careful indeed. The least mistake on his part would close the door.
‘Months, Nixie?’
‘Oh, yes, a single breath is months long,’ she whispered, her eyes
growing in size, and darkening with wonder and awe. ‘Pouf lies on me and
breathes twice to my once, but I breathe millions of times—ever so many
millions—as I lie on the earth’s body. And it breathes in and out just
as Pouf and I do. Winter is breathing in, and summer is breathing out,
you see.’
‘So the equinoctial gales are the changes from one breath to the other?’
he put in gravely.
‘I hadn’t thought about the—the gales,’ she said, putting her face
closer and lowering her voice, ‘but I know that in the summer I often
hear the earth breathing out—’specially on still warm nights when
everything lies awake and listens for it.’
‘Then do “Things” really listen as we do?’ he asked gently.
‘Not ’xactly as we do. We only listen in one place—our ears. They listen
all over. But they’re alive just the same, though so much quieter. Oh,
Uncle Paul, everything is alive; everything, I know it!’ She fixed a
searching look on him. ‘You knew _that_, didn’t you?’
There was a trace of real surprise and disappointment in her voice.
‘Well,’ he answered truthfully, ‘I had often and often thought about it,
and wondered sometimes—whether——’
But the child interrupted him almost imperiously. He realised sharply
how the knowledge that the years bring—little, exact, precise
knowledge—may kill the dreams of the naked soul, yet give nothing in
their place but dust and ashes. And, by the same token, he recognised
that his own heart was still untouched, unspoiled. The blood leaped and
ran within him at the thought.
‘The winds, too, are alive,’—she spoke with a solemn excitement that
made her delicate face flush as though a white fire glowed suddenly
beneath the skin and behind the charming eyes—‘they run about, and
sleep, and sing, and are full of voices. The wind has hundreds of
voices—just like insects with such a lot of eyes.’ (Even her strange
simile did not make him smile, so real was the belief and enthusiasm of
her words.) ‘_We_ (with scorn) have only one voice; but the wind can
laugh and cry at the same time!’
‘I’ve heard it,’ he put in, secretly thrilled.
‘I know its angry voice as well as its pretended-angry voice, when it’s
very loud but means nothing in particular. Its baby-voice, when it comes
through the keyhole at night, or down the chimney, or just outside the
window in the early morning, and tells me all its little
very-wonderful-indeed aventures, makes me so happy I want to cry and
laugh at once.’
She paused a moment for breath, dimly conscious, perhaps, that her
description was somewhat confused. Her excitement somehow communicated
itself to Pouf at the same time, for the kitten suddenly rose up with an
arched back and indulged in a yawn that would have cracked the jaws of
any self-respecting creature. After a prolonged stare at Paul, it
proceeded inconsequently to wash itself with an air that plainly said,
‘You won’t catch me napping again. _I_ want to hear this too.’
Paul, meanwhile, stared at the child beside him, thinking that the
gold-dust on her hair must surely come from her tumbling journeys among
the stars, and wondering if she understood how deeply she saw into the
heart of things with those dreamy blue eyes of hers.
‘Listen, Nixie, you fairy-child, and I’ll tell you something,’ he said
gently, ‘something you will like very much’; and, while she waited and
held her breath, he whispered softly in her ear:
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises in us, our life’s star
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God who is our home.