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.