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.