'She's come and gone a dozen times while you've been skylarking

somewhere else,' explained Monkey with her usual exaggeration. 'She's

gone for good now. She sleeps so badly. She's always waking up, you

know.' Mother understood. Only too well she knew that her friend

snatched sleep in briefest intervals, incessantly disturbed by racking

pain.

A stream of light flashed past her, dashing like a meteor towards the

village and disappearing before she could see the figure.

'There goes Jinny,' cried some one, 'always working to the very last.

The interfering sun'll catch her if she doesn't look out!'

There was movement and hurry everywhere. Already the world ran loose

and soft in colour. Birds, just awake, were singing in the trees

below. Several passed swiftly overhead, raking the sky with a whirring

rush of wings. Everybody was asking questions, urging return, yet

lingering as long as possible, each according to his courage. To be

caught 'out' by the sun meant waking with a sudden start that made

getting out of bed very difficult and might even cause a headache.

Rogers alone seemed unperturbed, unhurried, for he was absorbed in a

discovery that made him tremble. Noting the sudden perfection of his

cousin's Pattern, he had gone closer to examine it, and had--seen the

starry figure. Instantly he forgot everything else in the world. It

seemed to him that he had suddenly found all he had ever sought. He

gazed into those gentle eyes of amber and felt that he gazed into the

eyes of the Universe that had taken shape in front of him. Floating up

as near as he could, he spoke--

'Where do you come from--from what star?' he asked softly in an

ecstasy of wonder.

The tiny face looked straight at him and smiled.

'From the Pleiades, of course,--that little group of star-babies as

yet unborn.'

'I've been looking for you for ever,' he answered.

'You've found me,' sang the tiny voice. 'This is our introduction.

Now, don't forget. There was a lost Pleiad, you know. Try to remember

me when you wake.'

'Then why are you here?' He meant in the Pattern.

The star-face rippled with laughter.

'It's yours--your Scheme. He's given it perfect shape for you, that's

all. Don't you recognise it? But it's my Story as well. ...'

A ray with crimson in it shot out just then across the shoulder of the

Blumlisalp, and, falling full upon the tiny face, it faded out; the

Pattern faded with it; Daddy vanished too. On the little azure winds

of dawn they flashed away. Jimbo, Monkey, and certain of the Sprites

alone held on, but the tree-tops to which they clung were growing more

and more slippery every minute. Mother, loth to return, balanced

bravely on the waving spires of a larch. Her sleep that night had been

so deep and splendid, she struggled to prolong it. She hated waking up

too early.

'The Morning Spiders! Look out!' cried a Sprite, as a tiny spider on

its thread of gossamer floated by. It was the Dustman's voice.

Catching the Gypsy with one arm and the Tramp with the other, all

three instantly disappeared.

'But where's my Haystack friend?' called Mother faintly, almost losing

her balance in the attempt to turn round quickly.

'Oh, she's all right,' the Head Gardener answered from a little

distance where he was burning something. 'She just "stays put" and

flirts with every wind that comes near her. She loves the winds. They

know her little ways.' He went on busily burning up dead leaves he had

been collecting all night long--dead, useless thoughts he had found

clogging a hundred hearts and stopping outlets.

'Look sharp!' cried a voice that fell from the sky above them.

'Here come the Morning Spiders,

On their gossamer outriders!'

This time it was the Lamplighter flashing to and fro as he put the

stars out one by one. He was in a frantic hurry; he extinguished whole

groups of them at once. The Pleiades were the last to fade.

Rogers heard him and came back into himself. For his ecstasy had

carried him even beyond the region of the freest 'thinking.' He could

give no account or explanation of it at all. Monkey, Jimbo, Mother,

and he raced in a line together for home and safety. Above the fields

they met the spiders everywhere, the spiders that bring the dawn and

ride off into the Star Cave on lost rays and stray thoughts that

careless minds have left scattered about the world.

And the children, as they raced and told their mother to 'please move

a little more easily and slipperily,' sang together in chorus:--

'We shall meet the Morning Spiders,

The fairy-cotton riders,

Each mounted on a star's rejected ray;

With their tiny nets of feather

They collect our thoughts together,

And on strips of windy weather

Bring the Day. ...'

'That's stolen from you or Daddy,' Mother began to say to Rogers--but

was unable to complete the flash. The thought lay loose behind her in

the air.

A spider instantly mounted it and rode it off.

Something brushed her cheek. Riquette stood rover her, fingering her

face with a soft extended paw.

'But it surely can't be time yet to get up!' she murmured. 'I've only

just fallen asleep, it seems.' She glanced at her watch upon the chair

beside the bed, saw that it was only four o'clock, and then turned

over, making a space for the cat behind her shoulder. A tremendous

host of dreams caught at her sliding mind. She tried to follow them.

They vanished. 'Oh dear!' she sighed, and promptly fell asleep again.

But this time she slept lightly. No more adventures came. She did not

dream. And later, when Riquette woke her a second time because it was

half-past six, she remembered as little of having been 'out' as though

such a thing had never taken place at all.

She lit the fire and put the porridge saucepan on the stove. It was a

glorious July morning. She felt glad to be alive, and full of happy,

singing thoughts. 'I wish I could always sleep like that!' she said.

'But what a pity one has to wake up in the end!'

And then, as she turned her mind toward the coming duties of the day,

another thought came to her. It was a very ordinary, almost a daily

thought, but there seemed more behind it than usual. Her whole heart

was in it this time--

'As soon as the children are off to school I'll pop over to mother,

and see if I can't cheer her up a bit and make her feel more happy. Oh

dear!' she added, 'life is a bag of duties, whichever way one looks at

it!' But she felt a great power in her that she could face them easily

and turn each one into joy. She could take life more bigly,

carelessly, more as a whole somehow. She was aware of some huge

directing power in her 'underneath.' Moreover, the 'underneath' of a

woman like Mother was not a trifle that could be easily ignored. That

great Under Self, resting in the abysses of being, rose and led. The

pettier Upper Self withdrew ashamed, passing over the reins of conduct

into those mighty, shadowy hands.

CHAPTER XXVI

Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades,

Or loose the bands of Orion?

_Book of Job_.

The feeling that something was going to happen--that odd sense of

anticipation--which all had experienced the evening before at tea-time

had entirely vanished, of course, next morning. It was a mood, and it

had passed away. Every one had slept it off. They little realised how

it had justified itself. Jane Anne, tidying the Den soon after seven

o'clock, noticed the slip of paper above the mantelpiece, read it

over--'The Starlight Express will start to-night. Be reddy!'--and tore

it down. 'How could that. have amused us!' she said aloud, as she

tossed it into the waste-paper basket. Yet, even while she did so,

some stray sensation of delight clutched at her funny little heart, a

touch of emotion she could not understand that was wild and very

sweet. She went singing about her work. She felt important and grown-

up, extraordinarily light-hearted too. The things she sang made up

their own words--such odd snatches that came she knew not whence. An

insect clung to her duster, and she shook it out of the window with

the crumbs and bits of cotton gathered from the table-cloth.

'Get out, you Morning Spider,

You fairy-cotton rider!'

she sang, and at the same minute Mother opened the bedroom door and

peeped in, astonished at the unaccustomed music. In her voluminous

dressing-gown, her hair caught untidily in a loose net, her face

flushed from stooping over the porridge saucepan, she looked, thought

Jinny, 'like a haystack somehow.' Of course she did not say it. The

draught, flapping at her ample skirts, added the idea of a covering

tarpaulin to the child's mental picture. She went on dusting with a

half-offended air, as though Mother had no right to interrupt her with

a superintending glance like this.

'You won't forget the sweeping too, Jinny?' said Mother, retiring

again majestically with that gliding motion her abundant proportions

achieved so gracefully.

'Of course I won't, Mother,' and the instant the door was closed she

fell into another snatch of song, the words of which flowed

unconsciously into her mind, it seemed--

'For I'm a tremendously busy Sweep,

Dusting the room while you're all asleep,

And shoving you all in the rubbish heap,

Over the edge of the tiles'

--a little wumbled, it is true, but its source unmistakable.

And all day long, with every one, it was similar, this curious

intrusion of the night into the day, the sub-conscious into the

conscious--a kind of subtle trespassing. The flower of forgotten

dreams rose so softly to the surface of consciousness that they had an

air of sneaking in, anxious to be regarded as an integral part of

normal waking life. Like bubbles in water they rose, discharged their

puff of fragrant air, and disappeared again. Jane Anne, in particular,

was simply radiant all day long, and more than usually clear-headed.

Once or twice she wumbled, but there was big sense in her even then.

It was only the expression that evaded her. Her little brain was a

poor transmitter somehow.

'I feel all endowed to-day,' she informed Rogers, when he

congratulated her later in the day on some cunning act of attention

she bestowed upon him. It was in the courtyard where they all sat

sunning themselves after _dejeuner_, and before the younger children

returned to afternoon school.

'I feel emaciated, you know,' she added, uncertain whether emancipated

was the word she really sought.

'You'll be quite grown-up,' he told her, 'by the time I come back to

little Bourcelles in the autumn.' Little Bourcelles! It sounded, the

caressing way he said it, as if it lay in the palm of his big brown

hand.

'But you'll never come back, because you'll never go,' Monkey chimed

in. 'My hair, remember---'

'_My_ trains won't take you,' said Jimbo gravely.

'Oh, a train may _take_ you,' continued Monkey, 'but you can't leave.

Going away by train isn't leaving.'

'It's only like going to sleep,' explained her brother. You'll come

back every night in a Starlight Express---'

'Because a Starlight Express takes passengers--whether they like it or

not. You take an ordinary train, but a starlight train takes you!'

added Monkey.

Mother heard the words and looked up sharply from her knitting.

Something, it seemed, had caught her attention vividly, though until

now her thoughts had been busy with practical things of quite another

order. She glanced keenly round at the faces, where all sat grouped

upon the stone steps of La Citadelle. Then she smiled curiously, half

to herself. What she said was clearly not what she had first meant to

say.

'Children, you're not sitting on the cold stone, are you?' she

inquired, but a little absent-mindedly.

'We're quite warm; we've got our thick under-neathies on,' was the

reply. They realised that only part of her mind was in the, question,

and that any ordinary answer would satisfy her.

Mother resumed her knitting, apparently satisfied.

But Jinny, meanwhile, had been following her own train of thought,

started by her cousin's description of her as 'grown-up.' The picture

grew big and gracious in her mind.

'I wonder what I shall do when my hair goes up?' she observed,

apparently _a propos de bottes_. It was the day, of course, eagerly,

almost feverishly, looked forward to.

'Hide your head in a bag probably,' laughed her sister. Jinny flushed;

her hair was not abundant. Yet she seemed puzzled rather than

offended.

'Never mind,' Rogers soothed her. 'The day a girl puts up her hair, a

thousand young men are aware of it,--and one among them trembles.' The

idea of romance seemed somehow in the air.

'Oh, Cousinenry!' She was delighted, comforted, impressed; but

perplexity was uppermost. Something in his tone of voice prevented

impudent comment from the others.

'And all the stars grow a little brighter,' he added. 'The entire

universe is glad.'

'I shall be a regular company promoter!' she exclaimed, nearer to wit

than she knew, yet with only the vaguest inkling of what he really

meant.

'And draw up a Memorandum of Agreement with the Milky Way,' he added,

gravely smiling.

He had just been going to say 'with the Pleiades,' when something

checked him. A wave of strange emotion swept him. It rose from the

depths within, then died away as mysteriously as it came. Like

exquisite music heard from very far away, it left its thrill of beauty

and of wonder, then hid behind the breath of wind that brought it.

'The whole world, you see, will know,' he added under his breath to

the delighted child. He looked into her queer, flushed face. The blue

eyes for a moment had, he thought, an amber tinge. It was a mere

effect of light, of course; the sun had passed behind a cloud.

Something that he ought to have known, ought to have remembered,

flashed mockingly before him and was gone. 'One among them trembles,'

he repeated in his mind. He himself was trembling.

'The Morning Spiders,' said some one quietly and softly, 'are standing

at their stable doors, making faces at the hidden sun.'

But he never knew who said it, or if it was not his own voice speaking

below his breath. He glanced at Jimbo. The small grave face wore an

air of man-like preoccupation, as was always the case when he felt a

little out of his depth in general conversation. He assumed it in

self-protection. He never exposed himself by asking questions. The

music of that under-voice ran on:--

'Sweet thoughts, like fine weather,

Bind closely together

God's stars with the heart of a boy.'

But he said it aloud apparently this time, for the others looked up

with surprise. Monkey inquired what in the world he was talking about,

only, not quite knowing himself, he could not answer her. Jimbo then,

silent and preoccupied, found his thoughts still running on marriage.

The talk about his sister's hair going up no doubt had caused it.

He remembered the young schoolmistress who had her meals at the

Pension, and the Armenian student who had fallen in love with, and

eventually married, her. It was the only courtship he had ever

witnessed. Marriage and courtship seemed everywhere this morning.

'I saw it all with Mlle. Perette,' he informed the party. 'It began

already by his pouring out water for her and passing the salt and

things. It _always_ begins like that. He got shawls even when she was

hot.'

He looked so wise and grave that nobody laughed, and his sisters even

seemed impressed rather. Jinny waited anxiously for more. If Mother

did make an odd grimace, it was not noticed, and anyhow was cleverly

converted into the swallowing of a yawn. There was a moment's silence.

Jimbo, proudly conscious that more was expected of him, provided it in

his solemn little voice.

'But it must be horrid,' he announced, 'to be married--always sticked

to the same woman, like that.' No sentence was complete without the

inevitable 'already' or 'like that,' translated from the language he

was more at home in. He thought in French. 'I shall never marry myself

(_me marier_) he decided, seeing his older sister's eyes upon him

wonderingly. Then, uncertain whether he had said an awfully wise or an

awfully foolish thing, he added no more. Anyhow, it was the way a man

should talk--with decision.

'It's bad enough to be a wife,' put in Monkey, 'but it must be worse

still to have one!'

But Jane Anne seemed shocked. A man, Jimbo reflected, can never be

sure how his wisdom may affect the other sex; women are not meant to

know everything. She rose with dignity and went upstairs towards the

door, and Monkey, rippling with laughter, smacked her as she went.

This only shocked her more.

'That was a slight mistake behind,' she said reprovingly, looking

back; 'you should have more reserve, I think,' then firmly shut the

door.

All of which meant--so far as Jane Anne was concerned--that an

important standard of conduct--grown-up, dignified, stately in a

spiritual sense--was being transferred to her present behaviour, but

transferred ineffectively. Elsewhere Jane Anne lived it, _was_ it. She

knew it, but could not get at the part of her that knew it. The

transmitting machinery was imperfect. Connecting links and switches

were somehow missing. Yearning was strong in her, that yearning which

is common to all the world, though so variously translated. Once out

of the others' sight, she made a curious face. She went into her room

between the kitchen and the Den, flung herself on the bed, and burst

into tears. And the fears brought relief. They oiled the machinery

perhaps. At any rate, she soon felt better.

'I felt so enormous and unsettled,' she informed Mother later, when

the redness of her eyes was noticed and she received breathlessly a

great comforting hug. I never get anything right.'

'But you _are_ right, darling,' Mother soothed her, little guessing

that she told the perfect truth. 'You are all right, only you don't

know it. Everybody's wumbled somewhere.' And she advised her--ah,

Mother was profoundly wise instinctively--not to think so much, but

just go ahead as usual and do her work.

For Mother herself felt a little queer that day, as though something

very big and splendid lay hiding just beyond her reach. It surged up,

vanished, then surged up again, and it came closest when she was not

thinking of it. The least effort of the mind to capture it merely

plunged her into an empty gulf where she could not touch bottom. The

glorious thing ran instantly underground. She never ceased to be aware

of it, but any attempt to focus resulted in confusion. Analysis was

beyond her powers, yet the matter was very simple really, for only

when thought is blank, and when the mind has forgotten to think, can

inspiration come through into the heart. The intellect interprets

afterwards, sets in order, regulates, examines the wonder and beauty

the heart distils alchemically out of the eternal stream in which life

everywhere dips its feet. If Reason interferes too soon, or during

transmission, it only muddles and destroys. And Mother, hitherto, had

always been so proud of being practical, prosaic, reasonable. She had

deliberately suppressed the other. She could not change in a single

day just because she had been 'out' and made discoveries last night.

Oh, how simple it all was really, and yet how utterly most folk

convert the wonder of it into wumbling!

Like Jane Anne, her miniature, she felt splendid all day long, but

puzzled too. It was almost like those religious attacks she had

experienced in early youth. She had no definite creed by which she

could explain it. Though nominally Christian, like her husband, she

could not ascribe her joy to a 'Holy Spirit,' or to a 'God' working in

her. But she was reminded of her early 'religious attacks' because she

now experienced that large sensation of glorious peace and certainty

which usually accompanies the phenomenon in the heart called

'conversion.' She saw life whole. She rested upon some unfailing

central Joy. Come what might, she felt secure and 'saved.' Something

everlasting lay within call, an ever-ready help in trouble; and all

day she was vaguely conscious that her life lay hid with--with what?

She never found the word exactly, for 'Joy' was but one aspect of it.

She fell back upon the teachings of the big religions which are the

police regulations of the world. Yet all creeds shared these, and her

feeling was far deeper than mere moral teachings. And then she gave up

thinking about it. Besides, she had much knitting to do.

'It's come to stay anyhow; I feel in sympathy with everybody,' she

said, and so dismissed vain introspection, keeping the simple

happiness and peace. That was her strength, as it was also Jinny's. A

re-formation had begun.

Jimbo, too, felt something in his microcosmic way, only he said little

and asked no single question. It betrayed itself, however, to his

Mother's widened vision. He was all stirred up. He came back again

from school at three o'clock--for it was Thursday and he did not take

the singing lesson from three to four--put down his books with a very

business-like air, forgot to kiss his Mother--and went out.

'Where are you off to, Jimbo?' She scented mischief. He was so

_affaire_.

He turned obediently at once, the face grave and puckered.

'Going over to the carpenter's house, Mummy.'

'What for, dear? Why don't you stay and play here?' She had the

feeling that her husband was absorbed in his work and would not like

to be disturbed.

The boy's reply was evasive too. 'I want to have a long discuss with

Daddy,' he said.

'Can't you have your long discuss with me instead?' she asked.

He shook his head. 'You see,' he answered solemnly, 'it's about

things.'

'But Daddy's working just now; he'll be over to tea at four. Can't it

wait till then?'

She understood too well to inquire what 'things' might be. The boy

wished to speak with one of his own sex--as one man to another man.

'When a man's at work,' she added, 'he doesn't like to be disturbed.'

'All right,' was the reply. 'We can wait a little,' and he settled

down to other things in a corner by himself. His mind, clearly, was

occupied with grave considerations he could not discuss with anybody,

least of all with women and children. But, of course, busy men must

not be interrupted. For a whole hour in his corner he made no sound,

and hardly any movement.

But Daddy did not come at four o'clock. He was evidently deep in work.

And Mother did not send for him. The carpenter's wife, she knew, would

provide a cup of tea.

He came late to supper, too, at the Pension, nodded to Mother with an

expression which plainly said, 'I've finished the story at last';

winked to his cousin, meaning, 'It came out all right, I'm satisfied,'

and took his seat between Jinny and Mlle. Vuillemot, the governess who

had earned her meal by giving a music lesson that afternoon to a

_pensionnaire_. Jinny looked sideways at him in a spirit of

examination, and picked the inevitable crumb deftly from his beard.

'Reminiscences!' she observed slyly. 'You did have some tea, then.'

Her long word was well chosen for once; her mind unusually logical,

too.

But Daddy made no reply; he went on eating whatever was set before him

with an air of complete detachment; he devoured cold ham and salad

automatically; and the children, accustomed to this absorption,

ignored his presence. He was still in the atmosphere of his work,

abstracted, lost to the outer world. They knew they would only, get

wumbled answers to their questions and remarks, and they did not dare

to tease him. From time to time he lifted his eyes--very bright they

were--and glanced round the table, dimly aware that he was in the

midst of a stream of noisy chatter, but unable to enter it

successfully at any point. Mother, watching him, thought, 'He's

sitting on air, he's wrapped in light, he's very happy'; and ate an

enormous supper, as though an insatiable hunger was in her.

The governess, Mlle. Vuillemot, who stood in awe of the 'author' in

him, seized her opportunity. She loved to exchange a _mot_ with a real

writer, reading all kinds of unintended subtlety into his brief

replies in dreadful French. To-night she asked him the meaning of a

word, title of a Tauchnitz novel she had been reading--Juggernaut;

but, being on his deaf side, he caught 'Huguenot' instead, and gave

her a laboured explanation, strangled by appalling grammar.

The historical allusions dazed her; the explanation ended on a date.

She was sorry she had ventured, for it made her feel so ignorant.

'Shuggairnort,' she repeated bravely. She had a vague idea he had not

properly heard before.

But this time he caught 'Argonaut,' and swamped her then with

classical exposition, during which she never took her eyes off him,

and decided that he was far more wonderful than she had ever dreamed.

He was; but not for the reasons she supposed.

'Thank you,' she said with meek gratitude at the end, 'I thank you.'

'Il n'y a pas de quar,' replied Daddy, bowing; and the adventure came

to an end. The others luckily had not heard it in full swing; they

only caught the final phrase with which he said adieu. But it served

its unwitting purpose admirably. It brought him back to the world

about him. The spell was broken. All turned upon him instantly.

'Snay pas un morsow de bong.' Monkey copied his accent, using a

sentence from a schoolboy's letter in _Punch_. 'It's not a bit of

good.' Mother squelched her with a look, but Daddy, even if he noticed

it, was not offended. Nothing could offend him to-night. Impertinence

turned silvery owing to the way he took it. There was a marvellous

light and sweetness about him. 'He _is_ on air,' decided Mother

finally. 'He's written his great Story--our story. It's finished!'

'I don't know,' he said casually to the others, as they stood talking

a few minutes in the salon before going over to the Den, 'if you'd

like to hear it; but I've got a new creature for the Wumble Book. It

came to me while I was thinking of something else---'

'Thinking of one thing while you were thinking of another!' cried

Monkey. It described exaccurately his state of mind sometimes.

'---and I jotted down the lines on my cuff. So it's not very perfect

yet.'

Mother had him by the arm quickly. Mlle. Vuillemot was hovering in his

neighbourhood, for one thing. It seemed to her they floated over,

almost flew.

'It's a Haystack Woman,' he explained, once they were safely in the

Den grouped about him. 'A Woman of the Haystack who is loved by the

Wind. That is to say, the big Wind loves her, but she prefers the

younger, handsomer little Winds, and---'

He was not allowed to finish. The children laid his cuff back in a

twinkling, drawing up the coat sleeve.

'But surely I know that,' Mother was saying. 'I've heard of her before

somewhere. I wonder where?' Others were saying the same thing. 'It's

not new.'

'Impossible,' said Daddy, 'for the idea only came to me this morning

while I was---'

'Thinking of something else,' Monkey again finished the sentence for

him.

Mother felt that things were rushing about her from another world. She

was vaguely conscious--deliciously, bewilderingly--of having heard

this all before. Imaginative folk have built the certainty of a

previous existence upon evidence as slight; for actual scenery came

with it, and she saw dim forest trees, and figures hovering in the

background, and bright atmosphere, and fields of brilliant stars. She

felt happy and shining, light as a feather, too. It all was just

beyond her reach, though; she could not recover it properly. 'It must

have been a dream _she_ told me,' was her conclusion, referring to

Mlle. Lemaire. Her old friend was in it somewhere or other. She felt

sure of that.

She hardly heard, indeed, the silly lines her husband read aloud to

the children. She liked the sound of his voice, though; it suggested

music she had known far away--in her childhood.

'It's high spirits really,' whispered Rogers, sitting beside her in

the window. 'It's a sort of overflow from his story. He can't do that

kind of rhyme a bit, but it's an indication---'

'You think he's got a fine big story this time?' she asked under her

breath; and Cousin Henry's eyes twinkled keenly as he gave a

significant nod and answered: 'Rather! Can't you feel the splendour

all about him, the strength, the harmony!'

She leaped at the word. Harmony exactly described this huge new thing

that had come into the family, into the village, into the world. The

feeling that they all were separate items, struggling for existence

one against the other, had gone for ever. Life seemed now a single

whole, an enormous pattern. Every one fitted in. There was effort--

wholesome jolly effort, but no longer the struggle or fighting that

were ugly. To 'live carelessly' was possible and right because the

pattern was seen entire. It was to live in the whole.

'Harmony,' she repeated to herself, with a great swelling happiness in

her heart, 'that's the nunculus of the matter.'

'The what?' he asked, overhearing her.

'The nunculus,' she repeated bravely, seeing the word in her mind, yet

unable to get it quite. Rogers did not correct her.

'Rather,' was all he said. 'Of course it is.' What did the

pronunciation of a word matter at such a time? Her version even

sounded better than the original. Mother saw things bigger! Already

she was becoming creative!

'And you're the one who brought it,' she continued, but this time so

low that he did not catch the words. 'It's you, your personality, your

thinking, your atmosphere somehow that have brought this gigantic

sense of peace and calm security which are _au fond_ nothing but the

consciousness of harmony and the power of seeing ugly details in their

proper place--in a single _coup d'oeil_--and understanding them as

parts of a perfect whole.'

It was her thought really running on; she never could have found the

words like that. She thought in French, too, for one thing. And, in

any case, Rogers could not have heard her, for he was listening now to

the uproar of the children as they criticised Daddy's ridiculous

effusion. A haystack, courted in vain by zephyrs, but finally taken

captive by an equinoctial gale, strained nonsense too finely for their

sense of what was right and funny. It was the pictures he now drew in

the book that woke their laughter. He gave the stack a physiognomy

that they recognised.

'But, Mother, he's making it look like you!' cried Monkey--only Mother

was too far away in her magnificent reverie to reply intelligently.

I know her; she's my friend,' she answered vaguely. 'So it's all

right.'

'Majestic Haystack'--it was the voice of the wind addressing her:--

'Majestic Haystack, Empress of my life,

Your ample waist

Just fits the gown I fancy for my wife,

And suits my taste;

Yet there you stand, flat-footed, square and deep,

An unresponsive, elephantine heap,

Coquetting with the stars while I'm asleep,

O cruel Stack!

Coy, silent Monster, Matron of the fields,

I sing to you;

And all the fondest love that summer yields

I bring to you;

Yet there you squat, immense in your disdain,

Heedless of all the tears of streaming rain

My eyes drip over you--your breathless swain;

O stony Stack!

Stupendous Maiden, sweetest when oblong,

Does inner flame

Now smoulder in thy soul to hear my song

Repeat thy name?

Or does thy huge and ponderous heart object

The advances of my passion, and reject

My love because it's airy and elect?

O wily Stack!

O crested goddess, thatched and top-knotted,

O reckless Stack!

Of wives that to the Wind have been allotted

There is no lack;

You've spurned my love as though I were a worm;

But next September when I see thy form,

I'll woo thee with an equinoctial storm!

I have that knack!'

'Far less wumbled than usual,' thought Rogers, as the children danced

about the room, making up new ridiculous rhymes, of which 'I'll give

you a whack' seemed the most popular. Only Jane Anne was quiet. A

courtship even so remote and improbable as between the Wind and a

Haystack sent her thoughts inevitably in the dominant direction.

'It must be nice when one is two,' she whispered ambiguously to Mother

with a very anxious face, 'but I'm sure that if a woman can't cook,

love flies out of the window. It's a positive calamity, you know.'

But it was Cousin Henry's last night in Bourcelles, and the spirit of

pandemonium was abroad. Neither parent could say no to anything, and

mere conversation in corners was out of the question. The door was

opened into the corridor, and while Mother played her only waltz,

Jimbo and Monkey danced on the splintery boards as though it were a

parquet floor, and Rogers pirouetted somewhat solemnly with Jane Anne.

She enjoyed it immensely, yet rested her hand very gingerly upon his

shoulder. 'Please don't hold me _quite_ so tight,' she ventured. 'I've

never danced with a strange man before, you see'; and he no more

laughed at her than he had laughed at Mother's 'nunculus.' Even Jane

Anne, he knew, would settle down comfortably before long into the

great big pattern where a particular nook awaited--aye, needed--her

bizarre, odd brilliance. The most angular fragments would nest softly,

neatly in. A little filing, a little polishing, and all would fit

together. To force would only be to break. Hurry was of the devil. And

later, while Daddy played an ancient tune that was written originally

as a mazurka yet did duty now for a two-step, he danced with Mother

too, and the children paused to watch out of sheer admiration.

'Fancy, Mother dancing!' they exclaimed with glee--except Jinny, who

was just a little offended and went to stand by the piano till it was

over. For Mother danced as lightly as a child for all her pride of

measurement, and no frigate ever skimmed the waves more gracefully

than Mother glided over those uneven boards.

'The Wind and the Haystack' of course, was Monkey's description.

'You'll wind and haystack to bed now,' was the reply, as Mother sat

and fanned herself in the corner. The 'bed-sentence' as the children

called it, was always formed in this way. Whatever the child was

saying when the moment came, Mother adopted as her verb. 'Shall I put

some peat on, Mother?' became 'Peat yourself off to bed-it's nine

o'clock'--and the child was sorry it had spoken.

Good-byes had really been said at intervals all day long, and so to-

night were slight enough; the children, besides, were so 'excitey-

tired,' as Monkey put it, that they possessed no more emotion of any

kind. There were various disagreeable things in the immediate future

of To-morrow--getting up early, school, and so forth; and Cousin

Henry's departure they lumped in generally with the mass, accepted but

unrealised. Jimbo could hardly keep his eyes alight, and Monkey's hair

was like a baby haystack the wind had treated to an equinoctial storm.

Jinny, stiff, perplexed, and solemn with exhaustion, yet dared not

betray it because she was older, in measurable distance of her hair

going up.

'Why don't you play with the others, child?' asked Mother, finding her

upright on a sofa while the romp went on.

'Oh, to-night,' Jinny explained, 'I sit indifferent and look on. I

don't always feel like skedivvying about!'

To skedivvy was to chivvy and skedaddle--its authority not difficult

to guess.

'Good-bye, Cousinenry,' each gasped, as his big arms went round them

and squeezed out the exclamation. 'Oh, thank you most awfully,' came

next, with another kiss, produced by his pressing something hard and

round and yellow into each dirty little hand. 'It's only a bit of

crystallised starlight,' he explained, 'that escaped long ago from the

Cave. And starlight, remember, shines for everybody as well as for

yourselves. You can buy a stamp with it occasionally, too,' he added,

'and write to me.'

'We will. Of course!'

Jimbo straightened up a moment before the final collapse of sleep.

'Your train leaves at 6.23,' he said, with the authority of exclusive

information. 'You must be at the station at six to get the _bagages

enregistrees_. It's a slow train to Pontarlier, but you'll find a

_wagon direct_ for Paris in front, next to the engine. I shall be

at the station to see you off.'

'_I_ shan't,' said Monkey.

Rogers realised with delight the true meaning of these brief and

unemotional good-byes. 'They know I'm coming back; they feel that the

important part of me is not going away at all. My thinking stays here

with them.'

Jinny lingered another ten minutes for appearance's sake. It was long

past her bed-time, too, but dignity forbade her retiring with the

others. Standing by the window she made conversation a moment, feeling

it was the proper, grown-up thing to do. It was even expected of her.

'Look! It's full moon,' she observed gravely, as though suggesting

that she could, if she liked, go out and enjoy the air. 'Isn't it

lovely?'

'No, yesterday was full moon,' Rogers corrected her, joining her and

looking out. 'Two nights ago, to be exact, I think.'

'Oh,' she replied, as solemnly as though politics or finance were

under discussion, 'then it's bigger than full moon now. It goes on,

does it, getting fuller and fuller, till--'

'Now, Jinny dear, it's very late, and you'd better full-moon off to

bed,' Mother interrupted gently.

'Yes, Mother; I'm just saying good-night.' She held her hand out, as

though she was afraid he might kiss her, yet feared he would not.

'Good-bye, Mr. Cousin Henry, and I hope you'll have an exceedingly

happy time in the train and soon come back and visit us again.'

'Thank you,' he said, 'I'm sure I shall.' He gave her a bit of solid

starlight as he said it, then suddenly leaned forward and kissed her

on the cheek. Making a violent movement like an experienced boxer who

dodges an upper cut, Jinny turned and fled precipitately from the

room, forgetting her parents altogether. That kiss, she felt, consumed

her childhood in a flash of fiery flame. In bed she decided that she

must lengthen her skirts the very next day, and put her hair up too.

She must do something that should give her protection and yet freedom.

For a long time she did not sleep. She lay thinking it over. She felt

supremely happy--wild, excited, naughty. 'A man has kissed me; it was

a man; it was Mr. Rogers, Daddy's cousin.... He's not _my_ cousin

exactly, but just "a man."' And she fell asleep, wondering how she

ought to begin her letter to him when she wrote, but, more perplexing

still, how she ought to--end it! That little backward brain sought the

solution of the problem all night long in dreams. She felt a criminal,

a dare-devil caught in the act, awaiting execution. Light had been

flashed cruelly upon her dark, careful secret--the greatest and finest

secret in the world. The child lay under sentence indeed, only it was

a sentence of life, and not of death.

CHAPTER XXVII

_Asia_. ... I feel, I see

Those eyes which burn through smiles that fade in tears,

Like stars half quenched in mists of silver dew.

Prometheus Unbound, SHELLEY.

It was only ten o'clock, really, and the curfew was ringing from every

village on the mountain-side. The sound of the bells, half musical,

half ominous, was borne by the bise across the vineyards, for the

easterly wind that brings fine weather was blowing over lake and

forest, and seemed to drive before it thin sheets of moonlight that

turned the whole world soft. The village lay cosily dreaming beneath

the sky. Once the curfew died away there was only the rustling of the

plane trees in the old courtyard. The great Citadelle loomed above the

smaller houses, half in shadow half in silver, nodding heavily to the

spire of the Church, and well within sight of the sentinelle poplar

that guarded the village from the forest and the mountains. Far away,

these mountains now lowered their enormous shoulders to let night flow

down upon the sleeping world. The Scaffolding that brought it had long

since sailed over France towards the sea....

Mother, still panting from the ritual of fastening the younger

children into bed, had gone a moment down the passage to say good-

night to Mlle. Lemaire, and when she returned, the three of them--

herself, her husband, and Cousin Henry--dropped into chairs beside the

window and watched the silvery world in silence for a time. None felt

inclined to speak. There was drama somehow in that interval of

silence--that drama which lurks everywhere and always behind life's

commonest, most ordinary moments. Actions reveal it--sometimes--but it

mostly lies concealed, and especially in deep silences like this, when

the ticking of a cuckoo clock upon the wall may be the sole hint of

its presence.

It was not the good-byes that made all three realise it so near,

though good-byes are always solemn and momentous things; it was

something that stirred and rose upon them from a far deeper strata of

emotion than that caused by apparent separation. For no pain lay in

it, but a power much more difficult to express in the sounds and

syllables of speech--Joy. A great joy, creative and of big

significance, had known accomplishment. Each felt it, knew it,

realised it. The moonlit night was aware of it. The entire universe

knew it, too. The drama lay in that. There had been creation--of more

light.... The world was richer than it had been. Some one had caught

Beauty in a net, and to catch Beauty is to transform and recreate all

common things. It is revelation.

Through the mind of each of these three flowed the stream of casual

thinking--images, reflections, and the shadowy scaffoldings of many

new emotions--sweeping along between the banks of speech and silence.

And this stream, though in flood, did not overflow into words for a

long time. With eyes turned inwards, each watched the current pass.

Clear and deep, it quietly reflected--stars. Each watched the same

stream, the same calm depths, the same delicate reflections. They were

in harmony with themselves, and therefore with the universe....

Then, suddenly, one of the reflections--it was the Pleiades--rose to

the surface to clasp its lovely original. It was the woman who netted

the golden thought and drew it forth for all to see.

'Couldn't you read it to us, Daddy?' she whispered softly across the

silence.

'If it's not too long for you.' He was so eager, so willing to comply.

'We will listen till the Morning Spiders take us home,' his cousin

said.

'It's only the shorter version,' Daddy agreed shiningly, 'a sketch for

the book which, of course, will take a year to write. I might read

_that_, perhaps.'

'Do,' urged Mother. 'We are all in it, aren't we? It's our story as

well as yours.'

He rose to get the portfolio from the shelf where he had laid it, and

while Rogers lit the lamp, Riquette stole in at the window, picking

her way daintily across the wet tiles. She stood a moment, silhouetted

against the sky; then shaking her feet rapidly each in turn like bits

of quivering wire, she stepped precisely into the room. 'I am in it

too,' she plainly said, curling herself up on the chair Daddy had just

vacated, but resigning herself placidly enough to his scanty lap when

he came back again and began to read. Her deep purring, while he

stroked her absent-mindedly, became an undercurrent in the sound of

his voice, then presently ceased altogether....

On and on he read, while the moon sailed over La Citadelle, bidding

the stars hush to listen too. She put her silvery soft hands across

their eyes that they might hear the better. The blue wind of night

gathered up the meaning and spread it everywhere. The forest caught

the tale from the low laughter in the crest of the poplar, and passed

it on to the leagues of forest that bore it in turn across the

frontiers into France. Thence snowy Altels and the giant Blumlisalp

flashed it south along the crowding peaks and down among the Italian

chestnut woods, who next sent it coursing over the rustling waves of

the Adriatic and mixed it everywhere with the Mediterranean foam. In

the morning the shadows upon bare Grecian hills would whisper it among

the ancient islands, and the East catch echoes of it in the winds of

dawn. The forests of the North would open their great gloomy eyes with

wonder, as though strange new wild-flowers had come among them in the

night. All across the world, indeed, wherever there were gardened

minds tender enough to grow fairy seed, these flakes of thought would

settle down in sleep, and blossom in due season into a crop of magic

beauty.

He read on and on.... The village listened too, the little shadowy

street, the familiar pine woods, the troubled Pension, each, as its

image was evoked in the story, knew its soul discovered, and stirred

in its sleep towards the little room to hear. And the desolate ridges

of La Tourne and Boudry, the clefts where the wild lily of the valley

grew unknown, high nooks and corners where the buzzards nested, these

also knew and answered to the trumpet summons of the Thought that made

them live. A fire of creation ran pulsing from this centre. All were

in the Pattern of the Story.

To the two human listeners it seemed as familiar as a tale read, in

childhood long ago, and only half forgotten. They always knew a little

of what was coming next. Yet it spread so much further than mere

childhood memories, for its golden atmosphere included all countries

and all times. It rose and sang and sparkled, lighting up strange deep

recesses of their unconscious and half-realised life, and almost

revealing the tiny silver links that joined them on to the universe at

large. The golden ladders from the Milky Way were all let down. They

climbed up silvery ropes into the Moon....

'It's not my own idea,' he said; 'I'm convinced of that. It's all

flocked into me from some other mind that thought it long ago, but

could not write it, perhaps. No thought is lost, you see--never can be

lost. Like this, somehow, I feel it:--

Now sinks to sleep the clamour of the day,

And, million-footed, from the Milky Way,

Falls shyly on my heart the world's lost Thought--

Shower of primrose dust the stars have taught

To haunt each sleeping mind,

Till it may find

A garden in some eager, passionate brain

That, rich in loving-kindness as in pain,

Shall harvest it, then scatter forth again

It's garnered loveliness from heaven caught.

Oh, every yearning thought that holds a tear,

Yet finds no mission,

And lies untold,

Waits, guarded in that labyrinth of gold,--

To reappear

Upon some perfect night,

Deathless--not old--

But sweet with time and distance,

And clothed as in a vision

Of starry brilliance

For the world's delight.'

In the pauses, from time to time, they heard the distant thunder of

the Areuse as it churned and tumbled over the Val de Travers boulders.

The Colombier bells, as the hours passed, strung the sentences

together; moonlight wove in and out of every adventure as they

listened; stars threaded little chapters each to each with their

eternal golden fastenings. The words seemed written down in dew, but

the dew crystallised into fairy patterns that instantly flew about the

world upon their mission of deliverance. In this ancient Network of

the Stars the universe lay fluttering; and they lay with it, all

prisoners in Fairyland.

For the key of it all was sympathy, and the' delicate soul of it was

tender human love. Bourcelles, in this magic tale, was the starting-

point whence the Starlight Expresses flashed into all the world, even

unto unvisited, forgotten corners that had known no service hitherto.

It was so adaptable and searching, and knew such tiny, secret ways of

entrance. The thought was so penetrating, true, and simple. Even old

Mother Plume would wake to the recovery of some hitherto forgotten

fragrance in her daily life... just as those Northern forests would

wake to find new wild-flowers. For all fairytales issue first from the

primeval forest, thence undergoing their protean transformation; and

in similar fashion this story, so slight but so tremendous, issued

from the forest of one man's underthinking--one deep, pure mind,

wumbled badly as far as external things were concerned, yet realising

that Bourcelles contained the Universe, and that he, in turn contained

Bourcelles. Another, it is true, had shown it to him, though all

unwittingly, and had cleaned in his atmosphere the channels for the

entrance of the glorious pattern. But the result was the same. In his

brain--perhaps by Chance, perhaps by God--lay the machinery which

enabled him to give it out to others--the power and ability to

transmit. It was a fairy-tale of the world, only the world had

forgotten it. He brought back its fairyland again.

And this fairyland, what and where was it? And how could this tale of

its recovery bring into his listeners' hearts such a sense of peace

and joy that they felt suddenly secure in the world and safe mid all

the confusion of their muddled lives? That there were tears in

Mother's eyes seems beyond question, because the moonlight, reflected

faintly from a wet cobble in the yard below, glistened like a tiny

silver lantern there. They betrayed the fact that something in her had

melted and flowed free. Yet there was no sadness in the fairy-tale to

cause it; they were tears of joy.

Surely it was that this tale of Starlight, Starlight Expresses and

Star Caves, told as simply as running water, revealed the entire

Universe--as One, and that in this mighty, splendid thing each of them

nested safe and comfortable. The world was really _thinking_, and all

lay fluttering in the grand, magnificent old Net of Stars. What people

think, they are. All can think Beauty. And sympathy--to feel with

everything--was the clue; for sympathy is love, and to love a star was

to love a neighbour. To be without sympathy was to feel apart, and to

think apart was to cut oneself off from life, from the Whole, from God

and joy--it was Death. To work at commonplace duties because they were

duties to the Universe at large, this was the way to find courage,

peace, and happiness, because this was genuine and successful work, no

effort lost, and the most distant star aware of it. Thinking was

living, whether material results were visible or not; yearning was

action, even though no accomplishment was apparent; thought and

sympathy, though felt but for a passing moment, sweetened the Pleiades

and flashed along the Milky Way, and so-called tangible results that

could prove it to the senses provided no adequate test of

accomplishment or success. In the knowledge of belonging to this vast

underlying unity was the liberation that brings courage, carelessness,

and joy, and to admit failure in anything, by thinking it, was to

weaken the entire structure which binds together the planets and the

heart of a boy. Thoughts were the fairies that the world believed in

when it was younger, simpler, less involved in separation; and the

golden Fairyland recovered in this story was the Fairyland of lovely

thinking....

In this little lamp-lit room of the Citadelle, the two listeners were

conscious of this giant, delicate network that captured every flying

thought and carried it streaming through the world. God became a

simple thing: He fashioned Rogers's Scheme, even though it never

materialised in bricks and mortar. God was behind Mother, even when

she knitted or lit the fire in the Den. All were prisoners in His

eternal Fairyland....

And the symbolism of the story, the so-called fantasy, they also

easily understood, because they felt it true. To be 'out' of the body

was merely to think and feel away from self. As they listened they

realised themselves in touch with every nation and with every time,

with all possible beliefs and disbeliefs, with every conceivable kind

of thinking, that is, which ever has existed or ever shall exist....

The heat and radiance given out by the clear delivery of this

'inspirational' fairy-tale must have been very strong; far-reaching it

certainly was....

'Ah!' sighed Rogers to himself, 'if only I could be like that!' not

realising that he was so.

'Oh dear!' felt the Woman, 'that's what I've felt sometimes. I only

wish it were true of me!' unaware that it could be, and even by the

fact of her yearning, _was_ so.

'If only I could get up and help the world!' passed like a flame

across the heart of the sufferer who lay on her sleepless bed next

door, listening to the sound of the droning voice that reached her

through the wall, yet curiously ignorant that this very longing was

already majestically effective in the world of definite action.

And even Mother Plume, pacing her airless room at the further end of

the village and tapping her ebony stick upon the floor, turned

suspiciously, as at a passing flash of light that warmed her for a

sudden instant as it went.

'Perhaps, after all, they don't mean all these unkind things they do

to me!' she thought; 'I live so much alone. Possibly I see things less

clearly than I used to do!'

The spell was certainly very potent, though Daddy himself, reading out

the little shining chapters, guessed as little as the rest of them how

strong. So small a part of what he meant to say, it seemed, had been

transferred to the paper. More than he realised, far, far more, lay

between the lines, of course. There was conviction in it, because

there was vision and belief. Not much was said when he put his roll

of paper down and leaned back in his chair. Riquette opened her eyes

and blinked narrowly, then closed them again and began to purr. The

ticking of the cuckoo clock seemed suddenly very loud and noticeable.

'Thank you,' said Mother quietly in an uncertain kind of voice. 'The

world seems very wonderful now--quite different.'

She moved in her chair--the first movement she had made for over two

hours. Daddy rubbed his eyes, stroked his beard, and lit a cigarette;

it went out almost immediately, but he puffed on at it just the same,

till his cousin struck a match and stood over him to see it properly

alight.

'You have caught Beauty naked in your net of stars,' he murmured; 'but

you have left her as you found her--shining, silvery, unclothed.

Others will see her, too. You have taken us all back into Fairyland,

and I, for one, shall never get out again.'

'Nor I,' breathed some one in the shadows by the window....

The clock struck two. 'Odd,' said Mother, softly, 'but I never heard

it strike once while you were reading!'

'We've all been out,' Rogers laughed significantly, 'just as you make

them get out in the story'; and then, while Riquette yawned and turned

a moment from the window-sill to say thank you for her long, warm

sleep, Mother lit the spirit-lamp and brewed the cups of chocolate.

She tiptoed in next door, and as she entered the sick-room she saw

through the steam rising from the cup she carried a curious thing--an

impression of brilliance about the bed, as though shafts of light

issued from it. Rays pulsed and trembled in the air. There was a

perfume of flowers. It seemed she stepped back into the atmosphere of

the story for an instant.

'Ah, you're not asleep,' she whispered. 'We've brewed some chocolate,

and I thought you might like a cup.'

'No, I'm not asleep,' answered the other woman from the bed she never

would leave until she was carried from it, 'but I have been dreaming.

It seemed the stars came down into my room and sang to me; this bed

became a throne; and some power was in me by which I could send my

thoughts out to help the world. I sent them out as a king sends

messengers--to people everywhere--even to people I've never heard of.

Isn't it wonderful?'

'You've had no pain?' For Mother knew that these sleepless hours at

night brought usually intense suffering. She stared at her, noting how

the eyes shone and glistened with unshed moisture.

'None,' was the answer, 'but only the greatest joy and peace I've ever

known.' The little glass of _calmant_ was untouched; it was not a drug

that had soothed the exhausted nerves. In this room at any rate the

spell was working still. 'I was carried through the air by stars, as

though my ceaseless yearning to get up and work in the world for once

was realised.'

'You can do everything from your bed,' her friend murmured, sitting

down beside her. 'You do. Your thoughts go out so strongly. I've often

felt them myself. Perhaps that's why God put you here in bed like

this,' she added, surprised at the power in herself that made her say

such things--'just to think and pray for the world.'

'I do pray sometimes for others,' the tortured woman answered

modestly, 'but this time I was not conscious of praying at all. It all

swept out of me of its own accord. The force in me seemed so free and

inexhaustible that it overflowed. It was irresistible. I felt able to

save the world.'

'You were out,' said Mother softly, 'out of yourself, I mean,' she

corrected it. 'And your lovely thoughts go everywhere. You do save the

world.'

There fell a long silence then between them.

'You've been reading aloud,' Mlle. Lemaire said presently. 'I heard

the drone of the voice through the wall---'

'Daddy was reading his new story to us,' the other said. 'It didn't

disturb you?'

'On the contrary. I think it was the voice somehow that brought the

vision. I listened vaguely at first, trying to sleep; then, opening my

eyes suddenly, the room, as I told you, was full of stars. Their rays

caught hold of me and drew these forces out of my very heart. I

yielded, giving and giving and giving ... such life flowed from me,

and they carried it away in streams.... Oh, it was really like a

divine sensation.' 'It was divine,' said Mother, but whether she meant

the story or her friend's experience, she hardly knew herself.

'And the story--was it not about our little Bourcelles?' asked the

other.

Mother held her hands up as though words failed her. She opened her

arms wide. She was not quite sure of her voice.

'It was,' she said at length, 'but Bourcelles had grown into the

universe. It's a fairy-tale, but it's like a great golden fire. It

warmed my heart till my whole body seemed all heart, and I didn't know

whether to laugh or cry. It makes you see that the whole world is

_one_, and that the sun and moon and stars lie in so small and

unimportant a thing as, say, Jimbo's mischief, or Monkey's impudence,

or Jinny's backwardness and absurdity. All are in sympathy together,

as in a network, and to feel sympathy with anything, even the most

insignificant, connects you instantly with the Whole. Thought and

sympathy _are_ the Universe--they are life.'

While Mother paused for breath, her old friend smiled a curious,

meaning smile, as though she heard a thing that she had always known.

'And all of us are in the story, and all the things we _think_ are

alive and active too, because we have created them. Our thoughts

populate the world, flying everywhere to help or hinder others, you

see.'

The sound of a door opening was heard. Mother got up to go. Shafts of

light again seemed to follow her from the figure in the bed.

'Good-night,' she whispered with a full heart, while her thought ran

suddenly--'You possess the secret of life and of creation, for

suffering has taught it to you, and you have really known it always.

But Daddy has put it into words for everybody.' She felt proud as a

queen.

There were whispered good-nights then in the corridor, for Rogers and

her husband were on their way home to bed.

'Your chocolate is getting cold,' said Daddy kindly.

'We thought you would probably stay in there. We're going over now.

It's very late,' Rogers added. They said good-night again.

She closed and locked the great door of the Citadelle behind them,

hearing their steps upon the cobbles in the yard, and for some time

afterwards upon the road. But their going away seemed the same as

coming nearer. She felt so close to everything that lived. Everything

did live. Her heart included all that existed, that ever had existed,

that ever could exist. Mother was alive all over. 'I have just been

created,' she laughed, and went back into the Den to drink her cup of

tepid chocolate.

CHAPTER XXVIII

See, the busy Pleiades,

Sisters to the Hyades,

Seven by seven

Across the heaven,

Light desire

With their fire,

Working cunningly together in a soft and tireless band,

Sweetly linking

All our thinking

In the Net of Sympathy that brings back Fairyland.

_A Voice_.

The prophecy of the children that Bourcelles was a difficult place to

get away from found its justification next morning, for Rogers slept

so heavily that he nearly missed his train. It was six o'clock when he

tumbled downstairs, too late for a real breakfast, and only just in

time to get his luggage upon the little char that did duty for all

transport in this unsophisticated village. The carpenter pulled it for

him to the station.

'If I've forgotten anything, my cousin will send it after me,' he told

Mme. Michaud, as he gulped down hot coffee on the steps.

'Or we can keep it for you,' was the answer. 'You'll be coming back

soon.' She knew, like the others, that one always came back to

Bourcelles. She shook hands with him as if he were going away for a

night or two. 'Your room will always be ready,' she added. 'Ayez la

bonte seulement de m'envoyer une petite ligne d'avance.'

'There's only fifteen minutes,' interrupted her husband, 'and it's

uphill all the way.'

They trundled off along the dusty road, already hot in the early July

sun. There was no breath of wind; swallows darted in the blue air; the

perfume of the forests was everywhere; the mountains rose soft and

clear into the cloudless sky. They passed the Citadelle, where the

awning was already being lowered over the balcony for Mlle. Lemaire's

bed to be wheeled out a little later. Rogers waved his handkerchief,

and saw the answering flutter inside the window. Riquette, on her way

in, watched him from the tiles. The orchards then hid the lower

floors; he passed the tinkling fountain; to the left he saw the church

and the old Pension, the wistaria blossoms falling down its walls in a

cascade of beauty.

The Postmaster put his head out and waved his Trilby hat with a solemn

smile. 'Le barometre est tres haut...' floated down the village

street, instead of the sentence of good-bye. Even the Postmaster took

it for granted that he was not leaving. Gygi, standing in the door of

his barn, raised his peaked hat and smiled. 'Fait beau, ce matin,' he

said, 'plus tard il fera rudement chaud.' He spoke as if Rogers were

off for a walk or climb. It was the same everywhere. The entire

village saw him go, yet behaved as if he was not really leaving. How

fresh and sweet the morning air was, keen mountain fragrance in it,

and all the delicious, delicate sharpness of wet moss and dewy fields.

As he passed the courtyard near the Guillaume Tell, and glanced up at

the closed windows of Mother Plume's apartment, a pattering step

startled him behind, and Jimbo came scurrying up. Rogers kissed him

and lifted him bodily upon the top of his portmanteau, then helped the

carpenter to drag it up the hill. 'The barriers at the level crossing

are down, the warning gongs are ringing. It's signalled from

Auvernier.' They were only just in time. The luggage was registered

and the train panting up the steep incline, when Monkey, sleep still

thick in her eyes, appeared rolling along the white road. She was too

breathless to speak; she stood and stared like a stuffed creature in a

Museum. Jimbo was beside the engine, having a word with the

_mecanicien_.

'Send a telegram, you know--like that,' he shouted, as the carriage

slid past him, 'and we'll bring the _char_.' He knew his leader would

come back. He took his cap off politely, as a man does to a lady--the

Bourcelles custom. He did not wave his handkerchief or make

undignified signs. He stood there, watching his cousin to the last,

and trying to see the working of the engine at the same time. He had

already told him the times and stopping places, and where he had to

change; there was nothing more for a man to say.

Monkey, her breath recovered now, shouted something impudent from the

road. 'The train will break down with you in it before it gets to

Pontarlier, and you'll be back for tea--worse luck!' He heard it

faintly, above the grinding of the wheels. She blew him a kiss; her

hair flew out in a cloud of brown the sunshine turned half golden. He

almost saw the shining of her eyes. And then the belt of the forest

hid her from view, hid Jimbo and the village too. The last thing he

saw of Bourcelles was the top of the church spire and the red roof of

the towering Citadelle. The crest of the sentinel poplar topped them

both for a minute longer, waved a slight and stately farewell, then

lowered itself into the forest and vanished in its turn.

And Rogers came back with a start and a bump to what is called real

life.

He closed his eyes and leaned back in his corner, feeling he had

suddenly left his childhood behind him for the second time, not

gradually as it ought to happen, but all in one dreadful moment. A

great ache lay in his heart. The perfect book of fairy-tales he had

been reading was closed and finished. Weeks had passed in the

delicious reading, but now the last page was turned; he came back to

duty--duty in London--great, noisy, overwhelming London, with its

disturbing bustle, its feverish activities, its complex, artificial,

unsatisfying amusements, and its hosts of frantic people. He grew

older in a moment; he was forty again now; an instant ago, just on the

further side of those blue woods, he had been fifteen. Life shrank and

dwindled in him to a little, ugly, unattractive thing. He was

returning to a flat in the dolorous edifice of civilisation. A great

practical Scheme, rising in sombre bricks and mortar through a

disfiguring fog, blocked all the avenues of the future.

The picture seemed sordid somewhere, the contrast was so striking. In

a great city was no softness; hard, sharp angles everywhere, or at

best an artificial smoothness that veiled ugliness and squalor very

thinly. Human relationship worked like parts of a machine, cramped

into definite orbits, each wheel, each pulley, the smallest deviation

deemed erratic. In Bourcelles, the mountain village, there was more

latitude, room for expansion, space. The heart leaped up spontaneously

like a spring released. In the city this spring was held down rigidly

in place, pressed under as by a weight; and the weight, surely, was

that one for ever felt compelled to think of self--self in a rather

petty, shameful way--personal safety. In the streets, in the houses,

in public buildings, shops, and railway stations, even where people

met to eat and drink in order to keep alive, were Notice Boards of

caution and warning against their fellow kind. Instead of the kindly

and unnecessary, even ridiculous little Gygi, there were big, grave

policemen by the score, a whole army of them; and everywhere grinned

the Notice Boards, like automatic, dummy policemen, mocking joy with

their insulting warnings. The heart was oppressed with this constant

reminder that safety could only be secured by great care and trouble--

safety for the little personal self; protection from all kinds of

robbery, depredation, and attack; beware of pickpockets, the

proprietor is not responsible for overcoats and umbrellas even! And

burglar alarms and doors of steel and iron everywhere--an organised

defence from morning till night--against one's own kind.

He had lived among these terrible conditions all his life, proud of

the personal security that civilisation provided, but he had never

before viewed it from outside, as now he suddenly did. A spiritual

being, a man, lives in a city as in a state of siege among his own

kind. It was deplorable, it was incredible. In little Bourcelles, a

mountain village most would describe pityingly as half civilised and

out of the world, there was safety and joy and freedom as of the

universe.... His heart contracted as he thus abruptly realised the

distressing contrast. Although a city is a unit, all classes neatly

linked together by laws and by-laws, by County Councils, Parliaments,

and the like, the spirit of brotherhood was a mockery and a sham.

There is organised charity, but there is not--Charity. In a London

Square he could not ring the bell and ask for a glass of milk.... In

Bourcelles he would walk into any house, since there were no bells,

and sit down to an entire meal!

He laughed as the absurd comparison darted across his mind, for he

recognised the foolish exaggeration in it; but behind the laughter

flamed the astonishing truth. In Bourcelles, in a few weeks, he had

found a bigger, richer life than all London had supplied to him in

twenty years; he had found wings, inspiration, love, and happiness; he

had found the universe. The truth of his cousin's story blazed upon

him like an inner sun. In this new perspective he saw that it was a

grander fairy-tale than he had guessed even when close to it. What was

a Scheme for Disabled Thingumabobs compared to the endless, far-

reaching schemes that life in Bourcelles suggested to him! There was

the true centre of life; cities were accretions of disease upon the

surface merely! He was leaving Fairyland behind him.

In sudden moments like this, with their synthetic bird's-eye view, the

mind sometimes sees more clearly than in hours of careful reflection

and analysis. And the first thing he saw now was Minks, his friendly,

ridiculous little confidential secretary. From all the crowds of men

and women he knew, respected, and enjoyed in London, as from the vast

deluge of human mediocrity which for him _was_ London, he picked out

suddenly--little Minks--Herbert Montmorency Minks. His mind, that is,

darting forward in swift, comprehensive survey, and searching

automatically for some means whereby it might continue the happiness

and sweetness recently enjoyed, selected Minks. Minks was a clue.

Minks possessed--no matter how absurd the proportions of their mixing

--three things just left behind: Vision, Belief, Simplicity, all

products of a spiritual imagination.

And at first this was the single thought sent forward into the future.

Rogers saw the fact, flash-like and true-then let it go, yielding to

the greater pull that drew reflection back into the past.

And he found it rather dislocating, this abrupt stepping out of his

delightful forest Fairyland.... Equilibrium was not recovered for a

long time, as the train went thundering over the Jura Mountains into

France, Only on the other side of Pontarlier, when the country grew

unfamiliar and different, did harmony return. Among the deep blue

forests he was still in Fairyland, but at Mouchard the scenery was

already changing, and by the time Dole was reached it had completely

changed. The train ran on among the plains and vineyards of the

Burgundy country towards Laroche and Dijon. The abrupt alteration,

however, was pain. His thoughts streamed all backwards now to

counteract it. He roamed again among the star fields above the

Bourcelles woods. It was true--he had not really left Bourcelles. His

body was bumping into Dijon, but the important part of him--thought,

emotion, love--lingered with the children, hovered above the

Citadelle, floated through the dusky, scented forests.

And the haunting picture was ever set in its framework of old burning

stars. He could not get the Pleiades in particular out of his mind.

The pictures swarmed past him as upon a boy returning to school after

the holidays, and each one had a background of sky with stars behind

it; the faces that he knew so well had starry eyes; Jimbo flung

handfuls of stars loose across the air, and Monkey caught them,

fastening them like golden pins into her hair. Glancing down, he saw a

long brown hair upon his sleeve. He picked it off and held his finger

and thumb outside the window till the wind took it away. Some Morning

Spider would ride it home--perhaps past his cousin's window while he

copied out that wonderful, great tale. But, instead--how in the world

could it happen in clear daylight?--a little hand shot down from above

and gathered it in towards the Pleiades.

The Pleiades--the Seven Sisters--that most exquisite cluster of the

eastern sky, soft, tender, lovely, clinging close together always like

a group of timid children, who hide a little dimly for fear of being

surprised by bolder stars upon their enormous journey--they now shone

down upon all he thought and remembered. They seemed always above the

horizon of his mind. They never set. In them lay souls of unborn

children, children waiting to be born. He could not imagine why this

particular constellation clung with such a haunting touch of beauty

about his mind, or why some passion of yearning unconfessed and

throbbing hid behind the musical name. Stars and unborn children had

got strangely mixed!

He tried to recall the origin of the name--he had learned it once in

the old Vicar's study. The Pleiades were attendants upon Artemis, the

huntress moon, he recalled vaguely, and, being pursued by Orion, were

set for safety among the stars. He even remembered the names of some

of them; there was Maia, Tagete, Alcyone, but the other four lay in

his mental lumber room, whence they could not be evoked, although

Merope, he felt sure, was one of them. Of Maia, however, he felt

positive.... How beautiful the names were!

Then, midway, in thinking about them, he found himself, as Monkey

said, thinking of something else: of his weeks at Bourcelles again and

what a long holiday it had been, and whether it was wasted time or

well-used time-a kind of general stock-taking, as it were, but chiefly

of how little he had accomplished after all, set down in black and

white. He had enjoyed himself and let himself go, rather foolishly

perhaps, but how much after all had he actually accomplished? He

remembered pleasant conversations with Mother that possibly cheered

and helped her--or possibly were forgotten as soon as ended. He

remembered his cousin's passing words of gratitude--that he had helped

him somehow with his great new story: and he remembered--this least of

all-that his money had done something to relieve a case or two of

suffering. And this was all! The net result so insignificant! He felt

dissatisfied, eager already to make new plans, something definite and

thorough that should retrieve the wasted opportunities. With a little

thought and trouble, how easily he might have straightened out the

tangle of his cousin's family, helped with the education of the

growing children, set them all upon a more substantial footing

generally. It was possible still, of course, but such things are done

best on the spot, the personal touch and presence of value; arranged

by correspondence it becomes another thing at once and loses

spontaneity. The accent lies on the wrong details. Sympathy is watered

by the post.... Importance lodges in angles not intended for it.

Master of his time, with certain means at his disposal, a modicum of

ability as well, he was free to work hard on the side of the angels

wherever opportunity might offer; yet he had wasted all these weeks

upon an unnecessary holiday, frittering the time away in enjoyment

with the children. He felt ashamed and mortified as the meagre record

stared him in the face.

Yet, curiously enough, when Reason had set down the figures

accurately, as he fancied, and totted up the trifling totals, there

flitted before him something more that refused to be set down upon the

paper. The Ledger had no lines for it. What was it? Why was it

pleasant, even flattering? Why did it mitigate his discontent and

lessen the dissatisfied feeling? It passed hovering in and about his

thoughts, though uncaught by actual words; and as his mind played with

it, he felt more hopeful. He searched in vain for a definition, but,

though fruitless, the search brought comfort somehow. Something _had_

been accomplished and it was due to himself, because without his

presence it would never have been done. This hint slipped into desire,

yearning, hope--that, after all, a result _had_ perhaps been achieved,

a result he himself was not properly aware of--a result of that

incalculable spiritual kind that escapes the chains of definite

description. For he recalled--yet mortified a little the memory should

flatter--that his cousin had netted Beauty in his story, and that

Mother had spoken of living with greater carelessness and peace, and

that each had thanked him as though he were the cause.

And these memories, half thought, half feeling, were comforting and

delicious, so that he revelled in them lingeringly, and wished that

they were really true. For, if true, they were immensely significant.

Any one with a purse could build a hospital or pay an education fee,

but to be helpful because of being oneself was a vast, incalculable

power, something direct from God... and his thoughts, wandering on

thus between fact and fantasy, led him back with a deep inexplicable

thrill again to--the Pleiades, whose beauty, without their being aware

of it, shines nightly for all who can accept it. Here was the old, old

truth once more-that the left hand must not know what the right is

doing, and that to be is of greater importance than to do. Here was

Fairyland once more, the Fairyland he had just left. To think beauty

and love is to become them, to shed them forth without realising it. A

Fairy blesses because she is a Fairy, not because she turns a pumpkin

into a coach and four.... The Pleiades do not realise how their

loveliness may....

Rogers started. For the thought had borrowed a tune from the rhythm of

the wheels and sleepers, and he had uttered the words aloud in his

corner. Luckily he had the carriage to himself. He flushed. Again a

tender and very exquisite thing had touched him somewhere.... It was

in that involuntary connection his dreaming had found between a Fairy

and the Pleiades. Wings of gauzy gold shone fluttering a moment before

his inner sight, then vanished. He was aware of some one very dear and

wild and tender, with amber eyes and little twinkling feet--some one

whom the Great Tale brought almost within his reach.... He literally

had seen stars for an instant--_a_ star! Its beauty brimmed him up. He

laughed in his corner. This thing, whatever it was, had been coming

nearer for some time. These hints of sudden joy that breathe upon a

sensitive nature, how mysterious, how wildly beautiful, how

stimulating they are! But whence, in the name of all the stars, do

they come? A great happiness passed flaming through his heart, an

extraordinary sense of anticipation in it--as though he were going to

meet some one who--who--well, what?--who was a necessity and a delight

to him, the complement needed to make his life effective--some one he

loved abundantly--who would love him abundantly in return. He recalled

those foolish lines he had written on sudden impulse once, then thrown

away....

Thought fluttered and went out. He could not seize the elusive cause

of this delicious joy. It was connected with the Pleiades, but how,

where, why? Above the horizon of his life a new star was swimming into

glory. It was rising. The inexplicable emotion thrilled tumultuously,

then dived back again whence it came... It had to do with children and

with a woman, it seemed, for the next thing he knew was that he was

thinking of children, children of his own, and of the deep yearning

Bourcelles had stirred again in him to find their Mother... and, next,

of his cousin's story and that wonderful detail in it that the

principal role was filled at last, the role in the great Children's

Play he himself had felt was vacant. It was to be filled by that

childless Mother the writer's imagination had discovered or created.

And again the Pleiades lit up his inner world and beckoned to him with

their little fingers of spun gold; their eyes of clouded amber smiled

into his own. It was most extraordinary and delightful. There was

something--come much closer this time, almost within reach of

discovery--something he ought to remember about them, something he had

promised to remember, then stupidly forgotten. The lost, hidden joy

was a torture. Yet, try as he would, no revelation came to clear the

matter up. Had he read it somewhere perhaps? Or was it part of the

Story his cousin had wumbled into his ear when he only partly

listened?

'I believe I dreamed it,' he smiled to himself at last in despair. 'I

do believe it was a dream--a fragment of some jolly dream I had in my

Fairyland of little Bourcelles!'

Children, stars, Fairyland, dreams--these brought it somehow. His

cousin's story also had to do with it, chiefly perhaps after all--this

great story.

'I shall have to go back there to get hold of it completely,' he added

with conviction. He almost felt as if some one were thinking hard

about him--one of the characters in the story, it seemed. The mind of

some one far away, as yet unknown, was searching for him in thought,

sending forth strong definite yearnings which came to rest of their

own accord in his own being, a garden naturally suited to their

growth. The creations of his boyhood's imagination had survived, the

Sweep, the Dustman, and the Lamplighter, then why not the far more

powerful creations in the story...? Thought was never lost!

'But no man in his senses can believe such a thing!' he exclaimed, as

the train ran booming through the tunnel.

'That's the point,' whispered a voice beside him. 'You are _out_ of

your senses. Otherwise you could not feel it!'

He turned sharply. The carriage was empty; there was no one there. It

was, of course, another part of himself that supplied the answer; yet

it startled him. The blurred reflection of the lamp, he noticed, cast

a picture against the black tunnel wall that was like a constellation.

The Pleiades again! It almost seemed as if the voice had issued from

that false reflection in the shaking window-pane....

The train emerged from the tunnel. He rushed out into the blaze of the

Interfering Sun. The lovely cluster vanished like a dream, and with it

the hint of explanation melted down in dew. Fields sped past with a

group of haystacks whose tarpaulin skirts spread and lifted in the

gust of wind the train made. He thought abruptly of Mother....

Perhaps, after all, he had taught her something, shown her Existence

as a big, streaming, endless thing in which months and years, possibly

even life itself, were merely little sections, each unintelligible

unless viewed as portions of the Whole, and not as separate,

difficult, puzzling items set apart. Possibly he had drawn her map to

bigger scale, increased her faith, given her more sense of repose and

peace, more courage therefore. She thought formerly of a day, but not

of its relation to all days before and behind. She stuck her husband's

'reviews' in the big book, afflicted by the poor financial results

they represented, but was unable to think of his work as a stage in a

long series of development and progress, no effort lost, no single

hope mislaid. And that was something--_if_ he had accomplished it.

Only, he feared he had not. There was the trouble. There lay the

secret of a certain ineffectiveness in his character. For he did not

realise that fear is simply suppressed desire, vivid signs of life,

and that desire is the ultimate causative agent everywhere and always.

'Behind Will stands Desire,' and Desire is Action.

And if he _had_ accomplished this, how was it done? Not by preaching,

certainly. Was it, then, simply by being, thinking, feeling it? A

glorious thought, if true! For assuredly he had this faculty of seeing

life whole, and even in boyhood he had looked ahead over its entire

map. He had, indeed, this way of relating all its people, and all its

parts together, instead of seeing them separate, unintelligible

because the context was left out. He lived intensely in the present,

yet looked backwards and forwards too at the same time. This large

sympathy, this big comforting vision was his gift. Consequently he

believed in Life. Had he also, then, the gift of making others feel

and believe it too...?

There he was again, thinking in a circle, as Laroche flew past with

its empty platforms, and warned him that Paris was getting close. He

bumped out of Fairyland, yet tumbled back once more for a final

reverie before the long ugly arms of the city snatched him finally

out. 'To see life whole,' he reflected, 'is to see it glorious. To

think one's self part of humanity at large is to bring the universe

down into the heart. But to see life whole, a whole heart is

necessary.... He's done it in that splendid story, and he bagged the

raw idea somehow from me. That's something at any rate. ... So few

think Beaaty.... But will others see it? That's the point!'

'No, it isn't,' answered the voice beside him. 'The point is that he

has thought it, and the universe is richer. Even if others do not read

or understand, what he has thought _is there now_, for ever and ever.'

'True,' he reflected, 'for that Beauty may float down and settle in

other minds when they least are looking for it, and ignoring utterly

whence comes the fairy touch. Divine! Delicious! Heavenly!'

'The Beauty he has written came through you, yet was not yours,' the

voice continued very faintly. 'A far more beautiful mind first

projected it into that network which binds all minds together. 'Twas

thence you caught it flying, and, knowing not how to give it shape,

transferred it to another--who could use it--for others.... Thought is

Life, and Sympathy is living....'

The voice died away; he could not hear the remainder clearly; the

passing scenery caught his attention again; during his reverie it had

been unnoticed utterly. 'Thought is Life, but Sympathy is living---'

it rolled and poured through him as he repeated it. Snatches of

another sentence then came rising into him from an immense distance,

falling upon him from immeasurable heights--barely audible:-

'... from a mind that so loved the Pleiades she made their loveliness

and joy her own... Alcyone, Merope, Maia...' It dipped away into

silence like a flower closing for the night, and the train, he

realised, was slackening speed as it drew into the hideous Gare de

Lyon.

'I'll talk to Minks about it, perhaps,' he thought, as he stood

telling the Customs official that he had no brandy, cigarettes, or

lace. 'He knows about things like that. At any rate, he'll

sympathise.'

He went across Paris to the Gare du Nord, and caught the afternoon

boat train to London. The sunshine glared up from the baking streets,

but he never forgot that overhead, though invisible, the stars were

shining all the time--Starlight, the most tender and least suspected

light in all the world, shining bravely even when obscured by the

Interfering Sun, and the Pleiades, softest, sweetest little group

among them all.

And when at eleven o'clock he entered his St. James's flat, he took a

store of it shining in his heart, and therefore in his eyes. Only that

was no difficult matter, for all the lamps far up the heights were lit

and gleaming, and caught old mighty London in their gorgeous net.

CHAPTER XXIX

Think with passion

That shall fashion

Life's entire design, well planned.

_Woman of the Haystack_.

'You are looking so wonderfully well, Mr. Rogers,' Minks observed at

Charing Cross Station, 'the passage across the Channel, I trust, was

calm.'

'And yourself and Mrs. Minks?' asked Rogers, looking into the equally

sunburned face of his secretary, remembering suddenly that he had been

to the sea with his family; 'Frank, too, and the other children? All

well, I hope?'

'All in excellent health, Mr. Rogers, thanks to your generous thought.

My wife---'

'These are the small bags,' the other interrupted, 'and here are the

keys for my portmanteaux. There's nothing dutiable. You might bring

them on to the flat while I run over to the Club for a bit of supper,

Minks.'

'Certainly, with pleasure, Mr. Rogers,' was the beaming reply. 'And

Mrs. Minks begged me to tell you---'

Only Rogers was already in his taxi-cab and out of ear-shot.

'How well he looks!' reflected Minks, dangling the keys, accustomed to

these abrupt interruptions, and knowing that his message had been

understood and therefore duly delivered. These cut-off sentences were

like a secret code between them. 'And ten years younger! Almost like a

boy again. I wonder if---' He did not permit himself to finish the

thought. He tried to remember if he himself had looked like that

perhaps in the days of long ago when he courted Albinia Lucy--an air

of joy and secrecy and an absent-minded manner that might any moment

flame into vehement, concentrated action. For this was the impression

his employer had made upon him. Only he could not quite remember those

far-off, happy days. There was ecstasy in them; that he knew. And

there was ecstasy in Henry Rogers now; that he divined.

'He oughtn't to,' he reflected, as he hurried in another taxi with the

luggage. 'All his yearnings would be satisfied if he did, his life

flow into a single channel instead of into many.'

He did not think about his own position and his salary.

'He won't,' he decided as the cab stopped at the door; 'he's not that

kind of man.' Minks had insight; he knew men. 'No artist ever ought

to. We are so few, and the world has need of us.' His own case was an

exception that had justified itself, for he was but a man of talent,

and talent did not need an exclusive asceticism; whereas his employer

was a man of genius, and no one woman had the right to monopolise what

was intended to sweeten the entire universe.

By the time the luggage had been taken up, he had missed the last tram

home, and his sleep that night must in any case be short. Yet he took

no note of that. One must live largely. A small sacrifice for such a

master was nothing at all. He lingered, glancing now and again at the

heap of correspondence that would occupy them next morning, and

sorting once more the little pile that would need immediate personal

attention. He was picking a bit of disfiguring fluff from his coat

sleeve when the door opened and Henry Rogers came upon him.

'Ah! I waited a moment, Mr. Rogers. I thought you might have something

to say before I went, perhaps.'

'I hoped you would, Minks. I have a great deal to say. It can wait

till to-morrow, really--only I wanted--but, there now, I forgot; you

have to get down to Sydenham, haven't you? And it's late already---'

'That's nothing, Mr. Rogers. I can easily sleep in town. I came

prepared, indeed, to do so---' as though he, too, had his Club and

would take a bedroom in it.

'Clever and thoughtful of you, Minks!'

'Only you must be tired after your journey,' suggested the secretary.

'Tired!' exclaimed the other vigorously, 'not a bit! I'm as fresh as a

st--a daisy, I mean. Come, draw your chair up; we'll have a smoke and

a little chat. I'm delighted to see you again. How are you? And how's

everything?'

Goodness! How bright his eyes were, how alert his manner! He looked so

young, almost springy, thought Minks, as he obeyed decorously, feeling

flattered and pleased, yet at the same time uneasy a little. Such

spirits could only proceed, he feared, from one cause. He was a close

observer, as all poets had need to be. He would discover some clue

before he went to bed, something that should betray the true state of

affairs. In any case sleep would be impossible unless he did.

'You stayed away somewhat longer than you originally intended,' he

ventured at length, having briefly satisfied his employer's question.

'You found genuine recreation. You needed it, I'm sure.' He glanced

with one eye at the letters.

'Re-creation, yes; the very word. It was difficult to leave. The place

was so delightful,' said Rogers simply, filling his pipe and lighting

it. 'A wonderful mountain village, Minks,' he added, between puffs of

smoke, while the secretary, who had been waiting for the sign, then

lit his own Virginian and smoked it diffidently, and with just the

degree of respect he felt was becoming. He never presumed upon his

master's genial way of treating him. He made little puffs and was very

careful with the ashes.

'Ah, yes,' he said; 'I am sure it must have been--both delightful and

--er--difficult to leave.' He recalled the Margate sands, bathing with

Albinia and digging trenches with the children. He had written many

lyrics during those happy weeks of holiday.

'Gave one, in fact, quite a new view of life--and work. There was such

space and beauty everywhere. And my cousin's children simply would not

let me go.'

There was a hint of apology and excuse in the tone and words--the

merest hint, but Minks noticed it and liked the enthusiasm. 'He's been

up to some mischief; he feels a little ashamed; his work--his Scheme--

has been so long neglected; conscience pricks him. Ha, ha!' The

secretary felt his first suspicion confirmed. 'Cousin's children,'

perhaps! But who else?

'He made a tactful reference--oh, very slight and tentative--to the

data he had collected for the Scheme, but the other either did not

hear it, or did not wish to hear it. He brushed it aside, speaking

through clouds of tobacco smoke. Minks enjoyed a bigger, braver puff

at his own. Excitement grew in him.

'Just the kind of place you would have loved, Minks,' Rogers went on

with zeal. 'I think you really must go there some day; cart your

family over, teach the children French, you know, and cultivate a bit

of vineyard. Such fine big forests, too, full of wild flowers and

things--O such lovely hand-made things--why, you could almost see the

hand that made 'em.' The phrase had slipped suddenly into his mind.

'Really, really, Mr. Rogers, but how very jo--delightful it sounds.'

He thought of the stubble fields and treeless sea-coast where he had

been. The language, however, astonished him. Enthusiasm like this

could only spring from a big emotion. His heart sank a little.

'And the people all so friendly and hospitable and simple that you

could go climbing with your bootmaker or ask your baker in to dine and

sleep. No snobbery! Sympathy everywhere and a big free life flowing in

your veins.' This settled it. Only a lover finds the whole world

lovable.

'One must know the language, though,' said Minks, 'in order to enjoy

the people and understand them, I suppose?'

'Not a bit, not a bit! One _feels_ it all, you see; somehow one feels

it and understands. A few words useful here and there, but one gets

along without even these. I never knew such a place. Every one seemed

to be in sympathy together. They think it, as it were. It was regular

fairyland, I tell you.'

'Which means that _you_ felt and thought it,' said Minks to himself.

Aloud he merely remarked, though with conviction, for he was getting

interested, 'Thinking is important, I know.'

Rogers laid his pipe aside and suddenly turned upon him--so abruptly

that Minks started. Was this the confession coming? Would he hear now

that his chief was going to be married? His wandering eyes almost drew

level in the excitement that he felt. He knocked a tiny ash from his

cigarette and waited. But the expected bomb did not explode. He heard

instead this curious question:--

'And that's something--it reminds me now--something I particularly

wanted to ask you about, my dear fellow. You are familiar, I know,

with such things and theories--er--speculations, as it were. You read

that sort of stuff. You are in touch with the latest ideas, I mean,

and up-to-date. You can tell me, if any one can.'

He paused, hesitating a moment, as Minks, listening in some

bewilderment, gazed into his eager face. He said nothing. He only

committed himself to a deprecating gesture with his hands, letting his

cigarette slip from his fingers on to the carpet.

'About _thought_,' continued Rogers, keeping his eyes fixed upon him

while he rose with flushed face from the search to find the stump.

'What do you know about thought? Tell me what you hear about _that_--

what theories are held--what people believe about it. I mean thought-

transference, telepathy, or whatever it is called. Is it proved? Is it

a fact?'

His voice had lowered. There was mystery in his manner. He sat back in

his chair, picked up his pipe, replaced it in his mouth unlighted, and

waited.

Minks pulled himself together. His admirable qualities as a private

secretary now came in. Putting excitement and private speculations of

his own aside, he concentrated his orderly mind upon replies that

should be models of succinct statement. He had practised thought-

control, and prided himself upon the fact. He could switch attention

instantly from one subject to another without confusion. The replies,

however, were, of course, drawn from his own reading. He neither

argued nor explained. He merely stated.

'Those who have taken the trouble to study the evidence believe,' he

began, 'that it is established, though its laws are as yet unknown.

Personally, if I may quote myself, I do believe it.'

'Quite so, quite so. Do quote yourself--that's what I want--facts. But

you refer to deliberate experiments, don't you?'

'In my own case, yes, Mr. Rogers, although the most successful

thought-transference is probably unconscious and not deliberate---'

'Such as, for instance---'

'Public opinion,' replied Minks, after a moment's search, 'which is

the result of waves of thought sent out by everybody--by a community;

or by the joint thinking of a nation, again, which modifies every mind

born into that nation, the result of' centuries of common thinking

along definite familiar channels. Thought-currents rush everywhere

about the world, affecting every one more or less, and--er--

particularly lodging in minds receptive to them.'

'Thought is dynamic, then, they hold?'

'An actual force, yes; as actual as electricity, and as little

understood,' returned the secretary, proud that he had read these

theories and remembered them. 'With every real thought a definite

force goes forth from you that modifies every single person, and

probably every single object as well, in the entire world. Thought is

creative according to its intensity. It links everybody in the world

with everybody else---'

'Objects too, you say?' Rogers questioned.

Minks glanced up to make sure there was no levity in the question, but

only desire for knowledge.

'Objects too,' he replied, apparently satisfied, 'for science tells us

that the movement of a body here affects the farthest star. A

continuous medium--ether--transmits the vibrations without friction--

and thought-force is doubtless similarly transmitted--er---'

'So that if I think of a flower or a star, my thought leaps into them

and affects them?' the other interrupted again.

'More, Mr. Rogers,' was the reply, 'for your thought, being creative,

enriches the world with images of beauty which may float into another

mind across the sea, distance no obstacle at all. You make a mental

image when you think. There's imagination in all real thinking--if I

make myself clear. "Our most elaborate thoughts," to quote for a

moment, "are often, as I think, not really ours, but have on a sudden

come up, as it were, out of hell or down out of heaven." So what one

thinks affects everybody in the world. The noble thinkers lift

humanity, though they may never tell their thoughts in speech or

writing.'

His employer stared at him in silence through the cloud of smoke. The

clock on the mantelpiece struck half-past twelve.

'That is where the inspiration of the artist comes in,' continued the

secretary after a moment's hesitation whether he should say it or not,

'for his sensitive soul collects them and gives them form. They lodge

in him and grow, and every passionate longing for spiritual growth

sets the whole world growing too. Your Scheme for Disabled---'

'Even if it never materialises---' Rogers brusquely interposed.

'Sweetens the world--yes--according to this theory,' continued Minks,

wondering what in the world had come over his chief, yet so pleased to

state his own views that he forgot to analyse. 'A man in a dungeon

earnestly praying would accomplish more than an active man outside who

merely lived thoughtlessly, even though beneficently--if I make myself

clear.'

'Yes, yes; you make yourself admirably clear, Minks, as I knew you

would.' Rogers lit his pipe again and puffed hard through a minute's

silence. The secretary held his peace, realising from the tone of the

last sentence that he had said enough. Mr. Rogers was leading up to

other questions. Hitherto he had been clearing the ground.

It came then, through the clouds of smoke, though Minks failed to

realise exactly why it was--so important:

'So that if I thought vividly of anything, I should. actually create a

mental picture which in turn might slip into another's mind, while

that other would naturally suppose it was his own?'

'Exactly, Mr. Rogers; exactly so.' Minks contrived to make the

impatience in his voice sound like appreciation of his master's

quickness. 'Distance no obstacle either,' he repeated, as though fond

of the phrase.

'And, similarly, the thought I deemed my own might have come in its

turn from the mind of some one else?'

'Precisely; for thought binds us all together like a network, and to

think of others is to spread oneself about the universe. When we think

thus we get out--as it were--into that medium common to all of us

where spirit meets spirit---'

'Out!' exclaimed Rogers, putting down his pipe and staring keenly,

first into one eye, then into the other. 'Out?'

'Out--yes,' Minks echoed faintly, wondering why that particular word

was chosen. He felt a little startled. This earnest talk, moreover,

stirred the subconsciousness in him, so that he remembered that

unfinished sonnet he had begun weeks ago at Charing Cross. If he were

alone now he could complete it. Lines rose and offered themselves by

the dozen. His master's emotion had communicated itself to him. A

breath of that ecstasy he had already divined passed through the air

between them.

'It's what the Contemplative Orders attempt---' he continued, yet half

to himself, as though a little bemused.

'Out, by George! Out!' Rogers said again.

So emphatic was the tone that Minks half rose from his chair to go.

'No, no,' laughed his chief; 'I don't mean that you're to get out.

Forgive my abruptness. The fact is I was thinking aloud a moment. I

meant--I mean that you've explained a lot to me I didn't understand

before--had never thought about, rather. And it's rather wonderful,

you see. In fact, it's _very_ wonderful. Minks,' he added, with the

grave enthusiasm of one who has made a big discovery, 'this world _is_

a very wonderful place.'

'It is simply astonishing, Mr. Rogers,' Minks answered with

conviction, 'astonishingly beautiful.'

'That's what I mean,' he went on. 'If I think beauty, that beauty may

materialise---'

'Must, will, does materialise, Mr. Rogers, just as your improvements

in machinery did. You first thought them out!'

'Then put them into words; yes, and afterwards into metal. Strong

thought is bound to realise itself sooner or later, eh? Isn't it all

grand and splendid?'

They stared at one another across the smoky atmosphere of the London

flat at the hour of one in the morning in the twentieth century.

'And when I think of a Scaffolding of Dusk that builds the Night,'

Rogers went on in a lower tone to himself, yet not so low that Minks,

listening in amazement, did not catch every syllable, 'or of a

Dustman, Sweep, and Lamplighter, of a Starlight Express, or a vast

Star Net that binds the world in sympathy together, and when I weave

all these into a story, whose centre somehow is the Pleiades--all this

is real and actual, and--and---'

'May have been projected by another mind before it floated into your

own,' Minks suddenly interposed almost in a whisper, charmed wholly

into the poet's region by these suggestive phrases, yet wondering a

little why he said it, and particularly how he dared to say it.

His chief turned sharply upon him.

'My own thought exactly!' he exclaimed; 'but how the devil did you

guess it?'

Minks returned the stare with triumph.

'Unconscious transference!' he said.

'You really think _that_?' his master asked, yet not mockingly.

Minks turned a shade pinker.

'I do, indeed, sir,' he replied warmly. 'I think it probable that the

thoughts of people you have never seen or heard of drop into your mind

and colour it. They lodge there, or are rejected, according to your

mood and the texture of your longings--what you want to be, that is.

What you want, if I may say so, is emptiness, and that emptiness

invites. The flying thought flits in and makes itself at home. Some

people overflow with thoughts of kindness and beauty that radiate from

them, of love and tenderness and desire to help. These thoughts, it

may be, find no immediate object; but they are not lost. They pour

loose about the world of men and women, and sooner or later find the

empty heart that needs them. I believe, sir, that to sit in a chair

and think such things strongly brings comfort to thousands who have

little idea whence comes the sudden peace and happiness. And any one

who happens to be praying for these things at the moment attracts them

instantly. The comfort, the joy, the relief come---'

'What a good idea, Minks,' said Rogers gently, 'and how helpful if we

all believed it. No one's life need be a failure then. Those who want

love, for instance, need it, crave it, just think what an army they

are!'

He stared thoughtfully a moment at his little secretary.

'You might write a book about it, you know--try and make people

believe it--convince them. Eh? Only, you'd have to give your proofs,

you know. People want proofs.'

Minks, pinker than before, hesitated a moment. He was not sure how far

he ought to, indulge his private theories in words. The expression in

his chief's blue eyes apparently encouraged him.

'But, indeed, Mr. Rogers, the proofs are there. Those moments of

sudden strength and joy that visit a man, catching him unawares and

unexplained--every solitary man and woman knows them, for every

solitary man and woman in the world craves first of all--to _be_

loved. To love another, others, an impersonal Cause, is not enough. It

is only half of life; to _be_ loved is the other half. If every single

person--I trust, sir, I do not tire you?--was loved by some one, the

happiness of life would be enormously greater than it is, for each one

loved would automatically then give out from his own store, and to

receive love makes one overflow with love for every one else. It is

so, is it not, sir?'

Rogers, an odd thrill catching him unawares, nodded. 'It is, Minks, it

is,' he agreed. 'To love one person makes one half prepared to love

all, and to be loved in turn may have a similar effect. It is nice to

think so anyhow.'

'It is true, sir----' and Minks sat up, ready with another deluge.

'But you were saying something just now,' interrupted the other,

'about these sudden glimpses of joy and beauty that--er--come to one--

er--inexplicably. What d'ye mean by that precisely?'

Minks glowed. He was being listened to, and understood by his honoured

chief, too!

'Simply that some one, perhaps far away--some sweet woman probably--

has been thinking love,' he replied with enthusiasm, yet in a low and

measured voice, 'and that the burning thoughts have rushed into the

emptiness of a heart that needs them. Like water, thought finds its

level. The sudden gush--all feel it more or less at times, surely!--

may rise first from her mind as she walks lonely upon the shore,

pacing the decks at sea, or in her hillside rambles, thinking,

dreaming, hoping, yearning--to pour out and find the heart that needs

these very things, perhaps far across the world. Who knows? Heart

thrills in response to heart secretly in every corner of the globe,

and when these tides flood unexplained into your soul---'

'Into _my_ soul---!' exclaimed his chief.

'I beg your pardon, sir,' Minks hurried to explain; 'I mean to any

lonely soul that happens to crave such comfort with real longing--it

implies, to my mind at least, that these two are destined to give and

take from one another, and that, should they happen to meet in actual

life, they will rush together instantly like a pair of flames---'

'And if they never--meet?' asked Rogers slowly, turning to the mantel-

piece for the matches.

'They will continue to feed each other in this delicious spiritual way

from a distance, sir. Only--the chances are--that they will meet, for

their thought already connects them vitally, though as yet

unrealised.'

There was a considerable pause. Rogers lit his pipe. Minks, feeling he

ought to stand while his master did so, also rose from his chair. The

older man turned; they faced each other for a moment, Rogers putting

smoke violently into the air between them.

'Minks, my dear fellow,' he observed, 'you are, as I have always

thought, a poet. You have ideas, and, whether true or not, they are

rather lovely. Write them out for others to read. Use your spare time

writing them out. I'll see to it that you have more leisure.'

With a laugh the big man moved abruptly past his chair and knocked his

pipe on the edge of the ash-bowl. His eye, as he did so, fell upon the

pile of letters and papers arranged so neatly on the table. He

remembered the lateness of the hour--and other things besides.

'Well, well,' he said vaguely with a sigh; 'so here we are again back

at work in London.'

Minks had turned, too, realising that the surprising conversation was

over. A great excitement was in him. He did not feel in the least

tired. An unusual sense of anticipation was in the air. He could not

make it out at all. Reviewing a dozen possibilities at once, he

finally rejected the romantic one he had first suspected, and decided

that the right moment had at last come to say something of the Scheme.

He had worked so hard to collect data. All was in perfect order. His

chief could not feel otherwise than pleased.

'Then I'll be saying good-night, Mr. Rogers,' he began, 'for you must

be very tired, and I trust you will enjoy a long night's rest. Perhaps

you would like me to come a little later in the morning than usual.'

He stood looking affectionately at the formidable pile of

correspondence, and, as his chief made no immediate reply, he went on,

with more decision in his voice:

'Here,' he said, touching the papers he had carefully set on one side,

'are all the facts you wanted referring to your great Scheme---'

He jumped. His master's fist had come down with a bang upon the table.

He stepped back a pace. They stared at one another.

'Damn the Scheme!' cried Rogers. 'have done and finished with it. Tear

up the papers. Cancel any arrangements already made. And never mention

the thing again in my hearing. It's all unreal and wrong and

unnecessary!'

Minks gasped. The man was so in earnest. What could it mean?

'Wrong--unnecessary--done with!' he faltered. Then, noticing the

flashing eyes that yet betrayed a hint of merriment in their fire, he

added quickly, 'Quite so, Mr. Rogers; I understand. You've got an

improvement, you mean?'

It was not his place to ask questions, but he could not contain

himself. Curiosity and disappointment rushed over him.

'A bigger and a better one altogether, Minks,' was the vehement reply.

He pushed the heap of papers towards the secretary. Minks took them

gingerly, reluctantly.

'Burn 'em up,' Rogers went on, 'and never speak to me again about the

blessed thing. I've got a far bigger Scheme than that.'

Minks slowly gathered the papers together and put them in his biggest

pocket. He knew not what to think. The suddenness of the affair dazed

him. Thought-transference failed this time; he was too perturbed,

indeed, to be in a receptive state at all. It seemed a catastrophe, a

most undesirable and unexpected climax. The romantic solution revived

in him--but only for a passing moment. He rejected it. Some big

discovery was in the air. He felt that extraordinary sense of

anticipation once again.

'Look here, my dear fellow, Minks,' said Rogers, who had been watching

his discomfiture with amusement, 'you may be surprised, but you need

not be alarmed. The fact is, this has been coming for a long time;

it's not an impulsive decision. You must have felt it--from my

letters. That Scheme was all right enough, only I am not the right man

for it. See? And our work,' he added laughingly, 'won't go for nothing

either, because our thought will drop into another mind somewhere that

will accomplish the thing far better than I could have accomplished

it.'

Minks made an odd gesture, as who should say this might not be true.

He did not venture upon speech, however. This new plan must be very

wonderful, was all he thought just then. His faith in his employer's

genius was complete.

'And in due time you shall hear all about it. Have a little patience.

Perhaps you'll get it out of my thoughts before I tell it to you,' he

smiled, 'but perhaps you won't. I can only tell you just now that it

has beauty in it---a beauty of the stars.'

Yet what his bigger Scheme was he really had no clear idea. He felt it

coming-that was all!

And with that Minks had to be content. This was dismissal. Good-nights

were said, and the secretary went out into the street.

'Go to a comfortable hotel,' was the last thing he heard, 'and put it

down to me, of course. Sleep well, sleep well. To-morrow at two

o'clock will do.'

Minks strolled home, walking upon air. The sky was brilliant with its

gorgeous constellations--the beauty of the stars. Poems blazed upon

him. But he was too excited to compose. Even first lines evaded

capture. 'Stars,' besides, was a dreadful word to rhyme with, for all

its charm and loveliness. He knew of old that the only word was

'wars,' most difficult to bring in naturally and spontaneously, and

with the wrong sound in any case.

'He must have been writing poetry out there,' he reflected finally,

'or else living it. Living it, probably. He's a grand fellow anyhow,

grand as a king.' Stars, wars, kings, thrones-=the words flew in and

out among a maze of unaccomplished lines.

But the last thing in his mind as he curled up to sleep in the strange

bed was that he had delivered his wife's message, but that he could

not tell her about this sudden collapse of the great, long-talked-of

Scheme. Albinia would hardly understand. She might think less of his

chief. He would wait until the new one dawned upon the horizon with

its beauty of the stars. Then he would simply overwhelm her with it,

as his temperament loved to do.

CHAPTER XXX

Lo, every yearning thought that holds a tear,

Yet finds no mission

And lies untold,

Waits, guarded in that labyrinth of gold,--

To reappear

Upon some perfect night,

Deathless--not old--

But sweet with time and distance,

And clothed as in a vision

Of starry brilliance

For the world's delight.

JOHN HENRY CAMPDEN.

Then, as the days passed, practical life again caught Henry Rogers in

its wholesome grip. Fairyland did not fade exactly, but it dipped a

little below the horizon. Like hell and heaven, it was a state of

mind, open potentially to all, but not to be enjoyed merely for the

asking. Like other desirable things, it was to be 'attained.' Its

remoteness and difficulty of access lent to it a haunting charm; for

though its glory dimmed a little, there was a soft afterglow that shed

its radiance even down Piccadilly and St. James's Street. He was

always conscious of this land beyond the sunset; the stars shone

brightly, though clouds or sunlight interfered to blur their message.

London life, however, by the sheer weight of its grinding daily

machinery, worked its slow effect upon him. He became less sensitive

to impressions. These duller periods were interrupted sometimes by

states of brilliant receptiveness, as at Bourcelles; but there was a

fence between the two--a rather prickly frontier, and the secret of

combining them lay just beyond his reach. For his London mind, guided

by reason, acted in a logical plane of two dimensions, while

imagination, captained by childhood's fairy longings, cantered loose

in all directions at once--impossibly. The first was the world; the

second was the universe. As yet, he was unable to co-ordinate them.

Minks, he was certain, could--and did, sailing therefore upon an even

keel. There was this big harmony in little Minks that he envied. Minks

had an outlet. Sydenham, and even the City, for him were fairyland; a

motor-bus fed his inspiration as surely as a starlit sky; moon always

rhymed with June, and forget with regret. But the inner world of Henry

Rogers was not yet properly connected with the outer. Passage from one

to the other was due to chance, it seemed, not to be effected at will.

Moods determined the sudden journey. He rocked. But for his talks with

little Minks, he might have wrecked.