THE BIRTH OF WONDER
Meanwhile their father alone grew neither older nor larger. His
appearance did not change. They could not imagine that he would ever
change. He still went up to London in the morning, he still came down
again, he still continued to grind out stories which they thought
wonderful, and he still, on occasions, said mysteriously, "A day will
come," or its variants, "Some day," and "A day is coming." Yet, though
he had Fancy, he had not Imagination. He did not satisfy them. For
while Fancy may attend the birth of Wonder, Imagination alone
accompanies her growth. Daddy was too full of stationery and
sealing-wax in his daily work to have got very far.
Aunt Emily also still was there, explaining everything and saying No,
shaking her head at them, or holding up a warning finger. Their outward
life, indeed, showed little change, but it included one important
novelty that affected all their present and all their subsequent
existence, too. They made a new friend--their father's brother.
When first his visit was announced, they had their doubts about
him--"your Uncle Felix" had a very questionable sound indeed, but the
fact that he lived in Paris and was a writer of sea-stories and
historical novels counterbalanced the handicap of the unpleasant
"Felix." For to their ears Felix was not a proper sort of name at all;
it was all right for a horse or a dog or even for a town, but for a man
who was also a relation it was a positive disaster. It would not
shorten for one thing, and for another it reminded them of "a king, or
some one in a history book," and thus did not predispose them in his
favour. It was simply what Tim called a "beastly name." Aunt Emily,
however, was responsible for their biggest prejudice against him: "You
must remember not to bother him, children; you must never disturb him
when he's working." And as Uncle Felix was coming to stay for several
weeks in the Mill House, they regarded him in advance as some kind of
horrible excitement they must put up with.
However, as most things in life go by contraries, this Uncle Felix
person turned out just the opposite. Within an hour of his arrival he
was firmly established as friend and ally, yet so quickly and easily
was this adjustment brought about that no one could say exactly how it
happened. They themselves said nothing--just stood and stared at him;
Daddy and Mother said the expected things, and Aunt Emily, critical and
explanatory as usual, found it necessary to add: "You'll find it such a
quiet house to work in, Felix, and the children will never interfere or
get in your way." She was evidently proud of her relative and his
famous books. "They'll be as good as gold--won't you, Judy?" by which
name she referred to the trio as a whole.
Whereupon Judy smiled and nodded shyly, Tim bent down and scratched his
stocking, and Maria, her face expressionless, merely stared at her aunt
as though she--Emily, that is--were a piece of inanimate furniture.
"I see," said Uncle Felix carelessly, and glanced down at the trio.
That was all he said. But it was the way he said it that instantly
explained his position. He looked at them and said, "I see"; no more
than that--and it was done. They knew, he knew, Aunt Emily also knew.
Two little careless words--and then continued to talk of Paris, the
Channel crossing, and the weather.
"Didn't he squash her just!" remarked Tim, when they were alone
together. "She expected him to thank her awfully and give her a kiss."
And, accordingly, none of them were in the least surprised when he
suddenly poked his head inside the door as they lay in bed and
explained that he had just looked in to say good-night, and when he
left them a moment later added gravely from the door: "Mind, you never
disturb me, children; because, if you do--!" He shook a warning finger
and was gone. He looked enormous in the doorway.
From that moment Uncle Felix became an important factor in their lives.
The mysterious compact between them all was signed and sealed, yet none
could say who drew it up and worded it. His duties became considerable.
He almost took Daddy's place. The Study, indeed, at certain hours of
the evening, became their recognised nesting place, and Daddy was as
pleased as they themselves were. He seemed relieved. He rarely ground
out epics now when his brain was tired and full of Government
stationery and sealing-wax. Uncle Felix held the wizard's wand, and
what he did with it was this: he raised the sense of wonder in them to
a higher level. Daddy had awakened it, and fed it with specimens they
could understand. But Uncle Felix poked it into yet greater activity by
giving them something that no one could ever possibly understand! He
stimulated it so that it worked in them spontaneously and of its own
accord. He made it _grow_. And no amount of Aunt Emilies in the world
could stop him.
Their father felt no jealousy. When the story-hour came round, he
produced a set of sentences he kept slyly up his sleeve for the
occasion. "Ask your Uncle Felix; he's better at stories and things than
I am. It's his business." This was the model. A variation ran: "Oh,
don't bother me just now, children. I've got a lot of figures to
digest." But the shortest version was simply, "Run and plague your
uncle. I'm too busy."
"Try Mother" was used when Uncle Felix was in hiding. Only it had no
result. Mother's mind was too diffuse to carry conviction. It was
soaked in servants and things. In another sense it was too exact. The
ingredients of her stories were like a cooking recipe. Besides, hers
was the unpardonable fault of never forgetting the time. On the very
stroke of the clock she broke off abruptly with "Now it's bed-time; you
shall hear the rest another night." Daddy forgot, or pleaded for "ten
minutes more." Uncle Felix, however, said flatly, "They can't go till
it's finished"--and he meant it. His voice was deep and gruff--"like a
dog's," according to Maria--and his laugh was like a horse's neigh; it
made the china rattle. He was "frightfully strong," too, stronger than
Weeden, for he could take a child under each arm and another on his
back--and run! He never smiled when he told his stories, and, though
this made them seem extra real, it also alarmed deliciously--in the
terrible places. Perched on his gigantic knees, they felt "like up the
cedar," and when he stretched an arm or leg it was the great cedar
branch swaying in the wind.
His manner, too, was stern to severity, and his voice was so deep
sometimes that they could "feel it rumbling inside," as though he had
"swallowed the dinner gong." He was a very important man somewhere;
Daddy was just in the Stationery Office, but Uncle Felix was an author,
and the very title necessarily included awe. He wrote
"storical-novuls." His name was often in the newspapers. They connected
him with the "Govunment." It had to do somewhere with the Police. No
one trifled with Uncle Felix. Yet, strange to say, the children never
could be properly afraid of him, although they tried very hard. Their
audacity, their familiarity, their daring astonished everybody. The
gardeners and coachmen, to say nothing of the indoor servants, treated
him as though he was some awful emperor. But the children simply pushed
him about. He might have been a friendly Newfoundland dog that wore
tail-coats and walked on his hind legs, for all they feared reprisals.
He gave them a taste of his quality soon after his arrival.
"No, children, it's impossible now. I'm busy over a scene of my
storicalnovul. Ask your father." He growled it at them, frowning darkly.
The parental heels had just that instant vanished round the door.
"Father's got the figures and says he can't."
"Or your mother--" he said, gruffly.
"Mother's doing servants in the housekeeper's room."
"Take your foot out of my waistcoat pocket this instant," he roared.
"Why?" enquired Maria. "How else can I climb up?"
He shook and swayed like the cedar branch, but he did not shake her
off. "Because," he thundered, "there's money in it, and you've got
holes in your stockings, and toes with you are worse than fingers."
And he strode across the floor, Tim clinging to one leg with both feet
off the ground, and Judy pushing him behind as though he were a heavy
door that wouldn't open. He was very angry indeed. He told them plainly
what he thought about them. He explained the philosophy of authors to
them in brutal sentences. "Leave me alone, you little botherations!" he
cried. "I'm in the middle of a scene in a storicalnovul." It was
disgraceful that a man could lose his temper so. "Leave me alone, or
I'll ..."
In the corner of the big nursery sofa there was sudden silence. It was
a chilly evening in early spring. Between the bars across the windows
the wisteria leaves sifted the setting sunlight. The railway train lay
motionless upon the speckled carpet. A cat, so fat it couldn't unroll,
lay in a ball of mystery against the high guard of wire netting before
the fire. Outside the wind went moaning.
And Time ran backwards, or else the clock stopped dead. Dusk slipped in
between the window bars. The cedars on the lawn became gigantic. They
heard the haystacks shuffling out of their tarpaulins. The whole house
rose into the air and floated off. Mother, Daddy, Nurses, beds dropped
from the windows as it sailed away. All were left behind, forgotten
details of some stupid and uncomfortable life elsewhere.
"Quite ready," sighed the top of one cedar to the other.
"And waiting, too," an answer came from nowhere.
And then the Universe paused and settled with a little fluttering sound
of wonder. The onceuponatime Moment entered the room....
"There was a thing that nobody could understand," began the deep, gruff
voice. "And this thing that nobody could understand was something no
one understood at all."
"That's twice they couldn't understand it," observed Judy, in the
slight pause he made for effect.
"It was alive," he went on, "and very beautiful, so beautiful, in fact,
that people were astonished and felt rather ashamed because they
couldn't understand it. Some declared it wasn't worth understanding at
all; others said it might be worth understanding if they had the time
to think about it; and the rest decided that it was nothing much, and
promptly forgot that it existed. Their lives grew rather dull in
consequence. A few, however, set to work to discover what it was. For
the beauty of it set something in them strangely burning."
"It was a firework, I think," remarked Maria, then felt she had said
quite an awful thing. For Tim just looked at her. "It's alive, Uncle
Felix told you," he stated. She was obliterated--for the moment.
"Yes," resumed the story-teller, "it was alive, and its beauty set the
hearts of a few people on fire to know what it meant. It was difficult
to find, however, and difficult to see properly when found.
"These people tried to copy it, and couldn't. Though it looked so
simple it was impossible to imitate. It went about so quickly, too,
that they couldn't catch hold of it and--"
"But have _you_ seen it?" asked Judy, her head bobbing up into his face
with eager curiosity.
It was a vital question. All waited anxiously for his reply.
"I have," he answered convincingly. "I saw it first when I was about
your age, and I've never forgotten it."
"But you've seen it since, haven't you? It's still in the world, isn't
it?"
"I've seen it since, and it's still in the world. Only no one knows to
this day why it's there. No one can explain it. No one can understand
it. It's so beautiful that it makes you wonder, and it's so mysterious
that it makes you--"
"What?" asked Tim for the others, while he paused a moment and stared
into their gazing faces.
"Wonder still more," he added.
Another pause followed.
"Then is your heart still burning, Uncle Felix?" Judy enquired,
prodding him softly. "And does it matter much?"
"It matters a great deal, yes, because I want to find out, and cannot.
And the burning goes on and on whenever I see the
thing-that-nobody-can-understand, and even when I don't see it but just
think about it--which is pretty often. Because, if I found out why it's
there, I should know so much that I should give up writing
storicalnovuls and become a sort of prophet instead."
They stared in great bewilderment. Their curiosity was immense. They
were dying to know what the thing was, but it was against the Rules to
ask outright.
"Were their lives _very_ dull?"--Maria set this problem, suddenly
recalling something at the beginning of the story.
"Oh, very dull indeed. They had no sense of wonder--those who forgot."
"How awful for them!"
"Awful," he agreed, in a long-drawn whisper, shuddering.
And that shudder ran through every one. The children turned towards the
darkening room. The gloomy cupboard was a blotch of shadow. The table
frowned. The bookshelves listened. The white face of the cuckoo clock
peered down upon them dimly from the opposite wall, and the chairs, it
seemed, moved up a little closer. But through the windows the stars
were beginning to peep, and they saw the crests of the friendly cedars
waving against the fading sky.
He pointed. High above the cedars, where the first stars twinkled, the
blue was deep and exquisitely shaded from the golden streak below it
into a colour almost purple.
"The thing that nobody could understand was even more wonderful than
_that_," he whispered. "But no one could tell why it was there; no one
could guess; no one could find out. And to this day--no one _can_ find
out."
His voice grew lower and lower and lower still.
"To-morrow I'll show it to you. You shall see it for yourselves."
They hardly heard him now. The voice seemed far away. What could it
be--this very, very wonderful thing?
"We'll go out and find one...by the stream ...where the willows
bend...and shake their pointed leaves.... We'll go to-morrow...."
His voice died away inside his waistcoat. Not a sound was audible. The
children were very close against him. In his big hands he took each
face in turn and put his lips inside the rim of three small ears.
He told the secret then, while wonder filled the room and hovered
exquisitely above the crowded chair....
Awakened by the silence, presently, the ball of black unrolled itself
beside the wire fender, it stretched its four black legs. And the
children, hushed, happy, and with a mysterious burning in their hearts,
went off willingly to bed, to dream of wonder all night long, and to
ask themselves in sleep, _"Why God has put blue dust upon the body of a
dragon-fly?"_